Two Myths

In 1935 Kwame Nkrumah left the Gold Coast (Ghana) for the USA to complete his education, having been inspired by the writings of Marcus Garvey and WEB DuBois and by his ambitions for the future of his country. Later, as a student and teacher at Lincoln University, PA, USA, he thought deeply of the needs of his continent and its people. In London, he began to put his thoughts into political action: ideas for the unity of a great continent and people became particularised in practice in terms of, first, a united continent, Africa, and finally and effectively, of a united and independent country, Ghana. In the struggling years before independence and later, in the years following his great triumph, Ghana's own problems and needs occupied him completely. However, he never lost sight of his idea of African unity and, later on, he turned more and more to practical means of achieving that objective. Since his student days and by the time Nkrumah died in 1972, Africa has vastly changed. The best known changes are political, though the old boundaries as determined at the Berlin Congress in 1884/85 largely remain. Nkrumah knew that to cross those boundaries and penetrate the strong and proud new nationalisms within, Africa would need modern infrastructures in the form of telecommunications, trunk roads, railways, airlines, interterritorial committees on health and education, better language teaching, exchanges between artists, writers and craftsmen, shared research projects in sciences and medicine, trade treaties and some form of political co-operation or, at least, understanding. This book, by a great PanAfricanist leader, sets out the case for the total liberation and unification of Africa. It is essential reading for all interested in world socio-economic developmental processes.