Nkrumah Led Ghana into Neocolonialism

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Sixty years after the physical departure of Western-European colonialists from the shores of the African continent, it has become crystal clear that rather than the twentieth century having marked massive African decolonization, as widely documented in standard history textbooks and routinely taught in our schools, it is, indeed, the twenty-first century that stands to enable balkanized African countries to assume their long-desired status of socioeconomic and cultural independence.

Nkrumah, himself, recognized this stark and grim reality when he observed that in the era of the post-corporeal departure of the Western-European colonialists, what remained would be a woefully alienated class of African intellectuals, scholars and leaders who, because of their European-oriented academic and cultural indoctrination, acted pretty much like foreigners to their own cultures and people. And, indeed, while his diagnosis was indubitably admirable, Nkrumah would not, himself, be able to transcend this fluid, transitional period towards collective African self-recovery.

Dr. J. B. Danquah, the widely acknowledged Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics, on the other hand, ever the genius statesman and pragmatic thinker, had actually attempted to convince British and French colonialists, at least in the case of the erstwhile Gold Coast, to facilitate the organic demarcation of present-day Ghana by incorporating as integral landmarks of postcolonial Ghana, the Akan-speaking geo-polities, or territories, of the Ivory Coast. Conversely, Danquah had also counseled both Britain and France to organically merge the Ewe-speaking territories of Trans-Volta Togoland – or present-day Volta Region – with Togo. The latter stroke of genius and common sense largely accounted for Danquah’s perennial and consistent trouncing of Nkrumah in the Volta Region at the polls. And all evidence points to the verifiable fact that in the 1956 plebiscite that determined the geopolitical unification of Trans-Volta Togoland with the erstwhile Gold Coast, Nkrumah’s vigorously fought agenda, the overwhelming majority of the Ewe population opted for organic unification with Togo. The Ewes, however, lost the referendum by 16-percentage points due to the predominance of non-Ewe speakers in the northern-half of the Volta Region.

And so in a real and true historical sense, the bulk of the Ghanaian Ewe-speaking community has felt itself to be deeply alienated from the rest of the country since independence, and they have not hesitated to let this uneasy state of affairs be known to the rest of their Ghanaian compatriots. Recently, for instance, a group headed by some Ghanaian-Ewe intellectuals and professionals resident abroad convened a conference aimed at coalescing together something called The Greater Ewe Community or Nation, some ethnically based sort of mini-ECOWAS, in West Africa. What the latter might eventually lead to is anybody’s good guess. In the interim, what is known for certain is the fact that feeling woefully outnumbered and somewhat politically marginalized, as a logical defensive reflex mechanism, or so it seems, some Ewes, particularly those descended from Trans-Voltaics who were virulently against their incorporation into the Republic of Ghana at independence, have developed what may be aptly termed as a SIEGE MENTALITY, by which psychological process almost every non-Ewe-speaking Ghanaian, particularly Ghanaians of Akan lineage and/or heritage, have come to be envisaged as inveterate political opponents. The preceding state of affairs fairly accurately informs the “Pseudo-Political Theology” of the Volta Region constituting the so-called World Bank of the Ewe-dominated and Ewe-chaperoned National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The focus of this article – or “write-up,” as many Ghanaian readers are wont to describing it – however, regards a Graphic Online news report published on September 6, 2008, and titled “Design Aid to Build Capacity of Recipients.” In the report, President Kufuor is quoted as challenging the largely Western donor nations to couple their largesse to Third World countries, particularly those in Africa, with viable development and administrative frameworks, or strategies, that would enable recipient countries to wean themselves of such aid in the shortest practicable time.

If, indeed, this present writer’s interpretation of President Kufuor’s observation has validity, then what the outgoing Ghanaian premier appears to be implying is that Africa’s woeful socioeconomic and cultural underdevelopment may have equally much to do with a crushing loss of self-confidence on the part of the African her-/himself. The preceding maugre, it is still a rather tall order, as it were, to speak much less of the patently unacceptable, for recipients of Western economic largesse to also demand the systematic fabrication of an operational mechanism by which the donor could guarantee that such aid package as s/he is able to afford the indigent recipient gets put to effective use. In sum, what Ghana’s President Kufuor appears to be saying, sub-textually, is that if Western donor nations are unwilling or incapable of assuming the dual and onerous task, in elementary terms, of donating surplus food (as well as other material items) to the poor and destitute and actually ensuring that the recipient consume such donated food properly, then, perhaps, the magnanimous donor had better reconsider her/his kindly gesture or have such largesse, literally, flushed down the drain.

No doubt, President Kufuor’s observation may come as unforgivably absurd to some Ghanaians and Africans; fortunately, though, the Ghanaian premier’s quite acute observation could not be more dead-on accurate. For, indeed, such is the grim state of affairs on the African continent, three-score years into “post-coloniality.”

Interestingly, though, President Kufuor was merely highlighting the obvious, for such mechanism as is aimed at ensuring that aid-recipient nations effectively appropriate such largesse is already in place. The best known of its kind is something called the African Peer-Review Mechanism, a largely African-minted but Western-supervised procedure for guaranteeing the maximum utility of donor aid.

Needless to say, no one, except woefully misguided nationalist fanatics, ought to be embarrassed by this patently unsavory state of affairs. For, until a new breed of “Afrocentric” African elite – or leaders – appears on the scene who are proud to have been educated at Legon, Makerere, Ibadan or Dar-es-Salaam, and not Harvard, Oxford or the Sorbonne, we would continue to grope about the proverbial wilderness in desperate search of our damaged and/or lost identity. And while ours must not be an unrealistic process by way of re-inventing the wheel, nonetheless, it is ineluctably imperative that Africa’s realization of total self-reliance begin with the organic adaptation of science, technology and the esthetic and cultural arts. Already, this has been quite fairly successfully realized in the realm of religion, Christianity, to be precise. On the Islamic front, particularly vis-à-vis the African Muslim’s relationship to Mecca and the latter’s attendant seasonal psychological crisis, to speak much less about unnecessary economic waste and personal risk, much more needs to be done.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 18 books, including “Reena: Letters to an India-Americann Gal” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008), his twelfth and latest volume of poetry. E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.