Why the Black Star Must Lead Again

Nature abhors vacuum, so says philosophers, and scientists postulate that air occupies space. Similarly, a leadership vacuum must and will be filled at any given time by an individual or a state to help create order and an enabling environment for development, as we have learnt from ancient and recent history: The Roman empire (27BC - AD 1453), the United Kingdom (18th and 19th Centuries) and the United States (20th and 21st Centuries) have all played crucial global economic, political and military leadership roles, sometimes at heavy human toll and substantial fiscal costs, in maintaining order through minimizing conflicts between societies or states in the natural pursuit of resources, power and dominance. A nation’s leader sets the moral tone (e.g. the rallying of the world against Nazism and Fascism by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill), backed by economic muscle to drive a nation toward that moral imperative (e.g. building a democratic and free world where the rights of sovereign nations are respected).

In the post-World War II era, America has been the moral impetus crusading for the spread of democracy, freedom and human rights. America's foray into Vietnam (1965-1975, combat operation), Korea (1950-1953) and the Gulf (1991 and 2003-present) were inspired primarily by the economic, cultural and moral incentive to fight against communism, dictatorship, terrorism, oppression and the need to spread freedom and democracy. Whilst a nation may pursue global and regional geopolitical interests (e.g. the U.S. removal of Saddam’s forces from Kuwait), such leadership sometimes turns out to advance the interest of a region or the world (relatively unrestricted flow of oil from the Gulf).

West Africa and Ghana lack the leadership that existed in the days of Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah set the moral tone on why Africa needed independence and why the whole continent ought to pursue that objective with deliberate haste. Such impetus helped speed up the independence movement, and within just three years after Ghana's independence, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and others successfully wrested political power from the British and the French in their respective countries in 1960.

Kwame Nkrumah coined the term the Black Star to refer to the leadership of Ghana on the continent of Africa. Ghana was indeed a star of Africa, being the first Sub-Saharan nation to achieve independence and advocate for full economic, cultural and political self-government in Africa. In effect, Nkrumah created a Ghana that took a leadership role in foreign policy. That leadership position was relinquished after Nkrumah's overthrow in 1966 when Ghana was plunged into political and economic upheaval.

Today, Africa lacks continental leadership. South Africa has the economic muscle but lacks the will and the moral tone necessary to foster that kind of continental leadership. We see chaos and disorder in African foreign policy. Civil wars have thrived for years in West Africa (Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, etc), in the horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia), in Central Africa (Zaire, C.A.R) and in the Southern African region (Angola, Mozambique). In the last 40 years, we have witnessed virtually no regional or continental leadership in Africa. In the face of this leadership vacuum, minor disagreements or skirmishes can easily spiral out of control. Liberia's troubles started as resentment by a segment of population over the perceived dictatorship and political and economic dominance by President Doe’s Krahn ethnic group, which eventually escalated into a full-blown civil war. Similar trends and sequence follow most of the other trouble spots on the continent.

Ghana undoubtedly has the brain power, the moral rectitude and, to a lesser extent, the economic power to reassert itself as a regional and continental power on the foreign policy front. On brain power, Ghana is one sub-Saharan country with a pool of competent leaders with extensive intellectual pedigree, including Kwame Nkrumah (Penn, doctorate), second president Kofi Busia (Oxford, doctorate), Kofi Annan (MIT, management), John Kufuor (Oxford, law), Attah Mills (Stanford Law School, Fulbright scholar), to name a few. The nation's emphasis on education early on in its history has paid off big time. No wonder it can boasts of such intellectual powerhouses. Not only can Ghana claim bragging rights for giving impetus to the independence movement in Africa, it now currently stands as Africa's most successful democracy. It has recorded four successive transparent elections since 1992 and twice has successfully transferred power from an incumbent party to an opposition party. The country has a robust and competitive media industry that enjoys relative freedom with virtually no government intimidation or intervention.

The case for financial power is harder to make given the relatively small size of Ghana’s economy compared to countries like South Africa and Nigeria. Nevertheless, Ghana has the best-performing economy in West Africa (annual GDP growth rate of 6% in the last 6 years) and is among the top five in sub-Saharan Africa (in the league of South Africa, Botswana, Gabon, Angola). The country can boast of a robust economy that has expanded or registered higher growth than the previous year consistently in the last 10 years. Without doubt, Ghana's economy is one of the fastest-growing and most stable in Africa. The discovery of oil resources has led to diversification of the economy and a burgeoning new petrochemical sector, which will undoubtedly boost the Ghana’s quest to become a regional and continental economic and political power.

West Africa needs a regional leader and Africa needs continental leadership. Ghana aptly filled those roles in the 60's, thanks to the vision and charisma of Kwame Nkrumah and his young team of men and women inspired to help secure a rightful place for Africa in the modern community of nations. Given Ghana's current economic resurgence and flourishing democracy, the nation is ripe again to claim that leadership mantle.