African titan Kwame Nkrumah is the first President and Prime Minister of Ghana.
Nkrumah led Ghana to independence.
A nationalist and Pan-Africanism proponent, Nkrumah is undoubtedly one of Africa’s foremost freedom fighters.
A Pan-Africanism proponent, Nkrumah is undoubtedly one of Africa’s foremost freedom fighters, nationalist, writer and thinker who was to influence a generation of Pan-African nationalists and freedom fighters. Also a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity.
We pay homage to him by remembering the words he left us with in his quest to see the liberation, unification and development of Africa.
1. “I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me”.
2. “We face neither East nor West; We face forward”. – Conference speech delivered in Accra, 1960
3. “Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment”. – Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism, 1965.
4. “The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart.” – Africa Must Unite, 1963.
5. “We must unite now or perish”.- Speech given at the founding of the OAU, Addis Ababa, 24 May 1963.
6. “Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs”. – From a speech given at the founding of the OAU, Addis Ababa, 24 May 1963.
7. “I am in the knowledge that death can never extinguish the torch which I have lit in Ghana and Africa. Long after I am dead and gone, the light will continue to burn and be borne aloft, giving light and guidance to all people.” Epitaph on Nkrumah’s mausoleum in Nkroful, the village of his birth in southern Ghana.
8. “Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism”. – African Socialism Revisited, 1962.
9. “We were still regarded as representing the infancy of mankind. Our highly sophisticated culture was said to be simple and paralyzed by inertia, and we had to be encumbered with tutelage”. – Speech Inaugurating the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana Legon, 1962.
10. “Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation”. – Class Struggle in Africa, 1970.
