September 1, 2022 • 24 mins
Hear how the first President of Ghana sought to unite Africa in a Pan-African Federation, while his colleague Komla Agbeli Gbedemah worked for world federation through the World Movement for Federal World Government and the nascent United Nations.
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(00:11):
In this video we are going to look at thelife and thought of another world federalist thinker,
Kwame Nkrumah,the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana.
Nkrumah came to the idea of the importance of federation,
both a Pan-African federation and ultimately a world federation,
as a way to bring about two key principles: self-determination and non-domination. (00:28):
undefined
Young Nkrumah was born on 21 September 1909
in Nkroful, a small village in the south west of the Gold Coast,one of Britain’s colonies in West Africa.
His father was a goldsmith and his mother was a petty trader.
(00:49):
They lived apart, as his father had several other wives,
and his mother bought him up with the help of her extended family.
He had a simple and care-free life in the village
until his mother sent him to a local elementary school run by the Catholic Mission,
where he was later baptised as a Catholic.
He was an excellent student andwas soon noticed by the Reverend Alec Fraser,
(01:10):
Principal of the Government Training College in the colony’s capital, Accra,
who then arranged for Nkrumahto come to his college and train as a teacher.
Nkrumah went off to Accra and trained to be a teacher.
And it was while he was at the College that he firstcame across the ideas of radical American black intellectuals,
such as Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois,
(01:32):
mainly through his discussions with the Vice Principal,Kwegyir Aggrey, who had spent several years in the US.
Their calls for African independence, of both black Americans and Africans living in Africa under colonial rule,
made a big impression on Nkrumah,
and he was inspired by the idea of a free and independent Africa
(01:53):
in which Africans would live in freedom and govern themselves.
He started to think more deeply about the reality of British colonial rule
and to develop his own ideas about African freedom.
In 1930 he obtained his teachers certificateand he spent the next 5 years teaching in various local schools.
But he was keen to further his own education
(02:14):
and to learn more about the powerful ideas to which he had been recently exposed.
A few years later he happened to meetNmandi Azikiwe, the future President of Nigeria,
and talked more with him about African nationalism.
Azikiwe had studied at Lincoln University,
a predominantly black university in Pennsylvania in the US,
and he strongly encouraged Nkrumah to go there.
(02:36):
Coming from a poor family, and with only a teacher’s salary,this sounded like a tough prospect for Nkrumah,
but he was determined, and he asked around his extended familyand somehow or other he managed to piece together the necessary funds.
And so, in 1935, at the age of 26, he set off to the US,
for what would turn out to be ten incredibly important years
(03:00):
where he would develop the core of his ideas.
In 1939 he received his BA in Economics and Sociology from Lincoln University,
and then in 1942 he completed two Masters degreesin Philosophy and Education from the University of Pennsylvania
and a BA in Theology from the Lincoln Seminary.
And alongside his studies he got engaged in student politics,
(03:23):
founding the African Students Association of America and Canada,
and becoming its first President.
And at the same time he also worked in a range of menial jobs,washing dishes and the like, in order to make ends meet.
And on Sundays he attended Presbytarian churches.
But perhaps the most important times were the summers,
when we went to Harlem,a neighbourhood in the northern part of New York City
(03:47):
that was the centre of black American life, thought and culture.
Harlem was bustling with energy at this time, as black American consciousness was flourishing.
In the evenings the streets became open forumswhere young thinkers and activists
stood on soap boxes on street corners and gave impassioned speeches to the large crowds
(04:07):
who gathered to listen and discuss.
Carlos Cooks, founder of the Garvey orientedAfrican Pioneer Movement was on the scene at this time,
talking about pan-Africanism and black liberation.
So were Arthur Reed and Ira Kemp,founders of the African Patriotic League,
talking about how Africans should start their own businessesin order to overcome the racial labour segregation in the US.
(04:30):
Nkrumah walked the streets and watched and listened.
The ideas and the energy were intoxicating.
He also read the works of leading black intellectuals
such as Eric James, George Padmore and C.L.R. James,
and their analyses of the contemporary world order.
These thinkers developed piercing critiquesof the international world order
(04:52):
and argued that the imperialist world was builton a dual system of slavery and racial hierarchy.
In contrast to many analyses of the time
which claimed that the people in the colonies were excluded from the international system,
these thinkers argued that the colonies were absolutely included in the world system, but in an unequal way.
(05:12):
Their resources and their labour werecrucial elements of the international capitalist world order,
but their voices were not included in the decision-making.
They argued that there was one over-arching world system,
but that it was characterised by racialised system of unequal integration,
in which the imperial powers and the othermainly white sovereign states were fully integrated,
(05:35):
while the mainly black and brown colonieswere only partially integrated.
This system of unequal integration, along racial lines,was the fundamental political structure
which enabled the domination and exploitationof the majority of the world’s population in the colonies.
Liberation, autonomy and sovereignty, they argued,
(05:56):
were needed for Africans and other colonial peoplesto have self-determination over their own lives
and to integrate, equally, into the world system.
Nkrumah built on these ideas and he took them further.
He imagined, what would happen if all the African colonies gained independence as separate sovereign states?
(06:18):
If this were to happen, he argued, it would lead to what he called the ‘balkanisation’ of Africa.
the creation of lots and lots of small and weak states
that would be virtually powerless in the competitive international order.
For Africans to really achieve self-determination,
the world order needed to be changed
in a way that would ensure that the powerful countriesdid not dominate the weaker ones.
(06:42):
A global system of world law and order would need to be created,
in the form, he argued, of a democratic world federation.
And if this was not possible,or perhaps as a first step towards such a world federation,
he argued that Africa must federate.
He modeled his African federation on the US federation.
(07:03):
He recalled that the American federationwas initially created as a unity of former colonial states
who realised that they could onlybe powerful against their former colonisers
if they came together as one large political and economic unit.
The US had been hugely successful since then.
And Nkrumah felt sure that if Africa could come together in a similar way,
(07:24):
then it too could develop in a positive way.
If African states were to be all separate and independent,
each one would end up economically tetheredto its former imperial master and to the global market.
Most colonial economies had been designed to produce and supplya limited number of raw materials to the colonial centre.
The Gold Coast, for example, had an economy mainlydependent on the production and supply of cocoa beans.
(07:50):
If African states stayed small and separate they wouldinevitably remain dependent on their former colonial masters.
The international system would enablea form of what he called 'neo-colonialism',
with the former imperial powers being able to retain economic control
even if their direct rule had been ended.
(08:11):
In order to avert this, and to achievefull, diverse and self-reliant economies,
he argued that the whole African continentneeded to come together in an African federation,
and to create one huge political and economic unit for themselves.
In this way they could trade with each otherrather than always selling to the Europeans or Americans.
(08:33):
They could pool resources for regional development.
They could collaborate on economic planning
and create continent-wide systems of defence and security.
If Africa came together in this way,it could become big and powerful.
It was full of valuable natural resourceswhich Africans could develop for their own use.
And if those outside of Africa wanted access to these natural resources,
(08:56):
then they would have to negotiate with the powerful African federation,
which would only grant them access on terms that would benefit all Africans.
Thus for Nkrumah national liberationand self-determination was only the first step.
In order to ensure that Africawas not dominated in a future world order,
it was necessary to form both an African federation,
(09:17):
and also a world federation.
This would require the independent African countriesto give up some of their sovereignty to this African federation,
and indeed to the future world federation.
Nkrumah was well aware of this, and not scared by that fact at all.
In 1945 he left the US and went to London, where he metGeorge Padmore, a leading Pan-African thinker and activist,
(09:40):
and the two of them started to collaborate.
That same year, 1945, world leaders were meeting in San Franciscoto discuss the formation of the United Nations.
Nkrumah and Padmore watched on from the outside.
Among the fifty nations who had sent delegates to the meeting,
there were only representatives from four African countries:
(10:01):
Ethiopia, Liberia, Egypt and South Africa,
as these were the only African countries that existed at that time.
And South Africa, in any case, was ruled by whites.
The rest of Africa, still under colonial rule,
had no say in the major re-ordering of the world that was taking place.
The injustice and the humiliation was horrible.
(10:23):
In response to the lack of African representationat the San Francisco Conference,
Padmore and Nkrumah organised the5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester in England,
on the 15-21 October 1945,
just days before the UN would officially come into being, on October 24th.
They wanted to set out their alternative vision of post-war world order.
(10:47):
In contrast to the continued imperialism contained in the San Francisco outcome
which didn't see an end to colonialism at all,
the 5th Pan-African Congresscalled for the immediate end to colonialism
and for autonomy and independence for black Africa.
And Nkrumah drafted a Declarationcalling on the workers and farmers of the colonies
to strike and boycott in order to struggleagainst colonial rule and bring about independence.
(11:11):
And in contrast to the very limited confederal approach of the UN,
they called for the formation of a Pan-African federation
and ultimately a world federation, which they called ‘One World’.
The final Congress resolution called for, and I quote,
“Black Africa autonomy and independence,
so far and no further than it is possible in this ‘One World’
(11:35):
for groups and people to rule themselves,
subject to inevitable world unity and federation”
After the Congress Nkrumah did not stay long in London.
The stirrings of independence were beginning to rumble in The Gold Coast.
In 1947 the first real political party was formed,the United Gold Coast Convention,
(11:56):
with the aim to bring about self-government as soon as possible.
The founders of the new party were looking for someone to run it, and they chose Nkrumah.
Excited at this turn of events, Nkrumah accepted the invitation
and later that year he returned to the Gold Coast and took up his new position.
Nkrumah quickly found the party rather staid and conservative, appealing mainly to the urban intelligentsia.
(12:20):
So in 1949 he left and formed his own political party,the Convention Peoples Party, or the CPP.
And as the name suggests,this party would reach out to the masses.
The CPP went around the country in vans, waving flagsand blaring out music and were incredibly successful in rallying public support.
(12:41):
Nkrumah quickly became a well-known and popular figure.
In January 1950 he organised a general strike,
and in response the British put him in prison.
The British were nonetheless ready tomove slowly towards a system of increased local rule,
and while Nkrumah was safely incarcerated in prison
they organised an election for the new quasi-government.
(13:03):
Nkrumah made sure that the CPP would stand in these elections.
His assistant and right-hand man,Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, led the campaign,
while Nkrumah managed to smuggle out messages to him written on toilet paper.
The election result was a landslide win for the CPP,with them securing 34 out of 38 seats.
(13:25):
Nkrumah was released from prison on 12 February 1951
and the very next day the British colonial governorasked him to form a government,
and he became The Gold Coast’s first Prime Minister.
Gbedemah became theMinister for Health and Labour.
Following another election a few years later, which the CPP won again,
the British finally agreed to give the Gold Coast independence.
(13:48):
Nkrumah decided that the name of the new state would be Ghana.
And on 6th March 1957 Ghana became the first African colony to achieve full independence as a sovereign state.
The celebrations were huge!
Ghana’s independence was seen not just as a local victory,
but as a victory for all Africans, and indeed for all colonial peoples.
(14:12):
Nkrumah became hailed as the ‘redeemer’, or 'Osagyefu' in the local Akan language.
But achieving national independence did not distract Nkrumahfrom his larger goal of building an African federation.
In his augural speech he said:
“our independence is meaningless… unless it islinked up with the total liberation of the African continent”.
(14:34):
And just over 12 months later, in April 1958,he hosted the first Conference of Independent African States,
bringing together Ethiopia, Liberia, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and Ghana,
to discuss steps towards coming together to collaborate and form a federation.
And later that year he organised another conference, the All Peoples’ African Congress,
(14:58):
a wider event, bringing togethereven more leaders and politicians from across Africa.
Not content with just talking,he also started to practically build a federation.
In October1958 Guinea becamethe next West African state to gain independence.
And just a few weeks later, in November,Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekoe Toure, Guinea’s first President,
(15:22):
signed an agreement to form the Ghana-Guinea federation
as the nucleus of a future African federation.
And in 1960 newly independent Mali joined too,
and at that time they changed the nameto the Union of African states.
As more and more African states gained their independence in the early 1960s,
(15:43):
discussions about African unity continued across the continent.
There were several different positions. The Casablanca bloc,
consisting of Ghana, Egypt, Algeria and Libya,
wanted a full pan-African federation, with a federal continental layer of government,
a common foreign policy, a free-trade area,
(16:03):
customs integration, and coordinated development planning.
The Brazzaville bloc, consisting of Ethiopia, Senegal, Libya and Nigeria,
wanted a much looser confederation, an Organisation of African Unity,
with a charter and a secretariat, but no political union.
In 1963 a Summit Conference was held to decide on the way forward.
(16:26):
And to Nkrumah’s great disappointment
the con-federal approach was chosen and the loose grouping of
the Organisation of African Unity was formed.Despite this setback Nkrumah never gave up on his
idea of an African federation, and he continued to put efforts into increasing African collaboration
with the hope that a full federation would be possible in the future.
(16:48):
While Nkrumah was putting his efforts
into building up both Ghana and the potential African federation, his government was also
looking at how to change the broader international order in the direction of a world federation.
And it was his Finance Minister, Gbedemah, who took on the responsibility for this area.
Like Nkrumah, he believed that the first priority was
(17:08):
ending colonialism and gaining independence for all peoples,
and that then it was crucial to re-fashion the world order into a world federation
with a democratically elected federal world government.
Since the end of the war, British newspapers,
including those that made their way to the colonies,
had been full of stories about the idea of a world government,
with leading parliamentarians offering it their support,
(17:31):
and at this point in time, it seemed like something that was eminently achievable.
In April 1951, just two months after taking office in the new colonial Gold Coast
quasi-government, Gbedemah had travelled to Rome,
where he had attended the 4th Congress of the World Movement for World Federal Government.
The discussions that he'd heard there were exciting:
(17:52):
how to bring about de-colonisation,
the need to establish a World Development Authority to help
the former colonies once they gained independence,
the proposal to create a World Alimentation Office,
remember, the World Food Program had yet to be formed,
and ideas about drafting a World Constitutionfor the future world federation.
Gbedemah had been pleased to find a group of people that shared many of his ideas,
(18:16):
and he continued to attend the Congresses in the following years.
He had also became involved in theWorld Association of Parliamentarians for
World Government,
where he met with parliamentarians from other countries to discuss steps towards
the formation of a federal world government.
In October 1957, just six months after Ghana gained independence,
(18:36):
Gbedemah, now the Finance Minister of the first African
state to gain independence from a colonial power,
travelled to The Hague to attend the 10th Congress
of the World Movement for World Federal Government,
which had now changed its name to become the World Association of World Federalists.
Congress participants were excited with Ghana’s independence and there was much
(18:57):
discussion about how to speed up the process of other colonies gaining their independence too.
Many believed that the creation of a third bloc of states,
not aligned with either the US or with Russia,
and who had much to benefit from the creation of a democratic world federation,
would be a powerful force to drive change in the UN.
And even though the date of the planned UN Charter Revision conference had been postponed,
(19:21):
there was still hope that it would happen in the next year or two,
and the World Federalists were busy discussing options and preparing proposals.
At this Congress Gbedemah was elected as President of the World Association of World Federalists
and he served in that role for the next four years until 1961.
In his acceptance speech he emphasised the importance of the anti-colonial struggle
(19:44):
for the liberation of the remining people on the African continent.
He also called for the World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government
and the World Association of World Federalists to work more closely together in
order to increase their influence and impact.
And he particularly emphasised the importance of working together to revise the UN Charter
and also to form of a global police force.
(20:06):
In the 1960s, as the Cold War deepened and the possibility
of UN Charter revision faded into the background,
Gbedemah worked with Nkrumah and others to try reform the UN in other ways.
Their initial focus was on increasing representation from
African and Asian countries in the UN Security Council,
and also in ECOSOC, the Economic and Social Council.
(20:28):
Ghana’s representative at the UN, Alex Quaison-Sackey,
argued that each region of the world, the Americas,
Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East,
should have a permanent seat in the Security Council.
After several years of rather fierce discussion and debate
in December 1963 the UN General Assembly agreed to increase the number of non-permanent members
(20:51):
of the Security Council from 11 to 15, and members of the Economic and Social Council from 18 to 27,
in order to enable the better representation of the newly forming African and Asian countries.
Whilst not a total victory, this was a significant achievement
and it set things up for African and Asian countries
to be able to have an important impact on UN discussions throughout the 1960s and 70s.
(21:17):
The following year Quaison-Sackey was elected as President of the UN General Assembly,
becoming the first black African to hold this position.
Ghana also pushed for the reform of other international organisations,
again with the aim of increasing representation from what were now called ‘developing countries’.
Gbedemah in particular pushed for the representation of Africans in the IMF.
(21:39):
While he did not manage to secure increased voting rights, his efforts did eventually lead
to the formation of a special Africa Department at the IMF, which was administered by Africans.
While all of these achievements were good small incremental changes, they of course fell far,
far short of achieving a world federation.
During the 1960s Nkrumah and his colleagues were being watched
(22:01):
closely by the US Intelligence Authorities.They believed that Nkrumah was doing more
to undermine American interests than any other black African.
And this may have been true. It may also have been that he was doing more than any other
black African to advance African interests.Had a true African federation been created
the history of Africa and its development may have looked completely different.
(22:26):
In any case, in 1966, when Nkrumah was on a state visit to China, his government was overthrown
in a violent coup that many believe had the tacit, or perhaps not so tacit, support of the US.
Nkrumah never returned to Ghana,
and instead lived his final years in exile in Guinea, before dying in 1972.
(22:48):
Nkrumah’s visions of African federalism and of world federalism were inspired by
a desire to create a world order in which all peoples could enjoy
self-determination and would not be dominated by others.
He understood that in an ‘international system’
rich and powerful states would be able to continue to dominate smaller and weaker ones,
(23:09):
and former imperial powers would be able to retain significant control over their former colonies,
in a system which he described at length and which he called 'neo-colonialism'.
Much in his thought and in his writings has turned out to be true,
and 'neo-colonialism' is an apt and widely used term to describe the current state of affairs,
(23:30):
in which the so-called ‘developing countries’ or ‘global South’ remain until today dominated by,
and dependent on, the richer countries, or the so-called ‘global North’.
Nkrumah’s remedy for this unequal world system was federation,
a regional federation of Africa, and a world federation.
(23:51):
His analysis and his ideas are still important and relevant today.
In this video we are going to look at thelife and thought of another world federalist thinker,
Kwame Nkrumah,the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana.
Nkrumah came to the idea of the importance of federation,
both a Pan-African federation and ultimately a world federation,
as a way to bring about two key principles: self-determination and non-domination. (00:28):
undefined
Young Nkrumah was born on 21 September 1909
in Nkroful, a small village in the south west of the Gold Coast,one of Britain’s colonies in West Africa.
His father was a goldsmith and his mother was a petty trader.
(00:49):
They lived apart, as his father had several other wives,
and his mother bought him up with the help of her extended family.
He had a simple and care-free life in the village
until his mother sent him to a local elementary school run by the Catholic Mission,
where he was later baptised as a Catholic.
He was an excellent student andwas soon noticed by the Reverend Alec Fraser,
(01:10):
Principal of the Government Training College in the colony’s capital, Accra,
who then arranged for Nkrumahto come to his college and train as a teacher.
Nkrumah went off to Accra and trained to be a teacher.
And it was while he was at the College that he firstcame across the ideas of radical American black intellectuals,
such as Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois,
(01:32):
mainly through his discussions with the Vice Principal,Kwegyir Aggrey, who had spent several years in the US.
Their calls for African independence, of both black Americans and Africans living in Africa under colonial rule,
made a big impression on Nkrumah,
and he was inspired by the idea of a free and independent Africa
(01:53):
in which Africans would live in freedom and govern themselves.
He started to think more deeply about the reality of British colonial rule
and to develop his own ideas about African freedom.
In 1930 he obtained his teachers certificateand he spent the next 5 years teaching in various local schools.
But he was keen to further his own education
(02:14):
and to learn more about the powerful ideas to which he had been recently exposed.
A few years later he happened to meetNmandi Azikiwe, the future President of Nigeria,
and talked more with him about African nationalism.
Azikiwe had studied at Lincoln University,
a predominantly black university in Pennsylvania in the US,
and he strongly encouraged Nkrumah to go there.
(02:36):
Coming from a poor family, and with only a teacher’s salary,this sounded like a tough prospect for Nkrumah,
but he was determined, and he asked around his extended familyand somehow or other he managed to piece together the necessary funds.
And so, in 1935, at the age of 26, he set off to the US,
for what would turn out to be ten incredibly important years
(03:00):
where he would develop the core of his ideas.
In 1939 he received his BA in Economics and Sociology from Lincoln University,
and then in 1942 he completed two Masters degreesin Philosophy and Education from the University of Pennsylvania
and a BA in Theology from the Lincoln Seminary.
And alongside his studies he got engaged in student politics,
(03:23):
founding the African Students Association of America and Canada,
and becoming its first President.
And at the same time he also worked in a range of menial jobs,washing dishes and the like, in order to make ends meet.
And on Sundays he attended Presbytarian churches.
But perhaps the most important times were the summers,
when we went to Harlem,a neighbourhood in the northern part of New York City
(03:47):
that was the centre of black American life, thought and culture.
Harlem was bustling with energy at this time, as black American consciousness was flourishing.
In the evenings the streets became open forumswhere young thinkers and activists
stood on soap boxes on street corners and gave impassioned speeches to the large crowds
(04:07):
who gathered to listen and discuss.
Carlos Cooks, founder of the Garvey orientedAfrican Pioneer Movement was on the scene at this time,
talking about pan-Africanism and black liberation.
So were Arthur Reed and Ira Kemp,founders of the African Patriotic League,
talking about how Africans should start their own businessesin order to overcome the racial labour segregation in the US.
(04:30):
Nkrumah walked the streets and watched and listened.
The ideas and the energy were intoxicating.
He also read the works of leading black intellectuals
such as Eric James, George Padmore and C.L.R. James,
and their analyses of the contemporary world order.
These thinkers developed piercing critiquesof the international world order
(04:52):
and argued that the imperialist world was builton a dual system of slavery and racial hierarchy.
In contrast to many analyses of the time
which claimed that the people in the colonies were excluded from the international system,
these thinkers argued that the colonies were absolutely included in the world system, but in an unequal way.
(05:12):
Their resources and their labour werecrucial elements of the international capitalist world order,
but their voices were not included in the decision-making.
They argued that there was one over-arching world system,
but that it was characterised by racialised system of unequal integration,
in which the imperial powers and the othermainly white sovereign states were fully integrated,
(05:35):
while the mainly black and brown colonieswere only partially integrated.
This system of unequal integration, along racial lines,was the fundamental political structure
which enabled the domination and exploitationof the majority of the world’s population in the colonies.
Liberation, autonomy and sovereignty, they argued,
(05:56):
were needed for Africans and other colonial peoplesto have self-determination over their own lives
and to integrate, equally, into the world system.
Nkrumah built on these ideas and he took them further.
He imagined, what would happen if all the African colonies gained independence as separate sovereign states?
(06:18):
If this were to happen, he argued, it would lead to what he called the ‘balkanisation’ of Africa.
the creation of lots and lots of small and weak states
that would be virtually powerless in the competitive international order.
For Africans to really achieve self-determination,
the world order needed to be changed
in a way that would ensure that the powerful countriesdid not dominate the weaker ones.
(06:42):
A global system of world law and order would need to be created,
in the form, he argued, of a democratic world federation.
And if this was not possible,or perhaps as a first step towards such a world federation,
he argued that Africa must federate.
He modeled his African federation on the US federation.
(07:03):
He recalled that the American federationwas initially created as a unity of former colonial states
who realised that they could onlybe powerful against their former colonisers
if they came together as one large political and economic unit.
The US had been hugely successful since then.
And Nkrumah felt sure that if Africa could come together in a similar way,
(07:24):
then it too could develop in a positive way.
If African states were to be all separate and independent,
each one would end up economically tetheredto its former imperial master and to the global market.
Most colonial economies had been designed to produce and supplya limited number of raw materials to the colonial centre.
The Gold Coast, for example, had an economy mainlydependent on the production and supply of cocoa beans.
(07:50):
If African states stayed small and separate they wouldinevitably remain dependent on their former colonial masters.
The international system would enablea form of what he called 'neo-colonialism',
with the former imperial powers being able to retain economic control
even if their direct rule had been ended.
(08:11):
In order to avert this, and to achievefull, diverse and self-reliant economies,
he argued that the whole African continentneeded to come together in an African federation,
and to create one huge political and economic unit for themselves.
In this way they could trade with each otherrather than always selling to the Europeans or Americans.
(08:33):
They could pool resources for regional development.
They could collaborate on economic planning
and create continent-wide systems of defence and security.
If Africa came together in this way,it could become big and powerful.
It was full of valuable natural resourceswhich Africans could develop for their own use.
And if those outside of Africa wanted access to these natural resources,
(08:56):
then they would have to negotiate with the powerful African federation,
which would only grant them access on terms that would benefit all Africans.
Thus for Nkrumah national liberationand self-determination was only the first step.
In order to ensure that Africawas not dominated in a future world order,
it was necessary to form both an African federation,
(09:17):
and also a world federation.
This would require the independent African countriesto give up some of their sovereignty to this African federation,
and indeed to the future world federation.
Nkrumah was well aware of this, and not scared by that fact at all.
In 1945 he left the US and went to London, where he metGeorge Padmore, a leading Pan-African thinker and activist,
(09:40):
and the two of them started to collaborate.
That same year, 1945, world leaders were meeting in San Franciscoto discuss the formation of the United Nations.
Nkrumah and Padmore watched on from the outside.
Among the fifty nations who had sent delegates to the meeting,
there were only representatives from four African countries:
(10:01):
Ethiopia, Liberia, Egypt and South Africa,
as these were the only African countries that existed at that time.
And South Africa, in any case, was ruled by whites.
The rest of Africa, still under colonial rule,
had no say in the major re-ordering of the world that was taking place.
The injustice and the humiliation was horrible.
(10:23):
In response to the lack of African representationat the San Francisco Conference,
Padmore and Nkrumah organised the5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester in England,
on the 15-21 October 1945,
just days before the UN would officially come into being, on October 24th.
They wanted to set out their alternative vision of post-war world order.
(10:47):
In contrast to the continued imperialism contained in the San Francisco outcome
which didn't see an end to colonialism at all,
the 5th Pan-African Congresscalled for the immediate end to colonialism
and for autonomy and independence for black Africa.
And Nkrumah drafted a Declarationcalling on the workers and farmers of the colonies
to strike and boycott in order to struggleagainst colonial rule and bring about independence.
(11:11):
And in contrast to the very limited confederal approach of the UN,
they called for the formation of a Pan-African federation
and ultimately a world federation, which they called ‘One World’.
The final Congress resolution called for, and I quote,
“Black Africa autonomy and independence,
so far and no further than it is possible in this ‘One World’
(11:35):
for groups and people to rule themselves,
subject to inevitable world unity and federation”
After the Congress Nkrumah did not stay long in London.
The stirrings of independence were beginning to rumble in The Gold Coast.
In 1947 the first real political party was formed,the United Gold Coast Convention,
(11:56):
with the aim to bring about self-government as soon as possible.
The founders of the new party were looking for someone to run it, and they chose Nkrumah.
Excited at this turn of events, Nkrumah accepted the invitation
and later that year he returned to the Gold Coast and took up his new position.
Nkrumah quickly found the party rather staid and conservative, appealing mainly to the urban intelligentsia.
(12:20):
So in 1949 he left and formed his own political party,the Convention Peoples Party, or the CPP.
And as the name suggests,this party would reach out to the masses.
The CPP went around the country in vans, waving flagsand blaring out music and were incredibly successful in rallying public support.
(12:41):
Nkrumah quickly became a well-known and popular figure.
In January 1950 he organised a general strike,
and in response the British put him in prison.
The British were nonetheless ready tomove slowly towards a system of increased local rule,
and while Nkrumah was safely incarcerated in prison
they organised an election for the new quasi-government.
(13:03):
Nkrumah made sure that the CPP would stand in these elections.
His assistant and right-hand man,Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, led the campaign,
while Nkrumah managed to smuggle out messages to him written on toilet paper.
The election result was a landslide win for the CPP,with them securing 34 out of 38 seats.
(13:25):
Nkrumah was released from prison on 12 February 1951
and the very next day the British colonial governorasked him to form a government,
and he became The Gold Coast’s first Prime Minister.
Gbedemah became theMinister for Health and Labour.
Following another election a few years later, which the CPP won again,
the British finally agreed to give the Gold Coast independence.
(13:48):
Nkrumah decided that the name of the new state would be Ghana.
And on 6th March 1957 Ghana became the first African colony to achieve full independence as a sovereign state.
The celebrations were huge!
Ghana’s independence was seen not just as a local victory,
but as a victory for all Africans, and indeed for all colonial peoples.
(14:12):
Nkrumah became hailed as the ‘redeemer’, or 'Osagyefu' in the local Akan language.
But achieving national independence did not distract Nkrumahfrom his larger goal of building an African federation.
In his augural speech he said:
“our independence is meaningless… unless it islinked up with the total liberation of the African continent”.
(14:34):
And just over 12 months later, in April 1958,he hosted the first Conference of Independent African States,
bringing together Ethiopia, Liberia, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and Ghana,
to discuss steps towards coming together to collaborate and form a federation.
And later that year he organised another conference, the All Peoples’ African Congress,
(14:58):
a wider event, bringing togethereven more leaders and politicians from across Africa.
Not content with just talking,he also started to practically build a federation.
In October1958 Guinea becamethe next West African state to gain independence.
And just a few weeks later, in November,Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekoe Toure, Guinea’s first President,
(15:22):
signed an agreement to form the Ghana-Guinea federation
as the nucleus of a future African federation.
And in 1960 newly independent Mali joined too,
and at that time they changed the nameto the Union of African states.
As more and more African states gained their independence in the early 1960s,
(15:43):
discussions about African unity continued across the continent.
There were several different positions. The Casablanca bloc,
consisting of Ghana, Egypt, Algeria and Libya,
wanted a full pan-African federation, with a federal continental layer of government,
a common foreign policy, a free-trade area,
(16:03):
customs integration, and coordinated development planning.
The Brazzaville bloc, consisting of Ethiopia, Senegal, Libya and Nigeria,
wanted a much looser confederation, an Organisation of African Unity,
with a charter and a secretariat, but no political union.
In 1963 a Summit Conference was held to decide on the way forward.
(16:26):
And to Nkrumah’s great disappointment
the con-federal approach was chosen and the loose grouping of
the Organisation of African Unity was formed.Despite this setback Nkrumah never gave up on his
idea of an African federation, and he continued to put efforts into increasing African collaboration
with the hope that a full federation would be possible in the future.
(16:48):
While Nkrumah was putting his efforts
into building up both Ghana and the potential African federation, his government was also
looking at how to change the broader international order in the direction of a world federation.
And it was his Finance Minister, Gbedemah, who took on the responsibility for this area.
Like Nkrumah, he believed that the first priority was
(17:08):
ending colonialism and gaining independence for all peoples,
and that then it was crucial to re-fashion the world order into a world federation
with a democratically elected federal world government.
Since the end of the war, British newspapers,
including those that made their way to the colonies,
had been full of stories about the idea of a world government,
with leading parliamentarians offering it their support,
(17:31):
and at this point in time, it seemed like something that was eminently achievable.
In April 1951, just two months after taking office in the new colonial Gold Coast
quasi-government, Gbedemah had travelled to Rome,
where he had attended the 4th Congress of the World Movement for World Federal Government.
The discussions that he'd heard there were exciting:
(17:52):
how to bring about de-colonisation,
the need to establish a World Development Authority to help
the former colonies once they gained independence,
the proposal to create a World Alimentation Office,
remember, the World Food Program had yet to be formed,
and ideas about drafting a World Constitutionfor the future world federation.
Gbedemah had been pleased to find a group of people that shared many of his ideas,
(18:16):
and he continued to attend the Congresses in the following years.
He had also became involved in theWorld Association of Parliamentarians for
World Government,
where he met with parliamentarians from other countries to discuss steps towards
the formation of a federal world government.
In October 1957, just six months after Ghana gained independence,
(18:36):
Gbedemah, now the Finance Minister of the first African
state to gain independence from a colonial power,
travelled to The Hague to attend the 10th Congress
of the World Movement for World Federal Government,
which had now changed its name to become the World Association of World Federalists.
Congress participants were excited with Ghana’s independence and there was much
(18:57):
discussion about how to speed up the process of other colonies gaining their independence too.
Many believed that the creation of a third bloc of states,
not aligned with either the US or with Russia,
and who had much to benefit from the creation of a democratic world federation,
would be a powerful force to drive change in the UN.
And even though the date of the planned UN Charter Revision conference had been postponed,
(19:21):
there was still hope that it would happen in the next year or two,
and the World Federalists were busy discussing options and preparing proposals.
At this Congress Gbedemah was elected as President of the World Association of World Federalists
and he served in that role for the next four years until 1961.
In his acceptance speech he emphasised the importance of the anti-colonial struggle
(19:44):
for the liberation of the remining people on the African continent.
He also called for the World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government
and the World Association of World Federalists to work more closely together in
order to increase their influence and impact.
And he particularly emphasised the importance of working together to revise the UN Charter
and also to form of a global police force.
(20:06):
In the 1960s, as the Cold War deepened and the possibility
of UN Charter revision faded into the background,
Gbedemah worked with Nkrumah and others to try reform the UN in other ways.
Their initial focus was on increasing representation from
African and Asian countries in the UN Security Council,
and also in ECOSOC, the Economic and Social Council.
(20:28):
Ghana’s representative at the UN, Alex Quaison-Sackey,
argued that each region of the world, the Americas,
Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East,
should have a permanent seat in the Security Council.
After several years of rather fierce discussion and debate
in December 1963 the UN General Assembly agreed to increase the number of non-permanent members
(20:51):
of the Security Council from 11 to 15, and members of the Economic and Social Council from 18 to 27,
in order to enable the better representation of the newly forming African and Asian countries.
Whilst not a total victory, this was a significant achievement
and it set things up for African and Asian countries
to be able to have an important impact on UN discussions throughout the 1960s and 70s.
(21:17):
The following year Quaison-Sackey was elected as President of the UN General Assembly,
becoming the first black African to hold this position.
Ghana also pushed for the reform of other international organisations,
again with the aim of increasing representation from what were now called ‘developing countries’.
Gbedemah in particular pushed for the representation of Africans in the IMF.
(21:39):
While he did not manage to secure increased voting rights, his efforts did eventually lead
to the formation of a special Africa Department at the IMF, which was administered by Africans.
While all of these achievements were good small incremental changes, they of course fell far,
far short of achieving a world federation.
During the 1960s Nkrumah and his colleagues were being watched
(22:01):
closely by the US Intelligence Authorities.They believed that Nkrumah was doing more
to undermine American interests than any other black African.
And this may have been true. It may also have been that he was doing more than any other
black African to advance African interests.Had a true African federation been created
the history of Africa and its development may have looked completely different.
(22:26):
In any case, in 1966, when Nkrumah was on a state visit to China, his government was overthrown
in a violent coup that many believe had the tacit, or perhaps not so tacit, support of the US.
Nkrumah never returned to Ghana,
and instead lived his final years in exile in Guinea, before dying in 1972.
(22:48):
Nkrumah’s visions of African federalism and of world federalism were inspired by
a desire to create a world order in which all peoples could enjoy
self-determination and would not be dominated by others.
He understood that in an ‘international system’
rich and powerful states would be able to continue to dominate smaller and weaker ones,
(23:09):
and former imperial powers would be able to retain significant control over their former colonies,
in a system which he described at length and which he called 'neo-colonialism'.
Much in his thought and in his writings has turned out to be true,
and 'neo-colonialism' is an apt and widely used term to describe the current state of affairs,
(23:30):
in which the so-called ‘developing countries’ or ‘global South’ remain until today dominated by,
and dependent on, the richer countries, or the so-called ‘global North’.
Nkrumah’s remedy for this unequal world system was federation,
a regional federation of Africa, and a world federation.
(23:51):
His analysis and his ideas are still important and relevant today.
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