Kwame Nkrumah: Cold war modernity, pan-African ideology and the geopolitics of development

Abstract

This article analyses the development practices and foreign relations of Kwame Nkrumah during his nine-year regime as Ghana's first post-independence leader. It reinterprets Nkrumah's policies by situating them historically with the emergence of post-war global development discourses and geopolitically on the Third World battlefield of the Cold War. Nkrumah utilised his position at the crossroads of multiple modernities to implement a pan-African ideology. Nkrumah's ideology and policy point to a more globalised politics that emphasised supranational goals over national interest. However, these same shifts that marked his influence on the social imaginary were also limited by the political possibilities of his time. This new exploration of the contradictions of Nkrumah's rule has important implications for new global movements and organisations seeking to go beyond the nation-state framework.