Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah was the first Prime Minister and President of independent Ghana and a leading theorist of Pan-Africanism. Born in 1909 in the village of Nkroful in the Gold Coast, he trained as a teacher at Achimota School and then studied at Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, before moving to London in 1945.

In London he helped organise the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester alongside George Padmore and W.E.B. Du Bois. He returned to the Gold Coast in 1947 and in 1949 founded the Convention People's Party, which mobilised mass support for self-government through strikes and boycotts. Nkrumah was jailed by the colonial authorities but won the 1951 elections from prison and was released to lead the government.

On 6 March 1957 Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African colony to win independence, and Nkrumah declared the country a republic in 1960 with himself as President. He pushed industrial projects such as the Akosombo Dam, expanded education, and helped found the Organisation of African Unity in 1963. His one-party state and economic strains made him unpopular at home, and in 1966 the army deposed him while he was visiting Beijing.

He spent his exile in Conakry as co-president of Guinea at the invitation of Sékou Touré, writing books on neo-colonialism, and died in Bucharest in 1972. Ghana now marks his birthday as a public holiday.

The name Kwame is an Akan day name given to a boy born on Saturday, from the Twi word for that day. He bore it as a masculine name common among the Akan of Ghana.