Kwame Nkrumah (born Francis Nwia Kofi Nkrumah (ə)n-KROO-mə; 21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained independence from the United Kingdom. He was then the first prime minister and then the president of Ghana, from 1957 until 1966. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.
After twelve early years abroad pursuing higher education, developing his political philosophy, and organising with other diasporic pan-Africanists, Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast to begin his political career as an advocate of national independence. He formed the Convention People's Party, which achieved rapid success through its unprecedented appeal to the common voter. He became prime minister in 1952 and retained the position when he led Ghana to independence from the United Kingdom in 1957, a first in sub-Saharan Africa at the time. In 1960, Ghanaians approved a new constitution and elected Nkrumah as president.
His administration was primarily socialist as well as nationalist. It funded national industrial and energy projects, developed a strong national education system and promoted a pan-Africanist culture. Nkrumah had a vision to consolidate African countries under a single continental leadership (that was socialist in nature) with himself as president of this bloc. Under Nkrumah, Ghana played a leading role in African international relations and the Pan-Africanist movement during Africa's decolonisation period, supporting numerous liberation struggles. The anti-socialist Western nations saw the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute (KNII) as a sympathetic base for military support to African nationalists and hence as a problematic threat.
After an alleged assassination plot against him, coupled with increasingly difficult local economic conditions, Nkrumah's government became increasingly authoritarian in the 1960s, as he repressed political opposition and conducted elections that were neither free nor fair. In 1964, a constitutional amendment made Ghana a one-party state, with Nkrumah as president for life of both the nation and its party. He fostered a personality cult, forming ideological institutes and adopting the title of "Osagyefo." The KNII served the purpose of spreading propaganda and the ideology of Nkrumah's own version of scientific socialism known as Nkrumaism. Nkrumah was deposed in 1966 in a coup d'état by the National Liberation Council. Complicity on the part of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency has been claimed, including by former agents, but never fully verified. Nkrumah lived the rest of his life in Guinea, where he was named honorary co-president. In 1999, he was voted BBC African of the millennium.
Kwame Nkrumah was born on Tuesday, 21 September 1909 in Nkroful, Nzema East, (now Ellembele), Gold Coast (now Ghana). Nkroful was a small village in the Nzema area, in the southwest of the Gold Coast, close to the frontier with the French colony of the Ivory Coast. Kwame was his mother's only child. His father did not live with the family, but worked in Half Assini where he pursued his goldsmith business until his death. At age 3, Nkrumah and his mother moved to Half Assini to join his father. They sent him to the elementary school run by a Catholic mission at Half Assini, where he proved an adept student.
During his years as a student in the United States, he was known as Francis Nwia Kofi Nkrumah, Kofi being the Akan name given to males born on Fridays. He later changed his name to Kwame Nkrumah in 1945 in the UK, preferring the name "Kwame". According to Ebenezer Obiri Addo in his study of the future president, the name "Nkrumah", a name traditionally given to a ninth child, indicates that Kwame probably held that place in the house of his father, who had several wives.
His father, Opanyin Kofi Nwiana Ngolomah, came from Nkroful and belonged to the Asona clan of the Akan Tribe. Sources indicated that Ngolomah stayed at Tarkwa-Nsuaem and dealt in the goldsmith business. Ngolomah was respected for his wise counsel by those who sought his advice on traditional issues and domestic affairs. He died in 1927.
Although his mother, whose name was Elizabeth Nyanibah (1877–1979), later stated his year of birth as 1912, Nkrumah wrote that he was born on 21 September 1909. His mother hailed from Nsuaem and belonged to the Agona family. She was a fishmonger and petty trader when she married his father. Eight days after his birth, his father named him as Francis Nwia-Kofi after a relative but later his parents named him as Francis Kwame Ngolomah.
He progressed through the ten-year elementary programme in eight years. In 1925, he was a student-teacher in the school and was baptised into the Catholic faith. He would fondly remember having to stand atop a box to teach his mates. While at the school, he was noticed by the Reverend Alec Garden Fraser, principal of the Government Training College (soon to become Achimota School) in the Gold Coast's capital, Accra. Fraser arranged for Nkrumah to train as a teacher at his school. Here, Columbia-educated deputy headmaster Kwegyir Aggrey exposed him to the ideas of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois. Aggrey, Fraser, and others at Achimota thought that there should be close co-operation between the races in governing the Gold Coast, but Nkrumah, echoing Garvey, soon came to believe that only when the black race governed itself could there be harmony between the races.
After obtaining his teacher's certificate from the Prince of Wales' College at Achimota in 1930, Nkrumah was given a teaching post at the Catholic primary school in Elmina in 1931. During his years at Achimota, Nkrumah was noted for his debating and leadership skills, traits that later shaped his role as a nationalist leader.
After a year there, he was made headmaster of the school at Axim. In Axim, he started to get involved in politics and founded the Nzema Literary Society. In 1933, he was appointed a teacher at the Catholic seminary at Amissano. Although life there was strict, he liked it, and considered becoming a Jesuit. Nkrumah had heard journalist and future Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe speak while a student at Achimota; the two men met and Azikiwe's influence increased Nkrumah's interest in black nationalism. The young teacher decided to further his education. Azikiwe had attended Lincoln University, a historically black college in Chester County, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, and he advised Nkrumah to enroll there.
Nkrumah, who had failed the entrance examination for London University, gained funds for the trip and his education from relatives. He travelled by way of Britain, where he learned, to his outrage, of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, one of the few independent African nations. He arrived in the United States, in October 1935.
According to historian John Henrik Clarke in his article on Nkrumah's American sojourn, "the influence of the ten years that he spent in the United States had a lingering effect on the rest of his life." Nkrumah had sought entry to Lincoln University some time before he began his studies there. On Friday, 1 March 1935, he sent the school a letter noting that his application had been pending for more than a year. The university responded, asking him to write a short essay on his life story and personal goals. He notably wrote of his ambitions, saying: "In all things, I have held myself to but one ambition and that is to make necessary arrangements to continue my education... that I may be better prepared to serve my fellowman."
When he arrived in New York in October 1935, he travelled to Pennsylvania, where he enrolled despite lacking the funds for the full semester. He soon won a scholarship that provided for his tuition at Lincoln University. He remained short of funds through his time in the US. To make ends meet, he did menial jobs on roles such as a wholesaler of fish and poultries, cleaner, dishwasher and others. On Sundays, he visited black Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and in New York.