Ghana: Thirty Years On
Richard Rathbone takes a look at the first African colonial state to gain independence.
Ghana is a small West African country whose land area is roughly the same as that of mainland Britain; colonial delimitation, however, ensured that its physical outlines are far more even. Thirty years ago, as midnight ushered in March 6th, the world watched as its Prime Minister, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, flanked by his senior lieutenants, wearing, like him, the Nehru-style caps that denoted 'prison graduate' status, spoke to his country:
At long last the battle has ended. Ghana, your beloved country is free forever... from now on we are no more a colonial, but a free and independent people.
The world watched because the British colony called the Gold Coast was becoming Ghana and thus the first colonial state in tropical Africa to gain its independence. Thirty years – even twenty years – earlier this first gust of the wind of change, would have been unthinkable and unimaginable.
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