Kwame Nkrumah and the Dream of African Unity

Book excerpt: In Kwame Nkrumah and the Dream of African Unity, Lansiné Kaba describes some of the epic phases of Kwame Nkrumah’s struggle for the independence of his country, Ghana, and the unity of his continent, Africa. These two tasks were gigantic, complex, and even frightening. Each separately was promethean in scope, perhaps beyond the capacity of a single leader, however able and determined. Yet, Nkrumah dared to accomplish them and thus deserves a place among the great figures of his world. Far from being a hagiography or a biography, or an essay on the ideology and foreign politics of Nkrumah, this work follows the adventures of his dream of African unity, from the years studying across the Atlantic to the Accra Summit in 1965 and the coup d’état in 1966. Throughout, the analysis tries to understand the genesis of the dream and the effort required for its realization. These discussions deal with the difficulties of implementing a policy of regrouping independent states into a continental body.