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Nkrumah, Cocoa and the United States: The Vision of an Industrial African Nation-State

Abstract:
African nation-states attained independence in a rapidly changing world. Economic depression in the 1930s and the massive economic and physical destruction of Europe during World War II had reshaped economic theories and policies in instructive ways. Out of the drive to rebuild Europe development economics emerged, which was very much synonymous with colonial economics in its inception. The birth of the United Nations cemented the nation-state as the unit of international relations. The Cold War polarized the world between East and West with major implications for newly independent African states. Modernization theory and the vision of newly industrialized economies was advanced as an antidote to communism and held great appeal for Africa’s new leaders.
The paper examines Kwame Nkrumah’s vision for an industrial Ghana, his gravitation to the United States for funding and investment despite his complex political ideology that, perhaps, favored the East and socialism, and his complicated relations with a cocoa industry that was indispensable to the funding of industrialization but in its domination by small family farms seemed out of harmony with the vision of a “modern” economy. From these contradictions Nkrumah, the ardent critic of colonialism, would end up pursuing economic policies that were at times very neocolonial.

Speaker’s bio:
Emmanuel Akyeampong is a Professor of History and African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. Professor Akyeampong’s publications include Themes in West Africa’s History (2005), which he edited; Between the Sea and the Lagoon: An Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana, 1850 to Recent Times (2001); and Drink, Power and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c. 1800 to Present Times (1996). Professor Akyeampong is the faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a board member of the Du Bois Institute at Harvard. As a former chair of the Committee on African Studies, he has been instrumental, along with Professor Gates, in creating the Department of African and African American Studies.

Seminar Chairs: Abosede George and Rhiannon Stephens

Please RSVP to ths2122@columbia.edu if you would like to join the group for dinner at a nearby restaurant.