Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah was born in Nkroful in the Gold Coast in 1909 and studied at Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States before spending time in London. He founded the Convention People's Party in 1949, became prime minister in 1952 and led Ghana to independence in 1957, one of the first African colonies to win it. He became president in 1960. His government funded state industry and the Volta River dam, while growing more authoritarian. He was overthrown by a military coup in 1966 while abroad, lived in exile in Guinea, and died in Bucharest in 1972.

Nkrumah is celebrated as a leading figure of African independence and pan-Africanism, and in 2000 BBC World Service listeners voted him African Man of the Millennium. Admirers credit him with expanding education, building infrastructure such as the Akosombo dam, and helping found the Organisation of African Unity. Critics point to the Preventive Detention Act, which biographer David Birmingham said did more than anything else to damage his reputation, the one-party state, an obviously rigged 1964 referendum, and a personality cult around the title Osagyefo. Heavy borrowing and high levies on cocoa farmers, combined with a collapse in cocoa prices, left Ghana in debt and alienated rural supporters. Claims of CIA involvement in the 1966 coup have never been fully verified.