Ghanaian pan-Africanist and the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana
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O começo da segunda parte, organizada por Michael Lowy se chama "Socialismo Indo-Americano", com os textos:A crise mundial e o proletariado peruano (15 de jun de 1923)A unidade da América Indo-Espanhola (06 de dez de 1924)O problema elementar do Peru (09 de dez de 1924)O rosto e a alma do Tahuantinsuyo (11 de set de 1925)Economia colonial (08 de jan de 1926)Uma entrevista com José Carlos Mariátegui (22 de jul de 1926)Apresentação de Amauta (01 de set de 1926)Mensagem ao congresso operário (05 de jan de 1927)Indigenismo e socialismo: intermezzo polêmico (27 de fev de 1927).O livro principal é: Por um Socialismo Indo-Americano. Mariátegui; Michael Lowy. Expressão Popular: Por um socialismo indo-americano - Expressão Popular O livro anterior utilizado é: O labirinto periférico: Aventuras de Mariátegui na América Latina. Deni Alfaro Rubbo. Autonomia Literária: O labirinto periférico: aventuras de Mariategui na América Latina – Autonomia Literária#MorcegoNaAutonomia (cupom de desconto de 20% nos livros da Autonomia Literária) Bibliografia e referências:[1] Por um socialismo Indo-Americano: ensaios escolhidos. José Carlos Mariátegui. Expressão Popular. https://expressaopopular.com.br/livraria/9786558911258por-um-socialismo-indo-americano/[2] Revista Clio Operária: https://www.cliooperaria.com/ [3] Por uma Implosão da Sociologia. Marcos Morcego. Editora Terra Sem Amos. https://tsaeditora.com.br/produtos/por-uma-implosao-da-sociologia/ [4] Um mundo ch'ixi é possível. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Editora Elefante. https://editoraelefante.com.br/produto/um-mundo-chixi-e-possivel/ [5] Camponeses e quilombolas insurgentes: luta e resistência pela terra no Brasil. Clóvis Moura. Editora Terra Sem Amos. https://tsaeditora.com.br/produtos/camponeses-e-quilombolas-insurgentes/ [6] Neocolonialismo: estágio superior do imperialismo. Kwame Nkrumah. Abertura Editorial [Em pré-venda]: https://benfeitoria.com/projeto/neocolonialismonkrumah[7] As veias abertas da América Latina. Eduardo Galeano. Vídeo de leitura e discussão: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0s9_GPDGEk&list=PLwOYAlx_eyF3tF-m1dvmFUc5n4pfTZ-wE .Clio Operária: Clio Operária | Revista Drive das leituras (Roteiro disponibilizado no drive sobre a quinta temporada):https://mega.nz/folder/UYNwQZZS#rCNoahoz13hVy7Elyc4Ymg.CUPONS DE DESCONTO:#MorcegoNaAutonomia (cupom de desconto de 20% nos livros da Autonomia Literária) - https://autonomialiteraria.com.br/loja/.Não se esqueça de nos seguir nas redes sociais para ficar sempre por dentro dos nossos conteúdos:.Instagram: @morcego_marcos_BlueSky: marcosmorcego@bsky.socialYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/livescavernadomorcegoTwitch: twitch.tv/cavernamorcego.Colabore com a Caverna do Morcego, seja um apoiador:Apoio coletivo:apoia.se/cavernamorcegopicpay: @ marcos.morcegopix e email de contato: podcastmorcego@gmail.com.Equipe:Roteiro/edição : Marcos MorcegoVoz/Postagem: Marcos MorcegoCapa: Geovane Monteiro / @geovanemonteiro.bsky.social / @geovanedesenheiro
In this episode, Breht is joined by writer, intellectual, and poet Too Black to discuss his essay "Nonviolence is Violence, Too (Part 2)—We're All in the Gunk." Together, they critically examine the liberal mythology of "nonviolence" as a pure moral alternative to violence, arguing instead that all movements operate within conditions already structured by state, colonial, racial, and imperial violence. Drawing from the Black freedom struggle, Ghana's independence movement, Kwame Nkrumah, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, Gandhi, Indian independence, riots, armed resistance, and the "positive radical flank," Too Black shows how so-called nonviolent movements have often depended on the threat, presence, displacement, or redirection of violence in order to win concessions. Rather than offering a simplistic celebration of violence, this conversation asks us to think more honestly about power, confrontation, sacrifice, propaganda, state repression, and the real historical conditions under which oppressed people struggle to breathe beneath the boot. At its core, this is a discussion about what movements actually do, how victories are actually won, and why peace is not the absence of conflict, but something that must be fought for. Listen to our previous discussion on Part 1 of Too Black's essay here: https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/nonviolence-is-violence-too-somebodys-gotta-die Subscribe to Black Myths Podcast ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/
In this episode Esther Armah and Myrna discuss her Emotional Justice framework. In this conversation, they get into the courage that racial healing actually requires, and who it asks the most of. Esther is a journalist, playwright, and global emotional justice advocate joining us from Accra, Ghana. Drawing on her encounters with Winnie Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Nchiki Biko — the widow of Steve Biko who famously refused to forgive the officers who murdered her husband at the TRC — Esther unpacks why reconciliation is not liberation language, why Nelson Mandela's message of forgiveness placed an impossible emotional burden on Black people, and what the emotional work of white people actually looks like. Myrna brings her own reckoning: years of fawning for white audiences, softening the language of colonial trauma, and what it finally cost her to name it. This is Part 1. Esther will be back. Esther Armah is a Ghanaian-British journalist, playwright, radio host, and creator of the Emotional Justice framework. She is the author of Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing. She joins this episode from Accra, Ghana. IN THIS EPISODE — How Esther's mother's broken silence about the 1966 Ghana coup gave birth to Emotional Justice — and the insight that "you cannot PhD your way out of untreated trauma" — What Winnie Mandela told Esther before she interviewed Desmond Tutu: listen to the women first — Nchiki Biko's refusal to forgive at the TRC, the murder of Steve Biko, and why her "no" cracked open a new understanding of racialized forgiveness — Why reconciliation bypasses justice and repair — and how Canada's TRC has replicated the same harm as South Africa's — Nelson Mandela's forgiveness narrative: a political act of its time, and why it seeded a dangerous legacy — The emotional work that belongs to white people — Intimate Reckoning, Emotional Patriarchy, and the difference between proximity to power and actual allyship — The language of whiteness: how all of us are taught to center whiteness, and the emotional work of letting it go — Myrna's own reckoning: years of fawning for white audiences and what it took to name it — The three Cs — Courage, Comfort, and Convenience — and how we each choose to contribute to or resist systems of harm — Why you cannot self-care your way towards liberation, and what communal care actually requires — Isolation vs. solitude — why hiding can be part of healing, and why isolation is the death of liberation — Wellness in the Face of Warfare: what it means to choose wellness when your health is considered a threat to whiteness QUOTES "You cannot PhD your way out of untreated trauma. There is no amount of education that will replace the emotional work we all have to do." — Esther Armah "Reconciliation is not liberation language. It is conciliatory language designed to sustain how whiteness comforts and soothes itself." — Esther Armah "In Canada, your superpower is to mask your violence in polite neutrality and somehow describe it as no longer violence. We see that — because that's part of British whiteness." — Esther Armah PEOPLE MENTIONED — Winnie Mandela — South African anti-apartheid activist — Archbishop Desmond Tutu — South African human rights leader — Nchiki Biko — widow of Steve Biko; her refusal to forgive at the TRC was pivotal to Esther's framework — Nelson Mandela — discussed in relation to racialized forgiveness — Resmaa Menakem — referenced by Myrna on having skin in the game — Kwame Nkrumah — first independent president of Ghana; quoted on political and economic liberation RESOURCES Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing by Esther Armah - You can buy it here: https://www.amazon.ca/Emotional-Justice-Roadmap-Racial-Healing/dp/1523003367 estherarmah.com https://www.theaiej.com/ myrnamccallum.co You can learn more about Myrna and her work at: www.myrnamccallum.ca
Greetings Glocal Citizens! This week on the podcast I'm back in Accra, back on the Continent, just in time to commemorate African Liberation Day--Africa Day 2026. Last year around this time, my guest and I were preparing for our respective sessions at AfroTalks 2025 @ University of Ghana-Legon where we shared stories and proposed solutions centering the theme "HOW?" aimed at fostering critical introspection, sustainable community impact, and the amplification of African stories by Africans. I shared insights taken from our Future of Work salon series and featured Glocal Citizens specifically engaged in impact-driven solutions for us by us. My guest, Dr. Ashley D. Milton was part of a duo presenting The Triangle Offensive Policy. She joins us a year later to share how her work has progressed and her consortium prepares to release the The State of the Africa Diaspora Report, a first-of-its-kind continental grounding document examining how Africa and its global diaspora connect across mobility, investment, culture, skills, governance, technology, and development systems. The report brings together policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, creatives, and community stakeholders across Africa and the diaspora to shape a more coordinated and regenerative future. As a strategist, researcher, and systems builder working at the intersection of Africa, its global diaspora, and the future of regenerative economic development she is the Founder and Managing Director of She Grows It™ (SGI), a Pan-African consulting and investment migration advisory firm. Ashley leads work across green infrastructure, trade and industry, tourism and hospitality, diaspora engagement, governance strategy, and emerging technology systems designed to support long-term African growth and resilience. She has advised on projects ranging from IFC EDGE green building certification and sustainable development strategy to diaspora policy frameworks, investment positioning, and institutional ecosystem development. Her work consistently centers one core question: how do we build systems that allow African people, businesses, and communities to thrive across generations? Where to find Dr. Ashley? The Africa Diaspora Report On LinkedIn On Instagram What's Ashley watching? The Eyes of Ghana When Malcolm Smiled a film by Glocal Citizen Muhammida el Muhajir Other topics of interest: Africa Day Accountability and the March 2026 UN Resolution How the US justifies it's denial of the gravest crime against humanity. Kwame Nkrumah, books on Pan-Africanism About the long history of smog in Los Angeles About FAMU, a top ranked HBCU About the book, White Malice by Susan Williams Nautilus Diving - DakarSpecial Guest: Ashley D. Milton.
Stel je voor: een nationaal elftal dat niet alleen speelt voor winst, maar voor een politieke droom. Een team dat geloofde dat voetbal Afrika kon verenigen. Dat was Ghana in de jaren zestig.In deze aflevering van De Africast duiken we in het bijzondere verhaal van de Black Stars en de visionaire en controversiële president Kwame Nkrumah. Voor hem was voetbal geen bijzaak, maar een instrument van macht, trots en panafrikanisme. Het Ghanese elftal moest bewijzen dat een onafhankelijk Afrika sterk, modern en verenigd kon zijn.Te gast is Edwin Schoon, auteur van De macht van de bal. Samen onderzoeken we hoe Nkrumah voetbal gebruikte om zijn politieke idealen uit te dragen, waarom spelers bijna politieke ambassadeurs werden en hoe Ghana uitgroeide tot hét symbool van een zelfbewust Afrika.We bespreken ook hoe die ideeën vandaag nog doorsijpelen in het Ghanese voetbal. Want terwijl Ghana zich opnieuw probeert te profileren op het wereldtoneel, met diaspora-spelers, buitenlandse coaches en een nieuwe generatie sterren, blijft de vraag bestaan: voor wie spelen de Black Stars eigenlijk? Voor Ghana, of voor een groter Afrikaans ideaal?Daarnaast hoor je een bijdrage van de KoolkastVolg onze LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/africastpodcast?originalSubdomain=nlVoor mooie beelden, quizjes en 'behind the scenes', volg onze Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/africast_podcast/Link met Jos of Joeri via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jos-hummelen/ & https://www.linkedin.com/in/joerinortier/
Africa is a centre of world history — a fact that's been deliberately obscured, says journalist Howard W. French. In this talk based on his book, The Second Emancipation, he explores the surprisingly early seeds of 20th century Pan-African thought, and how Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana went from reluctant student to influential leader of a free Ghana.Howard W. French delivered the Black History Month lecture at University of Toronto's New College. French was is a former New York Times bureau chief based in Shanghai. He now teaches journalism at Columbia University and is also the author of Born in Blackness.
A Abertura Editorial, da qual faço parte, apresenta aqui o projeto editorial, mas também o seu primeiro lançamento, aqui na voz de Márcio Paulo (autor do posfácio, voz no Ponta de Lança), e Pedro Silva, que trabalhou na produção desse livro e tem a coleção de livros e o podcast: Marxismo Periférico; além das camaradas que não puderam estar em gravação, a Bebel, responsável pela tradução, Dy atuando na capa e nas artes, e a Biana, atuando na capa e diagramação.."Mais do que uma obra histórica, este livro é um chamado político e intelectual à autodeterminação dos povos, além de uma leitura essencial para quem busca entender as engrenagens profundas do poder global".Redes sociais e Sites:Acesse a pré-venda e adquira o seu livro: https://benfeitoria.com/projeto/neocolonialismonkrumah@aberturaeditorial@marxismoperiferico@omarciopaulo_@bebel_ecologia@dy.fuchs@bianaaf@morcego_marcos_.Para adquirir seu livro da Autonomia Literária com CUPONS DE DESCONTO:#MorcegoNaAutonomia (cupom de desconto de 20% nos livros da Autonomia Literária) - https://autonomialiteraria.com.br/loja/.Drive das leituras (Roteiro disponibilizado no drive sobre a terceira temporada):https://mega.nz/folder/UYNwQZZS#rCNoahoz13hVy7Elyc4Ymg.Não se esqueça de nos seguir nas redes sociais para ficar sempre por dentro dos nossos conteúdos:.instagram: @morcego_marcos_bsky: marcosmorcego.bsky.socialYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/livescavernadomorcegoTwitch: twitch.tv/cavernamorcego.Colabore com a Caverna do Morcego, seja um apoiador:Apoio coletivo:apoia.se/cavernamorcegopicpay: @ marcos.morcegopix e email de contato: podcastmorcego@gmail.com.Equipe:Roteiro/edição : Marcos MorcegoVoz/Postagem: Marcos MorcegoCapa: Geovane Monteiro / @geovanemonteiro.bsky.social / @geovanedesenheiro
Xenofobia en África: auto-aniquilación al servicio de la supremacía blanca¿Sabías que la ola de xenofobia que recorre Sudáfrica, Nigeria, Angola y Ghana no es un fenómeno aislado, sino el síntoma de una crisis más profunda en nuestra concienciaafricana? Hoy es miércoles y toca #LALLAVE. Escúchanos en nuestros canales de YouTube y Spotify: https://youtu.be/lRSgeDdM-P8 En este episodio analizamos por qué los africanos están siendo empujados a enfrentarse entre sí, cómo operan las élites y las estructuras neocoloniales para desviar la frustración popular, y qué nos enseñan Amos Wilson, Kwame Nkrumah, Mandela, Biko y Julius Malema sobre la urgencia de reconstruir la unidad africana.El programa se estructura en tres partes: primero, una radiografía de los hechos recientes de violencia y expulsiones; después, un análisis político y psicológico de las causas profundas; y finalmente, una reflexión panafricanistasobre cómo transformar esta crisis en un punto de inflexión para la liberación continental.¡Otra África es posible!#sabiasqueÁfrica#otraÁfricaesposible#xenophobiasouthafrica#afrophobia#blackonblackcrime#DrAmosWilson#OsagyefoKwameNkrumah#Africamustunite#Nigeriansmustgo#marchthemarch#primeirooangolano#Ghanamustgo#allafricanwomenrevolutionaryunion#allafricanpeoplerevolutionaryparty
Acclaimed historian Howard W. French's new book, The Second Emancipation, recasts the liberation of 20th century Africa through the lens of revolutionary leader Kwame Nkrumah. The first prime minister of Ghana, Nkrumah “was in his day as important as Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Mohandas Gandhi of India,” according to The Wall Street Journal. In fact, French writes, African opinion polls often rank Nkrumah as the greatest Black person of the last 100 years, surpassing Mandela. The Second Emancipation is the second work in French's trilogy about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history. The title―referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom―positions this liberation at the center of a “movement of global Blackness,” with one charismatic leader, Nkrumah, at its head. That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is “typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world.” Join us to hear French talk about Nkrumah's legacy and dramatic life story, the history of African liberation, and the current state of America's engagement with Africa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, writers, students, technical-experts, ministers, and diplomats. Osei-Opare shows how race and Ghana-Soviet spaces influenced, enabled, and disrupted Ghana's transformational socialist, Cold War, and decolonization projects to achieve Black freedom. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, writers, students, technical-experts, ministers, and diplomats. Osei-Opare shows how race and Ghana-Soviet spaces influenced, enabled, and disrupted Ghana's transformational socialist, Cold War, and decolonization projects to achieve Black freedom. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, writers, students, technical-experts, ministers, and diplomats. Osei-Opare shows how race and Ghana-Soviet spaces influenced, enabled, and disrupted Ghana's transformational socialist, Cold War, and decolonization projects to achieve Black freedom. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, writers, students, technical-experts, ministers, and diplomats. Osei-Opare shows how race and Ghana-Soviet spaces influenced, enabled, and disrupted Ghana's transformational socialist, Cold War, and decolonization projects to achieve Black freedom. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, writers, students, technical-experts, ministers, and diplomats. Osei-Opare shows how race and Ghana-Soviet spaces influenced, enabled, and disrupted Ghana's transformational socialist, Cold War, and decolonization projects to achieve Black freedom. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, writers, students, technical-experts, ministers, and diplomats. Osei-Opare shows how race and Ghana-Soviet spaces influenced, enabled, and disrupted Ghana's transformational socialist, Cold War, and decolonization projects to achieve Black freedom. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore.
Criminal gangs have torched buses and cars and set up roadblocks in several Mexican states after security forces shot the leader of the cartel Jalisco New Generation, who was nicknamed “El Mencho,” yesterday. France is set to pass an emergency decree slashing renewable energy targets, turning instead to its nuclear energy sector. And, a look at the life of Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, who was a vocal campaigner for Pan-Africanism and a United States of Africa that would work together as a political and economic bloc. Plus, giant tortoises have been reintroduced on Floreana Island in the Galapagos. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
In this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast, political theorist Shuk Ying Chan (UCL) discusses her new book Postcolonial Global Justice (Princeton University Press, 2026), which develops an account of postcolonial global justice as social equality by thinking with anticolonial leaders Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah and JawaharlalNehru. Chan explains her method of “historically inflected normative theorising”, which treats specific historical actors as interlocutors in developing normative principles for the present. The discussion also explores how the nation-state was often an instrument used by these thinkers to pursue abroader ideal of relational equality, and Chan's conceptualisation of postcolonial global justice as a matter of social equality, focusing on the ability of individuals and groups to “stand as equals”. Finally, the conversation turns to contemporary problems of undemocratic global governanceand Chan's proposal to rethink global democracy in terms of horizontal inequalities of power between groups, rather than only a vertical gap between individuals and global institutions.
In today's episode, we are joined by the author of a new book published by Princeton University Press. The book offers a bold reimagining of global justice, drawing on anticolonial thought to confront the unfinished work of decolonization. Rather than defending decolonization as a nationalist project, it advances a powerful vision of global social equality.Our guest is Dr. Shuk Ying Chan, Assistant Professor of Political Theory at UCL Political Science. Regular listeners will recall her previous appearances on the podcast, including episodes on resisting colonialism and the trouble with exporting Hollywood films.In Postcolonial Global Justice, Shuk Ying Chan proposes a new account of global justice centered on the value of social equality. Drawing on the ideas of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Chan argues that a core commitment of anticolonial thought is the rejection of hierarchy and the embrace of equality. These insights from decolonization, she suggests, give us critical tools for challenging contemporary global hierarchies and for rejecting forms of postcolonial nationalism that are more focused on policing citizens than promoting their freedom and equality. UCL's Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy offers a uniquely stimulating environment for the study of all fields of politics, including international relations, political theory, human rights, public policy-making and administration. The Department is recognised for its world-class research and policy impact, ranking among the top departments in the UK on both the 2021 Research Excellence Framework and the latest Guardian rankings.
Clearing the FOG with co-hosts Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a country in central Africa the size of Western Europe and rich in arable land and minerals, including those critical to the military industrial complex, such as cobalt and coltan. Since the CIA-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961, the DRC has been ruled by puppets who answer to the United States and its allies. 2025 has been a devastating year for the DRC. Clearing the FOG speaks with Maurice Carney, the executive director of Friends of the Congo, about the occupation by Rwandan forces, mass displacement of millions of people, and the recent 'peace agreements' that rob the DRC of its riches and sovereignty. He discusses this in the context of Kwame Nkrumah's work, "Neo-colonialism: The last stage of imperialism." For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism
The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
Les Têtes d'affiches de Denise Epoté de TV5 Monde, comme chaque dimanche sur RFI, cette semaine avec Guillaume Ouattara. Sur la première marche de notre podium cette semaine, un ingénieur en imagerie médicale originaire du Bénin, diplômé de l'Institut des sciences appliquées de Lyon, Bertin Nahum, possède également un master en robotique obtenu à l'Université de Coventry. Depuis 2017, Rosa et Epione, les robots qu'il a conçus, ont révolutionné les procédures chirurgicales, notamment dans le traitement des cancers. Notre seconde tête d'affiche est originaire du Ghana, spécialiste reconnu de la gestion durable des sols et de l'agriculture intelligente, Kwame Agyei Frimpong possède un doctorat en science des plantes et des sols obtenu à l'université d'Aberdeen, un master en ressources physiques des terres de l'université de Gand, un master en agriculture de précision de l'université polytechnique Mohammed VI et une licence en agriculture de l'université Kwame Nkrumah. Il est un acteur clé de l'agriculture durable en Afrique.
From colonial mental slavery to entrepreneurial freedom: Why waiting for capital keeps you broke - and the network-based wealth creation model that requires zero investors. In this transformative episode of Konnected Minds, a powerful conversation dismantles the capital-chasing mentality keeping young Africans trapped in perpetual waiting mode. This isn't about motivational fluff - it's a systematic breakdown of why the education system conditions graduates to seek multinational jobs abroad instead of recognizing the wealth-building opportunities surrounding them at home. The episode exposes a brutal truth: those asking for capital don't have it because they come from backgrounds where nobody can help them. Yet the same people desperate for 10,000 cedis to start a business walk past construction sites, market women building empires with no MBA, and young boys at Abossey Okai doing spare parts trading with nothing but hustle and honesty. The contradiction is devastating - university graduates who won't carry loads at construction sites in Ghana will do degrading work abroad without hesitation. From the 70-year-old man collecting cardboard boxes who now has 70,000 cedis in his account, to the roasted corn seller who started with 200 cedis and now exports, to the market traders moving inventory without business plans - this conversation proves that your network, your environment, and your willingness to start ugly are the only capital that matters in African markets where 80% are self-employed. Critical revelations include: • Why business is simply looking for problems in society - nothing magical about it • The network principle: your contacts, WhatsApp groups, and parents' connections ARE your starting capital • Why seeds must go into dirt before they germinate - your beginning doesn't have to be pretty • How writing business proposals for investors who don't know you wastes the exact time you could use building • The confidence crisis: Why Africans lack belief in themselves, their country, and their people • Why you cannot develop confidence without good memory of who you are as a people • The historical knowledge gap: Most Africans can't trace beyond 200 years - some stop at 65-year independence • How studying 10,000 years of African history (Ghana Empire, Mali Empire, Songhai Empire) repairs your mind • Why there's no successful group of people who aren't proud of their heritage • The university economics lecturer who said "Africa is not part of the global economy" - the contempt they have for us The conversation reaches its peak with an uncomfortable truth: every achiever believes in their ability to create their own destiny. Sitting back asking for someone to hold your hand reveals zero confidence. The force that makes you rise is internal - discovered through knowledge of self, history, and heritage. From Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's books to African historians reclaiming the narrative, the tools for mental repair exist for those willing to invest in knowledge acquisition beyond classroom certificates. This episode challenges the ideology that keeps Africans comparing their complex realities to Western economies, feeling inadequate despite building businesses that survive without the structures others depend on. The calmness, the confidence, the clarity to see opportunities everywhere - it all comes when you study your history and repair the colonial damage to your self-perception. From the man gathering industrial boxes to the person starting with whatever they have in their front, this isn't theory - it's the practical blueprint for Africans who are tired of waiting for capital that never comes, ready to leverage the network they already have, and willing to start in the dirt because they understand that's where seeds become trees. Host: Derrick Abaitey IG: https://www.instagram.com/derrick.abaitey YT: https://www.youtube.com/@DerrickAbaitey Join Konnected Academy: https://konnectedacademy.com/ Listen to the podcast on: Apple Podcast - http://tinyurl.com/4ttwbdxe Spotify - http://tinyurl.com/3he8hjfp Join this channel: /@konnectedminds FOLLOW ► https://linktr.ee/konnectedminds #Podcast #businesspodcast #AfricanPodcast
The rise and fall of Kwame Nkrumah — Africa's first postcolonial leader who dreamed of freedom but faced betrayal, paranoia, and a CIA-backed coup. From hope to heartbreak, this is the story of how Ghana's independence inspired a continent… and why it all came crashing down.Stay connected with LegacyFollow us for clips, behind-the-scenes stories, and new episode drops: Instagram: @originallegacypodcast | BlueSky: @legacy-productions.bsky.social | TikTok: @legacy_productionsExplore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In post-war London, Kwame Nkrumah turns from student to revolutionary — building the movement that would end colonial rule. From fish heads in Camden to the Pan-African Congress in Manchester, this is where independence began.Stay connected with LegacyFollow us for clips, behind-the-scenes stories, and new episode drops:Instagram: @originallegacypodcastBlueSky: @legacy-productions.bsky.socialTikTok: @legacy_productionsExplore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Le nouveau maire de New-York, le démocrate anti-Trump Zohran Mamdani, n'est pas seulement de nationalité américaine. Il est aussi de nationalité ougandaise, car c'est à Kampala qu'il est né, il y a 34 ans. Et sa solidarité avec le peuple palestinien tient beaucoup à l'engagement de ses parents à la fois contre l'apartheid et pour la Palestine. Quel rôle ont joué son père et sa mère, Mahmood Mamdani et Mira Naïr, dans ses choix politiques d'aujourd'hui ? Abdoulaye Bathily est l'envoyé spécial du président sénégalais Bassirou Diomaye Faye pour les affaires internationales. Il est ami avec la famille Mamdani depuis quarante ans. En ligne de Dakar, il témoigne au micro de Christophe Boisbouvier. RFI : Vous êtes un vieil ami de Mahmood Mamdani, le père de Zohran Mamdani, qui vient d'être élu à New York. Vous l'avez rencontré où, Mahmood Mamdani ? Abdoulaye Bathily : J'ai rencontré Mahmood Mamdani à Dar es Salam en 1979. Il était professeur au département de sciences politiques de l'Université de Dar es Salam, et il était à l'époque, comme beaucoup d'intellectuels ougandais, réfugié à Dar es Salam pour fuir la dictature de Idi Amin Dada qui, avec son slogan xénophobe, avait chassé tous les Asiatiques de l'Ouganda. Mais il avait aussi chassé tous les intellectuels, tous les opposants, militaires comme civils. Donc toute l'élite ougandaise s'est retrouvée à Dar es Salam. Il y avait également Yoweri Museveni, qui était étudiant là-bas, qui va par la suite former le Mouvement national de résistance contre la dictature de Idi Amin et qui va recruter des jeunes réfugiés rwandais comme Paul Kagame. Alors nous nous retrouvions souvent dans des espaces publics après les cours, après les conférences, pour discuter de l'avenir du continent, de la lutte contre l'apartheid, de la lutte contre le colonialisme. Et vous étiez tous des freedom fighters, contre l'apartheid ? Contre l'apartheid qui était soutenu à l'époque, il faut le rappeler, par Israël. Et on verra comment, en fait, le jeune Zohran, par la suite, suivra les traces de son père dans cette lutte pour le soutien à Gaza, le soutien à la Palestine. Alors, après la chute de Idi Amin Dada en 1979, Mahmood Mamdani peut rentrer en Ouganda. Et quand Mahmood Mamdani et Mira Naïr se marient et quand nait leur enfant, Zohran en 1991, la petite famille est toujours en Ouganda. Et le deuxième prénom que choisissent les parents pour leur enfant, c'est le prénom Kwame. Est-ce que c'est tout un symbole ? Mahmood Mamdani est un militant de la lutte pour l'indépendance de l'Afrique, ce qu'on appelle aujourd'hui un panafricaniste. Et pendant qu'il enseignait en Ouganda, il était régulièrement au Sénégal parce qu'il était membre actif du Conseil pour le développement de la recherche économique et sociale en Afrique, le Codesria. Il venait souvent à Dakar et d'ailleurs, en 2007, il est venu ici avec sa famille, avec le petit Zohran. Je me rappelle, ils sont venus ici à la maison. Et Zohran lui-même, il a vécu dans cette ambiance militante. Comme son prénom l'indique, puisque Kwame, c'est Kwame Nkrumah. Mais aussi Zohran a fait sa thèse sur Frantz Fanon et sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Donc vraiment, c'est le fils de son père. Quand Zohran nait à Kampala en 1991, sa maman, Mira Naïr, est déjà une personnalité très connue puisqu'elle a sorti « Salaam Bombay ! », un film à succès qui sera primé partout. Est-ce que Mira Naïr est aussi une femme aux convictions politiques ? Oui, elle a des convictions politiques affirmées. Je l'ai rencontrée plusieurs fois à Kampala, mais également à New York et ils sont venus ici à Dakar. Ils ont visité l'île de Gorée avec leur fils Zohran, et ils sont vraiment engagés à la fois pour les causes de l'Afrique, pour les causes de l'Asie, pour les causes de la Palestine et du monde progressiste en général. En 2018, Zohran Mamdani a été naturalisé citoyen américain et pour autant, il n'a pas abandonné sa nationalité ougandaise. Comment interprétez-vous cela ? Mahmood Mamdani, son père, est profondément attaché à l'Ouganda et à l'Afrique. Donc, cet attachement à l'Afrique, ce n'est pas quelque chose d'artificiel chez eux. Et puis leur foi musulmane également, c'est une donnée importante. C'est un couple de militants qui a donné naissance à un militant engagé pour les causes justes. Et aujourd'hui, est-ce que Mahmood Mamdani continue d'entretenir des relations avec des hommes politiques africains en dehors de vous-même ? Oui, Mahmood continue de parcourir le continent. Il est en contact avec tous nos amis d'il y a 50 ans. Donc c'est un internationaliste, Mahmood Mamdani. Et Zohran est né dans cette ambiance-là. Et est-ce que Mahmood Mamdani est toujours en contact avec Yoweri Museveni ? Oui je pense qu'ils sont en contact, mais peut-être leur chemin, en tout cas du point de vue des idées, ont divergé. Parce que malheureusement, nous avons vu que notre ancien camarade et ami Museveni aujourd'hui est au pouvoir depuis 1986, et ce n'est pas de notre goût.
As fascism rises in Europe, a young Kwame Nkrumah in America finds his purpose — to unite Africa and destroy colonialism. From racism in Jim Crow America to rebellion in the lecture hall, this is the making of a revolutionary.Get in touch:Instagram: @originallegacypodcastBlueSky: @legacy-productions.bsky.socialTikTok: @legacy_productionsSubscribe to our Substack:https://substack.com/@peterfrankopanhttps://substack.com/@afuahirsch Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Peter and Afua trace the early life of Kwame Nkrumah — from a small Ghanaian village to the first sparks of revolution that would change Africa forever. A story of faith, rebellion, and the birth of an idea: freedom on African terms.Get in touch:Instagram: @originallegacypodcastBlueSky: @legacy-productions.bsky.socialTikTok: @legacy_productionsSubscribe to our Substack:https://substack.com/@peterfrankopanhttps://substack.com/@afuahirsch Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Épisode 2 : Refaire l'histoire. Une conférence historique pour sortir de l'impasse coloniale soutenue par le griot de la jeunesse africaine Tiken Jah Fakoly, où intellectuels et artistes se sont retrouvés pour revisiter la Conférence berlinoise de 1885… quand ils ont partagé le monde. Mais comment refaire l'histoire ? Berlin 1885. Le chancelier allemand Otto von Bismarck convoque une conférence à Berlin afin d'organiser le partage du continent africain entre les puissances industrielles et militaires émergentes. Cette réunion, à laquelle participèrent quatorze pays européens, les États-Unis et l'Empire ottoman, visait principalement à préserver leurs intérêts extractivistes et commerciaux. Ce processus a conduit à une profonde fragmentation des structures politiques endogènes du continent africain, marquant durablement son histoire politique, économique et sociale. Pour les Africains, ce processus inaugura une ère de résistance et de lutte pour l'autodétermination. Berlin 2001. Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, plasticien berlinois d'origine africaine, imagine le Laboratoire de Deberlinization. L'artiste développe des outils symboliques afin de tracer un chemin vers l'émancipation. Ce kit d'urgence comprend un Global Pass pour faciliter la liberté de circulation le monde, ainsi que l'AFRO, une monnaie imaginaire panafricaniste, libérée des contraintes du CFA (indexation sur les garanties de change et de la tutelle des banques centrales exogènes). À la croisée de la création artistique et de la critique sociale, le laboratoire de Deberlinization invite à la réflexion sur la possibilité (individuelle ou collective) d'une refonte du lien civil au sein et en dehors de l'État postcolonial. Berlin 2025. À l'initiative du Professeur Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, directeur de HKW, la Conférence Deberlinization s'inscrit dans la continuité de l'utopie performative imaginée par Mansour Ciss Kanakassy pour considérer les conditions possibles d'un récit alternatif sur l'ordre du monde et son avenir, une poétique transformatrice de la relation entre l'action créatrice et les formes de résistance, l'histoire, la mémoire, la prospective – bref, un champ d'expérience et un horizon d'attente. Dans ce second épisode, vous écoutez les voix de Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (directeur et directeur artistique de Haus der Kulturen der Welt), Tiken Jah Fakoly, (chanteur et activiste) soutien de la manifestation, Célestin Monga, (professeur d'économie à Harvard), Simon Njami, (écrivain et commissaire d'exposition) et Yousra Abourabi, (professeure de sciences politiques à l'Université de Rabat). Pour écouter l'épisode 1 c'est ici. Un grand merci à toute l'équipe de HKW à Berlin et particulièrement à son directeur Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikun pour nous avoir accordé ce grand entretien : Valérie Nivelon : En introduction de cet évènement DEBERLINIZATION, vous avez demandé une minute de silence à la mémoire de Lawrence, un jeune Noir tué par des policiers au printemps 2025. Quel lien établissez-vous entre la mort de ce jeune homme et la conférence de Berlin de 1885 ? Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung : La mort de Lawrence est en fait un assassinat. Il a été tué par un policier et ce n'était pas par hasard, en fait, on lui a tiré dessus par derrière. Et la police a essayé de mentir en accusant Lawrence d'avoir attaqué un policier, ce qui s'est avéré faux. Il s'agit en fait de la longue histoire du racisme et de la déshumanisation, dont la Conférence de Berlin est un moment essentiel. Cette rencontre qui a eu lieu ici à Berlin en 1884-85 pour partager le continent africain sans les Africains, sans tenir aucunement compte de leur intérêt, sans aucun respect pour les cultures africaines et encore moins les êtres humains réduits au même niveau de statut que les machines pour travailler dans les plantations afin de créer des ressources pour l'Europe. C'est un acte de déshumanisation qui a été institutionnalisé dans cette conférence et qui a perduré dans les institutions, pas seulement en Europe, mais aussi en Afrique et un peu partout dans le monde. Donc la mort de Lawrence a un lien direct avec cette conférence. Valérie Nivelon : Votre intérêt pour l'impact de la conférence de Berlin sur la déshumanisation des Africains ici en Allemagne, en Europe, mais aussi sur la brutalisation des sociétés africaines remonte-t-il à la création de Savvy Contemporary dont vous fêtez les 15 ans de création ? Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung : Oui, c'est une très bonne question d'autant que Savvy a été fondé en 2009 pour une raison très simple, celle de notre invisibilité dans les institutions culturelles allemandes alors que la relation entre le continent africain et l'Europe est très forte. C'était très, très rare de voir les artistes, les penseurs des autres continents ici représentés à Berlin. Donc on a voulu tout simplement créer un espace où on peut présenter les philosophies plurielles du monde, les pensées du monde, les littératures, les poésies du monde. Et donc on a créé un espace qui n'est pas limité à une géographie, mais ouvert à tout le monde depuis Berlin, dont on ne peut pas négliger l'histoire. Des histoires multiples qui coexistent depuis bien avant la colonisation puisque le Royaume de Prusse a déjà des implantations coloniales au XVIIè siècle. Et donc en 2014, pour les 130 ans de la conférence de Berlin, on a invité le curateur camerounais Simon Njami pour imaginer une exposition sur cette histoire et il a fait une proposition qui était géniale «Nous sommes tous les Berlinois». C'était une belle provocation, mais c'était surtout dire : «Si le président américain J.F Kennedy pouvait dire «Je suis un Berlinois» en étant à Berlin pendant quelques heures en 1963 en pleine guerre froide, alors nous autres qui venions d'une Afrique violemment transformée par le Conférence de Berlin, sommes également des Berlinois !» Et on a fait cette exposition et une grande conférence où il y avait des sujets sur les projets, sur la restitution, sur les droits humains etc. Et il était clair que, en 2024-25, il fallait continuer à refaire l'Histoire ! Et ce n'est pas que l'histoire des Africains, c'est l'histoire du monde. Valérie Nivelon : Lorsque vous créez l'espace, Savvy pour inscrire une géographie africaine ici à Berlin. Est-ce que vous vous sentez en communion avec Présence africaine, telle que Alioune Diop l'a conçu, c'est-à-dire pour inscrire un espace géographique africain à Paris à la sortie de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale ? Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung Tout à fait. Ça procède du même état d'esprit. Alioune Diop a fondé la revue Présence africaine en 1947 à Paris, mais très vite des publications ont vu le jour sur le continent. Je pense à la revue Abbia, qui a été fondée au Cameroun en 1962, l'une des toutes premières revues de la culture postcoloniale fondée par le professeur Bernard Fonlon, Marcien Towa et Eldridge Mohammadou. Je pense également à Souffles, lancé en 1966 au Maroc, par des jeunes poètes et artistes peintres, mais aussi la Revue Noire, qui est plus récente mais qui était tellement importante pour pouvoir imaginer un lieu de fédération de nos savoirs. C'est dans cette généalogie intellectuelle que nous avons démarré Savvy, pas seulement avec un lieu, des expositions, mais aussi avec une publication Savvy journal. Donc ça, c'est un peu la généalogie intellectuelle de Savvy, sachant que nos références sont beaucoup plus nombreuses. Valérie Nivelon : Ce que je trouve très intéressant, c'est l'affirmation d'une présence africaine par les Africains eux-mêmes. Et vous avez d'ailleurs tenu à rendre hommage à l'un des tout premiers Africains universitaires diplômés ici à Berlin. Est-ce que vous pouvez nous dire pourquoi vous tenez à ce que l'on se souvienne de lui ? Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung : Et bien, nous sommes dans mon bureau ici à Berlin, à la Maison des Cultures du Monde et en face de nous, une peinture d'un jeune Camerounais qui s'appelle Adjani Okpu-Egbe. Et sur cette peinture, on peut lire le nom Anton Wilhelm Amo, personnage tellement important dans notre histoire. Il a été kidnappé au début du XVIIIè siècle, dans son village situé dans l'actuel Ghana, et offert comme cadeau au duc de Brunswick-Lunebourg. Et il a été prénommé Anton comme le duc. Pouvez-vous imaginer qu'un être humain puisse être offert comme un cadeau ? Il a néanmoins reçu une éducation sérieuse et il a étudié au Collège de philosophie à l'Université de Halle. Anton Wilhem Amo est donc un ancien esclave devenu le premier Africain à avoir obtenu un doctorat dans une Université européenne ! Je considère qu'il fait partie de l'histoire de l'Allemagne et de l'Histoire de la philosophie en Allemagne alors qu'il a été effacé de l'histoire de la philosophie de l'Europe pour les raisons que nous connaissons tous. Mais c'est notre devoir de rendre visible son travail. Donc, en 2020, j'ai fait une exposition qui s'appelait The Faculty of Sensing, pour rendre hommage à l'une de ses thèses, et pour moi, c'était important. Pas seulement de faire connaitre sa biographie, mais aussi sa pensée. Et on a invité une vingtaine d'artistes de partout, du monde, et 90% n'avaient jamais entendu parler d'Anton Wilhem Amo.. ce n'est plus le cas ! Valérie Nivelon : Savvy Contemporary a été une expérience intellectuelle et artistique prémonitoire et quinze ans après sa création, vous dirigez La maison des cultures du monde et vous êtes également le premier Africain à diriger une institution culturelle européenne de cette envergure. 140 ans après le Conférence de Berlin, vous avez choisi de créer l'événement DEBERLINIZATION. Pourquoi avez-vous sollicité la présence de Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, à l'origine de ce concept ? Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung : Je connais le travail de Mansour Ciss Kanakassy depuis longtemps et Mansour, qui est Sénégalais, a proposé un laboratoire de DEBERLINIZATION et sur l'affiche qu'il a créée pour l'annoncer, on peut voir la porte de Brandenburg à Berlin et la carte de l'Afrique. Et dans les différentes manifestations dans lesquelles il se produit, il propose ses billets AFRO, monnaie commune africaine qu'il a inventée en réponse au CFA. Son projet artistique est à la fois très provocateur et très concret, d'avant-garde. Comme James Baldwin le disait. «Quel est le rôle de l'artiste, c'est de poser des questions à des réponses qui sont déjà là». Et la question la plus importante du XXè siècle et XXIè siècle, c'est une question d'économie en fait et des moyens d'échange. Donc la monnaie. Mais comme vous le savez, la plupart des pays en Afrique francophone utilisent cette monnaie coloniale qui s'appelle le CFA. Pourtant, depuis l'indépendance, les grands politiciens panafricanistes comme Nkrumah, comme Olympio, comme Sankara ont toujours dit que l'Afrique ne peut sortir de la domination coloniale sans créer sa propre monnaie. Et ces nationalistes ont été soit renversés, soit assassinés. Donc on en est là. Les politiciens parlent, mais les artistes font. Mais la monnaie est aussi un vecteur de savoir, une archive. Donc si vous regardez les billets AFRO de Mansour, vous voyez l'image de Cheikh Anta Diop. Vous voyez l'image de Kwame Nkrumah. Vous voyez l'image de Sankara, de Bathily, d'Aminata Traoré, de celles et ceux qui ont œuvré pour le monde africain. Valérie Nivelon : Est-ce que vous pouvez nous parler de votre conception de la culture ici à la Maison des cultures du monde, vous incarnez une présence africaine ici à Berlin, vous avez une responsabilité en tant que directeur d'une institution culturelle, que revendiquez-vous dans votre façon de penser cette DEBERLINIZATION ? Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung : La DEBERLINIZATION ne peut avoir un sens uniquement si c'est une expression pluridisciplinaire. Bien sûr, on a invité un économiste comme Célestin Monga, mais également des personnalités du monde de la culture.. Ça a toujours été important dans ma pratique de faire savoir que l'Université n'a pas le monopole de la fabrique des savoirs. Des artistes comme Tiken Jah Fakoly ou Didier Awadi sont des grands intellectuels aussi. Et ils arrivent à dire des choses que beaucoup d'autres personnes ne peuvent pas dire. J'ajoute qu'il a toujours été important pour moi de travailler dans l'univers de la poésie car les poètes nous donnent des clés de lecture pour pénétrer l'opacité du monde. Mais on invite aussi les scientifiques, les philosophes… je cherche à orchestrer un discours choral, polyphonique et pluridisciplinaire !!! C'est ma conception de la culture. Ce que nous avons souhaité avec Franck Hermann Ekra et Ibou Coulibaly Diallo (co-commissaires de DEBERLINIZATION ), c'est penser les archives du futur, je veux dire créer de nouvelles archives. Le projet DEBERLINIZATION a l'ambition d'impulser le remembrement de l'Afrique qui a été démembrée à Berlin en 1885, découpée, déchiquetée. Le Professeur Mamadou Diouf a parlé de la berlinization comme d'un déracinement profond. Donc ce qu'on a essayé de faire, c'est d'amener cette complexité ici à HKW, un lieu où on peut réfléchir. En ce qui me concerne, je veux passer le reste de ma vie à réfléchir à ce que veut dire être humain. Bon anniversaire à Savvy contemporary. Découvrir La maison des cultures du monde et le programme Deberlinization. À paraître : - Deberlinization – Refabulating the World, A Theory of Praxis - Deberlinization - Les presses du réel (livre). À lire : Le pari acoustique de Tiken Jah Fakoly. À écouter : Le concert acoustique de Tiken Jah Fakoly enregistré par RFI Labo salle Pleyel à Paris.
Howard K. French, professor, journalist and bestselling author talks about his new book "Second Emancipation" with Host Llewellyn King and Co-host Adam Clayton Powell III. The book is the second installment in a trilogy, which refers to the brief period beginning in 1957 when a slew of African colonies became countries. The liberation, French writes in his book, was at the center of a "movement of blackness," led by Ghana's charismatic first president, Kwame Nkrumah.
De Stokely Carmichael, figure des luttes noires du XXème siècle, on connaît surtout le combat aux États-Unis, comme dirigeant des Black Panther. On sait moins qu'en 1968, Carmichael a rejoint la Guinée avec son épouse, la chanteuse sud-africaine Miriam Makeba. Il est alors devenu un proche collaborateur du président ghanéen en exil Kwame Nkrumah et s'est engagé aux côtés de la révolution guinéenne. Bokar Ture, fils de Stokely Carmichael, a accordé un entretien à RFI : il raconte les années africaines de la vie de son père. RFI : Votre père a été un acteur important des luttes noires du XXème siècle. Aux États-Unis, où il a été l'un des responsables des Black Panther… mais aussi dans son parcours transatlantique puisqu'il vient s'installer en 1968 en Guinée. Parlez-nous d'abord de lui. D'où vient-il ? Comment est née cette conscience militante noire ? Bokar Ture : Kwame Ture est né Stokely Carmichael à Trinidad et Tobago, connu aussi en français comme Trinité-et-Tobago, en 1941. Il immigre plus tard aux États-Unis pour retrouver sa mère -donc ma grand-mère- qui y était déjà installée quelques années plus tôt. Elle avait pu avoir sa nationalité américaine parce qu'elle était née à Panama. Comment a commencé cette conscience ? Déjà, il avait un penchant politique très tôt. Il y a une de ses tantes qui racontait une anecdote : quand il était jeune, il la poussait à aller voter pour un syndicaliste à l'île de Trinidad. Et au lycée, aux États-Unis, il fréquentait déjà des groupes gauchistes. Un de ses amis de classe était le fils du président du Parti communiste américain dans les années 1952. Et donc, très tôt, il a pu découvrir les discours marxistes. Et bien sûr, il vivait au sud du Bronx, à côté de Harlem. Et la 125e rue de Harlem est une rue reconnue pour des discours politiques de tout genre, de différents groupes. Il a été l'un de ceux qui ont travaillé l'idée de Black Power. Il a même coécrit, en 1967 avec Charles Hamilton, un ouvrage qui le théorise, intitulé Black Power, the politics of Liberation in America. Effectivement, le concept de Black Power existait avant. Il y avait un livre qui s'appelait Black Power par Richard Wright, qui a été écrit pendant les années 1950 et qui était un ouvrage dédié à Kwame Nkrumah. Mais personne n'a rendu l'idée de Black Power aussi populaire que Kwame Ture - Stokely Carmichael à l'époque. Notamment durant une marche contre la peur au sud des États-Unis, aux côtés de Martin Luther King, où il disait, plus ou moins : « On est fatigué de mendier notre liberté, comme on l'a fait ces dernières années dans les droits civiques. Maintenant, ce qu'on va faire, c'est de demander le Black Power », le pouvoir noir, qui était un appel à une autodétermination en termes de structures politiques et économiques pour les personnes noires descendantes d'africains aux États-Unis. En 1968, votre père épouse une première femme, la chanteuse sud-africaine Miriam Makeba. Au-delà de la relation amoureuse qui s'est nouée entre eux, cette union reflète-t-elle aussi une pensée de votre père, de plus en plus tournée vers l'Afrique et vers le panafricanisme à cette époque ? Ce n'est pas un tournant, c'est une continuité. Kwame Ture a toujours été Africain dans l'âme. Il vient d'un milieu où l'Afrique est centrale dans l'identité noire. Bien avant qu'il ne se marie avec Miriam Makeba. On le voit dans des photos au début des années 1960 avec ses camarades où il est en tenue africaine. Il se sentait toujours africain. Pour lui, être noir et africain, il ne voyait pas de distinction et toute sa vie était ainsi. Quand il a marié Tantie Miriam, comme je l'appelle, c'était juste une continuité. Après aussi, ma mère, Marlyatou Barry, qui était aussi une Guinéenne. C'était juste une continuité de sa façon de vivre. Comment se fait concrètement la connexion entre votre père et le premier responsable guinéen, Ahmed Sékou Touré ? Stokely Carmichael, à l'époque, faisait une tournée mondiale et il a rencontré Shirley Graham Du Bois, qui était la veuve de W.E.B Du Bois, qui est aussi une légende de l'histoire de la lutte antiraciste et du développement du panafricanisme. Elle a invité Stokely Carmichael à venir en Guinée pour une conférence du Parti démocratique de Guinée pour rencontrer Kwame Nkrumah et Sékou Touré. Quand il est venu, il a rencontré les deux présidents. Il avait déjà beaucoup entendu parler de Kwame Nkrumah, parce que mon grand-père a travaillé dans un bateau un moment. Il est parti au Ghana et quand il est revenu à New York, il expliquait que c'était la première fois qu'il avait vu une nation noire, indépendante, avec sa propre armée, un président, etc. et il expliquait ceci à un jeune Stokely Carmichael. Cela a vraiment marqué sa pensée. Quelques années plus tard, ils se voient face à face avec Kwame Nkrumah. Après la conférence, en quittant la Guinée, il part dire au revoir à Sékou Touré, qui lui dit : « Écoute, mon fils. Ici, c'est chez toi, tu peux revenir quand tu veux. C'est ta maison. » Il part voir Kwame Nkrumah qui lui dit « Écoute, moi, je cherche un secrétaire politique, donc si ça t'intéresse, tu es toujours le bienvenu. » Un an et demi plus tard, deux ans pratiquement, il était de retour avec sa nouvelle épouse, Miriam Makeba. Qu'est ce qui fait qu'il vient s'installer à Conakry à cette époque ? Pour lui, c'était le coin le plus révolutionnaire en Afrique. Lumumba a été assassiné très tôt donc il n'y avait plus le Congo. Après, il y a eu le coup d'État contre Kwame Nkrumah en 1966. Modibo Keïta en 1968. Quand lui est arrivé, le seul autre pays, c'était la Tanzanie, mais qui était beaucoup moins radicale. Donc il a choisi la Guinée. C'était le pays qui s'alignait le plus avec sa pensée du pouvoir noir à l'échelle mondiale. Il est aussi menacé aux États-Unis. C'est aussi pour cela qu'il quitte les États-Unis ? De toute façon, mon père était prêt à se martyriser. Il a vu Malcolm X tué, il a vu Martin Luther King tué et les agences voulaient sa tête. Il a échappé à pas mal d'attentats. Mais ce n'était pas la raison centrale. Déjà, il y avait l'invitation. Ensuite, il ne voyait pas les États-Unis comme le centre de cette lutte à laquelle il a dédié sa vie. Il voyait l'Afrique comme étant une partie essentielle. Pour lui, en venant en Guinée, il rejoignait l'Afrique, il rejoignait la révolution africaine qui pouvait donner la dignité à tout le peuple noir à travers le monde. Diriez-vous qu'il y a un vrai projet politique international derrière cette volonté de s'installer en Guinée ? Il a toujours eu ce projet. Quand il parlait de Black Power, déjà, dans le livre dont vous avez parlé, il parlait aussi des colonies en Afrique. Dans Black Power, lui et Charles Hamilton faisaient le parallèle entre la situation que vivaient les Afro-Américains aux États-Unis et la situation que vivaient les Africains en Afrique et aux Caraïbes aussi. Il faisait ce parallèle. Dans sa tête, c'était quelque chose qui était un combat international dès le début. Quelles sont les idées sur lesquelles votre père, Stokely Carmichael – Kwame Ture, une fois qu'il change de nom – et Ahmed Sékou Touré se retrouvaient ? On parle de personnes qui avaient la même vision d'une Afrique unie, une Afrique libre où il n'y a pas d'inégalités. Ils étaient tous deux penchés vers des idées socialistes. Ils étaient totalement alignés idéologiquement. Sékou Touré était un de ses mentors, une de ces personnes qui l'ont formé dans cette idéologie. Ils se retrouvent dans l'idée, qui est défendue par Ahmed Sékou Touré à l'époque, d'authenticité africaine ? À 100 %. Et il s'intègre à 100 %. Je peux vous dire que moi, par exemple, j'ai très peu de souvenirs de mon père en habit occidental. Il s'habillait en tenue africaine, cousue en Afrique. Il s'est enraciné dans la population africaine. Ce qui était quand même unique parce que tout le monde était tourné vers une façon de vivre occidentale. Et lui non, il voulait se réapproprier son héritage culturel. Et la volonté de promouvoir les cultures africaines, de leur donner leur vraie place ? C'est exactement cela, revaloriser la culture africaine, la culture noire, se réapproprier celle-ci. Et ne pas avoir de complexes vis-à-vis des cultures européennes, dominantes et autres. Depuis le début de cet entretien, on joue avec deux noms pour parler de votre père, Stokely Carmichael, Kwame Ture. À un moment donné de sa vie, il décide de passer du nom de Stokely Carmichael à celui de Kwame Ture. C'est une démarche qui dit aussi beaucoup de choses sur le lien qu'il a avec Kwame Nkrumah et Ahmed Sékou Touré. Effectivement. Il y avait un précédent aux États-Unis. Il y avait pas mal d'Afro-Américains, notamment dans son milieu révolutionnaire, qui changeaient de nom. Notamment Malcolm X, Mohamed Ali. Bien sûr, le nom est inspiré de Kwame Nkrumah et de Sékou Touré. L'anecdote, c'est qu'il était en Tanzanie lors d'un entretien radio. Après l'entretien, apparemment, un vieil homme venu à pied d'un village lointain est venu le voir et lui a dit : « Écoute mon fils, j'ai vraiment aimé ton entretien. Mais il y a une chose : ton nom sonne un peu bizarre, un peu féminin, il faut le changer ». Il a alors pris le nom de Kwame Nkrumah et de Sékou Touré. Lorsqu'il venait l'annoncer à Sékou Touré et lui dire : « J'ai pris le prénom de Kwame », Sékou Touré lui a répondu : « C'est bien, parce qu'à chaque fois que nous avons des débats, tu prends toujours son parti. » Il lui a répondu : « Mais j'ai pris le nom Touré comme nom de famille. ». Ce qui était approprié, car c'étaient ses deux mentors. À lire aussiKwame Ture, le destin hors du commun d'un Black Panther parti s'installer en Guinée [1/2] Comment est-ce que vous décririez les liens qu'il entretenait avec Kwame Nkrumah et Ahmed Sékou Touré ? En Kwame Nkrumah, il voyait un symbole de cette lutte. Il était prêt à le suivre. Il a mené quelques opérations au Ghana pour essayer de voir s'il pouvait réinstaurer Kwame Nkrumah au pouvoir. Il était très proche de lui. Et Sékou Touré était comme un père pour lui. En 1970, votre père vit l'un des moments charnières de l'histoire de la Première République guinéenne, à savoir l'attaque contre Conakry du 22 novembre 1970. Savez-vous comment il a vécu ces journées ? Je sais qu'il était un participant dans l'action de repousser les troupes portugaises. Il était armé ce jour et a dû utiliser son arme. Selon ce que j'ai appris, il était un des premiers à alerter les autorités, y compris le président, du fait qu'il y avait une attaque qui venait. Ca tirait sur sa case, donc il devait quitter sa maison. Lui et Miriam Makeba ont dû se réfugier quelque part d'autre où il l'a laissée et lui est ressorti pour aider à défendre la ville. Cette opération conjointe de militaires portugais et de rebelles guinéens a conduit à la plus grande vague d'arrestations en Guinée de toute la Première République. La vie du pays va être rythmée pendant de longs mois par des confessions publiques de personnes présentées comme les complices d'un « complot impérialiste » aux ramifications tentaculaires. Comment est-ce que votre père se positionnait par rapport à cette thèse du complot permanent contre la Guinée ? Et plus généralement, quel regard portait-il sur l'État policier qu'était aussi devenu la Guinée de cette époque ? C'est quelque chose de très complexe et malheureusement, la Guinée ne s'est toujours pas réconciliée avec ce passé et les positions sont assez ancrées. Maintenant, si on parle de Kwame Ture précisément, pour lui, c'était un régime panafricaniste, le seul régime panafricaniste radical. Et malgré toutes ses erreurs, c'était celui qui pouvait tenir jusqu'au bout cette conviction qu'il avait lui-même. Il était totalement d'accord avec le fait qu'il fallait conserver ce régime pour qu'il ne bascule pas dans un régime néocolonialiste. À tout prix ? À tout prix. En 1974, il y a un autre évènement important pour l'Afrique et plus généralement pour le monde noir, c'est le combat en Afrique, à Kinshasa, entre Mohamed Ali et George Foreman. Dans un livre de mémoires, votre père indique qu'il a été invité par Mohamed Ali lui-même à venir à Kinshasa pour le combat. Est-ce que vous savez ce que représentait cet affrontement pour votre père ? Mohamed Ali était son ami. Il y avait ce symbole de Mohamed Ali qui représentait l'Africain fier et George Foreman qui était un peu l'opposé de cela. Mais après, il a rencontré George Foreman et il disait que George Foreman l'avait séduit avec son charme, l'a embrassé et tout. Je pense qu'au-delà du symbolique, mon père était beaucoup plus intéressé par ce qui se passait au Congo démocratique, c'est-à-dire le Zaïre à l'époque, et le fait que c'était sous le régime de Mobutu Sese Seko, auquel il était farouchement opposé par ce qu'il représentait en termes de corruption et d'alignement avec les puissances coloniales. Qui sont de manière générale les acteurs politiques qui fréquentaient le salon de votre père dans ces années 1970 et au début des années 1980, pendant la Première République en Guinée ? On parle d'un melting pot qui ne dit pas son nom. Que ce soit des artistes - Miriam Makeba et Nina Simone, qui était une de ses amies très proches - ou des activistes de partout dans le monde. Qui venaient à Conakry et qui venaient le rencontrer ? Qui venaient à Conakry ou qui y vivaient. Parce que vous savez qu'à une époque, Conakry était un centre du monde noir où on conciliait l'art, les mouvements de libération, etc. Il y avait un grand nombre de personnes qui y vivaient, comme Amilcar Cabral, comme Kwame Nkrumahn, avant même il y avait Félix-Roland Moumié du Cameroun, pour ce qui est de la politique. Concernant les arts et la littérature, il y avait Ousmane Sembène qui y vivait, il y avait Maryse Condé qui y vivait. C'était vraiment un centre… et il se retrouve chez lui avec toutes ces personnes, plus ou moins de différentes sphères. Moi, je peux raconter avoir vu des activistes exilés sud-africains, Tsietsi Mashinini, qui a commencé la révolte estudiantine de Soweto, qui était parmi d'autres exilés sud-africains. Il y avait beaucoup d'Afro-Américains, bien sûr, des Black Panthers exilés. Il y avait la diplomatie guinéenne, des diplomates de pays gauchistes et souverainistes, il y avait tout un monde. Mais aussi, il faut savoir que Kwame Ture était vraiment penché vers la masse, la masse populaire. Donc autour de tout ça, on voit un chef villageois qui est assis ou on voit la personne déshéritée du quartier qui est là, assise, qui peut recevoir un repas. Parce que notre maison était comme un centre communautaire pour la jeunesse du quartier. Il amenait tous les enfants du quartier à la plage chaque dimanche. Puis se retrouvait peut-être un mardi à saluer un chef d'État. Puis avait une conférence avec un groupe communautaire. Moi, j'ai vu tout cela dans cette maison. C'était quelque chose de magique. Il recevait où, justement ? Dans son salon, dans son bureau ? Y avait-il un rituel autour de la réception de ses amis politiques ? Déjà, il avait une véranda où il était assis… parce que c'était un bibliophile. Il lisait beaucoup, il écrivait beaucoup. Il ne lisait pas pour le plaisir, mais il lisait pour ses conférences. Après, il y a des gens qui venaient pour le rencontrer. Je sais qu'il y a eu Charles Taylor qui était venu de nulle part pour le rencontrer. C'était vraiment un melting pot. À cette époque, votre père continue aussi ses voyages et ses tournées, il n'est pas tout le temps à Conakry ? Il était très organisé. Sur toutes ses photos, il écrivait les dates et les lieux. On se demande comment il pouvait parcourir toutes ces distances en si peu de temps. Un jour, on le voit au Connecticut. Le lendemain, on le voit à Paris, banni, chassé. En Angleterre, peut-être, d'où il est banni et chassé. Parce que c'était très compliqué pour lui d'avoir accès a beaucoup de pays. Après, on le voit en Californie... Il était partout. Sékou Touré disparaît en 1984. Mais votre père continue, lui, son engagement pour ses idées au sein du Parti démocratique de Guinée. Qu'est-ce qui a marqué ces années de militantisme politique sous Lansana Conté ? Le contexte a vraiment changé ! Et c'est là que l'on voit vraiment les convictions de l'homme. Parce que, du jour au lendemain, tout a changé. Il a été arrêté par le régime de Lansana Conté. Donc, il a perdu les privilèges qu'il avait, bien sûr, où il connaissait le président et était sous sa tutelle. Mais malgré cela, il a décidé de rester en Guinée. La moitié de sa vie guinéenne, quinze ans, s'est passée ainsi. Il a décidé malgré tout de rester en Guinée, d'être actif dans la vie politique guinéenne et la vie sociale de la Guinée. … Et de rester fidèle à ses convictions. Exactement. Vous êtes à l'époque enfant. Quel souvenir est-ce que vous gardez de ces années, de votre maison à Conakry, de ceux qui y passaient ? Quelle était l'ambiance ? Vous disiez tout à l'heure que tout le quartier se retrouvait chez vous… C'est cela. Mon père était d'une gentillesse rare, d'un altruisme qu'on ne retrouve pas très souvent. Donc effectivement, c'était pour moi quelque chose de très formateur. Comment quelqu'un peut traiter un chef d'État avec le même respect qu'il traite la personne la plus déshéritée du quartier. Et toutes ces personnes pouvaient se retrouver chez lui, devant lui, avec le même respect, ou peut-être même le déshérité avec un peu plus d'amour. Vous appelez régulièrement les Guinéens à se souvenir de votre père, Stokely Carmichael / Kwame Ture. Avez-vous le sentiment que son histoire a été oubliée en Guinée ? Je parle de manière générale. Il y a une politique de mémoire en Guinée qui doit être améliorée. Stokely Carmichael est un pont unique entre l'Afrique et l'Amérique. On parle d'un personnage qui a passé la moitié de sa vie en Guinée. À ce stade, l'État guinéen n'a pas fait une seule initiative pour se réapproprier de l'héritage de cette personnalité. Donc il y a un vrai chantier ? Il y a un chantier. Une dernière question plus personnelle. Quel père a été Stokely Carmichael ? Quelle image retenez-vous de lui ? Un père adorable, d'une gentillesse rarissime, qui m'a beaucoup appris, que j'ai profondément aimé. Quelqu'un qui était attaché à tout ce qui est beau dans le monde, à commencer par les enfants. ►A lire pour aller plus loin : BERTHO Elara, Un couple panafricain, Editions Rot-Bo-Krik, 2025 À (ré)écouterElara Bertho: «Replacer Conakry au centre des imaginaires, c'était un peu l'idée de cet ouvrage»
Suite et fin de notre série consacrée aux objets de pouvoir du continent. Le dernier épisode ce matin nous emmène au Ghana, premier pays d'Afrique subsaharienne à avoir déclaré son indépendance, en 1957. À sa tête à l'époque : le premier président Kwame Nkrumah, figure du panafricanisme. Il s'est servi du Kente, le pagne traditionnel ghanéen, afin d'envoyer au monde entier un message d'unité, d'indépendance et de liberté du continent africain. De notre correspondant à Accra, Sur le cliché en noir et blanc disposé dans la bibliothèque de Samia Nkrumah, deux hommes sourient à l'objectif : son père, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, premier président du Ghana, et Ahmed Sékou Touré, son ami et homologue guinéen. Quand ce dernier arbore sur la photo veste de costume, chemise et cravate, Kwame Nkrumah, lui, porte le Kente, un des pagnes tissés traditionnel ghanéen. Pour Samia Nkrumah, le Kente porté par son père revêtait aussi une signification éminemment politique, à destination de ses homologues occidentaux. Un message anticolonialiste, assumé à même le corps par le biais du pagne tissé que Kwame Nkrumah portait lors de ses déplacements internationaux. « C'est parce qu'il pensait qu'il n'y avait rien de plus important que de se montrer avec. Cela dit au monde qui nous sommes, notre style, nos systèmes de connaissances autochtones, notre terre, détaille la fille du premier président ghanéen. C'était naturel pour nous de porter le Kente lors de certaines occasions. Mais le porter en dehors du Ghana, dans ces arènes internationales, c'était presque révolutionnaire, radical. Ainsi, il prenait position : l'Afrique indépendante est en train de se soulever, et que nous souhaitons faire des partenariats sur un pied d'égalité, à armes égales. » À lire aussiKwame Nkrumah: le vrai panafricanisme se vit Porté au Ghana depuis au moins quatre siècles, le Kente est un tissu chargé de sens. Alors, pour sa première venue au siège des Nations unies en 1960, Kwame Nkrumah a décidé d'emmener avec lui un Kente nommé « Tikro Nnko Adjina », que l'on peut traduire par « deux cerveaux valent toujours mieux qu'un seul ». Un pagne bleu aux motifs dorés, rouges et verts, dont la confection a été confié au maître tisserand Andrew Asare. Une fierté racontée aujourd'hui par son fils, Kwasi Asare : « Le Kente est un habit si puissant. Celui qu'Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah a présenté portait ce message : l'indépendance du Ghana ne signifie rien sans l'indépendance de tout le continent africain, d'où cette signification "deux têtes valent mieux qu'une". D'une certaine manière, il cherchait également à dire que par l'ONU, tous les États doivent s'unir pour ne faire plus qu'un. » Un message sous forme de Kente, qui est resté exposé pendant plusieurs décennies dans le hall du siège de l'ONU, aux yeux du monde entier. À lire aussiGhana: l'héritage politique de Kwame Nkrumah source de débat au Parlement
Accra's James Fort is an iconic monument for Ghana and modern Africa. This lecture explores the fort's evolution -from its role as a trading post in the early European-African encounters, through its significance during the trans-Atlantic trade and enslavement, to its later use as a modern colonial prison in the post-independence era. It also explores its connection to Ghana's liberation movement, particularly its role in imprisoning Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and other political leaders during their resistance to British rule. Today, this monument represents the resilience, talent and creative potential of a sustainable future for Ghana and its youthful population.This lecture was recorded by Elsie Owusu on the 27th of March 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.Elsie Owusu OBE is a Ghanaian-British architect and urban designer. She is principal of Elsie Owusu Architects, with projects in UK, Nigeria and Ghana.With an extensive portfolio of international projects, from transport and infrastructure and master planning, Elsie is a specialist conservation architect. She is currently designing rural community-led zero-carbon schemes and conservation projects in Ghana and developing eco-homes in Sussex. When a partner at Feilden+Mawson, she was co-lead architect for the UK Supreme Court and London's Green Park Station.Born in Ghana, Elsie was the founding chair of the Society of Black Architects. She is a trustee of UK Supreme Court Arts Trust and former member of Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Council. Previous roles include the Founding Vice-Chair of the London School of Architecture, the London Mayor's Panel of Design Advocates and Board Member of the Commonwealth Heritage Forum. Elsie is a director of JustGhana Ltd which promotes education, architecture, arts and creative industries in Ghana and the UK.In 2003, she was honoured by The Queen for services to architecture. She was the runner-up for the Presidency of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2018.The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/james-fortGresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-todayWebsite: https://gresham.ac.ukTwitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollegeFacebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollegeInstagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-todaySupport the show
Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint projects of nation-building, economic development, and international relations. Drawing on the political careers of four heads of states: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Independent Africa engages four major themes: what does it mean to construct an African nation-state and what should an African nation-state look like; how does one grow a tropical economy emerging from European colonialism; how to explore an indigenous model of economic development, a "third way," in the context of a Cold War that had divided the world into two camps; and how to leverage internal resources and external opportunities to diversify agricultural economies and industrialize. Combining aspects of history, economics, and political science, Independent Africa examines the important connections between the first generation of African leaders and the shared ideas that informed their endeavors at nation-building and worldmaking. Professor Akyeampong is the former Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies and the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He joined the History faculty at Harvard upon receiving his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Virginia in 1993. He received his master's degree at Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1989, where he concentrated on English labor history, and his bachelor's degree in History and Religions from the University of Ghana at Legon in 1984. Professor Akyeampong is currently the Ellen Gurney Professor of Professor Akyeampong's publications include Themes in West Africa's History (2005), which he edited; Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023); 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). He was a co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 Vols. (2012). Professor Akyeampong has been awarded several research fellowships, and from 1993 to 1994, he was the Zora Neale Hurston Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University. He was named a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2002, and was nominated to be a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Ghana. At Harvard, Professor Akyeampong is a faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the executive committee of the Hutchins Center. 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 and formerly served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies. You can learn more about Professor Akyeampong's work here Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint projects of nation-building, economic development, and international relations. Drawing on the political careers of four heads of states: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Independent Africa engages four major themes: what does it mean to construct an African nation-state and what should an African nation-state look like; how does one grow a tropical economy emerging from European colonialism; how to explore an indigenous model of economic development, a "third way," in the context of a Cold War that had divided the world into two camps; and how to leverage internal resources and external opportunities to diversify agricultural economies and industrialize. Combining aspects of history, economics, and political science, Independent Africa examines the important connections between the first generation of African leaders and the shared ideas that informed their endeavors at nation-building and worldmaking. Professor Akyeampong is the former Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies and the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He joined the History faculty at Harvard upon receiving his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Virginia in 1993. He received his master's degree at Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1989, where he concentrated on English labor history, and his bachelor's degree in History and Religions from the University of Ghana at Legon in 1984. Professor Akyeampong is currently the Ellen Gurney Professor of Professor Akyeampong's publications include Themes in West Africa's History (2005), which he edited; Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023); 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). He was a co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 Vols. (2012). Professor Akyeampong has been awarded several research fellowships, and from 1993 to 1994, he was the Zora Neale Hurston Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University. He was named a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2002, and was nominated to be a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Ghana. At Harvard, Professor Akyeampong is a faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the executive committee of the Hutchins Center. 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 and formerly served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies. You can learn more about Professor Akyeampong's work here Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint projects of nation-building, economic development, and international relations. Drawing on the political careers of four heads of states: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Independent Africa engages four major themes: what does it mean to construct an African nation-state and what should an African nation-state look like; how does one grow a tropical economy emerging from European colonialism; how to explore an indigenous model of economic development, a "third way," in the context of a Cold War that had divided the world into two camps; and how to leverage internal resources and external opportunities to diversify agricultural economies and industrialize. Combining aspects of history, economics, and political science, Independent Africa examines the important connections between the first generation of African leaders and the shared ideas that informed their endeavors at nation-building and worldmaking. Professor Akyeampong is the former Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies and the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He joined the History faculty at Harvard upon receiving his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Virginia in 1993. He received his master's degree at Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1989, where he concentrated on English labor history, and his bachelor's degree in History and Religions from the University of Ghana at Legon in 1984. Professor Akyeampong is currently the Ellen Gurney Professor of Professor Akyeampong's publications include Themes in West Africa's History (2005), which he edited; Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023); 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). He was a co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 Vols. (2012). Professor Akyeampong has been awarded several research fellowships, and from 1993 to 1994, he was the Zora Neale Hurston Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University. He was named a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2002, and was nominated to be a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Ghana. At Harvard, Professor Akyeampong is a faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the executive committee of the Hutchins Center. 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 and formerly served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies. You can learn more about Professor Akyeampong's work here Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint projects of nation-building, economic development, and international relations. Drawing on the political careers of four heads of states: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Independent Africa engages four major themes: what does it mean to construct an African nation-state and what should an African nation-state look like; how does one grow a tropical economy emerging from European colonialism; how to explore an indigenous model of economic development, a "third way," in the context of a Cold War that had divided the world into two camps; and how to leverage internal resources and external opportunities to diversify agricultural economies and industrialize. Combining aspects of history, economics, and political science, Independent Africa examines the important connections between the first generation of African leaders and the shared ideas that informed their endeavors at nation-building and worldmaking. Professor Akyeampong is the former Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies and the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He joined the History faculty at Harvard upon receiving his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Virginia in 1993. He received his master's degree at Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1989, where he concentrated on English labor history, and his bachelor's degree in History and Religions from the University of Ghana at Legon in 1984. Professor Akyeampong is currently the Ellen Gurney Professor of Professor Akyeampong's publications include Themes in West Africa's History (2005), which he edited; Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023); 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). He was a co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 Vols. (2012). Professor Akyeampong has been awarded several research fellowships, and from 1993 to 1994, he was the Zora Neale Hurston Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University. He was named a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2002, and was nominated to be a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Ghana. At Harvard, Professor Akyeampong is a faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the executive committee of the Hutchins Center. 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 and formerly served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies. You can learn more about Professor Akyeampong's work here Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies
Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint projects of nation-building, economic development, and international relations. Drawing on the political careers of four heads of states: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Independent Africa engages four major themes: what does it mean to construct an African nation-state and what should an African nation-state look like; how does one grow a tropical economy emerging from European colonialism; how to explore an indigenous model of economic development, a "third way," in the context of a Cold War that had divided the world into two camps; and how to leverage internal resources and external opportunities to diversify agricultural economies and industrialize. Combining aspects of history, economics, and political science, Independent Africa examines the important connections between the first generation of African leaders and the shared ideas that informed their endeavors at nation-building and worldmaking. Professor Akyeampong is the former Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies and the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He joined the History faculty at Harvard upon receiving his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Virginia in 1993. He received his master's degree at Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1989, where he concentrated on English labor history, and his bachelor's degree in History and Religions from the University of Ghana at Legon in 1984. Professor Akyeampong is currently the Ellen Gurney Professor of Professor Akyeampong's publications include Themes in West Africa's History (2005), which he edited; Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023); 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). He was a co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 Vols. (2012). Professor Akyeampong has been awarded several research fellowships, and from 1993 to 1994, he was the Zora Neale Hurston Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University. He was named a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2002, and was nominated to be a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Ghana. At Harvard, Professor Akyeampong is a faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the executive committee of the Hutchins Center. 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 and formerly served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies. You can learn more about Professor Akyeampong's work here Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
In our latest episode we speak with the author and academic Frank Gerits, whose most recent work explores the history of the intense ideological battle which took place in the 1950s and 1960s for African hearts and minds. His book, The Ideological Scramble for Africa, explores how this competition wasn't just between Cold War superpowers, but among African leaders themselves who were projecting competing visions of what African modernity should look like. In this conversation with Robert Amsterdam, Dr. Gerits gives an informed portrait of key figures such as Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, whose revolutionary call for immediate continental unity challenged both colonial powers and fellow African leaders. While leaders like Senegal's Senghor favored maintaining ties with Europe and others promoted regional federations, Nkrumah demanded complete independence and a "Monroe Doctrine for Africa" that would keep the continent out of global power struggles entirely. Gerits discussess his views on the fascinating psychological dimension of decolonization, showing how Western powers promoted "modernization" programs designed to psychologically transform Africans, while leaders like Nkrumah and intellectuals like Frantz Fanon fought to reclaim African cultural identity. The louder Africans demanded independence, the more Western powers interpreted this as evidence they needed more assistance—a dynamic that continues today. Be sure to explore our library of past podcast episodes, which include more than a dozen recent books on Africa.
Send us a textWhat if the dreams of Africa's greatest liberators were not just echoes of the past, but a living blueprint for the future? In this electrifying episode of the Self Reflection Podcast, host Lira Ndifon channels the urgent voice of a new generation, igniting a firestorm of hope and a powerful call to action for the youth of Africa, with a laser focus on the pivotal moment for Cameroon. Prepare to be moved, inspired, and galvanized by a message that transcends borders and speaks to the very soul of a continent yearning for true liberation.Lira doesn't just share a message; she amplifies a potent awakening. Through the impassioned words of a young African, she unpacks the burning desire for unity and self-determination that is surging through the continent's veins. This isn't a nostalgic look back, but a vibrant connection to the unfinished work of pan-African giants like Kwame Nkrumah, the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Sankara, the unwavering conviction of Patrice Lumumba, and the enduring legacy of Nelson Mandela. Their sacrifices, Lira powerfully argues, were seeds planted for this very moment – a moment where the youth are rising to claim their inheritance.With palpable excitement, Lira dissects the profound mindset shift that is reshaping the African landscape. She celebrates the growing consciousness and unwavering determination of young Africans to not just envision, but actively build a better future, free from the shackles of external influence and internal stagnation. This episode is a clarion call, urging the youth to tap into their inherent power, reclaim their resources, and forge a united front towards a prosperous and self-reliant Africa – a continent where pride and progress go hand in hand. The conversation fearlessly confronts the lingering vestiges of neocolonialism and underscores the critical importance of rewriting African narratives from an African perspective.Turning her attention directly to the critical juncture facing Cameroon, Lira speaks with urgency about the upcoming 2025 elections. She underscores the undeniable link between genuine change, tangible development, and a fundamental shift in leadership. This isn't just about casting a vote; it's about seizing an opportunity to redefine the nation's trajectory. Lira paints a compelling vision of a revitalized Cameroon – a nation where education flourishes, clean water flows freely, accessible healthcare is a right, not a privilege, and the nation's immense wealth serves its people. Through a personal anecdote, she poignantly captures the growing awareness and fervent desire for transformation among young Cameroonians, emphasizing that this is their Kairos moment.Beyond the immediate political horizon, Lira delivers a powerful and deeply personal message of self-belief and resilience to every young African listener. She champions the courage to trust one's journey, to embrace setbacks as invaluable lessons, and to relentlessly pursue personal aspirations. In a world saturated with external opinions and potential discouragement, Lira passionately emphasizes the unwavering importanSupport the showCall to Action: Engage with the Self-Reflection Podcast community! Like, follow, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube (Self-Reflection Podcast by Lira Ndifon), and all major podcast platforms. Share your insights and feedback—we value your contributions! Suggest topics you'd like us to explore. Your support amplifies our reach, sharing these vital messages of self-love and empowerment. Until our next conversation, prioritize self-care and embrace your journey. Grab your copy of "Awaken Your True Self" on Amazon. Until next time, be kind to yourself and keep reflecting.
Nicholas Richard-Thompson and Tunde Osazua from the Black Alliance for Peace join Breht to examine the life and legacy of Kwame Nkrumah—anti-colonial revolutionary, Pan-African visionary, and the first president of an independent Ghana. From leading the charge against British colonial rule to his bold attempts to unify the African continent under a socialist banner, Nkrumah's story is one of profound courage, political brilliance, and unfinished dreams. We explore his writings, his revolutionary vision for a liberated and united Africa, and the forces—both foreign and domestic—that sought to dismantle his project. Nkrumah's legacy still burns in the hearts of those fighting imperialism today, and this episode brings his voice back to the forefront of revolutionary memory. Learn more and support Black Alliance for Peace Follow Nicholas on Twitter Follow Tunde on Twitter BAP Chicago's Twitter ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood
“The writers of our time who used to criticise the government are no longer there.”Today on the podcast, Alan has the pleasure and privilege of speaking to one of Africa's great writers: the South Sudanese author Taban Lo Liyong.In the 1960s he rubbed shoulders with independence politicians like Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah and with giants of African literature like Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. He was taken to Uganda as a young child and spent his formative years there – but now lives in his native South Sudan. On today's podcast he discusses language, the impact of HIV Aids, and why he's not ready to stop work at the age of 93 years. He says he still has two more books in him…