YAO SAINT YVES YOBOUE - THE BIOGRAPHY OF KWAME NKRUMAH

« I- THE BIOGRAPHY OF KWAME NKRUMAH 1- The life of Nkrumah Kwame Nkrumah was born in 1909 in "Gold Coast", the name given by the British Empire to Ghana.

Despite his modest social origin, Kwame Nkrumah enjoys an education nonetheless paid and mainly intended for the children of traditional notables, this one having to allow the British colonial administration to rely on a privileged class of natives from which his local agents. After completing his first years of study with the Jesuits (the company of Jesus), Nkrumah became a student instructor at the age of 17 and was noticed by an inspector who sent him to continue his studies in the suburbs of Accra.

In 1935, a few years after leaving college, he moved to the United States to complete his studies at Lincoln University. After doing odd jobs in parallel with his studies, he obtained a license in economics and sociology in 1939. 2- His first steps in political life Nkrumah was a member of an association of African students which he helped transform into the Association of African Students of the United States and Canada and was its president between 1942 and 1945, and his compass was the journal of the association.

featuring Pan-African ideas.

Nkrumah is indeed interested in issues of colonialism and imperialism.

He was very interested in the writings of Marx and Lenin because they had developed a philosophy of character to best respond to the causes of his struggle. He is mainly interested in Marcus Garvey's “Return to Africa” and “Africa to Africans” theories. However, he rejects the concept of "black race purity" advanced by Garvey. Shortly before leaving the United States for Great Britain, where the Pan-African Congress of 1945 was to be held, he wrote the pamphlet Towards National Liberation in which he developed his analysis of colonialism: it was described as a consequence of the needs of capitalism to access raw materials at the lowest cost, to have cheap labor and to get rid of its overproduction The speeches on the civilizing mission and on the education of the natives are for him only pretexts to conceal the reality of colonialism.

In London, he joined the West African Students' Union (WASU) and briefly began studying law, but soon found himself engrossed in his political activities.

He is co-editor, with communist activist George Padmore, of the final declaration of the Pan-African Congress in Manchester.. »