Ghana's founder's day - remembering the vision and works of the African of the millennium
21st September is the birth day of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and it is a public holiday in Ghana - known as founder's day or recently the Kwame Nkrumah memorial day.
In today's report, @BlockRush will take you down the memory lane into the life and fate of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah - the founder and first president of Ghana, as well as the instrumental role he played in uniting Africa.
Enter; Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah was born on 21st September 1909 in the Western Region of the Gold Coast - which is now Ghana. He he performed very well in school and earned a scholarship to study in the US.
In Pennsylvania he organized a group of expatriate African students into the African Students Association of America and Canada, and became its president.
Nkrumah at (top left) Lincoln College in Pennsylvania in 1935.
The Ghanaian exploit
While studying in the US and actively engaging in Pan-African activities he was invited to join the first political party in Ghana, the United Gold Coast Convention party(UGCC).
He came to join the founders and the group soon became known as the Big Six. The Big Six was made up of Ebenezer Ako-Adjei, Edward Akufo-Addo, Joseph Boakye Danquah, Kwame Nkrumah, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey and William Ofori Atta.
Due to a disagreement in ideologies and strategies on how to gain Independence in Ghana, he broke away from the UGCC to found the Convention People's Party(CPP) which later got the Independence for Ghana.
As the founder of Ghana, he set Ghana on the path of industrialization building infrastructures which are still the indispensable to this day.
Some of surviving infrastructure of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah include;
- the Tema motorway which is the major route linking the harbor to the capital
- Accra International Airport
- the Tema harbor and ports which have been the shipping point of other nations around Ghana
- the Akosombo hydro electric dam which solely provided Ghana with electricity until recently
- dozens of factories, roads, housing corporations
Till this day in Ghana, it is a known fact that no other government has every achieved even 10% of the infrastructure developments that was seen under the government of Nkrumah.
The United States of Africa
In his quest for Africa's total independence and unity of Africa, he is said at Ghana's Independence;
We are going to see that we create our own African personality and identity. We again rededicate ourselves in the struggle to emancipate other countries in Africa; for our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.
His original idea for Africa was to unite into a "United States of Africa". It was on this idea that he started Organization of Africa Unity which became know as the African Union.
To this end, the black star in the Ghanaian map was to "represent the hope of Africa". This is how much he loved Africa, he even made the Ghanaian flag a symbol for Africa.
A few years ago, BBC Radio honored Kwame Nkrumah as the African of the millennium. He was the pioneer of freedom and justice for the whole of Africa.
You may even notice that his name "Nkrumah" is recognized throughout the world and in dictionaries. When you type "nkrumah" in your browser, it is no underlined and when you right-click, you see a capitalized "Nkrumah".
The fall from glory
Despite all these ambitions and achievements, not everyone was impressed with the work of Kwame Nkrumah. As Ghana's finances began to experience difficulties, he soon began to fail to deliver on all of his ambitious promises to the people.
The newly formed nation has not yet gotten over ethnicity and soon political parties were formed on tribal lines - Northern Party, Volta Party and the Ashanti Party. Kwame Nkrumah would not allow such segregation and ethnicity to divide Ghana and responded in the rather rough way - by banning all political parties.
Soon, people began to feel he was a dictator who has not delivering on his promises yet would not step aside for someone else to take over. They began to plot coups and assassinations attacks on him. Again, he responded in another rough way by instituting a Preventive Detention Act - which was a military force to arrest and detail anyone who was suspected of being an emery of the government.
Things turned from bad to worse. Locally he had run out of finances to deliver on his promises to the people while also facing coups plots and threat. Externally, he was loosing friends and the very United States where he had studied was planning to overthrow him.
Finally help came - and it was from the Soviets who wanted to extend their "colonies" to Africa - at the time of the Cold War mode was on. Being out of options, out of funds and out of supporters, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah fell to the Soviets and set Ghana on the path to Communism.
His greatest "mistake" however, was to imprison Dr. JB. Danquah - one of the most instrumental and primary founders of Ghana. Without JB Danquah, perhaps the fight for independence might not have even be started and even if it were started, the "new" Ghana would have had a land size less than 20% of what it currently is.
Dr. JB Danquah was the one who united the Ashanti Empire, and the Northern Regions of Ghana. It was only due to this that the Volta regions also joined Ghana(formerly the trans-Volt Togo-land).
Eventually, he was overthrow in a bloodless coup on while he was on a peace trip to help end the infamous Vietnam war. He remained in exile until his death in 1972 in Romania.
Years later it was discovered that the CIA was behind the coup - yes the CIA of America overthrew the first democratically elected president of the first African country to gain Independence!
Resting place of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in Accra, Ghana
Africa and Blockchain
Bit Land
Ghana does boast of already having a Bitcoin 2.0 project since 2015. Bit Land is a Blockchain powered decentralized, transparent and incorruptible land registry and record system.
The project is built atop Open Ledger(Bit Shares) and be financed by the tokens called CADASTRAL.
Bit Pesa
Bit Pesa is a Naorobi, Kenyan based Blockchain payments processing service that is fast expanding across Africa as well as the world. The company is the first Bitcoin company to receive payment license in the UK in 2015 from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Founder and CEO of Bit Pesa, Elizabeth Rossiello said;
We keep raising because we have grown above and beyond projections. We have expanded across Africa and Europe added a stellar roster of Fortune 100 companies as clients and are receiving growing support from regulators. Global companies trading in Africa see the immediate value and efficiency of using BitPesa, as they know the pain of using existing cross-border payment services in these markets
Custos
Custos is a South African based anti-digital-piracy company which uses Bitcoin embedded into leaks of movies and other proprietary digital content to trace the source of the leak.
The concept is rather simple. Bitcoin private keys of real Bitcoin wallets containing small $5+ worth of Bitcoins are embedded into original files so when they are leaked before the due time, other pirate can search the pirated files for the Bitcoin keys to redeem the Bitcoins.
However, once Custos is alerted of the discovered private key, it will then be able to track the source of the hack.
Blockchain Africa Conference
The Blockchain African Conference is an annual conference held in South Africa where Blockchain enthusiasts, developers, investors and entrepreneurs come together to plan, learn and explore ways to implement as well as further Blockchain technology in civilization.
Africa and Steemit!
Steemit is doing wonders in Africa and Africans are returning the favor to Steemit!
The Blockchain Rush blog( @BlockRush ) is from Ghana; the awesome @thecryptodrive is a Steem witness based in South Africa.
The awesome @OluwoleOlaide is Nigerian while countless other awesome African Steemians are daily publishing signatory African quotes, literature and arts to Steemit.
There are several other Africans on Steemit doing great as well as several other coming up. In a chat with the mighty @aggroed, he said he had been in Ghana and loved the country.
The Kwame Nkrumah song
Ghana(Gold Coast) was recent overtaken by our neighboring Ivory Coast to become the second largest world Cocoa producer - yet Ghana is still Africa's largest Gold producer.
We have the world's largest man-made lake - the Lake Volta; we have Timber, Diamond, Bauxite, and we have oil!
The former general Secretary of the United nations, Kofi Anan is Ghanaian, Hollywood's Boris Kodjoe, Idris Elba and Abraham Attah are Ghanaian; WWE's Kofi Kingston is Ghanaian.
Yet 60 years on, Ghana is still struggling and nowhere near the even the worst that Nkrumah could have imagined for us. Why won't we miss him?
We will remember that old song we used to sing for him; and we will sing it again.
Kwame yee-a-eeh, Kwame Nkrumah Show boy
Kwame yee-a-eeh, Kwame Nkrumah Show boy
We want to see you, Kwame Nkrumah show boy
We want to see you, Kwame Nkrumah show boy
In memory of Dr. Kwame Krumah
The almighty Queen
The British PM
The Great Dreamer
OMG!
Wow!
Long live Ghana;
God Bless Our Homeland Ghana
and God bless Nkrumah!
wow am proud of your post. Now am aware of African growing blockchain company like bit-pesa thanks. Nkrumah was such a great man with visions.
This post has received a 0.39 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @banjo.
Interesting post. Loved reading it and the historical pictures worth watching!
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