Leaders at independence: Kwame Nkrumah and his contemporaries
Between 1957 and 1960 most of West Africa moved from the periphery of European empires to sovereign statehood. Nationalist leaders who, during the struggle for decolonization, had learnt the importance of ideas as a weapon of political struggle (Falola, 2001, 27) were now actually responsible for the economic and social welfare of their populations as heads of state.
Most of them shared a commitment to economic modernization, a usually hostile attitude towards indigenous business, and the assumption, quite common at the time — especially in Francophone writing (Hugon, 1993), but far from exclusively so — that the state had to play an active role in promoting economic development. Yet, given the ideological context of the Cold War, it is possible to draw a line between more ‘socialist' and more ‘market oriented' governments. Leading examples of the former were Kwame Nkrumah's regime in Ghana, especially from 1961, Ahmed Sekou Toure's in Guinea and Modibo Keita's in Mali; while the latter approach was championed by Felix Houphouet-Boigny in Ivory Coast. An intermediate, if not openly ambiguous, position was occupied by Leopold Sedar Senghor's Senegal. While Houphouet- Boigny (1905—93), who ruled Ivory Coast from independence in 1959 until 1990, thought that a qualified economic liberalism was the appropriate model for the development of his country, Senghor (1906—2001), a distinguished poet and intellectual, provided a highly original interpretation of African socialism: ‘the object of socialism is not the economy, as too many Marxists now believe, but concrete, living man, in his totality, body and soul' (Senghor, 1964: 108). Senghor's humanism, based on the concept of Negritude, was aimed principally at developing a distinctive African epistemology that could embody an alternative to both Western individualism and scientific rationalism. Though these themes recur in the work of postcolonial African philosophers, Senghor's ideas never shaped significantly the thought of economists and economic reformers.Ultimately it was Kwame Nkrumah (1909—72) who emerged from the first generation of postcolonial West African politicians as the most systematic and influential writer on economic matters, anticipating many insights that would characterise the work of radical African scholars in later decades. Nkrumah's economic thought, which developed as a blend of socialism and Pan-Africanism, was largely based on Lenin's theory of imperialism (Lenin, 1917/1947). Although Lenin referred to the Scramble for Africa, and noted that ‘capitalism's transition to the phase of monopoly capitalism, to finance capital is bound up with the intensification of the
struggle for the partition of the world' (Lenin, 1917/1947, 131), his treatment of imperialism was mostly concerned with the concentration and spread of industrial and financial capital in the West. In contrast, Nkrumah identified in the Scramble for Africa and European colonization not only a necessary stage of the evolution of capitalism, but the prime cause of Africa's contemporary underdevelopment. In his view the gap between political independence and economic dependence (noted by Lenin, 1917/1947, 144—6), with reference to Argentina's and Portugal's reliance on British capital) was the main feature of the stage in the history of global capitalism experienced by post-colonial Africa, that of ‘neo-colonialism'. The essence of neo-colonialism was that ‘The State which is subjected to it is, in theory, independent... In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside' (Nkrumah, 1965/1970, ix). The ‘subtle and varied' (Nkrumah, 1965/1970, 239) means through which neo-colonialist agents (including former colonial powers, international organizations and multinational corporations) imposed their will on African states included the manipulation of primary product prices in international markets, the use of high interest rates, multilateral aid, and such tools of cultural policy as evangelism and American cinema (Nkrumah, 1965/1970, 239—54).
Although an ardent Pan-Africanist, Nkrumah's vision had little to do with the African- American diaspora discussed by Blyden, representing instead an attempt to achieve fuller political and economic integration on African soil for African benefit. According to Nkrumah, the most effective way for Africa to regain its economic and political freedom was the formation of a socialist African continental political union, which could plan its development ‘centrally and scientifically through a pattern of economic integration' (Nkrumah, 1963/1970, 170). Meanwhile Nkrumah rejected the Tete-Ansah project of economic development led by African private enterprise. While he was willing to work with foreign companies bringing large-scale capital and industrial technology, his view of the economy had little place for indigenous capitalists (Nkrumah, 1961/1997). Following his overthrow in 1966, Nkrumah spent the last years of his life in exile, as honorary vice-president in Sekou Toure's Guinea. During these years his ideas showed a marked radicalization, adopting class struggle as a key analytical concept (Nkrumah, 1970/1999). Thus embracing more closely the tenets of orthodox Marxism, rather than his own version of ‘African socialism', he now called for armed struggle against neo-colonialism.