Kwame Nkrumah ‘I speak of freedom “

Dr Kwame Nkrumah is the epitome of the “ prophet never recognized in his own home” . Throughout his time in office he was passionate about African Unity . Some say he was consumed by the notion due to his unbridled love for power and ambition . Today however , critical analysis will bear out his correct vision and foresight. 50 years on, no single African country can count itself as developed . Africa though waking up is still bedeviled as ever before from one trauma to another . I looked back on his speech in 1963 and realized how right he was .
In these extracts ones sees how prophetic Osagyefo was . Would there have been a Cedi crisis if Africa had one currency? What of the wars in Sudan, CAR, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone Mali, Guinea, Cote D’Ivoire, Congo that have killed and maimed so many women, children, and men and so hindered economic growth . All we needed was the African High Command . Would there have been sanctuary for the Boko Haram, or El Shoebab, or Al Qaeda
These are headlines we read weekly if not daily
“Somalia's Shebab insurgents said they had assassinated a lawmaker in Mogadishu as he left prayers at a mosque on Friday, the fifth MP killed this year in a string of attacks.”
“Boko Haram gunmen attacked Nigeria's restive northeastern town of Gwoza on Wednesday leaving dozens dead, residents said, in the latest violence blamed on the Islamists.”
“Clashes between rival militias in Tripoli have killed at least 22 people and wounded 72, the Libyan government said on Sunday, warning of a "worsening humanitarian situation" in the capita”l.
“Egyptian troops have killed 11 militants in shoot-outs in the restive Sinai Peninsula where security forces have battled an insurgency since president Mohamed Morsi's overthrow, the army said on Monday”
“South African business confidence has fallen to its lowest level since 1999, amid protracted labour disputes, a leading survey showed on Thursday.” “The economy is beset by slow growth, high unemployment and a series of strike-induced wage agreements that policymakers fear will spur inflation that is already above six percent”
“Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta launched Friday a construction deal for the first berths in a proposed multi-billion dollar port, the day after ordering vast tracts of "stolen" land be repossessed.”


Health wise would we be facing Ebola as a killer disease , which we as usual are helpless waiting for “ Big brother” to help . What of the Climate change challenges and mass migration both of our best brains and the youth to add to the human resources of those who already have ? President Obama sums up the latest summit as follows “ Ultimately, Africa's prosperity depends on Africa's greatest resource -- its people. And I've been very encouraged by the desire of leaders here to partner with us in supporting young entrepreneurs, including through our Young African Leaders Initiative. I think there's an increasing recognition that if countries are going to reach their full economic potential, then they have to invest in women -- their education, their skills, and protect them from gender-based violence. And that was a topic of conversation this afternoon. And this week the United States announced a range of initiatives to help empower women across Africa.

So why ignore what Nkrumah said 50 years ago? In the speech he points to the futility of our individual efforts as nation states .
Let me reproduce his great speech as adjustments may take away the beauty , direction and devalue its thrust
“For centuries, Africa has been the milk cow of the Western world. Was it not our continent that helped the Western world to build up its accumulated wealth? We have the resources. It was colonialism in the first place that prevented us from accumulating the effective capital; but we ourselves have failed to make full use of our power in independence to mobilise our resources for the most effective take-off into thorough-going economic and social development

Experts have estimated that the Congo Basin alone can produce enough food crops to satisfy the requirements of nearly half the population of the whole world, and here we sit talking about regionalism, talking about gradualism, talking about step by step. Are you afraid to tackle the bull by the horn? We shall accumulate machinery and establish steel works, iron foundries and factories; we shall link the various states of our continent with communications by land, sea and air. We shall cable from one place to another, phone from one place to the other and around the world with our hydroelectric power; we shall drain marshes and swamps, clear infested areas, feed the under-nourished, and rid our people of parasites and disease.
What are the gains of independence?
It is within the possibility of science and technology to make even the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for agricultural and industrial developments. We shall harness radio, television, giant printing presses to lift our people from the dark recesses of illiteracy.
A decade ago, these would have been visionary words, the fantasies of an idle dreamer. But this is the age in which science has transcended the limits of the material world, and technology has invaded the resiliencies of nature
We cannot afford to pace our needs, our development, our security, to the gait of camels and donkeys. We cannot afford not to cut down the overgrown bush of outmoded attitudes that obstruct our path to the modern open road of the widest and earlier achievement of economic independence and the raising up of the lives of our people to the highest level.
Even for other continents lacking the resources of Africa, this is the age that sees the end of human want. For us, it is a simple matter of grasping with certainty our heritage by using the political might of unity. All we need to do is to develop with our united strength the enormous resources of our continent.
What use to the farmer is education and mechanisation, what use is even capital for development, unless we can ensure for him a FAIR price and a READY market? What has the peasant, worker and farmer gained from political independence unless we can ensure for him a fair return for his labour and a higher standard of living?
Unless we can establish great industrial complexes in Africa, what have the urban worker, and those peasants on overcrowded land gained from political independence? If they are to remain unemployed or in unskilled occupation, what will avail them the better facilities for education, technical training, energy and ambition which independence enables us to provide?
There is hardly any African state without a frontier problem with its adjacent neighbours. It would be futile for me to enumerate them because they are already so familiar to us all. But let me suggest that this fatal relic of colonialism will drive us to war against one another as our unplanned and uncoordinated industrial development expands, just as happened in Europe?
Unless we succeed in arresting the danger through mutual understanding on fundamental issues and through African unity, which will render existing boundaries obsolete and superfluous, we shall have fought in vain for independence.
Only African unity can heal this Only African unity can heal this festering sore of boundary disputes between our various states. The remedy for these ills is ready in our hands. It stares us in the face at every customs barrier, it shouts to us from every African heath. By creating a true political union of all the independent states of Africa, with executive powers for political direction, we can tackle hopefully every emergency and every complexity
This is because we have emerged in the age of science and technology in which poverty, ignorance and disease are no longer the masters, but the retreating foes of mankind.
Above all, we have emerged at a time when a continental landmass like Africa with its population approaching 300 million(1.05bn) are necessary to the economic capitalisation and profitability of modern productive methods and techniques.
Not one of us working singly and individually can successfully attain the fullest development. Certainly, in the circumstances, it will not be possible to give adequate assistance to sister states trying, against the most difficult conditions, to improve their economic and social structures. Only a united Africa functioning under a union government can forcefully mobilise the material and moral resources of our separate countries and apply them efficiently and energetically to bring a rapid change in the conditions of our people.
Unite we must. Without necessarily sacrificing our sovereignties, big or small, we can here and now forge a political union based on defence, foreign affairs and diplomacy, and a common citizenship, an African currency, an African monetary zone and an African central bank. We must unite in order to achieve the full liberation of our continent. We need a common defence system with African high command to ensure the stability and security of Africa. We have been charged with this sacred task by our own people, and we cannot betray their trust by failing them .We will be mocking the hopes of our people if we show the slightest hesitation or delay in tackling realistically this question of African unity. The, supply of arms or other military aid to the colonial oppressors in Africa must be regarded not only as aid in the vanquishment of the freedom fighters battling for their African independence, but as an act of aggression against the whole of Africa. How can we meet this aggression except by the full weight of our united strength?

Many of us have made non-alignment an article of faith on this continent. We have no wish, and no intention of being drawn into the cold war. But with the present weakness and insecurity of our states in the context of world politics, the search for bases and spheres of influence brings the cold war into Africa with its danger of nuclear warfare. Africa should be declared a nuclear-free zone and freed from cold war exigencies. But we cannot make this demand mandatory unless we support it from a position of strength to be found only in our unity.

Instead, many independent African states are involved by military pacts with the former colonial powers. The stability and security which such devices seek to establish are illusory, for the metropolitan powers seize the opportunity to support their neocolonialist controls by direct military involvement .we have seen how the neocolonialists use their bases to entrench themselves and even to attack neighboring independent states. Such bases are centers of tension and potential danger spots of military conflict. They threaten the security not only of the country in which they are situated but of neighboring countries as well.

We need unified economic planning for Africa. Until the economic power of Africa is in our hands, the masses can have no real concern and no real interest for safeguarding our security, for ensuring the stability of our regimes, and for bending their strength to the fulfillment of our ends. With our united resources, energies and talents, we have the means, as soon as we show the will, to transform the economic structures of our individual states from poverty to that of wealth, from inequality to the satisfaction of popular needs. Only on a continental basis shall we be able to plan the proper utilization of all our resources for the full development of our continent.
How else will we retain our own capital for our development? How else will we
establish an internal market for our own industries? By belonging to different
economic zones, how will we break down the currency and trading barriers between African states and how will the economically stronger amongst us be able to assist the weaker and less developed state?

It is important to remember that independence financing and independent
development cannot take place without an independent currency: A currency system that is backed by the resources of a foreign state is ipso facto to the trade and financial arrangements of the foreign country. Because we have so many customs and currency barriers as a result of being subject to the different currency systems of foreign powers, this has served to widen the gap between us in Africa. How, for example, can related communities and families trade with, and support one another successfully, if they find themselves divided by national boundaries and currency restrictions? The only alternative open to them in these circumstances is to use smuggled currency and enrich,national and international racketeers and crooks who prey upon our financial and economic difficulties.

No independent African state today by itself has a chance to follow an independent course of economic development, and many of us who have tried to do this have been almost ruined or have had to return to the fold: of the former colonial masters. This position will not change unless we have a unified policy working at the continental level. The first step towards our cohesive economy would be a unified monetary zone, with, initially, an agreed common parity for our currencies. To facilitate this arrangement, Ghana would change to a decimal system. When we find that the arrangement of a fixed common parity is working successfully, there would seem to be no reason for not instituting one common currency and a single bank of issue. With a common currency from one common bank to issue, we should be able to stand erect on our own feet because such an arrangement would be fully backed by the combined national products of the states composing the union. After all, the purchasing power of money depends on productivity and the productive exploitation of the natural, human
and physical resources of the nation.
So many blessings flow from our unity; so many disasters must follow on our
continued disunity, that our failure to unite today will not be attributed by posterity only to faulty reasoning and lack of courage, but to our capitulation before the forces of ‘ neo- colonialism and imperialism. The hour of history which has brought us to this assembly is a revolutionary hour. It is the hour of decision. For the first time, the economic imperialism which menaces us is itself challenged by the irresistible will of the people.
The masses of the people of Africa are crying for unity. The people of Africa call for the breaking down of the boundaries that keep them apart. They demand an end to the border disputes between sister African states- disputes that arise out of the artificial barriers raised by colonialism. It was colonialism’s purpose that divided us. It was colonialism’s purpose that left us with our border irredentism that rejected our ethnic and cultural fusion. Our people call for unity so that they may not lose the patrimony in the perpetual service of neo colonialism. In their fervent push for unity, they understand that only its realization will give full meaning to their freedom and our African independence


When the first congress of the United States met many years ago at Philadelphia, one of the delegates sounded the first chord of unity by declaring that they had met in ‘a state of nature’; In other words, they were not in Philadelphia as Virginians, or Pennsylvanians, but simply as Americans .This reference to them as Americans were in those days a new and strange experience. May 1 dare to assert equally on this occasion. Your Excellencies, that we meet here today not as Ghanaians, Guineans, Egyptians Algerians, Moroccans, Malians, Liberians, Congolese or Nigerians but as Africans. Africans united in our resolve to remain here until we have agreed on the basic principles of a new pact of unity among ourselves which guarantees for us and our future a new arrangement of continental government. If we succeed in establishing a new set of principles as the basis of a new charter or stature for the establishment of a continental Unity of Africa and the creation of political and social progress for our people, then in my view, this conference should mark the end of our various groupings and regional blocs. But if we fail and let this grand and historic opportunity slip by then we shall give way to greater dissention and division among us for which the people of Africa will never forgive us. And the popular and progressive forces and movements within Africa will condemn us. I am sure therefore that we shall not fail them.
The committee of foreign ministers, officials arid experts should be empowered to establish:
1. A Commission to frame a constitution for a Union government of African
States;
2. A Commission to work out a continent-wide plan for a unified or common
economic and industrial programme for Africa; this place should include
proposals for setting up:
a. A common market for Africa
b. An African currency; •
c. An African monetary zone;
d. An African central Bank, and
e. A continental communication system.

It is quite obvious that President Obama sees the obvious path of a United Africa as most of the Ills of Africa can only be cured by the concerted effort of all . Is it rocket science to see how inter dependent we are ?

The writer Kojo Tamakloe is a Pan Africanist who believes it is through African Unity that it will become developed