I will try within the limits of 15 minutes to establish, that Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah inherited a nation badly battered, bruised and mutilated that he had to change things in other to make a diffirence not only for Ghana but for the rest of the liberatiing nations to follow. His task was daunting given the long years of denials, exploitation and apparent rape of the continent by foreign interests.

Effects of the past
The devastation of Africa that we witness today is not a new phenominon. It commenced with the genocidal brutality of the Trans Atlantic Slave trade which was inflicted on Africa and continued for 400 years, depriving the continent of the most productive and active segments of the population and disrupting the productive activities on the continent. Slavery and colonialism led to a massive loss of African labour. Slave buyers preferred their victims to be between the ages of 15-35 and even more preferably in their early twenties with a captive-sex-ratio of two men to one woman. What was left of the African population was the aged who had little energy capable of reproduction and of kids who were not of the reproductive age. Africa’s population lagged dangerously behind her counterparts and especially in the buying countries. This trend of stagnation of the African population is amply pictured by the table below.

Table 1: Population Change of 3 Continents (1650-1900)

Period	1650	1750	1850	1900
Africa	100	100	100	120
Europe	103	144	274	423
Asia	257	437	656	857

Source: Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa P. 111
It is evident that from the 15th century to the 17th century, it is only Africa’s population that did not grow. It had a marginal growth in the 19th century while Europe and Asia had tremendous increases to the population. What could account for this strange, shocking and catastrophic demographic trend? The demographic crises of nearly 400 years are indeed intriguing.  Cypher & Dietz puts it mildly “the slave trade furnished one part of the colonial world with labour to fill the vast lands acquired by colonial powers, at the cost of depopulating Africa. Between 1600 and 1900, approximately 12 million Africans were sold into slavery and brought to the Western Hemisphere, with an additional 36 million dying as a result of constant warfare throughout Africa, or on the long march to the coast, or in slave pens awaiting shipment across the Atlantic (stavrianos 1981:109) and between 1650-1850, Africa’s share of world population fell from 18 percent to 8 percent”. Evidently these approximations excluded those who were smuggled out of Africa into slavery.

(Nasser 2010) says European and American slave traders accumulated enormous super-profits from the exploitation of slave labour in the production of tobacco, cotton, sugar and coffee in Central, South and North America. Quite apart from this, African slave labour was also used to put up physical structures such as roads, bridges and canals in Europe and America. The Great Western Railway in Britain for example was built with salve profits, while several iron, textile and other infrastructural edifices were built with money from slave proceeds. The two brothers - David and Alexander Barclay – were slave traders and they used their slaving loot to establish Barclays Bank. Slave profits also helped James Watt to produce his steam engine which helped to spur the Industrial Revolution.

At the opposite end of the spectrum of the Slave Trade was the very chaotic and unstable socio-political curve wrecked on the African continent by the slave raids and constant flight of large populations. One of the consequences of this was that Africa missed out on the industrial revolution which started somewhere in the Eighteenth century. Having missed that critical start, the continent has continued to lag ominously behind. If the African continent had been stable at the time the Industrial Revolution started, it is obvious that the new technologies associated with that Revolution would have flowed into the African continent and would have eventually been internalized as part of Africa’s technological tradition.

Colonialism
The advent of the Industrial Revolution made Slave Trade non-profitable because machines had come to replace human labour. The machines were turning out goods in such large quantities that there was the need to expand markets and secure the sources of raw materials. This triggered the rush for colonies, and Africa was divided and re-divided among the leading European nations of the time. One of the first processes that led to the usurpation of the land area which eventually became the Gold Coast started with the Bond of 1844 which the British signed with our coastal chiefs as a decoy to sereptitiously usurp political power from the indigenous people. This was part of the scramble for Africa long after the slave trade had been abolished.

Earlier in 1881 France usurped control over Tunisia, and a year later Britain took possession of Egypt. In 1884 the first German colony was established on the coast of South-West Africa. A year later Germany followed this up with the occupation of Togo and the Cameroons. Soon afterwards a French expedition force seized the territory between the Cameroons and the Portuguese colony of Angola, which became the French Congo. In 1885 France established control over Madagascar, and later in 1894 seized control over Timbuktu, Ivory Coast and Dahomey (now Benin). Soon the whole of the Sudan was occupied by France.  Spain and France eventually secured control over Morocco. In 1876 Leopold II of Belgium occupied the Congo Basin. Italy came late into the race for colonies, but all the same it managed to occupy, among other places, the area now known as Eritrea, and in 1889 the colony of Italian Somaliland was formed.

Some of the territories changed hands after the defeat of Germany in the First World War. Colonies that used to belong to Germany were distributed among the victorious nations. So what happened? Britain received German East Africa, a quarter of Togoland and a piece of the Cameroons. France took over the remaining three-quarters of Togoland and the greater part of the Cameroons, while Belgium got a slice of German East Africa. The Union of South Africa received German South-West Africa, now Namibia. Thereafter Africa's people and natural resources were exploited to build up the economic and political strength of the colonial powers.

By the time Europe was compelled to decolonize Africa, it had had enough time of the more than a century of colonial rule, to erect the necessary economic and political structures designed to ensure the continuation of the exploitation of the continent even in the absence of the so-called colonial master. For this purpose they groomed an exclusive class of political elite, technocrats and intellectuals deeply enmeshed in imperialist ideology. This was the class that the departing colonialists normally handed over power to. Apart from political office, members of this fifth column were also rewarded with lucrative jobs, foreign bank accounts, and executive positions in multinational corporations. Occasionally those African elite who distinguish themselves in this treacherous symbiosis are even knighted.
Africa’s role in all this was basically twofold: First, to supply the material resources, markets and investment outlets for Europe, America and Japan and second, to act as buffer zones or shock absorbers to cushion and stabilize the crises of the global system whenever they occur.

The Place of Nkrumah
The reality and the stress that Africans went through and are still going through, catapulted people like Nkrumah to dismantle the shackles of exploitation of African by conduit of Slavery and colonialism. The strenuousness of the era required real men. Nkrumah was a real man of character, man of purpose, man of enormous confidence and above all a man of unshakable faith.  These rare traits of Nkrumah ensured our attainment of Independence.      At his time he came across many weaklings who professed to be leaders, but in the test he found them to be slaves of nobler class. These weaklings, who constituted themselves into a movement, were concerned about reforms and not political sovereignty. They could not sacrifice themselves for the just course of the masses. They belonged to the aristocratic order. It was this feeble mindedness that ensured that Kwame Nkrumah broke links with them.

The national situation at the time Kwame Nkrumah took over the reigns of government from the British is that of immeasurable destitution. All over the country, great tracts of open land lay untilled and uninhabited, while nutritional diseases were rife among the people. There were very few hospitals, schools or clinics. Access to potable water was a remote dream for the vast majority of the people. Our roads were scanty. For the most part, people walked hundreds of miles from one town to the other, carrying loads on their heads. Over eighty percent of the people were illiterate. Trade and commerce were run almost entirely by Europeans.

Of industries, we had none except those extracting gold and diamond. We did not make a pin, not a handkerchief, not even a match. The only clothes the country produced were the hand-woven kente (and the northern smock). Our economy was dependent on one cash crop cocoa. Although our output of cocoa at the time was the largest in the world, there was not a single cocoa processing factory. There had been geological surveys of our subsoil, but imperialist Britain scrupulously withheld the reports.

As a heritage, Kwame Nkrumah tells us that it was stark and daunting, and seemed to have been summed up in the symbolic barrenness which met him and his colleagues when they officially moved into the Christiansburg Castle, which had just formerly been the official residence of the British governor. Making their tour through room after room, Kwame Nkrumah notes that they were struck by the general emptiness, and that except for an occasional piece of furniture there was absolutely nothing to indicate that only a few days before people had lived and worked there. Not a rag, not a book was to be found, not a piece of paper, not a single reminder that for very many years the colonial administration had its centre there. Such was the legacy of deprivation and squalor bequeathed to Ghana by the departing British colonialists. And upon assumption of office in March 1957 Nkrumah and the CPP had to challenge the status quo, and to develop the country’s resources for the benefit of the Ghanaian people. For Nkrumah, time was of critical essence, and he had to work fast.

Building the Nation
In the first ten years in Government, Nkrumah drew up the First and Second Development Plans where foundations were laid for the modernization and industrialization of Ghana. A skilled labour force was to be trained and an adequate complement of public services built up such as transport, electricity, water and tele-communications.
The industrial sector registered the most impressive development with the construction of many new industrial plants. Most of these had either been completed or were nearing completion.

These included steelworks, cocoa processing plants, sugar refineries, a textile printing plant, a glass factory, a chocolate factory, a meat processing plant, a radio assembly plant, a large printing works, a textile mill, a complex of food industries, a gold refinery, an asbestos factory, a cement factory, a shoe factory, a rubber-tyre factory, a plant for the manufacture of pre-fabricated houses, a glass factory, radio assembly and several others. In addition, the Atomic Energy Commission was established at Kwabenya, and work was well advanced on a high-tech research programme on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Ghana was also breaking free from the stranglehold of the big international banking houses. In 1958, foreign banks held one-third of Ghana’s foreign currency reserves; in 1965 they held none at all In fact, the basic policy underlying the Seven Year Development Plan was to structurally transform Ghana’s mainly agricultural economy into a balanced modern economy, and this was going ahead with great speed and efficiency. Ghana was successfully managing to use local raw materials for establishing industries, and was beginning to satisfy local demand for certain consumer goods.

For example, the country produced matches, shoes, nails, sweets, chocolate, soft drinks, biscuits, paints, canned fruit, insecticides and other chemicals as well as other beverages.
In education, progress was equally impressive. In ten years Ghana had achieved more than the colonial administration had achieved throughout the entire period of colonial rule which extended more than a century. Nkrumah took the unprecedented step in Africa of making all education free, from primary to university level. In addition, textbooks were supplied free to all pupils in primary, middle and secondary schools. According to a UNESCO Report in 1963, Ghana spent more on education in proportion to her size and population than any country in the world. (Sutherland, 2010) says by the 1964-65 school year there were 9,988 primary and middle schools. 

89 secondary schools constructed included several that had been built under the auspices of the Education Trust. A moving precursor to this was the Ghana National College established by Kwame Nkrumah himself followed by secondary schools all over the country such as Wa, Lawra, Tamale and Yendi schools. 47 teacher training colleges were also established. It may be noted that the Advanced Teacher Training College, The Specialist Teacher Training College and the Deaf Specialist Training College all now integral to UEW are included in this number. 11 technical schools and 3 universities were also in place.

Nkrumah’s Warning
Nkrumah warned us to be mindful of the departing colonial masters lest they comeback in disguised form. But we did not listern. Today they are here as “International looters association”. Through their multilateral institutions they asked us to abandon state involvement in industries- we did, they said we should privatise, we did, reduce interest rates- we did, check inflation-we did, devalue our currency-we did in the process we accepted structural adjusment programme, Economic Recovery Programme, PAMSCARD, PAF and finally, we landed ourselves in the exclusive but inglorious EHIPC-Thus from frying pan to fire.  They lured into selling off the Black Star Shipping Line, Colapse our bubbling industries, we sold Ghana Airways, we attempted selling Ghana Commercial Bank and Agricultural Development Bank but for public pressure. The recent action of sale of Ghana Telecom to Vodafone and the action of EO Group in our oil fines are just a few of the digustings evidence of our gullibility.

Our Nation Today
Our Nation today is a pale shadow of its past glory and envy. Since 1966, Ghana’s growth retrogression has been unpresendented. From the almost absent levels of unemployment with the option of being a net imported of labour, our nation is now faced with massive levels of unemployment-Students parading everywhere with CVs. From a period of self sufficient to a period of importing everything from tooth pick, through “second hand underwear” to handkerchief and you name it. We have now become exporters of employment and importers of unemployment. We have failed to diversify our Agriculture, Our workers brigade Yamutu, State Farms, Yamutu, Robber plantation Yamutu, Cotton Ginery-Yamutu, Ghana airways-Yamutu, oil palm-Yamutu and Rice production-Yamutu. How did all these happen to a once booming Ghana? Surely, it is the work of the greedy few with support from the CIA. Declassified CIA documents reveal that the agency was in constant contact with Afrifa, Harlley and Kotoka. These traitors each received 13 million US dollars and were promised more if they could kill Nkrumah.

J. Mahoney in his book JFK Ordeal in Africa relates an incident which confirms that the leader of the opposition to Nkrumah at the height of Ghana’s confrontation with imperialism had been on the payroll of the CIA. Mahoney writes: “The matter concerned Dr. J.B. Danquah, Nkrumah’s opponent in the presidential elections of 1960, who had been released from prison a few months after Mahoney’s arrival as ambassador. Danquah paid a visit one November day to the embassy to ask Mahoney why the funds his family had been receiving during his imprisonment had been cut off after his release. This was the first time that Mahoney had heard of the arrangement. After Danquah left, he summoned the CIA chief of station to ask why he had not been advised of the agency’s association with Danquah. Dissatisfied with the explanation, Mahoney flew to Washington two days later and personally informed Kennedy about the matter.”

Conclussion
Do I hear them (Western Countries and their Multinationals) say that we must follow their path, if we (Africans) wants to attained the height of development they gloat? Surely we are too civilized and human to engage in the abominable business of slave trade. We cannot fall for colonizing another continent. We cannot plunder and pillage the resources of another continent for the growth of ours. So you see, we shall not follow their example to development. We shall have to develop our own, that which is native to Africa, that which Nkrumah thought us in his wards “from now on, there is a new African in the world…the blackman is capable of managing his own affairs”.
Nkrumah played his part but for betrayal. The agenda is uncompleted. We have done a lot of talk, let us actuate the vision and Ghana and Africa shall be free.
I thank you




Thank you.