Ghana 50 Year Of Independence

A comprehensive review of major political events in Ghana, with critical comments, during the past 50 years. The book takes off where its predecessor The New Ghana, the international best seller published in 1958, Ghana’s first independence anniversary, ended. Absorbing, balanced and detailed, it is nevertheless controversial and challenging. Unique for its vignettes on all the major personalities of the five decades that the author has been privileged to interact with. The book challenges certain myths about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The slow rate of development in Ghana in particular and Africa in general: the reasons why Ghana, despite its vast natural and mineral resources, is still a developing country. Traditions and customs which negate the rapid development of Ghana and robustly reviewed. What killed Nkrumah? Was Nkrumah anti-white? These are only a few of the interesting questions that the book attempts to answer. The book, which is unique in many ways, ends on a note of hope and expectation – that the next 5 years would be better than the last half century. Only time can tell.

This book connects the Black freedom struggle in the United States to liberation movements across the globe.

The book follows a first edition published in 1989, which focused on the severe economic crisis Ghana faced during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. In this second edition, the authors extend the review up to the mid-2010s, covering the entire period since independence, with a special focus on shifts in economic policy, starting with the adoption of the Economic Recovery Programme in 1983. Huq and Tribe provide systematic coverage of Ghanaian economic development since its independence, reviewing the two main modes of development that have been practiced; and offer an updated, rich data bank. By analyzing the wider macroeconomy of Ghana; its individual sectors; money, banking and trade; infrastructure and environmental policies; and Ghana’s poverty, welfare and income distribution, the authors are able to draw vital lessons from the country’s economic development. ​

In this new edition of Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, C. L. R. James tells the history of the socialist revolution led by Kwame Nkrumah, the first president and prime minister of Ghana. Although James wrote it in the immediate post-independence period around 1958, he did not publish it until nearly twenty years later, when he added a series of his own letters, speeches, and articles from the 1960s. Although Nkrumah led the revolution, James emphasizes that it was a popular mass movement fundamentally realized by the actions of everyday Ghanaians. Moreover, James shows that Ghana’s independence movement was an exceptional moment in global revolutionary history: it moved revolutionary activity to the African continent and employed new tactics not seen in previous revolutions. Featuring a new introduction by Leslie James, an unpublished draft of C. L. R. James's introduction to the 1977 edition, and correspondence, this definitive edition of Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution offers a revised understanding of Africa’s shaping of freedom movements and insight into the possibilities for decolonial futures.