How Nkrumah’s Approach to the World May Help Explain Africa’s Current Approach
By Fidel Amakye Owusu
Kindly take another look at this:
“How Nkrumah’s approach to the world may help explain Africa’s current approach.
1. In recent years and months, there have been talks about Africa’s approach to some global events and powers.
2. Not least of these events has been the war in Ukraine. Many in the West who expected some African states to go all out to condemn Russia were frustrated when it did not happen. Many African states abstained or were absent during a vote that sought to condemn Russia’s actions.
3. Some pro-Russians had expected that Africans sided with Russia in what they considered to be Western antagonism against Moscow. To them, both Russia and Africa are victims of the West—Africans largely do not think so.
4. Again, many Westerners have raised issues with the Chinese presence in Africa. Some see some “neo-colonialism” going on and expect that Africa limits engagements with the second-largest economy in the world. Here too, Africans keep dealing with China as it sponsors major projects across the continent. China built the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia—symbolic.
5. The Chinese also question Africa’s continued engagements with the West. They do not get why many countries are so tied to the apron strings of their former colonizers.
6. While these expectations and counter-expectations of different interests of Africa are interesting, there is an antecedent that explains why states may continue to entertain different interests.
7. How is that?
8. Shortly after independence in 1957, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana declared that his country was looking neither left nor right; it was looking forward. He was referring to the East-West ideological divide of the Cold War.
9. Consequently, he engaged both Western and Eastern countries to maximize the developmental benefits to Ghana. Nkrumah was able to get one of the biggest hydroelectric dams and an aluminum smelter from the United States, while he created a national shipping line with sponsorship from the Soviet Union.
10. When he had decided to leave the Commonwealth of Nations to end Ghana’s colonial link to the UK, he later had a change of mind after listening to counsel.
11. He established diplomatic relations with China as early as 1960. This was a time when many Western states did not recognize the Communist state.
12. As one source puts it, Nkrumah had only shifted a bit more to the East after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. He became quite distrustful of the West. However, his pragmatism towards global powers remained notable.
13. Today, African states are looking for partners who would support them in reducing their infrastructural deficit, ensuring security, and bettering their human development indexes.
14. They are “looking forward”.
15. Many more…”
#africa #usa #geopolitics DefSEC Analytics Africa Ltd unival group GmbH
By Fidel Amakye Owusu – International Relations and Security Analyst and Writer
Article Reproduced with Permission from Fidel Amakye Owusu
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