The Fulfilment of Kwame Nkrumah’s ‘Prophecy’: Africa’s Neocolonialism in Theory and Practice

Dr Osagiyefo Kwame Nkrumah, the first Ghanaian President was born on the 21st of September in 1909 in Nkroful, a rural village in the Western region of the then British Gold Coast (Ghana) and he rose into prominence when he took upon the great and intricate risk to liberate the continent of Africa starting with his own native country (Langan, 2018; Biney, 2012; Nkrumah, 1963). He died of cancer on the 27th of April in 1972, 6 years after he was torpedoed from power by what some historians call, ‘a wave of West African coup de etats’. Ghana’s coup came as the third after Togo and Zaire had gone through similar intricate imbroglios early in the 1960s. The coup in Ghana was staged in 1966 courtesy of the external contrivances aimed at thwarting African nationalism which was on its ascendancy shouldered by Kwame Nkrumah (Biney, 2012). His disposal came when he was on his way to Hanoi, Vietnam. He unparallelly contributed to the total liberation of the continent at large and it is argued of him that he was envisioning an African Federation with one army, one currency and one leader (Lumumba 2017; Mutambara 2024). As a face of African liberation and champion of Pan-Africanism, Kwame Nkrumah (1965) had no illusion in his mind as he proffered warnings to his fellow colleagues whom he later lost faith in them as they shot down and dwarfed his sense of urgency and well-intentioned radicalism. Also, Nkrumah’s vision had soon became the victim of World’s Bipolarity and confrontational politics; that was an ideological standoff between the Capitalist West and the Communist East. Unfortunately, African nations are still ranked backwards despites them assuming political independence from the former colonizers. However, Nkrumah had a pessimistic premonition and yet an accurate ‘prophecy’ that Neocolonialism would be rolled out to remodel and replace the defunct colonial rule. And Africa is still struggling to achieve proper development to sustain its over 1.4+ billion people as Neocolonialism is in both theory and practice throughout the continent. The sole aim of this paper is to unpack the accuracy of Kwame Nkrumah’s predictions which he saw in 1965 as he argues in his book that Neocolonialism is a last stage of imperialism and it would be more insidious and subtler. As long as that ghost of Neocolonialism is not structurally exorcised, Africa will remain in the words of Mhango (2018) that Africa, a weakened community. It is likened to a problem child who refuses to grow despite 60 years of the so-called self-determination (Langan, 2018). And this makes Nkrumah’s views on Neocolonialism in Africa straightforwardly applicable to the comprehension of Africa’s political economy.