Pan-Africanism in One Country: African Socialism, Neoliberalism and Globalization in Ghana

Abstract

This dissertation is about the changing historical role of Pan-Africanism in Ghanaian politics from the late colonial period to the present. For a variety of reasons, the Republic of Ghana is an ideal site to explore questions about the interplay between Pan-Africanism and globalization. After becoming the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain its independence in 1957, Ghana's First Republic espoused the core values of African socialism and anti-imperialism and anti-colonial solidarity under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. The realization of independence in Ghana and Nkrumah's eagerness to sponsor other nationalist movements shifted the center of Pan-African activity from the African diaspora to the continent itself. Despite Nkrumah's authoritarianism and political demise via military coup in 1966, Pan-Africanism remained an important facet of Ghana's political and economic landscape. This was particularly evident with the end of the Cold War, re-establishment of multi-party democracy and adoption of Africa's most rigorous Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPS) under the auspices of the Breton Woods institutions. This major paradigm shift not only made Ghana a darling of the global donor community, but also created the framework for the nation to become a major site for African-American migration, investment and heritage tourism In my dissertation, I claim the sum of these interactions between the Ghana and the African diaspora constitute a "free-market Pan-Africanism," a distinctive cultural product of the age of globalization in direct contrast to the African socialist political project of the Nkrumah era. In the early Ghanaian state, Pan-Africanism was an anti-capitalist and anti-imperial, continental political ideology. My argument is contemporary Ghana deploys Pan-Africanism as a promarket commodification of culture to serve the greater project of nation building