Africa’s Transition to Pan-Continentalism and Nkrumah’s Contributions, 1945 – 1958

Abstract

Kwame Nkrumah, a foremost African nationalist and first President of independent Ghana alluded to the claims that he did not concede  to the idea of continentalism in his pan-Africanist career until the 1970s. However, his speeches, actions and activities from 1945 onward,  when he made his debut at the Pan-African Congress in Manchester, show otherwise. It can be argued that Nkrumah had always acted in  favour of a wider union and association both in the context of a West African Union (his attempt for the first time to incorporate the  French-speaking parts of West Africa in the West African National Secretariat {WANS}) and on a continental basis. This paper examined  the view that even though it may have been sub-conscious, Nkrumah was an uncontestable factor in the transition of pan-Africanism  from its racial perspectives to it being territorialised thereby contributing immensely to its continental descriptions especially between  1945 and 1958 without even realising it. The study is based on the quantitative method of research and relied heavily on the historical  methodology, which combines both primary and secondary sources of data, including newspaper sources, official documents as well as  books and journal articles. The findings of the study indicate that the activities of Nkrumah served to nurse the idea of a union of African  peoples to protect their interest in the face of European colonialism. Finally, the study concluded on the note that Nkrumah indeed  contributed to pan-Africanism and Africa’s transition to pan-continentalism during his active political activism and recommends that  more studies of his should be encouraged among those interested in African political and intellectual studies.