"Nkrumah & the Investors: Selling the State, Decolonizing Ghana"

Foreign financing was crucial for the development agendas of newly independent African countries in the 1950s-1960s. In Ghana, as in other former colonies, decolonization required resources beyond those of domestic revenues. One of the most urgent tasks of new African leaders was building industry and infrastructure. This paper explores the way Ghana’s new leaders “branded” the country to attract foreign investment. Ghana’s first Prime Minister, Kwame Nkrumah spearheaded dozens of initiatives including, tax concessions, import duty exemptions, priority access to public utilities, and immigration permits. Additionally, he established an office of Industrial Promotion responsible for marketing Ghana as a young, vigorous, and stable country and as a “land of opportunity” likened to the American West. While seemingly contradictory to his Pan-Africanist, anti-colonial/capitalist agenda, I argue that Nkrumah efforts illustrate the delicate relationship between African decolonization and global finance. Such efforts also coincided with campaigns aimed at Ghanaian citizens. Messages about sacrificing and saving in the name of nation-building permeated everyday culture through media, as well as billboards and songs. The relationship between Nkrumah and the investors, and the history of state-sponsored budget campaigns are crucial for understanding shifting attitudes towards development, as well disputes about global debt and Ghana’s entanglement with foreign creditors.