Foremost politician and daughter of Ghana’s former President Kwame Nkrumah, Samia Nkrumah has described as critical the need for Africans to revisit their indigenous political knowledge systems in their drive to meet their development agenda.
This formed part of the submissions made by Samia Nkrumah during the Toyin Falola Interview Series held via various social media platforms and streamed live to various audiences across the globe on Sunday, June 25, 2023. The interview panel was led by celebrated African historian, Professor Toyin Falola, Dr. Mary Owusu, Dr. Evelyn Kissi and Mary Bawa. Dr Owusu is a historian of ancient and modern Africa with her research interests spanning African intellectual, political, and development histories, with a focus on Ghana; Dr. Kissi is an African tri-citizen, Black Disability, Transnational scholar of Ghana, Nigeria and Canada and Bawa is the Communication Lead at the Cyber Security Authority (CSA) and a broadcast journalist with two decades of field experience in both commercial and community radio.
While responding to Bawa’s question on the effectiveness of the democratic process in Africa’s quest for development, Samia told the gathering that: “We must understand that we are not strangers to democracy. We have always practiced democracy in different ways; this is even from our indigenous cultures and traditions. But it is slightly different in model from multi-party politics. But even more recently like the case of Ghana, the way we gained independence was through constitutional means. That is why we had to go through three elections before we could convince the colonial powers that indeed the majority of Ghanaians wanted independence. We are no strangers even to multi-party democracies as such. It is the manner in which we are practicing it perhaps. It is inadequate; it is not helping us deliver on the promises of our independence. Many Ghanaians have been brainstorming on this especially recently especially when we want to talk about constitutional reforms. One of the most often repeated things is that we interrogate and review the winner-takes-all situation. This creates not just tension but also the feeling among a big chunk of voters that their voice is completely silent when they lose. But that is not what our traditional sense is about: our sense of communalism.
We need to refine and improve our democracy with the way we are practicing it. This is so that it is more inclusive so that we can deliver on the promises of independence and raising the standards of living because ultimately that is the reason for practicing democracy. It is to make everyone have a say. We must stop the concentration of power; it is not working. We must go back to our indigenous knowledge systems even in politics. It is not enough to go back but to use what is good and relevant and powerful in it for our development. It is even useful in addressing issues that are intractable. We were very keen about thinking of the collective. This is not just about individual wealth or power. Part of the responsibility of politics and politicians is to bring people together.”
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Speaking further, Samia noted that: “We have not been passive in the roles played. A lot of people have suffered and sacrificed. We had the whole independence struggle, relatively peaceful compared to countries like southern Africa or in the north, in the case of Algeria. We didn’t have to go through an independence war. People lost their lives, their livelihoods and comforts. People struggled for this independence. Our father paid a heavy price for charting the way. It took us decades to gain our independence. We have been trying; we have implemented some laws; we have tried free education; we built up our manufacturing base. We formed alliances with other countries. Ghana played a very important, instrumental role in the organization of African unity. Despite military rule, political instability, we have struggled to come back to constitutional rule. Although things are not what they are supposed to be, we have never stopped trying to make things better. Where we have not done too well is in keeping a united front or reaching consensus on the most important things. These are things that should have been our priority and development. I think what we really need to focus on now is how to unite people of influence in various sectors of our society so that we make a change where it matters most. ”
Commenting on her father’s Pan-Africanist agenda and the place of its actualization in contemporary history, she noted that “The African Continental Free Trade Agreement is to ultimately link the whole continent into one market without trade barriers. I wonder why we didn’t think about five or six regional markets rather than one. I know the answer. If you look at the initial proposal for unity that Ghana put forward under Kwame Nkrumah when it comes to continental integration, you will see that a lot of what is AfCFTA today is really what they were talking about sixty years ago. Why it took so long even for something to come to the fore, we could go into that. But for whatever reasons, Africans have picked that up today and countries are ratifying and there is hope that we are working towards that in the years to come.
One of the reasons it has reached the point where it is today is because it has reached some kind of consensus from business leaders, African civil society leaders, chunk of intellectuals, and many others. There is a conversion that seems to have put pressure on African leaders to start looking at this signing and consenting. It means that in today’s world, what can change our economies positively is when you are talking about a billion people. You need a huge market and you need a lot of small economies. It means there is a realization that we need something beyond our regional groupings to make us fly economically. It is a realization; it is an admission. Our father never said we should not have smaller groupings or markets. In fact he said let us have unity with a nucleus of those who are willing. But the objective is to maximize the potential of the various zones developmentally. Why should Africa be shortchanged? The bigger we grow, the better. If Africa spoke with one voice on issues of international dimension, I think the world would hear us and eventually we would be able to secure a sit at the UN Security Council. We would be an economic power house. You cannot ignore a people with a population of about 1.5 billion people.”
Members of the audience who spoke included Barth Akpah, Michael Vickers, Temitope Fagunwa, Olu Akeredolu, Okechukwu Iheduru, Charles Prempeh, Izielen Agbon, Afrifa Boateng, Professor Abaka from the University of Miami and Nicholas McLeod. The interview was streamed on various social media platforms and had dignitaries including the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in attendance.
