A 2014 picture featuring incumbent president of Ghana with the late Pope Francis. Courtesy: BBC
Friday, March 6th, 2026 was the 69th anniversary of Ghana’s independence. The number 69 has no mystique around it but every anniversary of Ghana’s independence sends a message to the entire Africa because it was the first to regain independence. Not only that, Ghana was in a position to drag Queen Elizabeth 11, the transition manager for the shift from Empire to its Commonwealth version of it to a dancing script in Accra by 1961.
There is a significance to that dancing jamboree, not because it was an attack on racism as some script managers of empire have been dishing out. The more crucial point was, by the queen’s own testimony, to be in Accra before Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, went there. For that reason, she turned down Churchill and others who were advising her against travelling to Ghana on the ground that it would legitimize Nkrumah whom they called a dictator.
In other words, the trip and the dance was a hegemonic move which is not to say that it was a bad show. No, it wasn’t bad because Nkrumah and Ghana made many statements with it. For those statements, every anniversary of Ghana’s independence is a reminder for Africa or should be: how far?
Independence has not added everything else as Nkrumah thought but it was also at Ghana’s independence that Nkrumah dropped the one liner: “There is a new African in the world”.
The new African is taking too long to materialise but independence has its symbolism!
