The Algerian Question in Nkrumah’s Ghana, 1958–1960: Debating “Violence” and “Nonviolence” in African Decolonization

In recent years, historians and other scholars have greatly expanded how they approach the study of African decolonization. This article builds upon this growing scholarship by exploring the political and intellectual debates surrounding the use of “violence” in decolonization. Taking Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana as its setting, it explores the ways in which the armed struggle of the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962) helped transform African perceptions of the political and social processes of decolonization in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as the moral ambiguities surrounding them. It shows how the Algerian presence in the Ghanaian capital of Accra competed with and transformed Nkrumah’s own interpretations of decolonization and the possibilities of a pan-African world created through “nonviolent Positive Action.”