“Nkrumah Lives Forevermore”: Independence, Symbolic Nationalism, and Nation-Building in Ghana

After more than a century of British colonial rule, how does a newly formed nation-state forge a cohesive national identity out of a society whose population identifies with one out of a multitude of ethnic tribal traditions? In Building the Ghanaian Nation-State: Kwame Nkrumah’s Symbolic Nationalism, historian Harcourt Fuller analyzes how independent Ghana’s first political leader dealt with this imperative question. In particular, this review focuses on President Kwame Nkrumah’s use of visual symbols as mechanisms for augmenting his authority and strengthening the Ghanaian state.