Kwame Nkrumah, the first prime minister of independent Ghana, was the original proponent of the United States of Africa dream, a name in history textbooks synonymous with the heady days when the continent was unshackling itself from colonial rule. He was deposed by a coup in 1966, while on his way to Hanoi to mediate between the US and Vietnam; and his family moved to Cairo for the next two decades. His daughter SAMIA NKRUMAH, now 49, is back in Ghana to get the “Nkrumahists” together, to draw upon the original African dream and fulfill her potential as MP ( she was elected three months ago). Samia represents her father’s Convention People’s Party, a pale shadow of what it was. Samia studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She has worked as a journalist, with Al Ahram newspaper while there, and even as a clerk in the Bank of India for two months. She was in India briefly on an official visit, to recall her father’s association with Gandhian philosophy and India. Brief excerpts from an interview with SEEMA CHISHTI. 

•Ghana has been touted as a “success” story by the IMF. Your thoughts? 

After the coup, Ghana became very donor-dependent. We went through financial upheaval and our economic vision was interrupted. Kwame Nkrumah’s attempts to give us economic independence were reversed. He had set in motion policies which created at least 300 enterprises, and we would have taken off had that gone through uninterrupted. In 1981, we took the Structural Adjustment Fund, in the absence of any alternative — no one at the time wanted to think of bold and indigenous solutions.In west Africa, we have 16 countries, which is the maximum density of states anywhere in the world! If only we could push through continental unity, we would be a viable economic unit. We have a saying in our country, that we have heard several advisors, but never heeded the advice of our elders — our elders wanted the continent to fortify itself and think of it as a single unit. 

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