As the anticipated 13th Kwame Nkrumah memorial lecture draws near, Prof. Emmanuel Akyeampong, an Ellen Gurney professor of History and of African and African American Studies at the Harvard University who is the guest speaker says he is very enthused to be delivering the lecture.
Speaking exclusively to ATL FM, he said the lecture, which is under the broad theme: Diaspora, Pan-Africanism, and Spiritual Awakening: Nkrumah’s Years Abroad and as Head of State”, will look at how formative Nkrumah’s years were; where he learnt about race and racial relations, racial capitalism and empire.
He further stated that all these will lead to where Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanism beliefs were deepened.
The 13th Kwame Nkrumah memorial lecture is scheduled for the 19th and 20th October, 2023 at the University of Cape Coast.
Giving a gist of his lectures on Thursday, Prof. Emmanuel Akyeampong indicated that one of his two lectures on that day will highlight Nkrumah’s years abroad and how these formative years came to shape his outlook, and later becoming the head of State.
“There will be two lectures on Thursday. I’ll look at the years in Nkrumah spent abroad from 1935 to 1945 in the United States, where he was both an undergraduate and a graduate student, and then 1945 to 1947 where he was in the United Kingdom, ostensibly to go to school, but got involved in politics and political organizations. Came to Ghana in 1947 to be the general secretary to the united gold coast convention. And as they say, the rest is history.”
His second lecture will also look at The Pan-Africanist Nkrumah and Africa’s Triple Heritage: Christianity, Islam, and Africa’s Indigenous Religions.
Ellen Gurney professor of History said he will look at what Nkrumah dubbed Africa’s triple heritage intersects with his Pan Africanism and how such influences shaped his beliefs.
Prof. Akyeampong noted that though Nkrumah’s toughness may have fallen at the end of his life, Dr. Nkrumah’s legacy gets better each year.
“Especially in Ghana, where he had been overthrown in a military coup. Nkrumah is like good wine. Each year he gets better. And I think it’s because as we lookback over his life, 50 plus years after he died, we appreciate his vision and his Pan African vision, the push for a continental African union and economies that were connected together,” he continued.
The Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lecture series were instituted by the University of Cape Coast in 1974 and inaugurated in November, 1976, by the First Chancellor of the University, Dr. Archie Casely Hayford.
The lectures are dedicated to the memory of the late First President of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and are expected to address issues of social, economic and political development of Africa in particular and the Black World in general.
These were issues which were of interest to the late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and in the life-long attempt to resolve them, became a major source of inspiration and confidence for the Black World.
The 13th Kwame Nkrumah memorial lecture will be held at the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Cape Coast at 2:00pm on October 19 and at 10:00am on October 20.
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Source: Anthony Sasu Ayisadu/ATLFMNEWS
