African Socialism; or the Search for an Indigenous Model of Economic Development in Ghana?

Abstract

Few African countries explicitly choose "capitalism" on independence, and for those who followed capitalism it was a default model or a residual pattern. On the other hand, "African socialism" was popular in the early decades of independence and pursued by several countries including Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, and Tanzania. African socialism had multiple meanings, and its advocates were quick to stress that they were not communist, some that they were not even Marxist. What did socialism mean to Nkrumah and how did he pursue a socialist economic agenda? This paper explores the argument that African socialism was a search for an indigenous model of economic development for a generation that was justifiably ambivalent about capitalism, but wary of being put in the communist camp in an era of Cold War. Importantly, advocates of African socialism, particularly Nkrumah, often proposed bold and transformative visions for their countries that might be worth revisiting devoid of the paradigm of socialism.