DISCUSS THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCINCISM OF KWAME NKURUMA

INTRODUCTION

The viewpoint of Consciencism is that philosophy arises from and operates within the context of a given society. This viewpoint asserts that “philosophy always arose from social milieu and that a social contention is always present in it”. We are here concerned with the second aspect of the assertion, namely, the “social contention” of the new philosophy. We should try to see how philosophical consciencism seeks to affect its social milieu which is Ghana in particular and Africa in general.

It is necessary at the outset to clear up what seems, to the lay mind, a confusion of terms and isms. Here in Ghana, we have all heard of scientific socialism. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah himself has stated openly that “Ghana has taken the road of scientific socialism”. We have also heard of Nkrumaism ; and only recently this term was defined as the ideology for the new Africa. And now Dr. Nkrumah, in his new work, gives the world the philosophy of Consciencism.

Superficially this seems to be some confusion. But, on closer examination, there is in fact no confusion at all.

Ghana has embraced the ideology of socialism and to Dr. Nkrumah there is only one socialism, namely scientific socialism. And this is correct. Nkrumaism is the application of this scientific socialism to the historical conditions and aspirations of Africa. Consciencism, on its part, is the philosophical or theoretical basis of Nkrumaism. Consciencism is thus the intellectual tool of the ideology for the new Africa, very much as mathematics often serves as the tool of physics or statistics as a tool of economics, or religion as a tool of ethics. Thus, Consciencism serves Nkrumaism and Nkrumaism is the particularisation of scientific socialism to emergent Africa.

The “social contention” of Consciencism in Ghana and in Africa can be said to be the evolution of a body of principles, which, by guiding the thinking and actions of all Africans, will establish a common range of behaviour for all. This range of behaviour becomes the foundation of social cohesion in Ghana and Africa. It sets out the moral, social and political values to which all the cultural strands in present-day African society should conform.

Ghanain society is a microcosm of African society today. In it the three layers of present-day African society are to be found. These are the strands of traditional Africa, of Islamic Africa and of Euro Christian Africa. Consciencism sets out to provide a set of values (a body of coherent principles) which can provide a rational rallying point for the best in each of these three components of present-day Africa.

In this grand effort to provide a rational harmony out of the three Africas, consciencism has to fight on at least three planes, everywhere applying uncompromisingly the test of reality. Reality is objective and is discovered through practical struggle. Active struggle is thus the means and the test of all knowledge.

Consciencism has to fight in the field of philosophy. It has to fight in the field of moral and social theory. And it has to fight in the field of political theory and practice. Put in another way, Consciencism has its philosophy, its moral and social theory, and arising from these, a political theory. The practical application of consciencism in Ghana and Africa involves a sustained struggle in all three categories of thought.

Consciencism’s philosophy is based on the following principles:-

1. that matter is the source of all knowledge;
2. that  matter is a “plenum of forces in tension”;
3. that because it is a plenum of forces in tension, matter is capable of self induced motion;
4. that the motion of matter is both unilinear and in leaps, that is to say, change in matter is both quantitative and qualitative;
5. that mind has a distinct existence even though it is a product of matter;
6. that there is interaction between matter and mind but that matter is primary;
7. that in this interaction of matter and mind, assumptions, theories and conclusions are permissible but that such assumptions, theories and conclusions are valid only when confirmed in practice.

This philosophy is materialist in content. Its approach is rational. Its touch-stone is practice.

When we turn to the practical application of this philosophy the first step is to clear our individual thinking of the cobwebs of irrationality, half-truths, unproved assertions and superstitions. We have to subject the ideas floating about in our individual minds to the test of rationality and above all to the test of practice. We have to reject all ideas and notions that can neither be verified nor confirmed by practice.

As regards the thinking of the community, Consciencism enjoins that we wage a relentless war against mysticism, magic and all those views which postulate the supernatural in an attempt to explain phenomena and events around us. If there is any phenomenon which we cannot explain, then this must be due to the fact that our knowledge is still limited. We cannot go by way of claiming that the phenomenon is supernatural and hence inexplicable in terms of human reason.

Overall, Consciencism and Nkrumah's ideological system, philosophical consciencism, serve as a basis for explanation of his increasingly unpopular descisions as a national leader. Published two years before the coup that forced him into exile and revised two years before his death, Consciencism seeks to explain Nkrumah's Africa - a colonial philosopher's experience of postcolonial Africa. It seems that his actions more often than not reflect the ideology that he has himself derived from socialism, the philosophical consciencism: the construction of the Akosombo Dam reflects his fear of neo-colonialism and his military support to those fighting the South African Smith administration reflects, perhaps, his pan-Africanist ideals. When he was voted Africa's man of the millennium by listeners to the BBC World Service in 2000, that probably reflected this commitment and faith, and it underlines how he remains an influental politician and thinker to this day.

Such a philosophical statement I propose to name Philosophical Consciencism, for it will give the theoretical basis for an ideology whose aim shall be to contain the African experience of the traditional African Society, and, by gestation, employ them for the harmonious growth and development of that society.” (p. 70).

V. Philosophical Consciencism is thus a new and creative development of Marxism in African conditions and experience. Both in belief and in action a Marxist is a humanist, he lives by human values achieved through human action.

This humanism, as Kwame Nkrumah expounds in minute detail and with such clarity and lucidity, is consistent with the traditional African way of life. The respect for human individuality and human capacity finds its logical basis in the understanding of society and its transformations given us by Marxism, and today reaffirmed anew and developed to a higher level for us by philosophical consciencism.

The fundamental task of philosophy is to discover and generalise the laws of change and development manifested in nature and society. These most general laws, the laws of dialectics, provide the theoretical weapon, the method for understanding and changing society.

VI. In our own African experience and environment philosophical consciencism is such a philosophy. It generalises the laws of change and development in Africa not only from the discoveries of science and Marxism, but from the whole complex of the movement of African Society in its entirety.

This means concretely that philosophical consciencism not only generalises the laws of change and development in Africa, but provides us with the theoretical and intellectual means for understanding the forces at work in our society, and what is more, how to organise and harness those forces (1) for the total liberation of Africa from imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism (2) for the intensification of the struggle for real and effective African Unity and (3) for the building of Socialism in Africa.

The problem therefore of interpreting African Society, has become the problem of how to change our society with the philosophy and ideology of Philosophical consciencism as our intellectual guide.

The author of Consciencism, asserting the philosophical conclusions of dialectical materialism, begins his book by reprinting a passage from a letter by Engels warning that Marx and he had never claimed that the economic factor is the only determining one. “According to the materialistic conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase …”.

Engels goes on to suggest that it is the younger people who sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. But the letter was written 1890, and today it is the “angry young men” who react against the sole occupation with economic factors in the Marxist parties both within and outside the socialist countries.

As we read “Consciencism”, we begin to understand why the author made the Engels letter the keynote to his book. He is concerned mainly with the humanism in African society before its involvement with capitalism, and means to prove that it has withstood and will withstand the determining factors of capitalism. He includes the Euro-Christian and Islamic influences in Africa among the factors which brought these changes into African society, and concludes that their quantitative effects could not bring a qualitative change.

The importance of these philosophical assertions in the field of politics lies in the further assertion that where the original communalism still remains fundamentally humanistic, a transition to socialism can take place through reform and not necessarily through revolution. A humanist society is one where each man is considered an end in himself and not a means. No capitalist society can attain to this as man is first of all a means.

Kwame Nkrumah asserts that in Africa the capitalist system has not taken sufficient hold to necessitate the kind of revolution which must destroy capitalism on other continents. Reforms, of course, must be quantitative changes of a revolutionary kind, or they cannot be regarded as reforms at all.

The basis of these assertions depends on the philosophical principle which the author calls “categorial conversion”. This depends on the ability of matter, the basic raw material of the world, to produce consciousness, which can be explained in terms of overt response to stimuli, and for this consciousness to produce self-consciousness, of which we have only an internal experience.

“By categorial conversion”, says the author of Consciencism, “I mean such a thing as the emergence of self-consciousness from that which is not self-conscious; such a thing as the emergence of mind from matter, of quality from quantity”.

The author insists that it is the task of philosophy only to prove the possibility of this conversion, and that tracing the details of conversion is one of the tasks of science.

In the political field, the main interest lies in the categorial conversion of quantity to quality; whether the quantity of change in human environment can produce a qualitative change in human society. If it cannot do so then no amount of revolutionary change will abolish the exploitation of man by man, of man’s inhumanity to man, of man’s continual flight from reality to the realms of superstition. If it can do so, then no amount of sacrifice is too great to achieve socialism – to change the environment created by slavery, feudalism and capitalism in the past, which has brought wars, imperialism, racial intolerance and religious superstition.

In the political field in Africa, the conception of categorial conversion raises additional problems. We know for certain that in most areas of the world, the original communalism of early human societies has undergone qualitative changes. Nothing short of further qualitative changes can eradicate capitalism, (internal exploitation), and imperialism, (external exploitation), from the societies which have undergone a categorial change from communalism. The basic humanism of these societies has disappeared, and can only appear again, (in a higher form, if at all), through revolution.

Is it true of Africa? The author of Consciencism says no. He asserts that the basic humanism of African society has not disappeared, and will therefore embrace socialism willingly and not necessarily through compulsion.

It follows that the dictatorship of the proletariat, (Marx’s means of compelling a capitalist system to change over to socialism), will not be a necessary condition for revolution in a society which is basically humanistic. It also follows, however, that without the comparatively simple device of proletarian dictatorship, the tasks of eradicating and suppressing capitalist manifestations in Africa will be more complicated and may take longer.

The one-party state is close enough to proletarian dictatorship to make superficial analogies possible. Yet the tendency to twist the materialist conception of history into an acceptance of the economic element as the only determining one, still remains the main characteristic of Western revolutionary socialism, whilst the main characteristic of socialism in Africa may become a tendency to under-rate the economic factor.

CONSCIENCISM puts the economic factor into its correct place, as the primary but not the only determining factor of human society. That is the great contribution of this book to the socialist movement. The decolonization of Africa is analysed in philosophical terms, so that the political tasks of socialists in Africa will be distinguished from, and co-ordinated with, the tasks of socialists where different conditions prevail.

The mental energy and profundity of mind which can embark on an exercise of this kind, when Kwame Nkrumah is immersed in the political chores of administering a developing country and of uniting a divided continent, are too apparent to need under-lining.

Certainly a new wind is blowing over Africa. The spirit of Kwame Nkrumah is awakened. This renewed presence is acknowledged across the continents. Not only are academicians and intellectuals reviving their interest in Kwame Nkrumah. They have also questioned and are questioning the decades of neglect in the study of the ideas of the man. Agitations are on foot at centres of learning to incorporate such studies into the curriculum of university studies in Africa. The agitations do not resist the continued studies of Western philosophers like Thales, Plato, Aristotle and others. They make a just and positive demand that Kwame Nkrumah be added to them.

In the politics of Ghana today the spirit of Kwame Nkrumah looms large. Political parties which were even opposed to the policies of the man today seek a certain accommodation with his commitments. Not only does the current President remain unambiguous in his ideological commitment to the ideals of Kwame Nkrumah but also the flag bearer of the main opposition party has stated his commitment to the Pan-African project of the foremost Pan-African Proponent, Kwame Nkrumah. No longer are the old folks of that opposition secure in their age-old condemnations of the Man of African Destiny in the face of the rising and increasing youth acknowledgement of that man in their own ranks.

This renewed and wide spreading interest in Kwame Nkrumah has occasioned discomfort, however, in the souls of certain persons who have taken the strategic option of attacking the very intellectual foundations of the man in the name of the man. This transparent mission to distort and revise Nkrumah’s fundamental ideas and commitments in favour of what he stands against is targeted at the youth of Africa and of the Diaspora. But the spirit of Kwame Nkrumah, awakened by this wicked design of low political spirits, has invoked a quick response in THE MIND OF KWAME NKRUMAH: MANUAL FOR THE STUDY OF CONSCIENCISM.

This manual does not only simplify the reading and understanding of the statement of Kwame Nkrumah’s fundamental ideas in his book, CONSCIENCISM, through guiding the reader over its pages, chapter by chapter, but as well engages in a radical and militant combat of that distortionist and revisionist trend promoted by fifth columnists who have taken positions within what Kwame Afful calls the Nkrumah movement. Addressed to the youth of Africa and the Diaspora, this manual is the first of its kind to breakdown the technical philosophical language of Kwame Nkrumah to easily accessible terms of ordinary language. It is to be read alongside the book, CONSCIENCISM, itself.

In its opening pages, the Manual addresses the youth and explains the necessity of reading Nkrumah’s book in the flesh rather than the second hand or interpretative versions of it. The Foreword traces a brief history of attitudes towards philosophy in general and particularly towards CONSCIENCISM within the public domain as well as within the intelligentsia. These are attitudes that have not facilitated the appreciation of the profundity of Kwame Nkrumah’s thought and practice. In the Preface, vital concepts of the book are explained prior to the in-depth treatment of the chapters.

This is followed with guiding the reader through the Introduction of the book, CONSCIENCISM. In this respect, a portion of Nkrumah’s quotation from Fredriech Engels’ letter that he leaves out is recalled to provide a better understanding of what he says. The importance of the Introduction rests in the fact of its revealing Kwame Nkrumah’s anxiety to quicken the liberation and reconstruction of Africa through the conscious use or application of principles of thought to understand the dynamics of society in scientific terms in order to effectively change it. This special feature in Nkrumah’s intellectual attitude is well understood in comparison to the physical scientist’s attitude towards applicable research.

In the first chapter, the Manual explains the difficulties of Kwame Nkrumah’s presentation style and devices a strategy for following the presentation easily. In this way, it leads the reader along the themes that Nkrumah explores in his development of the history of Western intellectual thought. It identifies the main themes and then the sub-themes. The reader is then led to follow the development of themes and sub-themes individually all over the chapter and shows how they are connected with each other in a logical flow. This interesting pursuit of themes and sub-themes in the pages of the book is in the nature of hunting an animal and the unforgettable experience of landing at the catch makes the idea stick and memorable.

But if the first chapter explores the history of abstract thought in Western intellectual history, the second chapter shows the immediate concrete nature of those thoughts through illustrations of their social content. So that what had hitherto appeared as mind-splitting about nothing immediately comes alive with passions being aroused in this to that direction. Here, the themes and sub-themes are again in display and such themes as the concepts of egalitarianism and revolution are portrayed in their evolution within the demands of the struggles to free man from the clerical restrictions and then the clergy-oligarch diarchy that compromised increased production and freedom for the human spirit.

Chapter three then takes the reader through and focuses their attention on the role of ideology in the pursuit of the perfect society and therefore in the everyday life of the individual and society. The definition of ideology offered is innovative. Every society exhibits one or more. The Manual simplifies the explanation and, ideology, in Kwame Nkrumah’s terms, is understood not essentially as a written statement but as the total set of values, written and largely unwritten, that man develops for the conduct and direction of all for the freedom and fulfilment of society and the individual. The need for such an ideology out of the historically-conditioned conflicting ideologies in Africa is then advocated.

The details of that ideology are outlined in chapter four. With the understanding that an ideology is displayed in and permeates every sphere of the socio-political life of a society and is exhibited in the philosophical system and theories in all studies, the Manual systematically shows those outlines. The book CONSCIENCISM finally emerges as a philosophical statement that elucidates and theoretically defends scientific socialist ideology to guide the African Revolution. The Manual, in this portrayal of CONSCIENCISM, sees Consciencism not as solely concerned with the fusion of the three dominant strands of African culture but as a complete thought system for every socio-political purpose.

The final chapter of the Manual portrays the combat against contemporary revisionism and neglect conducted in cyberspace. It is a defence of the principles of Consciencism by the author of the Manual against the revisionism and neglect of apparently influential figures in the Nkrumaist and Pan-African movement.  The featured figures are Christian Kwame Agbodza, the self-appointed Professor of Consciencism, and Elder Chinweizu Chinweizu, respectively.

The author of the manual is Lang T.K.A. Nubuor, the General Secretary of the erstwhile People’s Revolutionary League of Ghana and a member of the National Defence Committee that attempted to build an alternate State to replace the neo-colonial state structure through a system of People’s and Workers’ Defence Committees upon the inception of the December 31, 1981 coup in Ghana.

 With consciencism the simple process of the two contraries the theoretical foundation of mechanistic determination and the dominant magical aspect of communalist thought dis- appear in one fell swoop if only because consciencism gives us a new concept in cosmic contrast. “ There can be no material grounds on which the adjectives caused uncaused or finite or infinite can be descriptively applied to the universe. No one pure gold discourse can logically constitute material ground of any of the epithets is only left and they should be postulates. If however one postulates a cause for what there is, one is thereby committed to the conception of an outside and inside of the world this need not lead to any irreducible contradiction for whether the world is finite or infinite depends upon the mode of conceiving of the world. Hence the opposition is strictly dialectical beyond mere formal dialectics however one significance of the cosmic contrast of the inside and outside of the world is that it implies and a knowledge meant that there is a conversion of a process which commences outside the world into the world and its contents. ( Kwame Nkrumah consciencism him Heinemann publishers London)
Ghanain society is a microcosm of African society today. In that the three layers of present-day African society are to be found. These are the strands of traditional Africa, of Islamic Africa and of Euro Christian Africa. Consciencism sets out to provide a set of values a body of coherent principles which can provide a rational rallying point for the best in each of these three components of present-day Africa. In this grand effort to distill a body of connected thought out of the three Africa’s, consciencism has to fight on at least three planes, everywhere applying uncompromisingly the test of reality. Reality is objective and is discovered through practical struggle active struggle is thus the means and the test of all knowledge.
Consciencism has to fight in the fields of philosophy. It has to fight in the field the moral and social theory. And it has to fight in the field of political theory and practice. Put in another way, consciencism has its philosophy, it’s moral and social theory, and arising from these a political theory. The practical application of consciencism in Ghana and Africa and also sustained struggle in all three categories of thought. Consciencism’s philosophy is based on the following principles:
1-that matter is the source of all knowledge
2-that’s matter is a plume of forces in tension
3-that because it it is a Plenum of forces intention matter is capable of self induced motion
4-that the motion of matter is both uni-linear and in leaps that is to say change in matter is both quantitative and qualitative
5-that mind has a distinct existence even though it is a product of matter
6-that there is interaction between matter and mind but that matter is primary
7-that in this interaction of matter and mind assumptions theory and conclusions are permissible but that such assumptions theories and conclusions are valid only when confirmed in practice
This philosophy is materialist in content its approach is rational its touchtone is practice.
When we turn to the practical application of this philosophy the first step is to clear our individual thinking of the cobwebs of irrationality, half-truths unproved assertions and superstitions. We have to subject the ideas floating about in our individual minds to the test of rationality and above all to the test of practice. We have to reject all ideas and notions that can neither be verified nor confirmed by practice.
As regards the thinking of the community consciencism enjoins that we wage a relentless war against mysticism magic and all of these views which postulate the supernatural in an attempt to explain phenomena and events around us. If there is any phenomenon which we can I explain then this must be due to the fact that our knowledge is still limited. We cannot go by way of claiming that the phenomena is supernatural and hence inexplicable in terms of human reason.
The African mind
It is here that consciencism will perhaps have to fight its fiercest battles. For the primitive (ie. un cultivated) African mind has a propensity towards mysticism and supernaturalism. Incidentally this is a feature the primitive minds everywhere. The liberation of the African mind from such severe limitations is a social objective or mission of consciencism. And this mission will be achieved to the extent that we can fish out, grappled with and vanquish all unprovable unverifiable assertions theories ideas and beliefs. In philosophical terms Consciencism has to do battle with idealism and its handmaiden metaphysics. A little reflection will show what immense gains the African will make once he liberates himself and his society from the crippling mental cogs of mysticism and superstition. A little reflection also will show how much more successful the African will be in transforming his environment one see in thrones action ( ie. practice) as the touchstone of knowledge in place of metaphysics( ie. Abstruse reasoning).
Consciencism has its moral and social theory. Its principal tenets are:
1- that all men are equal
2- that each man is an end in himself and not just the means to an end.
3- That the group is responsible for the individual
4- that the free development of the group is the condition for the free development of the individual
Here again the student of consciencism has not to come to grips with other moral and social theories, for example he simply cannot tolerate a moral or social theory which preaches racial discrimination as in South Africa and racial superiority as in Central America the USA or racial supremacy as under fascism. Nor can consciencism accommodate social theories that support a caste system whether this is based on religion as in India or on the collar up of the skin as in South Africa and the southern state’s of the USA or on birth as under feudalism or on the control of the means of production as under capitalism. These systems are either founded upon or have come to accept the inequality of man. They are opposed to the view that the group is responsible for the individual and that the activity of the individual must conduce to the well-being of the group. Consciencism condemns and rejects that development of the individual which results in the cramping or stunted growth of either individuals.
Again the moral theory of consciencism will have a great affect on religious values. Consciencism does not quarrel with religion which it recognizes as a necessary instrument for spreading moral values in any community. The consciencism is vitally interested in the moral values disseminated by religions. Because they uphold the system of apartheid. The teachings of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa for example are antithetical to consciencism. Nor can consciencism reconcile itself either with that practice of Islamic religion that supports slavery or with that form of paganism which endorses human sacrifice. These values though shrouded under the cloak of religion are harmful, wrong and repugnant to consciencism because they violate the dignity of man and negate the principle of the equality of man. The principal significance of consciencism in the field of religion lies in this fact namely that it compels a re-examination and reevaluation of the moral values upheld by every religion. The aim of such a reevaluation must be to enthrone the view of man set out at the beginning of this section.
 Seeking to connect Talakawa Summit with Ujamaa cannot be a farfetched exercise because all the early African discourses of society such as Aminu Kano’s Democratic Humanism, Awo’s Democratic Socialism, Kwame Nkrumah’s Conscientism, Kaunda’s Humanism or Milton Obote’s Freedom Charter and even Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya had the same origin. At least, this was how we treated them in our class works on African political thought. They all came from moral reprehension against the evils of colonial capitalism even as these early African leaders did not accept Socialism per see. They, therefore, sought a third way to development, with each of them coining his own terminology as listed above.
Ghana under President Kwame Nkrumah adopted the political and economic policy of Conscientism. Conscientism was the development philosophy of Kwame Nkrumah which emphasized the importance of self sacrifice, home grown economic development and self-reliance. Nkrumah clearly understood international dependence as a form of neo-colonialism. Nkrumah saw neo-colonialism as the last stage of imperialism. Imperialism was a step-child of mercantilism.
Under Conscientism, Ghana embarked on the creation of conditions for economic take-off. The Okosombo Hydro-electric Project on the Volta River was one of such initiatives.
However, the Nkrumah times were Cold War times. Nkrumah’s anti-imperialist and anti-capitalism stand earned him a CIA inspired coup d’ etat in 1966. His dream of a united, prosperous and self-reliant Africa was not be realized. Imperialism sabotaged Nkrumah’s dream.
Tanzania under Mwalimu Julius Nyerere adopted the Ujamaa policy. Ujamaa emphasized family or community based development. Such a development was to be based on self-reliance, social, economic and political equality. Self-reliance meant the transformation of economic and cultural attitudes of the people. Nyerere exhorted Tanzanians to work for themselves as well as for the whole community.
Though Ujamaa was declared “a heroic failure”, the policy moulded the Tanzanian personality, national harmony and stability. The implementation of villagization production system could not succeed because it was too top-down. Social mobilization was not adequate to prepare the people for life in new conditions.
Both Ghana and Tanzania emerged as stable and resilient societies. Though economic take-off did not happen under African socialism, social cohesion did happen under African socialism. However, African socialism was not a sufficient condition for economic take-off.

REFERENCES

• Birmingham, David (1998). Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African Nationalism. Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 0-8214-1242-6.
• Tuchscherer, Konrad (2006). "Kwame Francis Nwia Kofie Nkrumah". In Coppa, Frank J.. Encyclopedia of Modern Dictators. New York: Peter Lang. pp. 217–220. ISBN 0-8204-5010-3.
• Davidson, Basil (2007) [1973]. Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah. Oxford, UK: James Currey. ISBN 978-1-84701-010-0.
• Mwakikagile, Godfrey (2006). "Nyerere and Nkrumah: Towards African Unity". Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era (Third ed.). Pretoria, South Africa: New Africa Press. pp. 347–355. ISBN 0-9802534-1-1.
• Poe, D. Zizwe (2003). Kwame Nkrumah's Contribution to Pan-African Agency. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-203-50537-9.
• James, C. L. R. (1977). Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. London: Allison & Busby. ISBN 0-85031-461-5.
• Defense Intelligence Agency, "Supplement, Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana", 12-January-1966.