Revisiting Kwame Nkrumah’s African Personality

The Origin of the African Personality as a Tool for Pan-Africanism

While the African Personality as a form of social thought was present in Africa, its emergence as a Pan-African ideology originated within the African diaspora with the West Indian intellectual and Pan-Africanist, Edward Blyden. Blyden coined the term in the nineteenth century as a counter- discourse to Eurocentric views about people of African descent in Africa and beyond.¹⁷ Born in the Danish West Indies, Blyden relocated to the United States and finally settled in Liberia in the 1850s. Over the course of his life, Blyden traveled across the Atlantic Ocean demonstrating, in writings and speeches, a unique African Personality that defied Eurocentric views about Black people. For instance, on May 19, 1893, Blyden gave a speech to the Young Men’s Literary Association of Sierra Leone. Blyden’s speech titled “Study and Race” had two key messages. One was for the young men to train their minds or build an intellectual capacity to uplift their race. And the second was to develop and promote their African Personality. On the African Personality, Blyden stated, “It is sad to think that there are some Africans, especially among those who have enjoyed the advantages of foreign training, who are blind enough to the radical facts of humanity as to say, let us do away with the sentiment of race. Let us do our way with our African personality and be lost, if possible, in another race.”¹⁸

As one born in the Danish West Indies, who experienced racism in the United States, and colonialism in West Africa, Blyden rejected assimilationist discourse as a solution to the predicaments of Black people.¹⁹ For him, those sentiments, especially ones that purported to lose the African’s personality and submerge into another race’s personality meant self-erasure. He, therefore, urged his audience and Black people to develop and preserve the African Personality, which embodied the nature, cultures, and essence of life for Black people across the globe.

Blyden’s concept of the African Personality also emphasized that “the African must advance by methods of his own. He must possess a power distinct from that of the European.” He further added that “it has been proved that he [the African] knows how to take advantage of European culture and that he can be benefited by it. This proof was perhaps necessary, but it is not sufficient. We must show that we are able to go alone, to carve out our own way.”²⁰ The basic ideas underlying the African Personality, as articulated by Blyden, included African-centered approaches to African problems, racial pride, Africanism, unity, and self-determination.

On the other side of the Atlantic were Gold Coast intellectual J. E. Casely Hayford and Nigerian activist Mojola Agbebi, who joined in this pursuit of an African Personality as a counter to racism and expression of African nationalism. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the quest centered on resistance to Eurocentric representations of Black people and their culture as “sub-human” and “inferior.”²¹ Thus, Casely Hayford, a follower of Blyden called for the development and expression of African Personality through African languages like Fanti and Yoruba and in the wearing of African garb, which he believed would help promote respect and better treatment of Black people in colonial Africa and the diaspora.²² Casely Hayford in his seminal work, Ethiopia Unbound stated, “someone may say, but, surely, you don’t mean to suggest that questions of dress and habits of life matter in the least. I reply emphatically, they do. They go to the roots of The Ethiopians’ self-respect.”²³ The Ethiopians here referred to people of African descent. In the 1880s, some West African nationalists formed the Dress Reform Society, which according to Leo Spitzer was an effort to “counteract the perversion of their “racial personality.”²⁴ As such, the promotion of an African Personality in the colonies helped to create a sense of national consciousness manifested in the preservation of culture. However, most of its advocates accepted the civilizing missions of the colonial regime. For instance, historian Toyin Falola, while discussing the contradictions in the life of the Gold Coast cultural nationalist Kobina Sekyi wrote, “Kobina Sekyi, our most anti-European representative, was a lover of cigars, wine, Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart and was thoroughly addicted to English literature, music, and philosophy.”²⁵ Additionally, historian July observed that Blyden, Hayford, and others who strove for African traditions “were so thoroughly accustomed to European style of living that they found difficult any personal concessions to the doctrines of Africanization they were propounding.”²⁶ Sekyi, Hayford, and Blyden, like many other African nationalists at the time, were among a new elite in the early twentieth century: the product of colonialism, Western education, and Christianity. Thus, their identities, influenced by Western lifestyles, often complicated their promotion of Africanness. Nevertheless, the basis of their African nationalism and Pan-Africanism was centered on promoting an African Personality that combated racist Euro-American depictions of Black people. It also revealed in some ways, the new personality that they sought for Africans in an ever-changing world. A personality expansive enough to embody European elements and remain African.

The Pan-African ideology continued to shape Black politics in the African diaspora like Garveyism and the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Marcus Garvey, a Black nationalist from Jamaica, raised Black consciousness and racial pride to a never-before-seen height with the promotion of a back-to-Africa campaign, Black businesses, and anti-colonial politics.²⁷ Garveyism coincided with the Harlem Renaissance which, likewise, saw an explosion in Black literary works and arts promoting Black beauty. While the pursuit of African Personality was not articulated in explicit terms within the Garveyite movement and Harlem Renaissance, key themes of the movement such as artistic expression, reclaiming Blackness, and self-determination underscored the African Personality in action. In 1926, Langston Hughes, one of the forerunners of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” which explained the movement’s mission as: “We, the creators of the new black generation, want to express our black personality without shame or fear …”²⁸ Hughes’s assertion of a “black personality” echoed Blyden’s call to embrace the African Personality against the rhetoric of self-erasure. It is worth mentioning that the Black personality is more attuned to African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans. To this end, the Black personality is localized while the African Personality is a global ideology. Though often not put in conversation with each other, advocates of Black personality like Hughes or Garvey shared similar goals with campaigners of African Personality like Blyden, Casely Hayford, and later Nkrumah.

Furthermore, Black radicals in Paris sounded a similar call during the interwar years. In France, the Négritude movement, led by Leopold Senghor, Paulette Nardal, and Aimé Césaire, asserted variants of an African Personality that dominated Francophone Africa.²⁹ What is evident is that, before Nkrumah’s administration, the articulation of an African Personality was a tool for the deployment of Pan-African consciousness and a pushback against the constant subjugation of Blackness to Whiteness.

Nkrumah’s African Personality, which revived Pan-Africanism in the second half of the twentieth century, was thus built on earlier concepts of Black pride. Nkrumah lived in the United States from 1935 to 1945, experienced African American culture, and consumed Garvey’s writings, which he described as influential books on his life.³⁰ He also encountered Black radicals like Du Bois and Padmore while at Lincoln University—where he received his bachelor’s degree—which brought him into contact with activists whose aims were the liberation of Africa and the projection of a new African Personality.

Moreover, Pan-Africanists like Kwegyir Aggrey and Nnamdi Azikiwe were sources of inspiration to Nkrumah during his formative years. Aggrey, Nkrumah, and Azikiwe’s concept of an African Personality was shaped fundamentally by their lived experiences of colonial oppression, Jim Crow segregation, Western education, and Pan-African alliances. Like many African intellectuals who spearheaded the independence struggle, they spent almost a decade of their lives in the United States and sought to apply the ideas they acquired to African development. For instance, Azikiwe, having experienced the Harlem Renaissance, told Padmore that “an intellectual revolution was more potent” than propaganda politics in the building of African nationalism toward independence.³¹ Even though Azikiwe did not use the phrase “African Personality,” he believed the first step toward revolution was decolonizing the mind and creating a new personality. In his appeal for funds for an African university that would produce intellectuals not alienated from their culture, Azikiwe wrote to his potential financiers stating, “There is a need in West Africa for an educational centre which would select the more constructive concepts of the West to modify the outlook of the African, based on African culture and social organization.”³² Also, in 1943, Nkrumah, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that Africa’s challenge was in “how to educate and then initiate the African into modern life without uprooting him from his home and tribal life…. This calls for correlation between African culture and that of the western world.”³³ As a result, by the time Nkrumah made his famous speech about the African Personality in 1957, he was pulling from historical counter-discourses, transnational networks, and lived experiences, among others, in order to revive Pan-Africanism for Africans at home and abroad.

On March 6, 1957, Ghana celebrated its independence from British colonial rule. In his independence speech, Nkrumah, then prime minister, declared that “from now on, today, we must change our attitudes, our minds; we must realize that from now on we are no more a colonial but free and independent people.”³⁴ For Nkrumah, the political freedom won had to be manifested in the attitude and mindset of Ghanaians. He later added that, “We are going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations … that we are prepared to lay our foundation … we are going to create our own African personality and identity. It is the only way in which we can show the world, that we are ready for our own battles.”³⁵ Nkrumah’s assertions thus informed Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians at the event that the new nation was going to redefine Pan-Africanism and the postcolonial world through the pursuit of a new African Personality. The emphasis on redefining the imageries of Africans or Black people through the African Personality underlined nationalist and Pan-African agendas in the second half of the twentieth century. Nkrumah’s pursuit revealed what Blyden and Hayford advocated for in the early twentieth century: an African-centered way as the guiding principle of African development. The setup of GBC-TV provided an avenue for the development and expression of Nkrumah’s African Personality.

The African Personality and the Making of Ghana Television

Radio, television, and newspapers in the 1960s were powerful means of mass communication. However, in terms of social reconstruction, television stood out because of the visual images, auditory effects, and ability to appeal to both literate and non-literate folk alike. By the 1960s, television had become an important medium of communication, serving as a tool for propaganda politics across the globe, including Africa. Emerging nations in Africa like Ghana and Nigeria sought to capitalize on it for their Pan-African and national agendas. In the postcolony, African leaders like Nkrumah identified three key issues to tackle for successful nation-building: poverty, ignorance, and disease.³⁶ In the case of Ghana, free mass education, the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, Young Pioneers, newspapers, radios, and GBC-TV all became mediums to address those social ills.³⁷ Thus, two years after Ghana’s independence, the idea for a Ghanaian national television network was launched.³⁸ Unlike Western Nigeria Television, a regional network launched in 1959, GBC-TV was to be a national network. When President Nkrumah appeared before the National Assembly in 1963, he announced Ghana Television as a new venture for the development of the country.³⁹ Nkrumah and his party, the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), made deliberate attempts to remodel colonial subjects into citizens who would exhibit a new African Personality. To this end, the making of Ghana Television aided the development and promotion of an African Personality.

Ghana Television had an essential role to play in the postcolonial nation. In 1963, Nkrumah declared that “Ghana Television will be Ghanaian, African and Socialist in content.”⁴⁰ A breakdown of the three components (Ghanaian, African, and Socialist) reveals the goals toward an African Personality using this media platform. First, the Ghanaian agenda was to inspire pride, unity, scientific inquiry, and creativity.⁴¹ In other words, it was to unleash what Nkrumah termed the “African genius.” The African genius, according to Nkrumah, was Africans’ conception of society, values, and moral codes; political, social, and economic institutions, and even a sense of hospitality that made for a just society.⁴² Just like the Kenyan nationalist Tom Mboya, Nkrumah believed there were unique traits that defined an African—such as a sense of collectivism, communalism, and hospitality, as opposed to the individualism of Western societies.⁴³ In this regard, there was an African Personality and a Western Personality. However, this was not an essentialization of Africanness or racial differences. As Mboya explained in his memoir, “I am not suggesting other peoples do not possess these attributes at all; I am simply saying Africans possess these qualities outstandingly, and they form an important part of the African personality.”⁴⁴ Thus, GBC-TV had to project those unique ideals. For Nkrumah, however, the new personality also had to incorporate Western values deemed relevant to the African.

Second, the African factor, according to a GBC-TV report, was to “be a weapon in the struggle for African unity.”⁴⁵ This weapon sought to expose and challenge imperialists and their divisive tactics against Africans. It was also to promote African culture, teach African history, and gain continental independence. Finally, GBC-TV had to be socialist because socialism was the chosen economic path to develop the new Africa. Capitalism, for its part, was linked with the West, imperialism, and the exploitation of the masses; Nkrumah, like many other African leaders, associated socialism with African traditionalism and an egalitarian society. A socialist television network was to show the people a collective and communal lifestyle that would help the nation. It was to inspire everyone to contribute toward the development of the nation.

The officials tasked with the above goals for national television included Mr. C. V. M. Forde, chairman of the board of directors, Shirley Graham Du Bois as director of Ghana Television, and Mr. Alex T. Quarmyne, deputy director of television. Of particular interest to this article is Graham Du Bois, an African American who became one of Africa’s most influential women.⁴⁶ Her presence on the board of directors added to the string of diasporic Africans who held influential positions within Nkrumah’s Ghana. For instance, Padmore headed the Office of the Adviser to the Prime Minister on African Affairs until he died in 1959.⁴⁷ Du Bois, whom the Accra Evening News described as the “Prophet of Nkrumaism” was director of the Encyclopedia Africana till his death in 1963, while civil rights activist Julian Mayfield was editor of the African Review magazine.⁴⁸

Graham Du Bois had married W. E. B. Du Bois in 1951. The couple relocated to Ghana in 1961 in response to Nkrumah’s request for Du Bois to work on the Encyclopedia Africana. However, their journey was also an escape from Jim Crow and anti-communist America. Graham Du Bois was a civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, and dramatist. One of her most successful works, TomTom, included the first all-Black operatic cast and achieved widespread recognition in the United States.⁴⁹ In TomTom, Graham Du Bois featured African aesthetics and explored Africanisms among Americanisms. Graham Du Bois also authored books on Black leaders, like Paul Robeson and Julius Nyerere: Teacher of Africa.⁵⁰ Her literary skills and Pan-Africanism thus contributed to her role as director of Ghana Television.

As an Nkrumaist, Graham Du Bois believed that the goal of Ghanaian television was to create an alternative to Western mass cultural production.⁵¹ It was to have African-centered programs and to aid Ghana’s development. Additionally, it served as a platform for educating and unifying Africans, which would eventually project “the African personality before the world in all its beauty and dignity.”⁵² The role of GBC-TV in developing and projecting the new personality was through its daily programming. Graham Du Bois traveled across nations to research television programs and sponsorships that were likely to support African liberation. Between 1963 and 1964, she traveled to Great Britain, France, Italy, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, and Japan to study television production. Afterward, she returned to organize an African-centered/Ghanaian approach to television production.⁵³

Graham Du Bois’s tour of Japan, in particular, yielded remarkable results, which also affirmed the Afro-Asian solidarity from the Bandung Conference of 1955. For instance, in Japan, she gave a radio talk that discussed the Ghana revolution, Afro-Asian solidarity and Western hegemonic rule. Furthermore, she interacted with the president of Sanyo Electricals, Mr. T. Tue, and reported back to Nkrumah. In a letter of appreciation to Tue, Nkrumah wrote, “Mrs. Du Bois has returned to Ghana with glowing tales of Japanese television and of Japanese friendship …”⁵⁴ In another letter, Nkrumah wrote to the president of Nippon Television Network in Japan that “Mrs. Du Bois … has told me of the near miracles you have performed in bringing about reconstruction of your country … I am deeply impressed and encouraged in my own efforts to wipe out colonialism and to realize a united Africa.”⁵⁵ The encounters in Japan led to the formation of the Ghana-Sanyo Corporation, established to provide electrical equipment to the Ghanaian government, including portable television plants to enhance television production.

GBC-TV officially launched Ghana Television on July 31, 1965, with glamour and programs that reflected a Western and African view. Prior to the launch, news articles were published to create awareness of the new addition to the nation-building project. For instance, in the Radio and TV Review, journalist N. A. Oppong wrote an article titled “What Is TV?” and explained the technical and behind-the-scenes activities of television productions. There was also an editorial that described Nkrumah’s goals for GBC-TV as “[e]schewing the wild and unfamous programmes of the decadence of Western civilization …”⁵⁶ It also added that there would be no cheap cowboy shows.⁵⁷ The initial broadcasting was three-and-half hours long and the first week’s programs included sports, Home Makers: “A programme mainly for women”, cooking, and childcare. Other programs included a children’s program of a puppet film “On Vacation,” guest artist music of Ephraim Amu, Beethoven, and Mozart and a string quartet. On Cultural Variety, GBC-TV presented African composition, and the Reflection segment featured Ghanaian music and poetry. The Farms and Fisheries segment was a 30-minute discussion of modern trends in gardening and fishing. Other features included guest artist Ramon Bouche from St. Helena, an Armed Forces parade at the Black Star Square, as well as George Bizet’s opera Carmen.⁵⁸ In all, the first and subsequent weeks’ programs included topics on economics, culture, politics, education, and relations between the state and citizens. There were also numerous English or foreign movies, which added to the African programs in projecting a new personality by showing a modernized Ghana.

In a 1979 dissertation on Ghana Television, Paa-Bekoe Henry Welbeck observed that mass communication helps to create a “revolution of rising expectations.” It does so by introducing people to other lifestyles through magazines, radio, books, films, and television, in order to inspire a desire for better living.⁵⁹ Thus, GBC-TV assisted in creating a revolution of expectation in support of the Nkrumaist vision. Chairman of GBC, Mr. C. V. M. Forde, speaking on “Television and the People,” stated that the new television network would help replace the “primitive” way of doing things with modern methods in areas such as agriculture and parenting, among other spheres of life. For instance, he indicated that “our women will be taught modern methods of cooking in conditions that are modern and congenial.”⁶⁰ In this regard, GBC-TV aired programs on how to make fancy cushions, decorate a home, and even cook certain meals. It was all part of creating the new African woman who was rooted in her African culture and still showed an awareness of the Western style of living. Television was to ignite Ghanaians’ interest in the world around them.⁶¹

Furthermore, in 1965, S. G. Ikoku, a senior lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, told graduate trainees of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation that, whereas newspapers depended on just the written word, the staff at GBC-TV could use music, videos, and images to appeal to the full sense of an individual, thus reaching both elite and non-elite audiences.⁶² As a result, the TV station worked with the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, the Ministries of Health, Labour, and Education, and many other agencies for social regeneration. The collaboration between the Ministry of Education and GBC-TV, for its part, led to school telecasting and the use of televisions in classrooms. Similarly, television viewing centers in communities showed programs on health and better ways of living as part of community development. The communal viewing centers expanded the Ideal Home Exhibits: a colonial project used to “improve” lives in the colony by showing the populace how to take care of their households and children.⁶³ To this end, the collaboration between GBC-TV and other institutions further strengthened Ghana’s role as a symbol of Black modernity for continental and diasporic Africans in the 1960s.

Meanwhile, in October 1965, two months after the launch of the national television network, Ghana hosted the third summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), with GBC-TV covering the 10–day event for a national audience.⁶⁴ The summit was crucial to the Pan-African movement for the economic, social, and political liberation of Black people. Central issues for the Accra summit were the calls for the end of apartheid in South Africa and for the independence of countries like Angola, Mozambique, and Southern Rhodesia, without which the full expression of African Personality was undermined, especially on the international stage.⁶⁵ However, of primary concern for Nkrumah was continental unity with an African government to guard against the West’s continued exploitation of African resources and interference in African affairs. Additionally, as Michael Dei-Anang, Ghana’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1959–1961, and later Head of the African Affairs Secretariat from 1961–1966, recorded, Nkrumah also used conferences to promote Africa’s image.⁶⁶ The summit was also Nkrumah’s attempt at restoring his declining image as the “voice” of Africa.⁶⁷ In this vein, he hoped that the OAU summit in Accra would help express the African Personality to enable Africa to assert itself on the global stage. Additionally, as Michael Dei-Anang, Ghana’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1959–1961, and later Head of the African Affairs Secretariat from 1961–1966, recorded, Nkrumah also used conferences to promote Africa’s image.⁶⁸ Therefore, GBC-TV was positioned to cover the Accra summit.

For its part in supporting the Nkrumaist agenda, GBC-TV programs during the week were Afri-centric.⁶⁹ The film “Towards A United Africa” by the Ghana Film Industry Corporation was listed to show.⁷⁰ The film Hamile—an adaption of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet—set in Tongo in the northern region of Ghana among the Talensi people was also shown during the week. Even homemakers featured the making of Moyu-Moyu, a Nigerian dish. Other programs included Adowa and Kete dances from the Institute of African Studies, Workers Brigade, and “Teenagers of Africa.”⁷¹ Finally, the segment “Reflections” featured Du Bois’s poem Ghana Calls. Graham Du Bois read the poem, which was illustrated by Herman Bailey, an African American artist.⁷² The programming was positioned to stimulate solidarity and mobilize support for Nkrumah’s main goal of continental unity. It also brought the African revolution and Pan-Africanism close to home as viewers witnessed the deliberations for African freedom. Pan-Africanism, through the lens of television, was no longer the purview of a select few, or only African heads of state, but was attainable to all who had access to television.

To address the problem of access to television, the Ghana-Sanyo Corporation was charged with producing portable television sets. In addition, community viewing centers were established, thus allowing more people, and especially those who could not afford to buy television sets, to benefit from the national television network. Centers were in major cities like Accra, Cape Coast, Takoradi, and Koforidua. In Accra, specifically, there were community centers at St. Mary’s Parish School, Bannerman Road, and Ghana Legion Village. Likewise, in Koforidua, they were located at the Anglican Middle Girls’ School; in Winneba, at the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute and in Takoradi, at the Young Pioneers center.⁷³ The viewing centers provided communal relations and participation for the Pan-African event.

One of the essential features of the African Personality was promoting national consciousness, identity, and a sense of unity that the state could harness for development. Community viewing centers thus fostered unity and communalism. Furthermore, centers had an “attendant” or “monitor,” a government employee who interpreted the programs from English into the language of the locality.⁷⁴ People of different ethnic groups gathered to watch daily programs, while some used the space as a platform for trading.⁷⁵ The many people who went to community centers were in turn exposed to foreign and local cultures, which led to a “revolution of rising expectations” crucial to Nkrumah’s agenda, albeit channeled through state-building and Pan-African goals.

During the CPP’s 10th anniversary celebration, Nkrumah emphasized the centrality of education to Ghana’s state-building project. In doing so, he explained that “the great task before us is education—intensive ideological education both of the masses and of ourselves.” His message primarily targeted the youth who were the foci of creating and promoting the African Personality.⁷⁶ The Nkrumah-led CPP government created party groups and institutions like the Young Pioneers and the Builder’s Brigade, which targeted the Ghanaian youth to create model citizens for nation-building.⁷⁷ But unlike the anti-West rhetoric often emphasized in this social engineering, Nkrumah believed that the African should be acquainted with “the best in his own as well as in foreign civilizations,” and that whatever might be the political trend and issues, education in Africa should produce a new class of people who were imbued with Western culture yet attached to their environment.⁷⁸ GBC-TV youth and school programs also emphasized a combination of Western and African values.

While the state built secondary schools and universities all over Ghana, GBC-TV became another platform to educate the African and cultivate the “African Genius.” Graham Du Bois and her team worked with the Ministry of Education to develop courses for school telecasting. Education was not only for those enrolled in schools, but for every citizen, both young and old.⁷⁹ Some of the courses that GBC-TV ran included “Burmese Lake Dwellers” (Geography), “Shakespeare the Man” (English), and “Reptiles & Mammals—The Newt & Rabbit Life Cycles” (Biology). There were technical courses on “How the Car Works—The Tools you Need” and “Electricity: The Invisible Giant.”⁸⁰ The telecasting was a blend of Western and African subjects, which underscored the fundamental element of the new African Personality. Even though programming on English courses focused largely on Shakespearean literature, others like “Talking about the Past” created a balance. For instance, during the week of August 3, 1965, GBC-TV’s cultural heritage featured a discussion of the historical origins of the Effutu people, which A. A. Mensah of the Institute of African Studies led, while Ebenezer Harrison examined Akan symbols.⁸¹ Cultural events like outdooring ceremonies were also discussed. GBC-TV additionally ran the program “Language and Literacy”—a twenty-minute program for teaching adults who were not literate to have “a working knowledge of English.”⁸² There was also “I Will Speak English,” in which a television teacher held lessons based on local activities. The school telecasting was in turn part of creating model citizens for the country by adding to the work of other citizenship-building programs like the Young Pioneers and Builder’s Brigade.⁸³

Regarding cultural development, Graham Du Bois reported that GBC-TV was a channel through which the rich cultural heritage of Ghana could “freely flow from the people out to the people.”⁸⁴ Thus, GBC-TV televised African music, dances, and arts to instill pride. In one of its early reports, the members of GBC-TV were very clear about distinguishing themselves from a Western form of television, meaning a television package “without the ‘canned’ programmes (about gangsters, good cowboys and bad Indians, and the vicissitudes of middle-class love in Chicago and Liverpool)” but rather one “with its own news programme geared to look at events through African eyes.”⁸⁵ Therefore, programs like fashion, which Joyce Addo, head of women’s programming, oversaw highlighted African prints, designs, and dressmakers, and promoted pride in African wear.⁸⁶ Ghanaian artists like Ephraim Amu, E. T. Mensah’s band, and Ghana’s Beatles led by Charlotte Dada were frequently featured on national television. The appointments of Graham Du Bois, director of television; Addo, head of women’s programs; Patience Asante, head of the education program and Genoveva Marais, head of programmes (TV) also demonstrate the significant roles women played in the nation-building effort.⁸⁷

Nkrumah was very particular about the “Africanness” component of the pursuit and its reflection on Ghana as the seat of Pan-Africanism. He regulated GBC-TV just as he did other state institutions to fulfill his Pan-African agenda. For instance, a few months before the OAU summit in Accra, Nkrumah wrote to Graham Du Bois and asked her to change the programs to air in Akan. He insisted that the Cultural Heritage program should not be in English but in Akan. The term Akan is broad, as it covers lots of different ethnic and linguistic groups even outside Ghana. However, Nkrumah’s point was that the program should reflect a proper balance of African and Western mores.⁸⁸ He urged Graham Du Bois to ensure the changes occurred before the summit began.⁸⁹ He also cautioned her to “remember the three requirements for Ghanaian Television; programmes must be Ghanaian, African, or Socialist. Every foreign film used on our Television should in one way or another reflect these ideals.”⁹⁰ Graham Du Bois responded appropriately. Following Nkrumah’s instructions to the letter, television programs further focused on African cultures or were foreign programs re-imagined for local contexts like Hamile.

Furthermore, Nkrumah’s caution to Graham Du Bois also shows that TV programs were not selected randomly for entertainment. Rather, television staff had to be cognizant of the national agenda of using television for social engineering, and to support the development of a new African Personality. Carla W. Heath observes that even the children’s programming was structured around the idea that to be strong it had to glean ideas from the ancestors, and to be relevant it had to adapt to ideas outside of Ghana.⁹¹ For instance, the film Romeo and Juliet aired as part of the English Literature lessons students had to take.⁹² Likewise, movies like Rubovia’s Legend, beyond entertainment, also exposed viewers to other cultures. It was in many ways the Nkrumaist plan for a new African Personality.

Even though the idea of Ghanaian television was to depart from Western television, in some ways, it was not entirely possible. Japanese, Canadian, and British companies did most of the construction and programming.⁹³ In 1965, the Canadian high commissioner to Ghana, S. Strong, presented over 9,900 films to the Ghana Radio and Television Corporation on behalf of the Canadian government.⁹⁴ The gift was part of Canada’s External Aid program. The British also gave books on sound and television broadcasting.⁹⁵ Additionally, the East German and Czechoslovakian governments also sent films and books.⁹⁶ It was cheaper to broadcast borrowed movies than to set up a film processing plant to aid the production of Ghanaian or African movies for the young republic. Countries like West Germany became models for GBC-TV’s educational television. For instance, Nkrumah and Graham Du Bois invited the German professor G. H. Fischer to assist in educational filming.⁹⁷ Similarly, in her position, Graham Du Bois included African American civil rights activists like William Gardner Smith as head of news. Smith went on to work as head of the Ghana School of Journalism and lectured at the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute.⁹⁸ Graham Du Bois also invited the American author Donald Ogden Stewart, a film writer and producer in Hollywood, to become director of TV writing for Ghana Television. In Ghana, he worked with Ghanaian scriptwriters and by the time GBC-TV was ready to launch in 1965, he could boast of approximately 75 scripts for programs.⁹⁹ Ogden applied Hollywood lessons to the Ghanaian context and encouraged his students to write stories about their own lives.¹⁰⁰

In terms of programming, English courses were as popular as local cultural displays, but these should not be presumed to be a blind copy of the West or East to invalidate the pursuit of a new personality. Rather, it should be seen in the light of projecting an African Personality that reflected a combination of African and Western values. For instance, the show called “Let’s Swing: A Teenager’s Program” mirrored the British swingers—a youth movement of fashion, music, and art in the 1960s.¹⁰¹ However, GBC-TV’s presentation of this teenagers’ program often featured Ghanaian artists and music like the Royal Brothers Band.¹⁰² Other times, the show ran with foreign tracks like The Avengers.¹⁰³ This then demonstrates that Nkrumah’s African Personality was not anti-Western. To develop the African Personality was not to be isolated from the West or to be anti-Western. Instead, it was to find what was essential and blend it with local values to create new citizens and develop the nation. As Dei-Anang recalled in his memoir, the task of administrators in Ghana and other African countries was to “secure a synthesis of the best elements from his own past and the new ideas of which his contacts with a changing world bring to his notice.”¹⁰⁴ This was a caution against a blind following of traditions or Westernization.

After the 1966 coup, which overthrew Nkrumah’s government, many changes occurred, including the introduction of television commercials and a TV license tax, which the Nkrumah government had opposed as being sensationalist and capitalist. The CPP-led regime viewed TV commercialization as an affront to the socialist and Pan-Africanist vision for Africa. Jennifer Blaylock observes that the post-Nkrumah GBC-TV employed explicit and sexist commercialism.¹⁰⁵ However, one essential feature of GBC-TV in the post-Nkrumah regime was the sections for feedback from viewers. Despite the changes, the major blow after Nkrumah’s government was that television became more of an entertainment tool than a tool for social regeneration to help Africans assert themselves on the global stage.