A new biography on Ghana’s first president, Death of an Empire- Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Africa would be released next month September 21 as the country marks the national holiday of his birth. Written by the last of his All African Cabinet Ministers and the youngest- Mr. Kwame Sanaa-Poku Jantuah who also served as his Ambassador to France, Brazil and the United Kingdom, it is published in the United States by the African World Press in Trenton, New Jersey and in Ghana by Digibooks Limited.
Mr. Jantuah worked on the 200 -page book with his nephew- Ivor Agyeman-Duah, currently a Visiting Associate Professor and Director of the Wole Soyinka Foundation at the University of Johannesburg before he passed on at 89 in 2011. The book also reflects on the dawn of Ghana’s Fourth Republic and the consequences of democratic progress.
A news release by the Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa and the Centre for Intellectual Renewal in Accra said, it would be launched at the Christiansborg Castle Gardens, Osu where Nkrumah started his Prime Ministerial work. The keynote speaker would be the Deputy Chairperson of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ambassador Kwesi Quartey previously Ghana’s Ambassador to Ethiopia and the African Union, and before then as the Ghana Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York among others.
Other speakers would include, David Owusu –Ansah, an eminent Professor of African History at James Madison University in Virginia, United States, former Lester Martin Associate of the Harry S. Truman Institute for International Peace of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and editor of the authoritative, Historical Dictionary of Ghana. He who would speak on, “Still Contested After All these Years: Nkrumah in the Context of the National History” and President of HACSA, Ambassador Johanana Odonkor Svanikier.
Mr. Agyeman-Duah who also wrote a detailed introduction to the book explains that it goes beyond the contemporary conversation of the founding history to the sophistry of the Gold Coast diplomatic service and Nkrumah- Jantuah roles in, for instance, the Algerian War of Independence and Ghana’s contribution to the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa.
Nkrumah once wrote to Jantuah: “I need not emphasise the importance of this assignment to represent me as Ambassador to Monrovia at this interesting stage of Ghana’s history and I have full confidence in your ability to represent the interest of the government and the people of Ghana in a matter that will be a credit to you and the country.”