“As we celebrate Nkrumah’s 114th birthday on September 21, let us strive to live up to the ideals Nkrumah stood for by working together with fellow Africans to increase trade among ourselves, add value to our raw materials, diversify our economies and create well-paying jobs for the teeming youth of Ghana and Africa as a whole,” former President John Dramani Mahama has said.
He noted that with a leadership that unites rather than “divides our people and inspires them to greatness rather than impose on them, Ghana and Africa will fully realize their potential.”
According to Mr. Mahama, the best way to respect Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s memory is by working together to create the Ghana and Africa that we want.
On the occasion of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s 114th birthday, Mr. Mahama made these remarks in honour of Ghana’s first president.
Recounting his recent speech at the Humanity Summit in Faro, Portugal, on the theme;
“Creating a new paradigm of trade between the Global North and the Global South,” Mahama emphasized that Kwame Nkrumah’s subtext found expression in his adoption of VeneKlasen and Miller’s concept of power as comprising a quartet of “the power over, the power to, the power within and the power with” in his keynote address.
Mahama re-emphasized among others that, “once Africa establishes the power within—that is to say, once we have empowered ourselves—we will then be in the position, insofar as trade is concerned, to negotiate with the Global North, in Africa’s best interest, in a manner anchored in mutual respect and cooperation.”
He added that only then can we say that a new paradigm of trade between the Global North and Global South has been created.
