Conclusion

Summary

This chapter demonstrates how the overarching reach of the dyad of UGCC versus CPP obscures the culture of debate that predates these two political camps. The intellectual and political histories of Ghana, remain obscured by their heated and divisive debates about how to frame the nation. At the core of Ghana’s foundation debates lie issues of national identity and belonging, legitimacy and power. Issuing a coin that singled Nkrumah as Civitatis Ghaniensis Conditor, and the 1958 declaration of Nkrumah’s birthday as Founder’s Day effectively erased and delegitimised other nationalists. Addressing how Nkrumah’s CPP dominated post-independence publications and politics with heavy doses of an Nkrumah as founder narrative, contextualises the accounts by pointing to unequal advantages. The grand narrative is thus complicated and expanded upon. A founder theory communicates the end result while excluding a multiplicity of actors, their debates, and the process. Such information situates the Founder versus Founders debate.