SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Continental Visions:The Radical Economics of African Unity in 1960s Ghana

Continental Visions:The Radical Economics of African Unity in 1960s Ghana This paper presents the history of the contribution of professional economists to a short-lived radical cause: the establishment of a federalist Africa which could plan its development at the continental level. The setting is 1960s Ghana, when Kwame Nkrumah, who had led the country to independence from British colonial rule, emerged as the most vocal proponent of this Pan-African vision. Two American economists, Ann Seidman and Reginald H. Green, became, as members of the research team on ‘The Economics of African Unity’ established at the University of Ghana in 1963, the most sophisticated and systematic advocates of Nkrumah’s economic argument for continental planning and political union. The paper argues that Green and Seidman’s support for Pan-Africanism was rooted in a significant attempt to question the applicability of mainstream economic theory to African conditions, and find an alternative framework to conceptualise African trade, institutions and economic integration. Ultimately the vision associated to Nkrumah and radical economists like Green and Seidman failed to gain any significant political legitimacy and ended in 1966 with Nkrumah’s overthrow. Yet, it is argued that the story of the ‘economics of African unity’ is a useful departure point to deepen our understanding of the relationship between economic theory and political imagination in postcolonial Africa.