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Modern World History: Movin' to Africa: Ghanaian History 16 Views
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Description:
Like most new governments, Ghana definitely had its growing pains. But hey, who hasn't experienced a coup d'état or two?
Transcript
- 00:00
the West African nation of Ghana gained its independence from Great
- 00:06
Britain in 1957. some newly independent countries like to doggie paddle around [UK flag with symbol of Africa}
- 00:11
for a bit testing the waters trying to decide
- 00:13
whether to stay in the shallows or head from the deep end, but the ghanians led
- 00:18
by President Kwame Nkrumah didn't doggy paddle. no they went right in from the 10
Full Transcript
- 00:25
meter diving board and plunged into the deep end headfirst. well Nkrumah was
- 00:29
ambitious he was kind of a dreamer and he looked great in a speedo,
- 00:33
maybe only two of those are true, but as president of ghana he swore to turn his
- 00:38
country into a utopia, unite all of africa and free the continent from the
- 00:43
yoke of european colonialism. well in order to do this Nkrumah believed
- 00:48
that he first had to mold Ghana into an industrialized nation that could compete
- 00:53
with the West. he wanted to build the industries and infrastructure that would
- 00:57
allow Ghana to turn its natural resources into manufactured products
- 01:02
worth a lot of cash. but getting industrialized wasn't the only problem [tomatoes being canned]
- 01:05
Ghana's faced. power the Ghanaian people after years of British rule supposed to
- 01:11
confront the monstrous markets of modernity.the crewmen wanted to drag
- 01:15
Ghana kicking and screaming into the 20th century and since patience wasn't one
- 01:19
of his virtues, he decided to throw common sense to the land and set about
- 01:24
socializing Ghana. well if nakooma put a mighty government
- 01:28
in place to protect his people from things like supply and demand economics
- 01:33
then Ghana would quickly and smoothly take its place amongst the modern
- 01:38
nations. what a shame it wasn't connected to any form of reality. which probably [many nations flags]
- 01:43
means you won't be surprised to learn that Nkrumah's policy policies bombed.
- 01:48
sure he successfully expanded the role of the government in Ghana but he also
- 01:51
stifled political opposition and destroyed the economy. he was deposed in
- 01:56
1966 and ended up dying in Romania six years later. hey the world is in a
- 02:02
Disney flick. not all stories have a happy ending. [story stamped with a "not happy ending" stamp]
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