Nkrumah, kente, and African philosophy: Socio-political thought and development in Ghana

Nkrumah contributed much to political thought and leadership style, not only in Africa, but also in the Developing World as a whole. Nkrumah's impact is evident not only in the field of ideas, concepts, and metaphors but also in his sartorial elegance and sociopolitical choices. In the early 1940s, Nkrumah began wearing the kente as a symbol of cultural identity. The kente (a well-known African fabric) has not only had an extensive impact on the Ghanaian society, but it has also captured a far reaching global interest in the fabric. Even though a number of scholarly publications on kente and other hand-woven textiles of West Africa have emerged since the early 1940s, the history of African textiles---their royal and aesthetic significance---has been well-documented. However, little scholarship has addressed the connections between the kente and Nkrumah's political, economic, and socio-cultural ideas.;The main objective of this research was to examine the relationship between the symbols of kente and the ideas of Kwame Nkrumah -- the first President of Ghana, a prolific writer and major political figure in Africa as a whole. The intricacy of the designs of the kente fabric, its unquestionably lofty place in the indigenous political systems of Ghana, and its wide use in the Black World as a symbol of unity, the fabric can be considered a major art and craft work in the region.;Thus, a study of the meanings of the kente symbols is a good entry point in the study and understanding of the relationships between African cultural and symbolic representations and the ideas and philosophical orientations of its statesmen and stateswomen---the individuals who are at the forefront of the region's development efforts.;This research adopted a broad view of development and built on a pedigree of works since Max Weber's seminal study on the affinity between the protestant ethic and the spirit of mature capitalism, and show that there are relationships between a people's philosophical and cultural orientations and their attempt to develop economically, politically, and socially. One of the most recent studies in that direction, part of which has informed the conceptual and theoretical framework of the current research, is Lawrence E. Harrison's and Samuel P. Huntington's 2000 edited volume: Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress.