Too often, foreign policy conversations that aim to be global in scope lack sufficient attention to African opinions and equities. By 2050, one in four people in the world will be African. From questions of war and peace, the future of capitalism, the viability of democratic governance, and the fate of the climate to the institutional architecture that facilitates international cooperation, the future should be informed by Africans.
In an effort to bring a broad range of perspectives to the CFR community, Senior Fellow for Africa Studies Michelle Gavin spoke with a number of prominent Africans in different fields about their work and priorities. No one person can speak to the incredible diversity of the continent's opinions and ideas, but our hope is that these dynamic individuals can help enrich readers' awareness of and sensitivity to African dynamics, and perhaps encourage readers to learn more about their work.
Dr. K.Y. Amoako is the founder and president of the African Center for Economic Transformation, a former executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, and the author of Know the Beginning Well: An Inside Journey Through Five Decades of African Development (2019). This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
I loved your book—the combination of personal reflection and then a lot of great, more analytic content makes it very engaging. One of the things that really struck me about it—even as you've had these positions that have continent-wide responsibilities or even beyond Africa, coming through always is your love for Ghana and your commitment to it. It resonated so much with me—I think about how I feel when I watch my own country head down the wrong direction, and how heartbreaking it is. Obviously, you've felt the same sometimes when Ghana hasn't been at its strongest. I wanted to ask—do you think that that capacity to identify with the national project is rather unique to Ghana? Is there something special about states like Ghana where there is identification with a national identity that has been strong and distinct since independence?
I think that Ghana occupies a special place, and that's one of the things I tried to get to come through at the end of the book—what Ghana meant and what Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, meant for Africa. Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence, and it inspired hope in many other parts of the continent. So in that sense Ghana was very special. But if you look at Ghana's political history—and that's what I try to explore in Know the Beginning Well—it's complicated. If Nkrumah had turned out a bit differently, what greater impact would that have had on other African countries? We had a situation where we went very quickly from independence and freedom to a one-party state. That was followed by military coup d'états, with poor economic policy and declining growth. And Ghana got into trouble. And then we came out of it, in terms of the democratic movement, and governance started improving. We saw the hope come back.
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