Ghana's Public Diplomacy under Kwame Nkrumah

ABSTRACT: The concept of public diplomacy is one of the trending approaches in modern international relations and diplomacy. Communicating and engaging effectively with the foreign public in a particular nation by a government to achieve its foreign policy objective is every government’s goal. The field of public diplomacy as an academic discipline in Ghana in particular and Africa has not received much attention compared to the Western World. This article attempts to bridge this gap by opening Ghana’s public diplomacy to academic scrutiny that has, as yet, been underdeveloped. This paper’s principal objective is to bring to light the public diplomacy instruments used by the indefatigable first president of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, to propagate his pan-Africanism foreign policy in the 1960s against capitalism and communism after Ghana’s independence. It also looks briefly at Nkrumah’s general foreign policy agenda through the lens of public diplomacy. Methodologically, it uses content analysis of documents to explore how Nkrumah adopted the public diplomacy tactics during his presidency to sell his foreign policy. The article explores the topic under the theoretical framework of Golan’s Integrated Public Diplomacy model. It concludes that public diplomacy under Kwame Nkrumah should be the foundation and ignite its incorporation into Ghana’s tertiary education and current foreign policy strategies. KEYWORDS: public diplomacy, communication, Kwame Nkrumah, pan-Africanism, foreign policy