When KY Amoako was growing up in 1950s Ghana, he hung on every word of Kwame Nkrumah, the liberation leader and, later, the country’s first prime minister and president. Amoako, who spent a lifetime working in “development”, remembers the heady feelings that Nkrumah inspired in a young man whose country and continent were on the verge of throwing off colonial oppression.
“Africa was going to be prosperous, strong, united, and respected,” he wrote of Nkrumah’s project to “raise up the lives of our people” in what would become 54 independent nations.
Amoako built a career at the World Bank in the 1970s and became head of the UN Economic Commission for Africa — two institutions he believed could help realise Nkrumah’s vision. Writing in his memoir some five decades later, he was clearly disappointed: “So why is Africa still poor?” he asked.