New Books Network Nana Osei-Opare, "Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana's Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Mar 24, 2026
Nana Osei-Opare, historian and author exploring Ghanaian and Black internationalist history. He traces Ghana’s 1957 independence as a Black socialist experiment. The conversation highlights Ghana–Soviet interactions, everyday racism faced by Ghanaians in the Eastern Bloc, contested development projects, petitions shaping diplomacy, and archival detective work across multiple countries.
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Three Busts That Sparked a Book
- Nana Osei-Opare discovered three busts of Marx, Engels, and Lenin at Kwame Sanaa Boku Ajanatua's house in Accra while researching in 2010.
- That small detail became the spark for tracing Ghana's engagement with global socialist ideas and the book's genesis.
Independence As Proof Of Black Self-Governance
- Ghana's independence was meant to prove that Black people could govern themselves and that development projects were central to that demonstration.
- Osei-Opare shows British critics framed Ghana's infrastructure and education efforts as 'megalomaniac' to delegitimise Black self-rule.
Race Shapes Cold War Alignment
- Race structures Cold War perceptions: both Western and Eastern powers assumed African leaders were manipulated rather than acting in their own national interest.
- Ghanaians judged blocs by whether they supported African sovereignty and by everyday anti-Black experiences in Eastern Europe.
