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Food And Nationalism In An Independent Ghana, Brandi Miller

History Theses

In 1957 Ghana became the first nation in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence from a European colonial power. During this time Kwame Nkrumah’s government concerned itself with the creation of a national identity that would speak to the new African Personality and Nkrumah’s Pan-African goals. In Nkrumah’s national project, regional cultural and economic contributions were at times subsumed. The absence of an identifiable national cuisine is a lens into ethnic conflict generated in part by the crafting of the national identity. I argue that in general the absence of a national cuisine represents the strength of the desire to maintain …