The anti-colonial struggles in West Africa were led by the new elite of Western-educated Africans. Examine.

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The Western-educated elite gave West Africa's anti-colonial struggle its ideas, press, parties and negotiators, but it succeeded only by harnessing mass discontent. Kwame Nkrumah, educated at Lincoln University and the LSE, led Ghana to independence in 1957 through a CPP that rode popular grievance.

**Introduction**

When Ghana won independence in 1957, its leader Kwame Nkrumah had studied at Lincoln University in the United States and at the LSE. The Western-educated elite led West Africa's struggle, but it led best where it harnessed popular grievance.

**How the Western-Educated Elite Led**

SKETCH: flow | Making of the West African Elite
- Mission schools
- Lincoln, LSE, Sorbonne
- Pan-Africanism, Négritude
- Parties: CPP, NCNC, RDA
- Ghana 1957

1. **Early constitutional voice**: Gold Coast lawyer J.E. Casely Hayford's National Congress of British West Africa (1920) used petitions and the press to demand elective seats long before mass politics.
2. **Ideas and identity**: The elite turned liberal ideas of self-determination against their teachers; Senghor's Négritude asserted African dignity, and the Manchester Pan-African Congress of 1945 linked Nkrumah to Du Bois and Padmore.
3. **Press and parties**: Azikiwe's West African Pilot and NCNC, Nkrumah's CPP (1949) and Houphouët-Boigny's RDA (1946) gave the struggle modern organisation and negotiators.

**Limits of the Elite Thesis**

1. **Masses supplied the force**: The Accra riots of 1948, cocoa farmers' anger and the Dakar-Niger railway strike of 1947-48 gave the elite its leverage.
2. **Elite divided**: Danquah's cautious UGCC was overtaken by Nkrumah's "Self-Government Now" and his less-schooled "verandah boys".
3. **Leaders outside the mould**: Sékou Touré, a trade unionist with little formal schooling, led Guinea's "No" in 1958, and Nigeria's north followed emirate aristocrats such as Ahmadu Bello.

**Conclusion**

The educated elite supplied West Africa's struggle with ideas, organisation and negotiators, but it succeeded only by riding mass discontent. Fanon's warning about the "pitfalls of national consciousness" proved apt when many of these leaders later built one-party states.

The anti-colonial struggles in West Africa were led by the new elite of Western-educated Africans. Examine.

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