Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from European colonial rule, doing so on 6 March 1957. Its independence ended British rule over the former Gold Coast.
Kwame Nkrumah, leader of the Convention People’s Party, became the country’s first prime minister and later its first president. The independence celebration in Accra became a major symbol for African nationalism and inspired liberation movements across the continent.
The phrase “first in sub-Saharan Africa” distinguishes Ghana’s milestone from earlier independence elsewhere in Africa. Egypt, for example, achieved formal independence from Britain in 1922, while Liberia had been an independent republic since the nineteenth century. Ghana’s new name referred to the ancient Ghana Empire, even though that medieval state was centred much farther west in the Sahel.