"And still the Youth are coming": Youth and popular politics in Ghana, c. 1900-1979

Abstract

This dissertation explores the significance of the youth in the popular politics of 20th-century Ghana. Based on two and half years of archival and field research in Ghana and Britain, the dissertation investigates the political agency of the youth, especially in the domains of youth associations, student politics, and popular culture. It also examines the structural factors in the colonial and postcolonial periods that shaped youth political engagement, and how youth worked within and without these structural frames to shape popular politics. I argue that youth-centered politics has been a motive force in Ghanaian popular politics. It opened up space for subalterns to be important players in colonial politics especially as catalysts of anti-colonial nationalism. In the post-colonial period, youth politics, mostly in the form of university students’ political activism, articulated public interests and was a bulwark against the authoritarianism of civilian and military governments. The dissertation charts the changing manifestations of Ghanaian youth political identity and formation from the early 1900s, when Britain completed its formal imposition of colonial rule on the territory that is present-day Ghana, to the political crisis of the late 1970s in which students and youth played crucial roles. The dissertation is a corrective to elite-focused accounts of political developments in Ghana’s history. It establishes youths as historically significant players who have shaped the country’s political ideas, values and practices. The dissertation also contributes to the renewed and growing focus on intergenerational relations, generational identity, and youth in scholarship on Africa.