Born in Wenchi, Ghana, Kofi Abrefa Busia was a Ghanaian scholar, politician, and prime minister (1969–1972). A member of the Yefre line of the Wenchi Royal Family, Busia had early contact with Methodist missionaries and remained a nominal Christian throughout his life. He attended Mfantsipim School between 1927 and 1939 and trained subsequently as a school teacher at Wesley College from 1931 to 1932, where he also taught for a year immediately upon graduation. He attended Achimota College (1935–1938) and then entered University College, Oxford (1939–1941), for his B. A. degree. He returned to the Gold Coast for fieldwork towards a doctorate in social anthropology. Between 1942 and 1946, he gained some administrative experience as Assistant District Commissioner. Upon completion of his Ph.D. thesis at Oxford, Busia returned to Ghana in 1947. He established the Department of Sociology at University College, serving as research lecturer (1949–1951), senior lecturer and head of department (1952–1954), and Professor (1954). At first, he was able to combine political and scholarly activities, serving as leader of the opposition from 1956 to 1959. In 1958, however, he resigned from the University in order to devote his full energies to politics. He went into self-exile the following year. Between 1959 and 1966, he held several appointments in Europe, culminating in a Professorship at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. He returned to Ghana after the coup that ousted Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, and his own Progress Party won the elections in 1969. His reign as Prime Minister of the Second Republic was brought to an end by a military coup on January 13, 1972.
Busia was the author of a number of important and influential books, perhaps the best known of them being his revised Ph.D. thesis, The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti (1951), a work of careful and painstaking ethnography. His intellectual interests were primarily concrete rather than speculative, and he showed an inevitable interest in educational policy in Africa. As a politician, he is remembered for his opposition to some of Nkrumah’s policies, and for an apparently unbridled embrace of European-style democracy. His own reign as prime minister (1969–1972) was not free of some of the same sorts of repressive policies that he had identified with Nkrumah’s government.
Works by Busia
Busia, Kofi Abrefa. 1951. The position of the chief in the modern political system of Ashanti: A study of the influence of contemporary social changes on Ashanti political institutions. London: Oxford University Press.
———. 1962. The challenge of Africa. New York: Praeger.
———. 1967. Africa in search of democracy. New York: Praeger.
———. 1968. Purposeful education for Africa. The Hague: Mouton.
———. Busia: a symbol of democracy. [Accra?]: Danquah Memorial Pub. Co, [between 1978 and 1980].
Bibliography
Agyeman, D. 1988. Kofi. Ideological education and nationalism in Ghana under Nkrumah and Busia. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.
Donkoh, C.E. [1974?]. Nkrumah and Busia of Ghana. Accra: New Times Corp.
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Agawu, K. (2021). Busia, Kofi Abrefa. In: Mudimbe, V.Y., Kavwahirehi, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2068-5_66
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