🇬🇭 GHANA MONTH- LET’S REVISIT HISTORY
Before Kwame Nkrumah became the face of Ghana’s independence struggle, there was an elderly merchant from Beyin in Nzema who quietly laid the foundation for modern politics in the Gold Coast. His name was George Alfred Grant, popularly known as Paa Grant the man many historians call “The Father of Gold Coast Politics.”
Born in 1878 into an influential merchant family, Paa Grant grew up to become a highly successful timber merchant with business links in Britain, Europe, and the United States. At a time when European companies dominated trade, he built his own firm, George Grant & Company, owned shipping vessels, and opened offices in London, Liverpool, and Hamburg. Yet, despite his wealth, Paa Grant lived simply and felt most comfortable among ordinary workers in forest towns like Dunkwa and Sefwi-Wiawso.
Through his business dealings, Paa Grant saw firsthand the injustices and discrimination Africans suffered under colonial rule. This experience pushed him beyond commerce into political activism.
In 1947, Paa Grant took a historic step. He invited leading intellectuals and professionals such as J. B. Danquah, Edward Akufo-Addo, Obetsebi-Lamptey, and others to meet at Saltpond. Out of that meeting was born the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) Ghana’s first nationalist political party with Paa Grant as its founder and first president.
When a young activist named Kwame Nkrumah was recommended to serve as UGCC Secretary-General, it was Paa Grant who paid Nkrumah’s £100 boat fare from Liverpool to the Gold Coast so he could return home and join the struggle.
History would later see Nkrumah break away to form the Convention People’s Party (CPP), but the seed had already been planted by Paa Grant.
In a touching twist of fate, Nkrumah visited Paa Grant two days before his death in Axim on 30 October 1956, just months before Ghana achieved independence.
Today, a flyover at Caprice in Accra bears his name, and his legacy lives on not just in monuments, but in the very political system that birthed Ghana’s freedom.
🇬🇭 Paa Grant may not always be mentioned first, but without him, Ghana’s independence story would be incomplete.
