Book Review: Know the Enemy: Nkrumah, Imperialism and the Unfinished Question of African Liberation

From colonial domination to neo-colonial dependence: lessons from Kwame Nkrumah’s ‘Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare‘

In World, 09/21/2026

The question of liberation cannot be separated from the question of power: who controls political institutions and the economy, determines development, and decides whose interests the state protects or sacrifices?

The questions of power and liberation stand at the centre of Kwame Nkrumah’s Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, particularly its opening chapter, “The World Strategy of Imperialism.” Written in 1968, when much of Africa had formally achieved independence but colonial domination persisted in new forms, the book sought to understand how imperialist power was changing. Nkrumah’s starting point was deceptively simple: know the enemy.

For him, liberation could not be reduced to the transfer of flags, the Africanisation of government offices, or the creation of formally independent states. The deeper issue was whether political independence transformed the economic and social relations inherited from colonialism. Imperialism could change its form without abandoning its essential objective: colonial rule could give way to states that were formally sovereign while remaining economically and politically subordinate to international capital. This was the problem Nkrumah called neo-colonialism.

Colonialism changes its form

Anti-colonial movements destroyed formal colonial rule across much of Africa, but Nkrumah warned against confusing the end of colonial administration with the end of colonial domination. His famous formulation was that a neo-colonial state could be “independent de jure and dependent de facto.” Such a state possesses the formal attributes of sovereignty while decisive economic power remains connected to international finance capital and external interests.

Political independence answers the question of who formally governs. Economic independence asks who controls production, investment, resources and the direction of development. Nkrumah insisted that these questions could not be separated. The colonial governor could leave while economic dependence remained; the colonial flag could disappear while accumulation stayed externally oriented; and an African government could replace colonial administration without transforming the underlying political economy.

The form had changed. The struggle over power had not.

From national imperialism to “collective imperialism”

Nkrumah also examined the international restructuring of capitalism after the Second World War. He argued that competing national imperialisms were increasingly supplemented by “collective imperialism,” with the United States occupying a leading position. This configuration operated through international financial institutions, military alliances, economic arrangements and political mechanisms that projected the interests of advanced capitalist states beyond their own territories.

Newly independent African states therefore entered an international system already structured by unequal relations between industrialised capitalist centres and formerly colonised societies. Political independence existed alongside profound economic inequality, which is why Nkrumah understood the African liberation question as extending beyond individual national borders.

“Sham independence” and the politics of division

One of Chapter One’s strongest arguments concerns “sham independence.” Nkrumah describes a process in which selected local political actors are elevated into formal authority without transforming the political and economic structure. “Good” indigenous elements may be incorporated into administration, followed by elections and governments that possess the appearance of independence while remaining constrained by inherited relationships.

This was Nkrumah’s historical interpretation of decolonisation, not a universal description of every African independence movement. Yet the conceptual question remains vital: What exactly changes when political sovereignty changes hands? If only the occupants of government offices change, political independence may coexist with economic continuity. Genuine liberation therefore required national reconstruction, popular participation and transformation of the structures through which external domination reproduced itself.

Nkrumah linked this problem to political fragmentation. In discussing African unity, he examined debates from the late 1950s and early 1960s, contrasting continental political unity with looser cooperation and separate foreign policies. Following Ghana’s independence in 1957, the Accra Conference of Independent African States and the All-African Peoples’ Conference in 1958, followed by debates at Sanniquellie in 1959 and Addis Ababa in 1960, represented important efforts toward coordination.

Nkrumah believed fragmentation increased imperial powers’ diplomatic influence and weakened collective resistance. Pan-Africanism was therefore not merely a cultural sentiment but a strategy connected to sovereignty, economic development, political security and the capacity of African peoples to determine their future.

The battle is also ideological

Nkrumah’s discussion of propaganda and psychological warfare remains among the chapter’s most contemporary-feeling sections. Domination, he argued, operates through ideas as well as military and economic power. Colonised populations can be taught to regard their institutions as incapable of functioning without external supervision, foreign models as inherently superior, and indigenous political projects as irrational or dangerous.

He identified broadcasting, publications, cultural institutions, films and other communications as instruments for shaping political consciousness, specifically discussing organisations such as the BBC and Voice of America within the Cold War context. The historical forms have changed, but the broader proposition remains important:

Power operates not only through what people are forced to do, but also through what people are persuaded to believe is possible.

If people become convinced that they cannot govern themselves, transform their economies or determine their political destiny, domination can reproduce itself without permanent direct coercion. Political education was therefore part of the struggle over power.

The economic question cannot be postponed

Nkrumah repeatedly returned to the relationship between politics and economics. One of his most striking formulations is:

“Military strategy presupposes political aims. All military problems are political, and all political problems are economic.”

The quotation reflects the wider argument of the book: political institutions cannot be understood apart from material interests. Who owns productive resources, controls investment, benefits from economic policy, bears the cost of crisis and determines development? These are political questions because they concern the distribution of power, and economic questions because they concern the organisation of production and distribution.

For Nkrumah, liberation therefore had to move beyond political sovereignty toward the transformation of African societies’ material conditions.

Independence as a beginning, not an end

This leads to a central proposition of Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare:

“Independence must never be considered as an end in itself but as a stage, the very first stage of the people’s revolutionary struggle.”

Independence was necessary but insufficient. The anti-colonial movement had to confront what kind of society would be built after colonial rule. For Nkrumah, the answer was connected to socialism, Pan-Africanism and the economic emancipation of the African masses. The publisher’s note describes the book as an analysis of a new phase of the African Revolution and records proposals for anti-imperialist coordination on a continental scale.

The struggle thus moves from “Who rules?” to “In whose interests is society organised?” That is fundamentally a class question.

The “enemy within”

Nkrumah’s analysis does not treat imperial domination as exclusively external. Neo-colonialism can operate through internal political forces that reproduce external interests. This does not mean classifying every African politician, civil servant, businessperson or party as an imperial agent; such an approach would reduce complex political economy to conspiracy.

His stronger point is that social groups possess different economic and political interests, making the state an arena of class struggle. External power can interact with these internal contradictions. The relevant question is therefore not merely whether a government is African, but which social forces exercise power through the state and toward what economic objectives.

This explains Nkrumah’s emphasis on vigilance, political organisation and the relationship between leadership and the masses.

Reading Nkrumah beyond 1968

Nkrumah wrote in a specific historical moment: the Cold War was underway, colonial rule persisted in parts of Africa, armed liberation struggles continued in southern Africa and elsewhere, and international politics was marked by intense ideological competition. His categories should not be transferred mechanically into the twenty-first century.

But historical analysis does not require abandoning older concepts. It requires asking which questions remain useful:

How does external domination reproduce itself after formal colonial rule has ended?

How do international economic structures interact with domestic class interests?

What does genuine political and economic sovereignty require?

These questions offer a starting point for analysing Africa’s unfinished liberation project without pretending that the continent of 2026 is identical to the one Nkrumah confronted in 1968.

Know the enemy — and know the society

The greatest lesson of Chapter One may be contained in its title. To “know the enemy” does not mean identifying only a foreign power. It means understanding the structure of power: imperialism as an economic and political system, the interaction between international capital and states, the relationship between external interests and internal classes, propaganda and ideology as dimensions of struggle, and the way political fragmentation weakens collective bargaining power.

Above all, it means refusing to confuse formal sovereignty with substantive emancipation.

Nkrumah argued that colonialism could transform itself, and liberation therefore had to transform itself as well. The first struggle challenged direct colonial rule; the next asked whether newly independent societies could transform inherited economic structures and establish political power capable of serving the majority. Independence was not the conclusion of the African liberation project. For him, it was the beginning.

Conclusion: The unfinished question of liberation

More than half a century after Nkrumah wrote Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, his political vocabulary remains part of the intellectual history of African liberation. The proper way to read him is neither to treat his 1968 analysis as a complete explanation of every contemporary problem nor to dismiss it as merely a Cold War document. The task is to study it critically.

His concept of neo-colonialism distinguishes formal sovereignty from material power. His concept of collective imperialism directs attention toward international structures rather than isolated national actors. His discussion of propaganda shows that domination operates through consciousness as well as institutions. His Pan-Africanism challenges the assumption that African states must confront global power only as fragmented national units. And his insistence that independence was only the “very first stage” of the people’s revolutionary struggle asks what liberation means beyond a national flag and a seat at the United Nations.

The most important lesson of “Know the Enemy” is methodological. Before declaring a society free, we must ask how power works within it. Before celebrating sovereignty, we must examine its material basis. Before analysing institutions, we must examine the social forces behind them. And before speaking of liberation, we must define what the liberation of the majority requires.

Nkrumah’s challenge was not simply to identify an external enemy but to develop the political intelligence necessary to understand the entire structure of domination.

To know the enemy is to understand the system.
To understand the system is to understand power.
And to understand power is the beginning of any serious discussion of liberation.