"At long last, the battle has ended! And thus Ghana, your beloved country, is free forever! And yet again I want to take the opportunity to thank the chiefs and people of this country, the youth, the farmers, the women, who have so nobly fought and won this battle. Also I want to thank the valiant ex-service men who have so co-operated and who have fought so bravely to win this battle. And then to cap it all, we have won the battle... We are going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations, that black men are capable of managing their own affairs."

Kwame Nkrumah, independence speech, Accra, Ghana, 6 March 1957. Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) became the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from European colonial rule.