At the 2002 G-8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, South Africa's Thabo Mbeki will launch the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). Part of the plan is to set up a peer review, whereby African governments can be criticized in order to strengthen the continents leadership. New Globalist contributor Nicholas Thompson examines Ghana's African leadership -- past and present.

On March 7, 1957, the day after Ghana became the first Sub-Saharan nation to win its independence, founding president Kwame Nkrumah sent a letter to his former colonial ruler Queen Elizabeth the second.

A letter to the Queen

Ebullient, but also gracious, the letter contained an ominous warning.

"If we can make a success of our endeavors, it will be demonstrated to the world that a former African colonial territory is as able and capable of conducting its own affairs as any country in the world. This will be an event of tremendous significance," wrote Nkrumah.

"If on the other hand we fail, then we shall have gravely harmed all those millions in Africa who put their trust in us and looked to Ghana to prove that African people can build a state of their own."

Nkrumah concluded the letter with a quote from Edmund Burke, "We are on a conspicuous stage and the world marks our demeanor."

A bright future

That wasn't just pomp. At the time, Ghana's economy was growing -- and it was already the richest country in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ghana produced more cocoa than anyone else in the world and was one of the prime cash cows of the British Empire. Nkrumah was the continent's most charismatic and respected leader, and the future looked bright.

For a short while, Ghana did succeed and prove worthy of its position and aspirations. It set an example that helped its neighbors win their independence much faster than anyone thought -- and Nkrumah drew in international investment and aid that helped the country at least appear to grow.

Leader in failure

But ultimately, as we now know, things fell apart -- and Ghana was soon a leader in failure.

The giant development projects sucked the economy dry. Cocoa rotted in the ill-advised silos Nkrumah had built trying to develop a chocolate-export industry.

The one-time charismatic leader grew harsh, stifled dissent and required that people called him "Osagyefo", the redeemer.

Hitting rock bottom

That pattern became all too common in Africa, and the result was what's now a tragically familiar one too. In 1966, Nkrumah was ousted in one of Africa's first coups. Chaos reigned as coup followed coup for a decade and then seemed to hit a nadir.

In 1979, a flight-lieutenant-turned-president named Jerry Rawlings lined up three of the preceding heads of state and shot them -- an action shocking even by African standards.

But as many of Ghana's neighbors would demonstrate later -- and some are still doing today -- you can hit rock bottom and still start digging again.

A change of fortune

By the early 1980s, Ghana was again on a conspicuous stage, emerging as one of the world's first "failed states." The economy bottomed out, people starved on the streets, and the government lost so much authority that villagers began stoning officials who showed up to do basic population registration.

But unlike so many of its neighbors who followed it into the abyss, Ghana recovered. It became a case study in success for World Bank structural adjustment and the economy began to grow again in the early 90s.

Then in 2000, it became a leader once again -- holding a free and fair election in which power actually transferred peacefully from one party to another, pulling the presidency away from Jerry Rawlings' handpicked successor.

Africa's Silicon Valley

Now Ghana is becoming a leader in perhaps the most promising way since Nkrumah announced his nation's independence: becoming Africa's Silicon Valley, albeit with an erratic power supply and goats in the street.

Accra is now the most wired place south of Cairo and north of Johannesburg. And Ghana has turned into Sub-Saharan Africa's technology center -- just as it was the political center 40 years ago and the center of economic despair 20 years after that.

The busy internet

In 1998, there was one Internet cafe in Ghana's capital of Accra; now there are at least 200. Some are just local garages with dial up modems moving slower than molasses. But others are booming.

One, appropriately called Busy Internet, hosts 100 flat-screen monitors routed online through a speedy satellite. Ghanaians pack the downstairs computers all day and night -- some people just surfing the Web, others managing businesses or making deals to trade key cutting machines with South Korean partners.

Upstairs, companies take advantage of the satellite with offices set up to do everything from e-commerce to processing street tickets for the New York City Police Department.

In downtown Accra, another company called ACS has grown from 20 employees to 850 in the last two years processing American health-insurance claims and sending them back via satellite. It's the largest such business on the continent and, appropriately enough, ACS's offices overlook Ghana's national theater, one of the last remnants of the glorious infrastructure built during Nkrumah's reign.

A move in the right direction

Ghana of course still faces a horrible digital divide. There are more Internet lines in Tokyo after all than in all of Sub-Saharan Africa. But the trend is moving dramatically in the right direction in Ghana, and history teaches that Africa follows wherever Ghana leads.

And that isn't just coincidence. As the Asian economies showed in the 1980s, nothing helps one country succeed like success in a neighboring economy. It creates a market for goods; it spurs competitive instincts; it allows skills and knowledge to transfer.

Ghana -- the leapfrog?

Asia famously set up its pattern of flying geese: Japan leading South Korea and Singapore; those two leading Thailand and the Philippines. Ghana did the same thing in Africa after winning independence. It just led its neighbors to political chaos, not economic growth.

"We can use information technology and the Internet to leapfrog," says Kwame Pianim, CEO of Ghana's New World Investments and one of Ghana's most respected economists. "But if the digital divide is added to all the other divides, then we are sunk."

That may be true of Africa as a whole as well as Ghana. Africa, so far, hasn't been able to get in on the global economic game.

And catching up just becomes harder as the continent falls farther behind technologically and misses out on each step of global economic integration. But, just like 40 years ago, there's some hope coming from that West African nation that always finds itself at Africa's steering wheel.

Once again, Ghana finds itself on a conspicuous stage, and the world should be marking its demeanor.