2 - A Missing African Peace? West Africans, Anti-War Activism and the Global Peace Movement (1928-1964)

Abstract: In the early 1960s, Ghanaians protested against the testing of nuclear weapons in the Sahara. Local protests were held by womens' and students' organisations and Ghanaian activists, together with Western pacifists, tried to infiltrate the test site to stop the tests from happening. This wave of protests is maybe the most well known example of peace activism in West Africa. In this paper, I will present the first findings of my PhD research, which aims to uncover the roots of peace activism in West-Africa. It takes us from interwar Pan-Africanist discussions about the link between peace and colonialism, to the activity of members of the Rassemblement Democratique Africain in the Partisans de la Paix movement, to the fight against nuclear imperialism in early post-colonial Ghana. I interrogate the meaning of 'peace' for West-African activists in global peace movements and how this changed in the process of decolonisation.