President Ghana
Description of Work:
After a distinguished academic career, Limann Hilla settled for a modest diplomatic post as Ghana's representative in Switzerland. A little-known figure even inside his own country, he emerged in 1979 as the leader of the People's National Party, which won the June elections held shortly after Flight Lieut. Jerry John Rawlings and his Armed Forces Revolutionary Council had ousted the previous military government. Limann was inaugurated as president on September 24, ending nearly eight years of military rule. Though strongly influenced as a young man by Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and still describing himself as a Nkrumahist, he espoused policies after coming to office that showed him to be moderate rather than militant in his economic ideas. Like Nkrumah, however, he was an ardent pan-African. In his inaugural address he showed himself to be a strong advocate of political tolerance, praising both Nkrumah and those who had been his bitterest critics during the earlier years of Ghana's independence. Limann established his first priorities as restoring Ghana's economic fortunes and, in his own words, to "cleanse" the country's public life. "Mine is a vision," he said, "of Ghana in which the majority of our people shall not be reduced to grinding poverty again." In 1981, however, Rawlings staged another coup and unseated Limann. When Limann ran for president again in 1992, he lost to Rawlings.
Limann Hilla came from the less developed northern part of Ghana. Its people, like his own family, were mostly poor peasant farmers, or they performed menial tasks in the cities. But Limann himself was one of the best-educated men in the country.