National Congress of British West Africa

The National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA), founded in 1920, was one of the earliest nationalist organizations in West Africa, and one of the earliest formal organizations working toward African emancipation. It was largely composed of an educated elite in the Gold Coast, who felt under threat from the incorporation of 'traditional authorities' in the colonial system. The cofounders included Thomas Hutton-Mills, Sr., the first President, and J. E. Casely Hayford, the first Vice-President. Other co-founders and early officials included Edward Francis Small, F. V. Nanka-Bruce, A. B. Quartey-Papafio, Henry van Hien, A. Sawyerr and Kobina Sekyi.

The idea of creating the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) was first conceived in 1914 during a conversation “between J.E. Casely Hayford, a barrister from the Gold Coast” and “Dr. Akinwande Savage, a Nigerian doctor”. Part of the inspiration for the creation of the NCBWA in the 1920s was growing concern that larger pan-African movements of the era were too broad in their scope and did not adequately address the concerns of West Africans. It was this desire to have a more consolidated scope for the development of nationalist aims that, in part, sparked the creation of the NCBWA in 1920.

The founding of the NCBWA was based on the existing legacy of resistance and nationalist movements throughout the colonies in British West Africa. Some of the resistance movements that influenced the development of the NCBWA were those by “King Aggrey of Cape Coast in the Gold Coast in the 1860s” and “King Kosoko of Lagos & Jaja of Opobo in the nineteen century”. The previous nationalist movements that sparked the creation of the NCBWA included the Gold Coast Aborigines' Rights Protection Society (ARPS) and the Fante Confederation. The NCBWA was influenced not only by nationalist movements in the region but also by the works of key African nationalist scholars in the region, such as Dr. Africanus Beale Horton, Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden, and John Payne Jackson.

...
Wikipedia