George Padmore Research Library on African Affairs

Overview

The George Padmore Research Library on African Affairs is a public library in the Osu suburb of Accra, Ghana, operating under the Ghana Library Authority. It functions as Ghana's principal legal deposit library and performs many roles of a national library, including compiling the Ghana National Bibliography and administering ISBN, ISSN, and ISMN issuance for Ghanaian publications.

History

The library was conceived by Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, following the 1959 death of George Padmore, a Trinidadian-born pan-Africanist journalist and author (born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse) who had worked closely with Nkrumah since their meeting at the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in October 1945 and who served Nkrumah's government as an adviser on African affairs after moving to Ghana in 1957. The library was established as a memorial to Padmore and built by Nkrumah's government, opening on June 30, 1961, at Ring Way, Osu, in Accra. The Ghana Library Authority supervised the building's construction and was subsequently entrusted with the library's administration. The Ghana ISSN Centre began operating at the library in 1986, and the Ghanaian ISMN Agency was established there in January 1999.

Collections, Holdings, and Publications

The library is organized into two departments: the Africa Collection Department, which houses materials on all African countries alongside George Padmore's personal library, and the Ghana Collection Department, which holds Ghanaian textbooks, newspapers dating to the 1950s, pamphlets, and special collections including files of the Bureau of African Affairs and materials on Kwame Nkrumah. Its archives include cultural, educational, and political campaign materials, pamphlets, journals, and publications from social and anti-racist organizations dating from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Access and Usage

The library is mandated by Ghanaian law to receive two copies of every book published in the country under legal deposit requirements. It is used primarily by university students, scholars, and researchers, and provides computer access for online research.