Kwame Nkrumah was buried three times before he came to rest in Accra

In September 2025, a renovated mausoleum was opened at Nkroful in the Western Region, the hometown of Kwame Nkrumah. People still travel there to see his tomb. But Ghana's first president has not lain there since 1992. Nkroful was his second grave, and there was a third.

Exile

In February 1966, Nkrumah was in Beijing on his way to Vietnam when soldiers took power in Ghana. In Accra, the head was knocked off his statue. He never returned to Ghana alive.

He went to Guinea, where his friend President Sékou Touré made him co-president. He later fell ill with cancer, and in 1971 he was flown to Bucharest, Romania, for treatment. He died there on 27 April 1972.

Grave one: Conakry

By then, Ghana had a new military government under Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, who wanted Nkrumah brought home for a proper burial. Touré refused at first. He was still angry about the coup, and he set conditions: a tomb for Nkrumah in front of Parliament, and his old officials given back their jobs. Ghana said no.

Guinea gave Nkrumah a state funeral in Conakry and buried him there.

Grave two: Nkroful

In Nkroful, his mother, Elizabeth Nyanibah, was waiting for her son to come home. She was very old and had lost her sight. Other West African leaders, Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria, William Tolbert of Liberia and Siaka Stevens of Sierra Leone, pressed Touré to release the body.

On 7 July 1972, a plane from Guinea landed in Accra carrying Nkrumah in a glass casket. Two days later, on 9 July, he was buried in Nkroful, the town where he was born.

Grave three: the Polo Grounds

He stayed in Nkroful for 20 years. On 1 July 1992, his remains were exhumed and reburied with state honours at a new mausoleum on the old Polo Grounds in Accra. It is the ground where he declared independence in 1957.

In 2007, his wife, Fathia Nkrumah, who died in Cairo on 31 May that year, was brought to Accra and laid to rest beside him.