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Biography
Bankole Awoonor Renner (1898 – 27 May 1970) was a Ghanaian politician, journalist, anti-colonialist and Pan-Africanist. Considered to be the first Black African to study in the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1927. Awoonor-Renner was also the first African to be accredited to the Institute of Journalists in London, becoming editor of the Gold Coast Leader.
He founded the West African Youth League alongside I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson.
A convert to Islam in 1942, he won a seat on the Accra city council as part of the Moslem Party.
In 1945 he attended the fifth Pan-African Congress, in Manchester, representing the Friends of African Freedom Society.
Initially a colleague of Kwame Nkrumah, he helped Ghana's first president found the Convention People's Party (CPP) being imprisoned alongside him in 1950. Later he broke with Nkrumah and established the Moslem Association Party.
Following the prohibition of political pluralism in the 1960s, Awoonor-Renner retired from politics, dying in poverty.