The monument combined the symbolism of an obelisk and a sword turned towards the ground, with a portrait representation of the president. The vertical, tapering form in white marble was topped by a huge simplified bust of Nkrumah, made of black marble. The head on the elongated neck and shoulders of the president took the shape of a sword handle. One of the most sensational commissions received by Polish artists in the 20th century, however, is part of a sequence of works they carried out in post-colonial countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Ślesińska was invited quite unexpectedly to create a monumental statue of the first president of independent Ghana. She had previously been offered collaborations in Brazil, among other places, and had exhibited in Paris and the USA, when she was approached at the end of 1963 with a commission from Africa and an invitation to come to Accra. She was there for almost the whole of 1964, working personally on scaffolding with local workers to realise the monument, while also presenting urban designs for the Ghanaian capital (unspecified). These supposedly gained the approval of the authorities, but were never realised.

The artist mythologised her African sojourn and the scale of her success; many details about this period remain unclear. The colossal statue, of a form unique in Slesinska's oeuvre and of foundational importance to the young state, was ceremonially unveiled by the president himself, but there were claims in the local press that it was unsuccessful. Like other symbols of Nkrumah's authoritarian rule, it was destroyed after 1966, when the president was overthrown in a military coup. For Slesina, it was to be 'the first monument to a black man on the African continent, it's like a symbol of the free African' (words from an interview in 1965). The symbolism of the upturned sword also appears in the new monument-mausoleum of Nkrumah in Accra, erected in the 1990s.