Frederick Victor Bruce, the son of Alexander Bruce, an Accra merchant, and Christiana Reindorf, was the scion of two prominent Georgia families. His father was a descendant of a prominent Georgia trader Robert William Wallace Bruce, while his mother was a relative of the Basel Mission catechist Carl Christian Reindorf.
University of Edinburgh.
Honorary He was the third African to practise medicine in the colony, after Benjamin Quartey-Papafio and Ernest James Hayford. The Bruces were from James Town or British Accra, while the Reindorfs were from Danish Accra or Osu. Bruce appended "Nanka" in honour of his ancestor, Robert William Wallace Bruce, who was also known as Nii Nanka.
Nanka-Bruce was educated at the Government School in Accra and at the Wesleyan Boys" High School in Lagos.
In 1901 he travelled to study medicine at Edinburgh University. Gaining his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery in 1906, he worked at the London Hospital before returning to Accra in 1907.
Nanka-Bruce built up a private medical practice in Accra, and was a government adviser on public health. In 1918 he founded The Gold Coast Independent newspaper.
He was awarded the O.B.E. in 1935.
His descendants still live in Accra and include the Ghanaian disc jockey William Nanka-Bruce.
After an apprenticeship to a dispenser in Accra, he was a member of the 1900 Kumasi Expedition - besieged in Kumasi Fort with the Governor, Frederick Hodgson, until the expedition managed to break through the Ashanti lines to the coast. He was a member of the Legislative Council, representing the Accra Ratepayers Association, from 1931 to 1935 and again from 1946 to 1950.
