Africa Must Unite Revisited: Continuity and Change in the Case for Continental Unification (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
Abstract: This dissertation has made an attempt to interrogate the centripetal and centrifugal forces imbedded in African unity, which spans six decades and more. This study used the ideology of Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance alongside the theories of regional integration to examine how the debates on the quest for African unity have evolved over a period of sixty years. The author divided the evolution of the quest for African unity into three phases: the first phase involves the early 1900s, which was marked by the formation of the Pan-African Congresses, however, this was to set a background history of Africa’s quest for unity. It further maintained that the transplantation of Pan-Africanism from the African diaspora to Africa represented the first phase, which came to an end when the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was established in 1963 ushering in the second phase in the quest for African unity. The transformation of the OAU into the African Union (AU) in 2002 mar...
FORGING AFRICAN UNITY IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD: A CHALLENGE FOR POSTCOLONIAL NATION-BUILDING
The paper examines the dilemma of African unity against the background of the multiplicity of political interests and agenda. It examines this in the contest of the African Union and it sub-regional groupings and in relation to external political interests such as donors, multi-laterals and bilaterals. It argues that the ongoing unity efforts have been simplified and enmeshed in a return to a tradition that from the onset had not understood the complexities of the continent and its history. It shows that issues of statism, ethnicity, linguistics and colonialism, which confront modern African states today, can only be understood within the context of history and the lived realities of the peoples caught in its tracks. Hence, such political talk needs to be informed and shaped by the radical ideological framings of the nationalist, early post-colonial era and the projects of Conscienticization, Ujaama and Harambee. Such efforts, in West and East Africa, blended African traditionalism with modernism to rebuild the fragmented and distorted communities that Africa's colonization had created. It concludes on a critical pan-africanist stance that unless, the current crop of African leaders extricate themselves of their colonial binds ushered in through globalization and embrace a critical postcolonial framework in ongoing nation-building efforts, the unity talks would be in vain.
This book examines Ghana’s Pan-African foreign policy during Nkrumah’s rule, investigating how Ghanaians sought to influence the ideologies of African liberation movements through the Bureau of African Affairs, the African Affairs Centre and the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute. In a world of competing ideologies, when African nationalism was taking shape through trial and error, Nkrumah offered Nkrumaism as a truly African answer to colonialism, neo-colonialism and the rapacity of the Cold War powers. Although virtually no liberation movement followed the precepts of Nkrumaism to the letter, many adapted the principles and organizational methods learnt in Ghana to their own struggles. Drawing upon a significant set of primary sources and on oral testimonies from Ghanaian civil servants, politicians and diplomats as well as African freedom fighters, this book offers new angles for understanding the history of the Cold War, national liberation and nation-building in Africa.
Africa Must Unite: Vindicating Kwame Nkrumah and Uniting Africa against Global Destruction;
Over fifty years ago the prophetic Kwame Nkrumah called for and wrote a book titled Africa Must Unite. Many self-seeking African leaders described him as a dreamer of impossibility. A few decades after his clarion call, some European countries created the European Union (EU) for their greater unity, collective benefit and for providing global leadership. Since then, American and Asian states have also come together, challenges notwithstanding. Africa is yet to make any meaningful progress towards a union government in spite of public acknowledgement of this need by some of its leaders. The foot-dragging approach in the unification of Africa has given rise to rapid westernisation in the guise of globalisation to 'squeeze the hell' out of the continent in virtually all domains of existence. In the midst of these aggressive efforts, Nkrumah's visionary appeal is more pertinent and imperative today in the face of a weak African socioeconomic and political base. The time to unite is now and there is excuse for continuous rhetoric. This paper examines the salience of Kwame Nkrumah's clarion call for a United Africa and why this should be embraced forthwith by the astute leadership and people of Africa, on the continent and in the Diaspora.
2017
The article describes the Bureau of African Affairs Collection. First it introduces the history of the archive by examining the crucial events that influenced its state and accessibility. Then, it describes the contents of the collection, underlying its importance for the study of Kwame Nkrumah’s domestic and foreign policies and African nationalism at a continental level. The documents included in the Bureau of African Affairs Collection provide unique insights into both Nkrumah’s foreign and domestic policies. In particular, they include invaluable information on his Pan-African policy. Moreover, the documents shed new light on the presence of African liberation movements in Ghana in the period 1957 to 1966. Thus, this Collection can attract scholars interested in both Ghanaian history as well as the history of Pan-Africanism and African nationalism at a continental level.
AFRICAN UNIFICATION: MYTHS AND REALITIES
University of ZImbabwe, 2014
Most commentary on African politics, insists that African unification cannot be realised, that it has been attempted in the past, that the heterogeneous nature of the continent is a major hurdle, and that independent countries will not give up their sovereignty to such a project. This paper, however, argues that the story is not simply one of collapse and catastrophe; it is much more nuanced and complex, with a possibility for successes as well as failure. The paper provides a summary of some of the key findings from my research based on conferences held and being held across the continent stressing the need for boosting internal trade, different literature on federalism and the theories of federal government. A discussion of various forms of federal governments and concrete examples of existing forms of federal government’s will help clarify the notion of African unification. An emerging group of regional bodies coming together ‟is identified, which are producing, investing and accumulating and boosting internal trade. This has important implications both economically and politically for the future, as the final section on policy challenges will discuss.
Road to Ghana: Nkrumah, Southern Africa, and the Eclipse of a Decolonizing Africa
Kronos: Southern African Histories, 2011
in establishing an anti-colonial policy that spoke both to the unique settler situation in the region and the heightening international tensions of the emergent Cold War -a transnational dialogue to which the Nkrumah administration was not always receptive. As such, this article argues that the southern African presence in Accra and the realities of settler rule in the region challenged Nkrumah's and others' faith in the 'Ghanaian' model of decolonization, thus leading to a radicalization of African anti-colonial politics in Ghana during the early and mid-1960s as Nkrumah and his allies faced the prospect of the continent's 'failed' decolonization.
Pan-Africanism or Imperialism? Unity and Struggle towards a New Democratic Africa
2006
I am honoured and humbled by your invitation to deliver the Second Billy Dudley Memorial Lecture. Memorial lectures are no doubt occasions for us to celebrate the lives of our colleagues and comrades and learn from their contributions to the causes that we hold dear. I take it that they are also an occasion to reflect critically on our intellectual discourses and what they mean for the societies we live in. So I wish to take this opportunity to reflect with you on one of the most important of such discourses African Nationalism.