Pan-Africanism

An anti-colonial movement rooted in the diaspora

Pan-Africanism is a movement that seeks to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous peoples of Africa and all peoples of African descent. The shared experience of slavery and racial oppression, and the Haitian Revolution in particular, produced an intercontinental pro-African political movement in the late nineteenth century that aimed to unite disparate campaigns against oppression. It was diasporic Africans' removal from the continent that enabled them to view it as a whole. The First Pan-African Conference, held in London in 1900, protested against the stealing of lands in the colonies and racial discrimination, and is widely regarded as the beginning of twentieth-century Pan-Africanism.

The congress series and decolonisation

The Pan-African Congress series led by W. E. B. Du Bois followed: Paris (1919), London (1921 and 1923) and New York (1927). These congresses drew in colonial and diaspora organisations such as the National Congress of British West Africa, the West African Students' Union and the World League for the Defence of the Negro Race. The Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester (1945) brought together anti-colonial activists from the continent and the diaspora and put the decolonisation of Africa at the top of the agenda; Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Nnamdi Azikiwe (Nigeria) and Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya) spoke there. Women such as Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey helped organise the congress and played a crucial role in it.

Unity after independence and the split

With Ghana's independence in 1957, Nkrumah emerged as a major advocate of African unity, and the 1958 All-African Peoples' Conference in Accra espoused a common anti-imperialist African identity spanning both the Arabic states and black Africa. The conference also marked a foreign policy of non-alignment between the US and the USSR, grounded in the Bandung Declaration. At the second conference in 1960, however, Nkrumah's call for political and economic union gained little agreement, and two rival factions emerged: the Casablanca Bloc and the Brazzaville Bloc. Most newly independent states opposed a politically unified Africa because they regarded it as a threat to their national sovereignty.

Institutionalisation and after

In 1963, 32 African states meeting in Addis Ababa established the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which institutionalised Pan-Africanism and was later succeeded by the African Union (AU). The OAU Charter defined a coordinated effort to raise living standards and defend member states' sovereignty, and the African Liberation Committee was formed at the summit. After Nkrumah's death in 1972, Muammar Gaddafi became the most outspoken advocate of African unity. It was not until the Seventh Pan-African Congress in Uganda in 1994 that women's issues were specifically addressed.

Assessment and limits

Pan-Africanism has pursued the historical and political solidarity of the peoples of the continent and the diaspora, and the African Union continues to advance economic and political integration, including a continental free trade area and freer movement across the continent. At the same time, the movement has been criticised as a movement of the African educated bourgeois elite; most newly independent states opposed political unification; and leaders such as Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe have been accused of severe human rights violations while using Pan-Africanist rhetoric to legitimise their authority. Julius Nyerere called the OAU a "committee of dictators" that does not protect the rights of Africans. Inconsistent treaty implementation and continued involvement by foreign superpowers remain obstacles to integration.