This collection of essays analyzes different iterations of African unity, exploring the political and cultural visions that informed projects aimed at African unification. It explores the cultural, economic and non-state aspects of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) as the principal institution dedicated to the cooperation of African states, from its establishment in 1963 to its transformation into the African Union (AU) in 2000, as well as how ideas of African unity shaped the Cold War and African liberation struggles. Bringing together contributors from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds across Africa, Europe and the US, this book investigates the ideological origins and historiography of Pan-African and unification projects, and considers how African intellectuals, leaders and populations engaged with these ideas.
Increasingly marginalized since the end of the Cold War, the continent of Africa is struggling to identify both the root causes and possible solutions to the maladies that continue to plague it. The problems read like a laundry list of misrule in the aftermath of decolonization: rampant political corruption, internecine wars, widespread disease, underdevelopment, and economic collapse. In the early 1990s, a group of statesmen, academics, and civil leaders from all over Africa gathered to put together a comprehensive plan to make the continent become less dependent on the rest of the world and prepare it to compete in the new globalizing economy. Those who gathered to write what would come to be known as the Kampala Document envisioned an organization which would succeed where the Organization for African Unity (OAU) had failed. This new organization, the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA), will provide a forum for discussion of democratization, security issues, and sustainable development. This new book by noted scholars Francis Deng and I. William Zartman provides a "mid-course" appraisal of the progress of the CSSDCA, as well as charting its future in relation to other regional organizations. With a preface by President Olusegun Obasanjo, this book will undoubtedly become an important tool in understanding Africa's present and future. Francis Deng is a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution. His books include Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement (Brookings, 1998, with Roberta Cohen), The Forsaken People: Case Studies of the Internally Displaced (Brookings, 1998, co-edited with Roberta Cohen). I. William Zartman is Jacob Blaustein Professor of International Organizations and Conflict Resolution and Director of African Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
This book is a compilation of selected papers presented during the 8th Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) Young Graduates and Scholars (AYGS) Conference held at the University of Johannesburg in the year 2014. The three-day conference dubbed, Africa at a Crossroads: Future prospects for Africa after 50 years of the Organisation of African Unity/African Union, voiced young graduates and scholars’ views on Africa’s future and developmental breakthroughs, as well as its challenges and opportunities. While the annual conference is a capacity building platform for young scientists, it provided a platform for participants to engage in critical dialogue about the African realities and possible, plausible and desirable future for the continent. The book thus provides a critical interrogation of the drivers of change in Africa moving forward, especially as the AU was busy churning out new ideas and mapping out a new vision for the next 50 years. Essentially the book provides insights on national systems of innovation, matrices on poverty, climate change and lastly a reflection on Africa’s position in global governance.
This collection of essays analyzes different iterations of African unity, exploring the political and cultural visions that informed projects aimed at African unification. It explores the cultural, economic and non-state aspects of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) as the principal institution dedicated to the cooperation of African states, from its establishment in 1963 to its transformation into the African Union (AU) in 2000, as well as how ideas of African unity shaped the Cold War and African liberation struggles. Bringing together contributors from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds across Africa, Europe and the US, this book investigates the ideological origins and historiography of Pan-African and unification projects, and considers how African intellectuals, leaders and populations engaged with these ideas.--
Does Africa have a future? What are the visions, hopes, ambitions and fears of young Africans for the future of the world, the continent, their nation, and their communities? How do they envision this world and their roles within it? These issues have not previously been explored collectively by Africans because of the enormous challenges and the preoccupation with the present. But Africa must not allow the enormity of the problems to blind it to its past and future. Africa must chart its own vision of a desirable future, and therefore young Africans, born just before or after independence, were challenged to reflect on the future of the continent. This book presents the response to that challenge. In this book, the voices of a new generation of Africa are heard exploring the future from personal and diverse perspectives. The authors have enumerated the ills of Africa, analyzed the problems and explored the opportunities. Remarkably, despite the daunting nature of the challenges, they were all hopeful about the future. They provided their visions of the future, suggest numerous ideas on how to build a new Africa, and implored Africans to take responsibility for the transformation of the continent. Given the current emphasis on African renaissance and union, the ideas presented here could become the basis for a truly shared vision for the continent.
In 1957 Ghana became one of the first sub-Saharan African nations to gain independence from colonial rule. Over the next decade, hundreds of African Americans--including Martin Luther King Jr., George Padmore, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, Pauli Murray, and Muhammad Ali--visited or settled in Ghana. Kevin K. Gaines explains what attracted these Americans to Ghana and how their new community was shaped by the convergence of the Cold War, the rise of the U.S. civil rights movement, and the decolonization of Africa. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's president, posed a direct challenge to U.S. hegemony by promoting a vision of African liberation, continental unity, and West Indian federation. Although the number of African American expatriates in Ghana was small, in espousing a transnational American citizenship defined by solidarities with African peoples, these activists along with their allies in the United States waged a fundamental, if largely forgotten, struggle over the meaning and content of the cornerstone of American citizenship--the right to vote--conferred on African Americans by civil rights reform legislation.
In this book, Lansine Kaba describes some of the epic phases of Kwame Nkrumah's struggle for the independence of his country, Ghana, and the unity of his continent, Africa. This work follows the adventures of his dream of African unity, from the years studying across the Atlantic to the Accra Summit in 1965 and the coup d'etat in 1966.
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: The Politics of Independence and Unity combines into one edition for the first time Africa: The Politics of Independence and Africa: The Politics of Unity. With a new introduction by the author, this edition provides some of the earliest and most valuable analysis of African politics during the period when the colonial system began to disintegrate. ø The influential Africa: The Politics of Independence was written as Africa was just realizing independence and still reveling in the optimism it brought. Immanuel Wallerstein was one of the few scholars who had traveled throughout Africa during the collapse of colonial rule. As a result, his interpretive essay captures the dynamism of that period of transformation and adroitly analyzes Africa?s modern political developments during the nascent process of decolonization. Africa: The Politics of Unity, published six years later, examines the African unity movement that arose between 1957 and 1965 and its revolutionary core. It is often considered the first thorough analysis of the postindependence history of Africa.
Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.
