Ghana, Pan-Africanism and the African Union

By Mohamed Boye Jallo-Jamboria.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Pan-Africanism, as a philosophy, is based on the belief that African people share common bonds and objectives and that it advocates unity to achieve these objectives.

In the views of different proponents throughout its history, Pan-Africanism has been conceived in varying ways. It has been applied to all black African people and people of black African descent; to all people on the African continent, including non-black people; or to all states on the African continent.

The formal concept of Pan-Africanism initially developed outside Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It developed as a reaction to the impact of European colonialism in Africa on peoples of African descent.

In the mid-20th century, activists in Africa adopted Pan-Africanism as a rallying cry for independence from colonial rule. Some African Pan-Africanists sought to unite the continent as one independent nation.

From these origins and objectives, Pan-Africanism developed in two basic forms. In one form, known as Continental Pan-Africanism, it advocates the unity of states and peoples within Africa, either through political union or through international cooperation. In its other, broader form, known as Diaspora Pan-Africanism, it relates to solidarity among all black Africans and peoples of black African descent outside the African continent. Developed and interpreted by thinkers, authors, and activists around the world, Pan-Africanism remains a significant force in global politics and thought.

This philosophy had its first root on the African continent in Ghana, the first European experiment of independence granting and the BLACK STAR OF AFRICA. Accra is still the African regional headquarters for the PAN AFRICAN UNION (PANAFU).

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

European contact with sub-Saharan Africa began in the mid-15th century, when the Portuguese established a thriving trade on Africa’s western coast. By the end of the century, in addition to buying items such as pepper, gold, and ivory, the Portuguese were buying increasing numbers of African slaves. The Portuguese were followed by slave traders and colonists from Britain and, later, France.

In the 16th century the expansion of agricultural plantation economies in new European colonies in North and South America and the Caribbean made African slavery exceedingly profitable. European demand for African slaves increased, and more and more Africans were enslaved by West and Central African slave traders and taken from Africa.

Early European trade in Africa was accompanied from its very beginning by European attempts to seize territory from African states in order to secure control of the sources of the goods they were purchasing. After conquering territory, European colonialists set out to control the African population for use as inexpensive labour in plantations, mines, and other flourishing businesses established in the African colonies. In this way, the first contacts of European traders with Africa marked the beginning of European domination of African peoples.

Colonialism systematically degraded Africans, both slaves and residents of Europe’s African colonies. Slaves laboured under cruel and dehumanizing conditions for no pay or extremely low wages. Furthermore, these slaves were scattered in far-flung European colonies, separated from their African homes and relatives. From the mid-15th century to the late 19th century, an estimated 6 percent of Africans in the slave trade were taken to the British territory that became the United States; 17 percent were sent to Spanish territory in North and South America; 40 percent to European-held islands in the Caribbean Sea; and 38 percent to Portuguese territory in South America.

This dispersion of African peoples is known as the African Diaspora. The term Diaspora also refers to these dispersed peoples’ descendents, who largely compose the present-day population of people of African descent outside of Africa.

Africans in the African colonies were indoctrinated with the notion of the inherent supremacy of European culture through everyday interaction with Europeans and through the few colonial schools Europeans established. The political systems of the indigenous African peoples were transformed, as traditional African rulers were usually forced to act as pawns of the colonial administration.

Colonialism also had a major economic impact on Africans, as agricultural commodities, minerals, and people were usually exported from the African colonies to Europe and the New World rather than being used for the direct benefit of Africans. Roads, bridges, ports, and other facilities were built only to facilitate this export trade.

Slavery and the colonial system were hated by Africans and were institutions that the Pan-African movement arose to combat. Pan-Africanism also developed to overcome the obstacles facing the African Diaspora-a scattered, diverse, and often disadvantaged population of people of African descent. Pan-African thinkers would maintain that, although they were dispersed throughout the world, African people and people of African descent were a unified people and should try to work together for the good of all.

DEVELOPMENT OF PAN-AFRICANISM

Africans resisted European domination from their earliest contacts with Europeans. The record of this resistance is present in the early communications between the rulers of African states and the monarchs of Europe in the 17th century, as well as in the routine physical resistance of Africans to slavery from the beginning of the slave trade.

Modern resistance to colonialism, however, began with the development of a formal Pan-African movement at the dawn of the 20th century.

In 1900 Henry Sylvester Williams, a lawyer from the Caribbean island of Trinidad organized a Pan-African conference in London to give black people the opportunity to discuss issues facing blacks around the world. The conference attracted a small but significant representation of Africans and people of African descent from the Caribbean and the United States, as well as whites from Britain.

The original political objective of the meeting was to protest the unequal treatment of blacks in the British colonies as well as in Britain. However, the speakers also used the forum to make statements about the needs to uphold the dignity of African peoples worldwide and to provide them with education and other social services.

In addition, speakers at the conference celebrated aspects of traditional African culture and pointed out great historical achievements of African peoples in the tradition of influential Pan-African pioneer Edward Wilmot Blyden. Blyden, a Caribbean-born Liberian educator, wrote extensively in the late 19th century about the positive accomplishments of Africans and may have coined the term Pan-Africanism.

The next several Pan-African meetings were organized by distinguished African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The consequences of World War I (1914-1918) raised serious concerns among blacks in the United States.

The main issues were the well-being of African American and African soldiers who had served in the war and the status of former German colonial territories in Africa that had been captured during the war by Britain, France, and other Allied powers.

Du Bois convened the first Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1919. The congress was held at the same time as the Paris Peace Conference, at which European powers negotiated the aftermath of the war.

The agenda of the first Pan-African Congress resembled that of the 1900 conference in its concern for the plight of Africans and people of African descent. Significant emphasis was placed on the provision of education for Africans and the need for greater African participation in the affairs of the colonies. Specific interest in the African territories of the conquered German colonial empire was also expressed.

A proposal was made that these territories be held in trust by the newly founded League of Nations with the goal of granting the territories self-determination as soon as possible. Nevertheless, the territories were placed under the nominal supervision of the league, which distributed the territories to other European colonial powers without demanding that the new colonial rulers move the territories toward self-determination.

The next Pan-African congresses sponsored by Du Bois were held in 1921 (in London, Paris, and Brussels, Belgium), 1923 (in London and Lisbon, Portugal), and 1927 (in New York City). These congresses were attended by increasing numbers of representatives from the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Several important factors affected the growing popularity of the congresses.

First, many delegates were sponsored by international labour movements, which were growing in size and power in the 1920s. A second factor was the growth of the Black Nationalist movement of Marcus Garvey. The Garvey movement was important in the United States as a popular expression of the sentiments of African unity and redemption among working-class blacks.

His followers contrasted with the more elite black groups cultivated by Du Bois. Garvey, a Jamaican, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 to promote black pride, political and economic improvements for blacks everywhere, and the repatriation of blacks to Africa (often called the “Back to Africa” movement).
The institutional growth of the Garvey movement was swift and international in scope. Garvey’s newspaper, the Negro World, achieved wide distribution, and chapters of UNIA sprung up all over the Americas, as well as in Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Garvey also established a steamship company, the Black Star Line, with which he hoped both to enter international trade and to transport blacks to Africa.

Garvey hoped to oversee the repatriation of tens of thousands of American blacks to the West African nation of Liberia, which had been founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century. The Garvey movement declined when Garvey was arrested and imprisoned in 1925 on charges of mail fraud relating to the operation of the Black Star Line, and his repatriation scheme was never fulfilled.

Influenced by Garvey’s ideas, young Africans studying in London founded the West African Student Union (WASU) in the late 1920s. WASU became a focal point for younger, more politically aggressive blacks from Africa and the Caribbean who agitated for African independence from colonialism.

In the late 1920s and the 1930s, public awareness of the plight of peoples of African descent grew as black cultural movements such as the Harlem Renaissance in the United States gained recognition. The Harlem Renaissance, centered in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York City, disseminated the works of black writers such as Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Du Bois himself, along with other black artists espousing black pride and challenging racial injustice. This also had its influence on Nkrumah at the time he studied in New York.

In France, a similar movement, called the négritude movement, followed the Harlem Renaissance. The movement developed in Paris among French-speaking African intellectuals and activists whose works affirmed the integrity of African civilization, defending it against charges of African inferiority.

Noted proponents of négritude included the authors Leopold Sédar Senghor (who later became the first president of Senegal), Aimé Césaire, Alioune Diop, and Léon-Gontran Damas.

AFRICAN INDEPENDENCE

In the 1930s and 1940s, global forces such as the Great Depression (the worldwide economic slump of the 1930s) and the development and onset of World War II significantly hampered the efforts of the Pan-African movement.

Nevertheless, concern for Africa among people of African descent remained strong in the United States and Britain. American and British Pan-African groups mounted substantial protests when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935.

In 1937 African American groups formed the Council on African Affairs, the first American lobby organization led by blacks. The council worked to raise awareness in the United States about the plight of Africans living under colonialism and advocated the liberation of African colonies.

It was headed by the internationally renowned black singer and film star Paul Robeson and included such important black scholars and activists as W. E. B. Du Bois, educator Alphaeus Hunton, future congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. The council also attracted African American artists such as singer and actor Lena Horne, who helped raise funds for projects.

In the early 1940s Kwame Nkrumah, a native of the British-ruled Gold Coast (now Ghana) in West Africa founded the African Student Organization in the United States. At the time, Nkrumah was a student in the United States. In 1944 Nkrumah left America for London, where he joined an important group of Pan-Africanists led by Jamaican activist George Padmore and Trinidadian author C. L. R. James.

Also in the group were Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, who, like Nkrumah, would eventually become leaders of their countries. In 1945 this group sponsored the fifth Pan-African Congress, which brought together numerous African nationalists and trade unionists. The meeting, held in Manchester, England, gave great impetus to the movement for African independence and fostered African leadership of the Pan-African movement.

In 1957 Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African state to gain independence, and Nkrumah became its first prime minister. Nkrumah held the Pan-Africanist view that the independence of Ghana would be incomplete without the independence of all of Africa.

To work toward this goal, he appointed Padmore to establish a Pan-African Secretariat within the Ghanaian government. The secretariat pursued the twin goals of total African independence and continental political union in two series of international conferences, held between 1958 and 1961: First, the All-African Peoples’ Conferences were held to stimulate independence movements in other African colonies. Second, Nkrumah organized the Conferences of Independent African States to establish a diplomatic framework for the political union of Africa.

By inviting representatives from independent North African states to the conferences and by holding the 1961 All-African Peoples’ Conference in Cairo, Egypt, Nkrumah’s intent was clearly to unite the entire African continent.

In 1960 Nkrumah invited W. E. B. Du Bois to live in Ghana to act as an adviser and to initiate a project that Du Bois had proposed, the Encyclopaedia Africana, a comprehensive encyclopaedia of the culture and history of African peoples. Du Bois died in Ghana in 1963 with this project incomplete.

However, the publication of several books during this period made Continental Pan-African philosophy more widely known. Notable among these books were Padmore’s Pan-Africanism or Communism? (1956) and Nkrumah’s Africa Must Unite (1963).

In 1960, 17 African countries gained independence. By the end of 1963, approximately 80 percent of the African continent was independent.

Nkrumah’s goal of establishing a United States of Africa with a centralized power structure was opposed by the leaders of many of the new African countries, who resisted giving up their nations’ newfound autonomy to a remote supra national political infrastructure.

1964 -2004: CHALLENGES AND PRESPECTIVES

GENERAL PERSPECTIVES AND UNIQUENESS OF THE AFRICAN GEOPOLITICAL SITUATION

In May 1963 representatives from 32 African nations of both North and sub-Saharan Africa met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and founded the Organization of African Unity (OAU, now African Union) as a loose federation of independent African states committed to continent-wide cooperation. The unfinished African independence movement, political differences among the independent nations, and the poverty of the African continent kept political union from becoming a reality.

From day one African unity had been and is still plagued with the major challenge of finding coordinated common ground of compromise and co operation towards a united Africa as the philosophy of pan Africanism postulates.

To understand the significance of present crisis that Africa finds herself and the consequent challenges to the formation of a united geo political and economic infrastructure one must look at the existing schools of thought that developed over the periods following colonialism and post colonialism.

There are, obviously, many schools of thought about the myriad of challenges that Africa has faced and still continue to face. However these perspectives have been largely influenced by two main thematic domains. These are the afro- as against the Eurocentric views about Africa and both are plagued by the challenge of lack of compromise and alternative approaches to the basic challenge posed by the differences between the traditional and western political and administrative structures and modus oprandi.

The afrocentric view developed largely by a Senegalese, CHEIKH ANTA DIOP one of Africa’s most renowned social anthropologists, holds that European centred views have contributed to neglect or denial of the contributions of Africa’s original peoples to the present models of world civilisation and history.

This was also the basic viewpoint of Nkrumah and a few of the first generation leaders like AHAMAD SEKUO TOURE of Guinea, PATRICE LUMUMBA the prematurely assassinated leader of Democratic Republic of CONGO, AUGUSTINO NETO the leader of the MPLA and first but short lived leader of Angola, JOMO KENYATTA leader of the Mau Mau resistance and first head of government of Kenya and JULIUS NYRERE teacher(Mwalimu),leader and proponent of the Arusha Declaration (a form of African sociology)of TANZANIA to name a few.

On the contrary, the euro centric school of thought believes or rather has been made to believe that most if not all world civilisation and history is the product of the influence of Europe following the advent of sea exploration.

This, though, largely held by Major European political and anthological scholars, has it’s own share of African scholars and proposers.These are or rather were mainly pre independence educated Africans found mostly in coastal African countries like Sierra Leone,Ghana,Cote D’Ivoire(The leadership of Hourpert Gbaougnaey was basically euro centric and upon his death a vacuum of ideological proportion led to a military coup and war) ,Togo, Senegal(The first leader, Leopold Sedar Senghor though originally a negritude was in character euro centric) and in the exceptional state of Liberia(Liberia that was established almost immediately the ex slaves, known locally as kongoh, were resettled during the regime of American President Monroe in 1847) in west Africa to name but a few.

In Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gambia and Nigeria this view is still held by the majority of the elites from the descendants of ex slaves that were resettled in those parts. Almost The whole of former French west and central Africa with the exception of Guinea and Mali and Burkina Faso, then the Upper Volta, started with leaderships that were to a very great extent euro centric.

However, notwithstanding these two key schools of thought, Africa has had to and is still facing challenges emanating from these two perspectives .These challenges have met with diverse but similar other challenges emanating from the inherited colonial challenge of unrealistic geopolitical states created to satisfy the trade needs of the colonial powers on the continent itself.

To exemplify this, Meredith(2005)wrote: “Having expended so much effort on acquiring African empires, Europe’s colonial powers then lost much of their interest in them...Colonial governments were concerned above all to make their territories financially self-supporting. Administration was thus kept to a minimum; education was placed in the hands of Christian missionaries; economic activity was left to commercial companies. The main function of government was law and order, raising taxation and providing an infrastructure of roads and railways....”

This summarises magnitude of challenges that first generation post independence African leaders had not to mention the wide spread political instabilities resulting from the relative absence of cohesion within these new nation-states.

For some of these very adverse realities on the continent to be understood, one must go back into the history of colonialism, independence and post independence Africa.

I would quote from a recent writing by a renowned journalist, biographer and historian, MARTIN MEREDITH, quoted inter alia, who has done a lot of researching and writing about the geopolitical complexities that obtain in Africa since 1988.

In his recent book, THE STATE OF AFRICA: A HISTORY OF FIFY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE, published in 2005,he wrote quoting a 1948 remark by a prominent African political figure from northern Nigeria and first prim minister, ABUBAKARR TAFAWA BALEWA; “since 1914 the British government has been has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but Nigerians themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite...Nigeria is only a British invention”.

In the same book he quoted another prominent Yoruba leader, OBAFEMI AWOLOWO as saying in a 1947 book he published: “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression.There is no Nigerians in the sense as there are “English”, “Welsh”, or “French”. The word “Nigerian” is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not”.

These two similarly factual but seemingly fatal statements coming from key political players of the same geopolitical background more or less summarises the key historical geopolitical challenge that Africa has had to contend with following the advent of independence in Ghana in 1957.

To understand why these statements were made and how the scenario described has affected Africa 50 years on, it is necessary to go back a bit to the period of the creation of what today constitute Africa’s nation-states.

Africa’s nation -states were carved up from maps that were largely inaccurate and at the time the Europeans who carved up these nation-states had very little knowledge of the geo political and social status quo of the Africans continent.

The partitioning of Africa by European governments in the 19th century was done largely with the intent of keeping a sense of order, securing trade rights and avoiding frictions that would have led to a major inter European war. As a result European negotiators at the various conferences held in major European capitals resorted to drawing straight lines on the map of Africa available at that time, taking little or no account of the myriad of traditional monarchies, chiefdoms and other African societies that existed on the ground. In most cases homogenous cultures and societies were rent apart and divided into two or more European controls with different linguistic situations.

The long term problems of this scenario were clear when the majority of the African peoples finally broke free of colonial control and established their independence in the next century (between 1964-2004).

When these African nations achieved independence in the 1950’s - 1970’s, most new African states were stuck with these same borders established during this colonial scramble. Thus, newly independent African leaders inherited borders that cut across and confused existing African history, relations, and tribal/language affiliations.

Pre-colonial tribal groups torn apart by competing colonial powers remained divided into different countries after independence whilst on the other hand; tribal groups with historic hatreds, thrown together by colonial empires then, had to try to coexist as fellow citizens in a newly created state.

The resulting tensions resulted first in multiples of coupd’etats, massive economic mismanagements and later on in civil war in the fragile new states emerging in the latter half of the 20th century. Wars in post-colonial Africa were and are still fought by groups trying to break away from a state to which they feel no loyalty. Slaughter and atrocities occur today between hostile tribes/nations irrationally combined into a common state by colonial borders. These kinds of unstable political issues underlie the violence still occurring in places like the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and Somalia.

Currently political violence and civil war are still devastating many African states and communities. Most can therefore in part be seen as the continuing effect of political/state borders drawn by Europeans who totally disregarded African traditions and natural divisions. Considering the fact that many of the current states in Africa achieved independence only 30- 40 years ago, resolving these controversial legacies is still a major problem now, and into the foreseeable future.

Apart from the direct wars, there is a very adverse situation that the above legacies affects the present modus operandi of most of Africa’s public sector administrations and which can be seen as a major challenge for African development. This is the lack of efficiency due to the inability of the post independent African administrators and elites to address the inherited problems traditional geo political and socio cultural diversity. Harmony and effectiveness of administration is only possible when the ruling political class puts in place after winning elections or whatever other method of coming to power, a civil service that is socio culturally identical and friendly to it.

This has and still is a key obstacle as governments and in more or less a very chronic cycle the public servants and decision makers tend to think local or ethnic rather than national when it comes to development planning and plans implementation.

This is the source of most electioneering violence and wars because Africa is the most heterogeneous continent with regards ethnic and the socio cultural diversity. When it comes to putting a government in place it is not much of an issue of what is to be done and how it will be done .Instead it is an issue of which socio cultural group that emerges and which region(s) of the country will benefit this time round.

This scenario sombre as it is will continue to plague most African emerging nation-states unless and until a continental consensus and alternatives are reached through the various sub-regional like ECOWAS and/or the regional organisation, AFRICAN UNION.

To geopolitical scholars who always write essays about Africa’s failed states, I am saying, go and see, study and learn. There are no failed states in Africa; there are only non- states trying to become states! I will proudly say that Africa, with all the inherent health, educational and infrastructural challenges, has experienced some of the greatest developmental changes over the last 50 years.

Fifty years ago less than 15 percent of the people were functionally literate yet today it is almost if not the reverse. Fifty years ago less than 5 000,00 km of roads in the whole continent were motor able throughout the year. Today it is also almost the reverse.
Fifty years ago Africa had 1 medical personnel to 10000 people today it is 1 to 100 or less in most cases.

However Africa is still in most cases plagued with the challenge of effective, cheap and affordable energy supply for both home and industrial use amongst other key infrastructural issues. Most of these can be affordable with effective regional co operation and development of inter nation state structures.

THE AFRICAN UNION: TOWARDS FEDERATION, CONFEDERATION OR LOOSE SUPRA-CONTINENTAL GOVERNMENT?

Having looked at the basic underlying historical perspectives and challenges and taking cognisance of the cyclic or rather prevalent nature of the challenges especially as they pertain to the key question of heterogeneous geo political and sociological realities on the African continent, it is obvious that one must ask certain questions.

Also taking into consideration that the AFRICAN UNION is more or less a mere change in nomenclature of the OAU with a few charters and protocols added and subtracted here and there, then finding answers to certain questions must now be the focus of all Africans and those interested in African studies.

The questions are:

.Will Africanunity ever become a political reality?

·If yes, what model would it take? Will it be fedral, confederal or just a loose union like the European Union?

·How workable and/or sustainablw will such a union be?

· How soon will it happen or is it already in existence?

The floor is now open and you are invited to make your contributions ladies and gentalemen. I thank you.

Photo:Mohamed Boye Jallo-Jamboria, right, and the chairman of the Ghana association in Bergen,Norway.