Pan-Africanism and vision 2063
If European men set out, in Westphalia in 1648, in Vienna in 1815, in Berlin in 1884, in Versailles in 1919, in Potsdam in 1945, as well as in other conferences, to make the world in their favour and advantage, those people who had been designated as Black also began to meet in 1900 in what became known as Pan-African Congresses to contest European worlding of the world and projecting how they could reworld the world from the perspectives of what Fanon (1968) termed ‘the wretched of the Earth’. It is within this context that pan-Africanism emerged from Black consciousness not just as a utopic register but as a major and influential ideology of reworlding initiative. It is not surprising that pan-Africanism first emerged in the Diaspora, because that is where deep dismemberment and rootlessness was felt. Today pan-Africanism is driven by the African Union from the continent of Africa.
In 1897 as the colonialists were busy with finalization of the partitioning of Africa among themselves, Henry William Sylvester from the West Indies formed the African Association in London, and three years later, in 1900, planned and hosted the first Pan-African Congress in London (Adejumobi 2001). For the first time, Black people who were on the receiving end of racism and colonialism gathered at the centre of a leading colonial power (British empire) to discuss issues such as the enslavement of Black people, the socio-economic and political conditions of Blacks in the Diaspora, the question of independent nations governed by Black people (Haiti, Liberia, and Ethiopia) as well as the problems of imperialism (Adejumobi 2001). The result of this first Pan-African Congress was that William E. B. Dubois, the shining intellectual light of Black radical tradition and indefatigable pan-Africanist, drafted an address ‘To the Nations of the World’ highlighting the problems of colonialism and demanding protections for the rights and dignity of Black people (Killingray 2011: 348).
Five more Pan-African Congresses were organized by Du Bois between 1919 and 1945, with the most significant one being that held in Manchester in the United Kingdom in 1945, as it attracted African leaders who were to fight against colonialism in Africa such as Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta. It marked a shift from demanding reforms of colonialism to the open demand for decolonization (Adejumobi 2001). Pan-Africanism intersected with anti-colonial African nationalism to advance a vision of ‘worldmaking after empire’ in which Africans re-emerged as a new force united against racism, enslavement, colonialism, imperialism, and underdevelopment (Getachew 2019). Pan-Africanism materialized as a vision of a world inhabited by united, free, and self-determining African people. Unity and self-reliance remain key aspects of the task of propelling Africa into a becoming a strong power in world affairs. It is an ongoing vision which is conjoined with African Renaissance in the African Union (AU)’s Agenda 2063. Here it becomes evident that the future of Africa has to be approached as a purposeful process consisting of seven aspirations:
•Prosperity underpinned by economic growth and sustainable development;
•Pan-African unity informed by ideals of Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance;
•Good governance based on democracy, human rights, justice and rule of law;
•Peace and security;
•Pan-African cultural unity based on common heritage. Shared values and ethics;
•People-driven development predicated on self-reliance and all African potentialities;
•A strong player in global affairs in partnership with others (African Union 2013).
Africa is here approached as a process in itself – that is, an ongoing invention, construction and elaboration by Africans themselves, confirming Kwame Nkrumah’s idea of Africa as born in him rather than him born in Africa. This takes us to the last part, which is focused on what are taken as latter-day African utopic visions, namely Afrotopia, Afropolitanism, globalectics, and feminism (we should all be feminists).