Africa's Many Divides and Africa's Future

Book excerpt: “If in the past the Sahara divided us, now it unites us,” Kwame Nkrumah declared more than half a century ago. Keenly aware of Africa’s many artificial divides, Nkrumah was determined to lead a revolution that would bridge them. One way to achieve this goal, Nkrumah proposed, was a continental pan-African government, which would provide the African people with the opportunity to pool and marshal their enormous real and potential economic, human and natural resources for the optimal development of their continent. A continental union government, Nkrumah was convinced, would ensure that Africa ended the divisions created by the trilogy of the enslavement, colonization and neo-colonization of Africans. Nkrumah was concerned by other divisions as well, specifically those created by time, history, nature, and, above all, Africans themselves, such as ethnic, racial and religious discrimination, classism, sexism, and ageism, as well as atavistic and backward traditional practices, including “tribalism” and patriarchy. Africa’s Many Divides and Africa’s Future: Pursuing Nkrumah’s Vision of Pan-Africanism in an Era of Globalization is a collection of papers presented at the first and second Kwame Nkrumah International Conferences. This volume contextualizes Nkrumah’s pan-Africanist agenda within the neo-liberal global project and against the backdrop of the current global economic and political ferment.