Re-engaging the African Diasporas

Book excerpt: Re-engaging the African Diasporas: Pan-Africanism in the Age of Globalization is the second volume in the Kwame Nkrumah International Conference series, and brings together twenty selected papers presented at the Third Kwame Nkrumah International Conference held at Kwantlen Polytechnic University on August 19-21, 2014. Two premises inform this volume: (1) If the history of slavery and its vestiges divided and continue to divide the continent and its Diasporas, modern technology should be harnessed to bridge that divide, and (2) the continent’s development is a boon to the development of what the African Union has dubbed Africa’s “Sixth Region”. The book threads together papers that seek to give academic and intellectual impetus to tie the continent’s development to that of the African Diaspora. The goal is to end the inertia and inward-looking on the part of scholars and academics in both Africa and “African International” or “Global Africa,” and re-engage one another in more productive ways. By harnessing the enormous resources available in our internet age and riding the cresting wave of globalization, the task of re-engagement will be vastly enhanced, and the debates and discussions in this volume will serve to facilitate this re-engagement. A main highlight of the conference was a special tribute to Nelson Mandela to honour his death in December, 2013 and celebrate 20 years of South African independence. In these papers, scholars examine Mandela’s role in the transition of South Africa from a racist state to a democratic nation. They critically examine how the ANC’s policies have impacted post-Apartheid South Africa and question what alternatives remain for the future.