Hebdo Africain: “Pan-Africanism: from the founding fathers of the OAU to the AfricTivists”
The weekly column by the Timbuktu Institute, in partnership with Medi1TV (#HebdoAfricain), focuses this week on pan-Africanism. In this interview, Dr Bakary Sambe reflects on the process of building African unity, with all its twists and turns and the very real obstacles that remain. Above all, he highlights the gap between the slow pace of political processes and the people’s desire for unity, which is developing along different paths.
Sambe places great emphasis on the arrival of new generations on the continental stage, making pan-Africanism an instrument of paradigm-shifting liberation and a means of accelerating the continent’s sovereignty. According to the director of the Timbuktu Institute, the growing strength of “African and alternative critical thought” among intellectuals and academics, together with youth movements empowered by their command of social media, is ushering in a genuine break and an “irreversible trend” that Africa’s international partners would do well to take into account.
On 25 May, as we mark the 59th anniversary of the Organisation of African Unity, pan-Africanism remains at the heart of socio-political and even geopolitical debate. But today, can we say that the ideal of African unity has made some progress since the founding fathers’ time?
Let us recall that the term “pan-African” first appeared in the late nineteenth century, during preparations for the First Pan-African Conference in 1900. But from the struggles for independence, and just after the first countries gained international sovereignty, the continent’s leaders adopted it. The founding fathers of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) were divided over the organisation’s direction: from 1961, there was the so-called Casablanca Group and another known as the Monrovia Group. Yet they shared an ideal of unity and of building continental unity, which led to the OAU’s creation in 1963 and the adoption of its historic Charter. There have certainly been setbacks, but also progress and significant developments, including Morocco’s return to its natural African family and the impetus for a new lease of life. The founding fathers therefore laid an important foundation. But the long-held dream of African unity in the sense of full integration still has a way to go before it can be realised.
Now known as the African Union since 2002, has the pan-African organisation managed to create a new momentum that responds to this desire for integration, at a time when people are making a genuine demand for it? In other words, have states and political leaders responded to the people’s concerns?
Yes. The historic Sirte Declaration of September 1999, adopted at an extraordinary OAU session in Libya under Gaddafi’s impetus, set the organisation on the path to becoming the African Union at the July 2002 Summit in Durban, South Africa. The people’s desire for integration did push political leaders to make significant efforts. Today, the idea of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), whose negotiating process was launched in Johannesburg in 2015, has raised immense hopes that the subregional economic organisations would finally be brought together in a free-trade area encompassing all 55 member states. On 1 January 2021, the AfCFTA was put in place for the countries that had ratified the agreement. But I often say that African people seem to be ahead of their political leaders in recognising the importance of continental unity—a principle they have fully embraced, but which still runs up against countless obstacles.
We have recently seen another theme—sovereignty, particularly in relation to Europe—come to the fore among young people and activists in Mali, Burkina Faso and across the region, who are developing a different form of pan-Africanism, amplified by social media. Is this simply a youthful revolt, or a new pan-African consciousness?
It is in the air. African young people now aspire first to a paradigm shift that will liberate the continent. We are seeing the rise of alternative critical thinking, embodied by prominent academics such as Felwine Sarr, Achille Mbembé, Mehdi Allioua and many others, as well as by schools of thought and critical approaches to the continent’s present and future. These have led, for example, to the creation of the Timbuktu Institute’s Alternative Report on Africa (RASA), among other forums for reflection and research. Young people, empowered by their command of social media and the democratisation of access to knowledge and information, have taken an important step in pursuing sovereignty on every front. A new momentum has emerged, one that has even prompted Africa’s Western partners to reconsider their policies. This trend will not change. Youth movements such as the Africtivistes are now influencing the progress of democratic struggles and the pursuit of sovereignty. The tone has been set for an African renewal, with a clear awareness of African unity already established in people’s minds and sovereignty set to grow. Political will is still needed, as is greater awareness within the international community that a difficult break with the past is now under way. But I believe that the momentum behind the building of African unity, growing sovereignty and a generation of young people freed from the weight of history and domination is now irreversible.
