Pan Africanism
Pan Africanism: Kwame Nkrumah, who was prime minister of Ghana when that country got its independence on March 6, 1957, said that the Gold Coast’s independence didn’t mean anything unless it was linked to the freedom of all of Africa. Under Nkrumah’s leadership, Ghana became synonymous with Pan Africanism following its independence.
African colonial states linked their desire for freedom and continental unity from the All-African People’s Conference in December 1958 onwards. When the meeting asked the colonial powers to give their African colonies the right to self-determination, it changed the relationship between Africa and Europe.
After a meeting of independent African countries in Accra in April 1958, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and the United Arab Republic worked together on plans for a bigger meeting of African states in December 1958. Between December 5 and 13, 1958, Kwame Nkrumah invited 300 people from 28 African countries who were leaders of political parties and work unions to meet in Accra.Â
People from the United States, Canada, China, Denmark, India, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom also came to watch. The attendees included representatives from France, Angola, Basutoland, Cameroon, Chad, Dahomey, Ethiopia, and France. Somaliland, Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, French Central Africa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South West Africa, Tanganyika, Togoland, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zanzibar all sent representatives to the meeting.Â
Only Ethiopia and Tunisia, out of all of Africa, remained under some form of colonial rule. Felix Monmie from the Basutoland Congress Party, M. Roberto Holden from Angola, Horace M. Bond, head of Lincoln University, and Marguerite Cartwright, an African-American author and journalist, were some of the important people who came.Â
The planning group picked Tom Mboya, who is the general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labor, to be the conference’s head. In his plenary address, Mboya compared the meeting to the Berlin meeting seventy-four years earlier, asserting that Africans were tired of subjugation. He believed that Africans should be in charge of their own lives, so he asked both the US and the USSR to keep Africa out of the Cold War.Â
Mboya wanted the conquered states to get political power as soon as possible and told Africans to stay away from becoming a Balkanized mess. The famous African-American W.E.B. Du Bois also spoke at the session. During his long life, he fought for Pan-Africanism. His wife read his speech for him because he was sick and 91 years old.Â
Du Bois told the conference that Pan Africanism meant that each country had to give up some of its heritage for the good of the whole continent. He said that by making this sacrifice, the African people would gain their honor and lose nothing but their chains.
During the conference’s working session, five committees talked about and passed resolutions on topics such as colonialism and imperialism, borders, federations, and federations; racialism and unfair laws and practices; tribalism; religious separatism; and traditional institutions. There was also a resolution on creating a permanent organization.Â
The group on imperialism decided that economic exploitation had to stop, and they stood behind freedom fighters in Africa. The group advocated for freedom for regions still under colonial rule, including Kenya, the Union of South Africa, Algeria, Rhodesia, Angola, and Mozambique, all governed by foreigners who had permanently settled in Africa.
The committee on borders, boundaries, and federations also wanted to see the end of white settlement in Africa. They were also against giving land away for colonial use and pushed the idea of a United States of Africa. The racial relations committee decided to cut off all diplomatic and economic ties with racist countries like South Africa, the Portuguese colonies, and Rhodesia.Â
The committee also demanded the removal of the UN order that placed South West Africa under the Union of South Africa. The committee on tribe, religious separatism, and traditional institutions perceived these factors as impeding Africa’s freedom and advocated for the provision of additional tools to political groups and trade unions to educate the populace.
The group in charge of setting up the permanent organization wanted the All-African People’s Conference to become permanent and have a professional office in Accra. The group’s goals were to help Africans understand each other better, speed up their freedom, get the rest of the world to speak out against the rejection of their basic rights, and build a sense of community among Africans.Â
The conference’s host, Kwame Nkrumah, ended his speech by stressing how important it was for Africa to become independent and form a community. He also said that future economic and social rebuilding in Africa should be based on socialism.Â
In his closing speech, Tom Mboya, the conference chairman, told the people that the conference had to deal with colonialism and European minorities in East and South Africa. He also said that how Europeans felt about African freedom would determine whether they would turn violent.Â
The conference had a huge effect on the fight for independence in Africa, and many of the delegates went back home to work even harder for independence. For example, Congolese Patrice Lumumba was a participant in the conference who not many people knew about, but when he got back home, he spoke to a large group of people in Leopoldville.
Without a doubt, the ideas that people like Lumumba brought back to Belgium sped up the process of giving the Congo its independence. The conference’s ideas moved many African countries, instilling confidence in them. By the end of 1960, 18 more African countries had become independent.Â
More importantly, pan Africanism went from being just an idea to being a real thing. The discussion that occurred after the meeting helped to create the Organization of African Unity.
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