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The Pan-African Experience: From the Organization of African Unity to the African Union

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Abstract

Faced with pressures from below and the wave of new energies from the African peoples, the Executive Council of the African Union in May 2013 declared an ambitious agenda for a people-centered Union to achieve the agenda of full unity by 2063. From the outset, the Pan-African Movement has articulated this goal of the full unification of Africa and the emancipation of African peoples in all parts of the world. This chapter is one more effort to grasp the Pan-African experiences from the Organization of African Unity to the African Union. In this contribution, by Pan-African experience we mean the process of getting knowledge or skill from doing, seeing, or feeling things associated with the emancipation of Africa. In this case, the getting of knowledge and skill came from the differing Pan-African activities that were undertaken to advance the cause of freedom. The chapter traces the evolution of the global idea of Pan-Africanism and its political and ideological manifestations over the historic period since the transatlantic slave trade. The Conclusion calls on scholars and students of Pan-Africanism to break from the traditional and worn-out assumptions of African reconstruction and embrace the spirit of Ubuntu, which is the new paradigm for Pan-Africanism emanating from victories of a revitalized people.

The Pan-African World We Want: Building a People’s movement for a just, accountable and inclusive structural transformation. A united and integrated Africa ; an-Africa imbued with the ideals of justice and peace; an interdependent and virile Africa determined to map for itself an ambitious strategy; an-Africa underpinned by political, economic, social and cultural integration which would restore to Pan-Africanism its full meaning; an-Africa able to make the best of its human and material resources, and keen to ensure the progress and prosperity of its citizens by taking advantage of the opportunities offered by a globalised world; an-Africa engaged in promoting its values in a world rich in its disparities.

(Constitutive Act, African Union website)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Horace G. Campbell

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  1. Horace G. Campbell
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. History Department, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA

    Martin S. Shanguhyia

  2. University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA

    Toyin Falola

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Campbell, H.G. (2018). The Pan-African Experience: From the Organization of African Unity to the African Union. In: Shanguhyia, M., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59426-6_41

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59426-6_41

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