People in Africa and the diaspora recently paid tribute to past and present heroes whose legacies inspired and continue to encourage the pursuit of genuine African liberation. “Pan-Africanism must be reclaimed—not as nostalgia, but as a practical and urgent roadmap,” Adeoye O.
Akinola wrote on premiumtimesng.com. Akinola is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg and heads the African Union Studies Unit.
“It (Pan-Africanism) must guide our trade policies, our education systems, our conflict resolution mechanisms, and our global diplomacy. It must be people-driven, not elite-dominated,” Akinola added. Most importantly, Pan-Africanism “must deliver tangible benefits to everyday Africans,” Akinola explained.
This year Africa Day was observed on May 25. It is a celebration of the 1963 founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which evolved into the African Union (AU) in 2002.
We pay tribute to those founding members of Pan-Africanism, which helped make African liberation a reality. As one of the OAU founding members, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, said in 1960, at a Harlem rally,
“that the 20,000,000 Americans of African ancestry ‘constituted the strongest link between the people of North America and the people of Africa,’” The New York Times reported.
Dr. Anthony Monterio reflected on the importance of Africa and those throughout the diaspora that he says paved the way “for Pan Africanism, a historic movement that originates outside of Africa.”
The Philadelphia-based Dr. Monterio, who has a Ph.D. in sociology, is the founder of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, which is now in its 14th year.
During a telephone interview with Africa Watch, Dr. Monterio explained, “Pan Africanism is a historic movement that linked the struggle for the freedom of Black folk in the diaspora, especially in the Western hemisphere, to the struggle against colonialism on the African continent. It was begun by people who were not Africans as such but were in the (U.S. and Caribbean) diaspora.”
According to Dr. Monterio, the first Pan-African Conference was in 1900 and held in London. Henry Sylvester Williams, a Trinidadian attorney who formed the “African Association” in London to encourage Pan-African unity, was its principal organizer. Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, who in 1899, published “The Philadelphia Negro,” America’s first sociological study of a Black American neighborhood, also participated in the 1900 conference.
Regarding this historic conference and subsequent gatherings, Saheed Yinka Adejumobi noted on blackpast.org that, “In the nearly half-century between 1900 and 1945, various political leaders and intellectuals from Europe, North America, (the Caribbean)
And Africa met six times to discuss colonial control of Africa and develop strategies for eventual African political liberation.” Adejumobi is an associate professor in the history department at Seattle University
“For the first time, (in 1900) opponents of colonialism and racism gathered for an international meeting. The conference, held in London, attracted global attention, placing the word ‘Pan-African’ in the lexicon of international affairs and making it part of the standard vocabulary of Black intellectuals,” Adejumobi wrote.
After World War I, DuBois revived the Pan-African congresses and later became “the torchbearer of subsequent” Pan-African Conferences, or “Congresses” as they were later called, explained Dr. Monterio.
According to Monterio, DuBois, was the first to frame the problem of the “‘20th century, is the ‘problem of the color line,’ by which he meant the ongoing oppression of Black people in the United States and the continuing colonization of Black people in Africa, and in the Caribbean, and in South and Central America.”
Dr. Monterio also credits DuBois as the father of what is modern-day Pan-Africanism, which began with the first Pan-African Congress. At the same time as that first conference, European powers were meeting in Versailles, at the Versailles Palace, just outside of Paris, to hammer out a peace deal between warring parties after World War I. However, DuBoise’s “worldview,” explained Monterio, was that there could not be peace without the decolonization of Africa.
However, subsequent world events led to a halt in the Pan-African gatherings.
“The financial crisis induced by the Great Depression and the military exigency generated by World War Two necessitated the suspension of the Pan-African Congress for a period of eighteen years. In 1945, the organized movement was revived in Manchester, England,” Adejumobi noted in his 2008 review of the history of Pan-Africanism.
On October 15-21, 1945, in Manchester, George Padmore, the staunch anti-imperialist, played a pivotal role in organizing the 5th Pan-African Congress. Recognizing DuBois’s unequaled contribution to the Pan-African movement, delegates named him president of the 1945 congress.
Key participants included DuBois, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah, Hastings Banda of Malawi and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria. This meeting led to the formation of the Pan-African Federation.
According to Dr. Monterio, it inspired participants to become leaders in the anti-colonial movements in Africa. “For the first time, a significant number of African freedom fighters and independence fighters were in attendance, which, in fact, was an indication that Pan-Africanism was now the property of Africans.
And that the African diaspora would become a movement of solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle and not the center of it,” he said. Follow Jehron Muhammad @africawatchfcn on X