Politics And Pan Africanism

Contains papers from the 7th Pan African Congress held in Kampala, Uganda, in April 1994, the first of three volumes planned as output of the congress. Contributors offer both analysis and practical solutions on how Africa can reclaim its history and confront the threat of recolonization in the form of IMF/World Bank policies and domination of African civil society by northern NGOs, dealing with issues such as the African woman, creating an African common market, and science and technology as a solution to underdevelopment. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

There is no recent literature that underscores the transition from Pan-Africanism to Diaspora discourse. This book examines the gradual shift and four major transformations in the study of Pan-Africanism. It offers an "academic post-mortem" that seeks to gauge the extent to which Pan-Africanism overlaps with the study of the African Diaspora and reverse migrations; how Diaspora studies has penetrated various disciplines while Pan-Africanism is located on the periphery of the field. The book argues that the gradual shift from Pan-African discourses has created a new pathway for engaging Pan-African ideology from academic and social perspectives. Also, the book raises questions about the recent political waves that have swept across North Africa and their implications to the study of twenty-first century Pan-African solidarity on the African continent. The ways in which African institutions are attracting and mobilizing returnees and Pan-Africanists with incentives as dual-citizenship for diasporans to support reforms in Africa offers a new alternative approach for exploring Pan-African ideology in the twenty-first century. Returnees are also using these incentives to gain economic and cultural advantage. The book will appeal to policy makers, government institutions, research libraries, undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars from many different disciplines.

While the fate of Africa is much discussed in the West, Westerners rarely hear the voices of Africans themselves in the debate over the future of this imperiled continent. Pan-Africanism aims to unite the many different peoples of Africa and the Diaspora (in the West indies, Latin America, the U.S., and the U.K.). As a political movement, Pan-Africanism first found expression 100 years ago and has since then waxed and waned, according to wars, economic and political tides and the often fickle vicissitudes of Western influence. Bringing together over a dozen influential writers, political leaders, and activists, Pan-Africanism defines what constitutes the movement as we approach the millennium. By addressing such subjects as the role of science and technology in Africa's future and the potential for a Pan-African women's movement, the writers offer a valuable overview of the political economy of uniting across the continent and beyond, at a time when the threat of recolonization looms large.

What does it mean to be an African today? Starting from that question the author takes the reader on a fascinating intellectual journey into the realm of Pan-African thought and practice. Moving from Africa to North America to Europe, the text insightfully explores the pre-occupations of black elite, in the three continents, exploring their shared visions and also their conflicting interests. Tackling thought provoking issues in politics, cultural identity, and economic development, the book provides the reader with a refreshing, jargon free insight into relations between Africa and the African Diaspora. A must read for anyone interested in politics, identity and development in Africa and the African Diaspora.

Walters (political science, Howard U.) uses the tools of comparative politics for examining similar Black and white social institutions and organizations in the US and other countries and for creating a "tailored" Pan African perspective as a criteria with which to describe the interactive relationships between the American Black community and Blacks in Britain, South Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

What does it mean to be an African today? Starting from that question, the author takes the reader on a fascinating intellectual journey into the realm of Pan-African thought and practice. Moving from Africa to North America to Europe, the text insightfully explores the pre-occupations of black elite, in the three continents, exploring their shared visions and also their conflicting interests. Tackling thought provoking issues in politics, cultural identity, and economic development, the book provides the reader with a refreshing, jargon free insight into relations between Africa and the African Diaspora. A must read for anyone interested in politics, identity and development in Africa and the African Diaspora.

A Guyanese by birth and a Kenyan by citizenship, Ras Makonnen would still regard these two aspects of his life as accidents of history—his roots and destiny are in the continent of Africa. For the last half of the twentieth century, he has striven, along with the other major architects of pan-Africanism, to reconcile the forces that still divide the continent. This volume is a further contribution to that struggle. Makonnen’s analysis of the pan-African movement starts in the former British Guiana (Guyana) in the early twenties, warms up to the North American scene where, as a young man, he got increasingly more aware of the African and diasporic African person’s position in world history. He then describes his days in London and Manchester from the mid-thirties to the fifties; Accra (Ghana) until the fall of Kwame Nkrumah in 1966 and thereafter Nairobi (Kenya), where he worked and made his transition. Although the narrative is peppered with the most delightful character sketches of early African and other Black leaders, the author’s main concern is to interpret the quality of life amongst Black people at home and abroad. He does so by employing a wide historical perspective and by infusing into his study of particular pan-African actors his knowledge of the intellectual and political climate at large. He produces in the process a vivid participator’s commentary on whole areas that have been quite neglected in conventional studies of pan-Africanism. Black intergroup relations in North America and the African diaspora in the Caribbean; race relations in Britain; Black intellectuals and the white Left; Black expatriates and African socialism—these are just a few of the themes examined against a background of individual famous personalities as well as others not documented before. With an autobiographical thread that runs throughout, Makonnnen’s narrative is a uniquely diversified pan-African portrait.