I came across the following video about the myth of African unity on YouTube from Polity. The speaker is Dr. Paul-Simon Handy of the Institute for Security Studies. I found it very interesting and thought it raised a lot of good points people don’t often like to discuss or consider. The main ones that stood out to me are that Africa is a very diverse continent that is not all black and does not have a common power to rise against any longer. Basically, we are in a post-post-Colonial world at this point, and it is up to governments, people and academics to determine that that is going to look like. I have been doing a lot of thinking on the idea of a new Pan-Africanism, wondering what it would look like and what the goals would be.
From the YouTube video description:
The idea of Pan-Africanism should be revisited, with the aim of reorienting it towards service delivery, performance and efficient governance.
The French text on the backdrop says “Knowledge emancipates Africa”.
Knowledge and access to that knowledge has been shown time and time again to have a positive impact on society. That is one of the reasons I feel so passionately about making sure that young people are able to use the internet, provided they have access to it, to look up meaningful information and connect with each other. I believe that with more and more dialogues happening, there is no limit on the ideas and solutions people are capable of coming up with. Knowledge does emancipate, and it also opens up new worlds.
When I think of the original Pan-Africanism, it had strong links to slavery. This meant that it reflected the entire diaspora. Where do black people from outside of Africa fit in to this new Pan-Africanism? If the global coverage of Obama showed anything, it is that even if we are not necessarily unified, we do look at major success stories and see our own potential, regardless of our background or country of origin. We see it and think that we can and will do better and know that we are the writers of our future. Our common histories link our successes, failures and futures.
I hope that in the future I am in a position where I can help create a future filled with knowledge and access.