The African Union and New Strategies for Development in Africa
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The African Union and New Strategies for Development in Africa B ...

Chapter 1:  Introduction: Transition, Continuity, and Change
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[w]e are determined to be free. We want education. We want the right to earn a decent living; the right to express our thoughts and emotions, to adopt and create forms of beauty. We demand for Black Africa autonomy and independence, so far and no further than it is possible and this one World for groups and peoples to rule themselves subject to inevitable world unity and federation. (Legum, 1962, pp. 135–137)

While the congress took place in the context of colonial rule and the strong ferment to negate it, the main elements of the resolution are political freedom, social welfare, and development for the people, which continue to be the central themes in Africa’s development discourse to date. The main actors at the fifth Pan-African Congress, like Kwame Nkrumah, later returned home to lead the nationalist struggle in their respective countries for political independence.

Which strategy the development of newly independent African states should take was an issue of intense discourse among the political leadership and organized interests in society. Pan-Africanists like Kwame Nkrumah had a strong conviction that microstates’ political independence would be meaningless unless those nations pull their resources together and act collectively within a regional political framework of continent unity. Nkrumah (1963) averred,

We in Africa who are pressing now for unity are deeply conscious of the validity of our purpose. We need the strength of our combined numbers and resources to protect ourselves from the very positive dangers of returning colonialism in disguised forms. WE need it to combat the entrenched forces dividing our continent and still holding back millions of our brothers. We need it to secure total African liberation. We need it to carry forward our construction of a socio-economic system that will support the great mass of our steadily rising population at levels of life which compare with those in the most developed countries. (see pp. 216–222)

Nkrumah concluded,

We in Africa with its islands are one Africa. We reject the idea of any kind of partition. From Tangier or Cairo in the North to Cape Town in the South, from Cape Guardafui in the East to Cape Verde Islands in the West, Africa is one and indivisible. (see pp. 216–222)