Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Open Thread on Pan-Africanism

Africa Unity Day is May 25th and commemorates the founding of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. Since Nkrumah's overthrow in 1966 Pan-Africanism seems to have been in serious decline on the continent. But, it is hard to argue that what replaced Nkrumah and his vision were better in the long term. Greater economic cooperation aimed at developing the physical and human infrastructure of Africa still appears to be the best way forward. If the University of Ghana is going to be a world class university its history department can not focus solely on Ghanaian history and only cater to students from Ghana. It has to expand and the natural direction of that expansion is in a Pan-African direction. I think we are starting to move in this direction now, but it has been a long time since Nkrumah fell so there is a lot of catching up to do.

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