Pan-Africanism and African Citizenship: The Way Forward
Abstract
This paper critically analyses Pan-Africanism as an ideology for the liberation of Africa, with a view to assessing the possibilities of a common African citizenship. This paper argues the claim that the focus of Pan-Africanism should shift from activism, agitations, and struggles to a univocal platform that will define authentic African identities by crystallising a common nationality for Africans on the continent and those in the diaspora. This claim is known to be rooted in the age-long African values of brotherhood, complementarity, and family hood (Ujamaa) that make Africans see other Africans as brothers who share the same humanity. This is different from the Africans of today who have assimilated western values of individualism, which are divisive and exclusive in nature, which in reality is a negation of authentic African personhood and society. This has given rise to ethnic agitations, xenophobic attacks, populism and hatred against "outsiders". Therefore, it is in the forging of common identities for Africans that African citizenship can be made possible. It should be the way forward for Pan-Africanism in the 21st century. Thus, in this paper, we employ the philosophical method of critical analysis in carrying out our investigation of the various issues that necessitated this research work.
References
African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (2015). The Rights to Nationality in African, ACHPR: The Gambia
Baldwin, J (1965). Nobody Knows my Name, London: Corgi
Kanu, A. (2013). African Identity and the Emergence of Globalization, American International Journal of Contemporary Research, 3(6), 34-42.
Kapere, M. (2008). Contextualizing Pan-Africanism, (Eds) Bankie and Mchombu, Pan-Africanism, African nationalism – Strengthening the Unity of Africa and its Diaspora. Trenton: The Red Sea Press Inc.
Lija, I. V. (2011). “An analysis of the concept of citizenship: Legal, political and social dimensions”. Unpublished Master’s Thesis submitted to University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences/ social and moral philosophy
Maimela, D. (2013). Pan-Africanism of the 21st Century – Challenges and Prospect, The Journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation, 71,34-44
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2009). Africa for Africans or Africa for “natives” only?“New nationalism” and nativism in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Africa Spectrum, 44(1), 61-78.
Ndubisi, F. O. (2013). The philosophical paradigm of African identity and development. Open Journal of Philosophy, 3(01), 222.
Nyerere, J. K. (1968). Ujamaa--essays on Socialism (Vol. 359). Dar es Salaam: oxford university press.
Poe, D. Z. (2004). Kwame Nkrumah's Contribution to Pan-African Agency: An Afrocentric Analysis. Routledge.
Potekhin, I. (1964). Pan-Africanism and the struggle of the two ideologies. South Africa History Online, 36-48.
wa Thiong'o, N. (2004). African identities: Pan-Africanism in the era of globalization and capitalist fundamentalism. Macalester International, 14(1), 9.
Authors who publish with Tamaddun journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain the copyright and grant Tamaddun the right of first publication. The work will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits others to share the work with proper acknowledgment of the authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors may enter into additional non-exclusive agreements for the distribution of the published version of their work (e.g., posting it to an institutional repository or including it in a book), provided that the initial publication in this journal is acknowledged.
3. Authors are encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their personal websites) before and during the submission process. This can lead to productive exchanges and increase the visibility and citation of the published work.
