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Sustainability, Emerging
Technologies, and
Pan-Africanism
Thierno Thiam
Gilbert Rochon
Sustainability, Emerging Technologies,
and Pan-Africanism
Thierno Thiam • Gilbert Rochon
Sustainability,
Emerging
Technologies, and
Pan-Africanism
Thierno Thiam Gilbert Rochon
Tuskegee University Tulane University
Tuskegee, AL, USA New Orleans, LA, USA
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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To the citizens of a future united Africa, both continental and in the
African Diaspora.
v
Preface
vii
viii PREFACE
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 Introduction 1
xi
xii CONTENTS
Index181
About the Authors
xiii
xiv About the Authors
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Congresses, and conventions, this study does not seek to settle this debate.
Rather, it seeks to build on consensus and will therefore focus on the most
consequential Congresses, which took place between 1900 and 1945.
This choice is especially relevant since the available data contained in origi-
nal proceedings of the Congresses held within such time span gives us the
evidence needed for a study based more on data and less on speculation.
Who are the main drivers of the Pan-African movement? The existing
scholarship has done a remarkable job fleshing out the roles of key indi-
viduals in shaping the idea and movement of Pan-Africanism. However, a
re-examination of Pan-Africanism along the lines of a different set of orga-
nizational frameworks will, in no uncertain terms, help further the analy-
sis. Most significantly, there is yet another imperative, which could be
equally important: the need to rethink the debate on the key drivers of the
Pan-African movement. There is indeed quite a consensus around key fig-
ures including Henry Sylvester Williams, William E. B. Du Bois, Edward
Wilmot Blyden, Marcus Garvey, Horace Campbell, Kwame Nkrumah,
Gamal Abdel Nasser, Julius Nyerere, and so on. Their place in the annals
of Pan-African History is secured and our work does not seek to challenge
this consensus.
However, our analysis of the fresh materials on the original proceedings of
the Pan-African Congress points to the preeminent role of individual actors
and institutions that the existing scholarship has, at best, just alluded to and,
at worst, completely ignored. Specifically, while the existing literature has had
only occasional forays into the role of key black institutions such as the black
press and the black church, it has tended to ignore the preeminent role of yet
another key black institution: Black Institutions of Higher Learning
and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, in particular. Our findings
from re-examining the original proceedings of the Pan-African Congresses
constitute a direct challenge to many of the pre-conceived notions about this
particular aspect of Pan-Africanism. This will be a key contribution that our
study seeks to bring to the rich scholarship on Pan-Africanism.
In light of these findings, this book seeks to challenge key notions
about Pan-Africanism in an effort to help advance the debate on an idea
and movement that has, to some extent, been handicapped by an over reli-
ance on secondary sources. In the process, our study will challenge some
of Pan-Africanism’s key theoretical assumptions, particularly, the one
advanced by Imanuel Geiss. In his work, which came to be a reference in
the study of Pan-Africanism, Geiss argues, in a rather definitive way, that
there are no comprehensive reports of the original proceedings of the
4 T. THIAM AND G. ROCHON
Pan-African Congresses (1974, 232). The Du Bois papers from the Special
Collections at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, do tell a very dif-
ferent story. Comprehensive reports of all the Pan-African Congresses are
indeed available and this book seeks to make ample use of such proceed-
ings to shed light on a debate that has been and continues to be burdened
by a belief in a lack of primary sources.
This book will also build on such re-examination in order to address
other major questions related to Pan-Africanism. Does Pan-Africanism
have a philosophical and theoretical framework? This very question along
with the suggestion that the difficulty in conceptualizing Pan-Africanism
is undoubtedly related to antecedent conceptions about whether one
could speak of African philosophy per se; questions rooted in prejudice. At
this point it will suffice to point out that such philosophy and theoretical
framework has been established be Edward Wilmot Blyden and that such
tradition has lived on with Du Bois and subsequent Pan-Africanists includ-
ing Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere, to name but these.
Of equal importance are the following questions: Why has Pan-Africanism
not achieved its goal of continental unification? What lessons can be learned
from the Pan-African experience? What are the links between Pan-
Africanism’s goal of unity and sustainable development? How might the
ultimate objective of African Unity be enabled and accelerated though
deployment of emerging technologies? The purpose of this book is to
address these questions in order to lay out a vision and a path for African
unity and sustainable development. African development must be thought
within the parameters of sustainability. Africa truly has the opportunity to
put forward the most comprehensive model for a development that does
not take place at the expense of the environment, interdependent ecosys-
tems, and the prosperity of future generations. The world can then turn to
Africa for leadership. As was the case in the past, humanity has never been
faced with an existential challenge that did not generate a bold response
from humans. The State, in the post Westphalia world, was a response to an
existential crisis; the Republic was a response to an existential crisis;
Democracy, itself, was a response to an existential crisis. The question of inse-
curity around the world and in Africa, imposed by extreme levels of poverty,
climate change, exploitative neo-colonial transactions, excessive wealth dis-
parity, and the rise of terrorist networks, represents an existential crisis. Africa
can respond and lead in the process of developing a paradigmatic shift
toward a more humane, more inclusive, sustainable, science-based, and more
equitable future. Africa can do this by seizing on the opportunity of new and
1 INTRODUCTION 5
to stand for disunity. Rather, if used properly, such dialectic could consti-
tute the very engine that enriches and re-invigorates the Pan-African ideal.
Pan-Africanism seeks to unite all people of African descent. Such quest
is premised on the notion of the existence of a special relationship among
all people of African descent. Consequently, the Pan-Africanists are those
who, through their intellectual work or through their actions, consistently
work toward these goals.
It is important to note, however, that the history of Pan-Africanism
cannot be a mere summary of the biographical notes of its standard bear-
ers. Rather, it should be a systematic approach which seeks to weave con-
cepts into contexts. The ways in which such concepts and contexts are
driven by the human experience adds clarity to the discourse and should
therefore be taken into account. As an idea, Pan-Africanism incorporates
several major aspects of our human experience including socio-political,
economic, scientific, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions. At its core, it is a
multifaceted phenomenon. The inherent difficulty to capture this multidi-
mensional phenomenon, which encapsulates both an idea and a move-
ment, is at the heart of all the difficulties associated with attempts to define
Pan-Africanism.
The Pan-African idea was born out of the effort to liberate the African
people and integrate them. For the Pan-Africanists, liberation and integra-
tion are both necessary components of the struggle to restore African
dignity and African pride. Consequently, the history of Pan-Africanism is
also the history of men and women whose dedication to the equality of
the human races is stronger than that of the hangmen of human civiliza-
tion. The essence of the Pan-African ideal of liberation and integration has
been articulated, perhaps best, by Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of
Ghana, the first independent post-colonial sub-Saharan African state. In
Nkrumah’s view, the concepts of freedom and unity are two faces of the
same coin and one cannot exist without the other in the African context.
In such light, Pan-Africanism, in its primary form, is the unbroken alliance
between Africa’s total liberation and Africa’s unity. Nowhere is this articu-
lation clearer than in his seminal treatise entitled Africa Must Unite.
Nkrumah explains:
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