Pan Africanism and the Academia The dominant wing of Pan African movement developed in the academia.

Du Bois, Nkrumah and Rodney were, for example, university lecturers. And most key figures passed through higher education. According to Horace Campbell (2011), the youth played active role in the movement. He mentioned the critical role played by West African students in the 1930s and 40s, the student movement in the United States during the civil rights movement era and, most importantly, the student of Soweto in South Africa who sacrificed their lives in the cause of freedom and equality in the 1970s. All of the prominent Pan African attached a great value to education. However, there were some differences as to what type of education should take precedence. For instance, Booker T. Washington advocated and launched vocational school for black people in America. But this was opposed by W.E.B Du Bois who thought that higher education should be given more priority. He thought that higher education was the breeding ground for producing the talented tenth who capable of leading the masses to freedom and better well being. Yet, Du Bois lacked faith in the role of Eurocentric education of his times. This belief was also He adhered that education of colonial peoples was designed to pacify their critical thinking by writing that: Education for colonial people must inevitably mean unrest and revolt; education, therefore, had to be limited and used to inculcate obedience and servility lest the whole colonial system be overthrown (1967, p.37). Due to this, Du Bois gave a very high priority to the education of the, especially, the youth. In his early 90th year, he wrote to Nkrumah the following:
Above all, the new Pan Africa will seek the education of all its youth on the broadest possible basis without religious dogma and in all hospitable land as well as in Africa and for the end of making Africans not simply profitable workers for industry nor stoolpigeons for propaganda, but for making them modern, intelligent, responsible men of vision (1967, p.297).

In the letter, one can clearly that Du Bois supported secular education that will transform not only the skill or knowledge of the intelligential but also uplift their personality. This social utility-based view of education was also championed by Nkrumah. In a speech he made at the opening of the Institute of African Studies on 25th October 1963, he said:

Education consists not only in the sum of what a man knows, or the skill with which he can put this to his own advantage. In my view, a mans education must be measured in terms of the soundness of his judgment of people and things, and in his power to understand and appreciate the needs of his fellow-men, and to be of service to them (1963, p. 59).

The social-utility purpose of education was equally endorsed by Nyere (1967). During the inaugural ceremony of the University of Dar El Salaam was inaugurated in on October 1961, Nyerere said:
Our young men and women must have an African-orientation education. That is, an education which is not only given in Africa but also directed at meeting the present needs of Africa. For while other people can aim at reaching the moon, and while in future we might aim at reaching the moon, our present plans must be directed at reaching the villages(1967, p.131).

This conception of education as a vehicle to self-knowledge has also been acknowledged by Malcolm X. When asked, on December 1962, whether his organization [Nation of Islam, at that time] supports the idea of African Americans joining an all white school, Malcolm X replied that it was better for the people to be educated about themselves by their own people and gain racial pride before integrating in the mainstream education system. The status of Pan Africanism in the academia has been closely intertwined with the plight and performance of the Africana community worldwide. During the early stages where the struggle for freedom was gaining more ground, attention and success, Pan Africanism became a prized subject in the academia. In the 1950s and 1960s, in particular, social scientists developed high academic interest in Africa and the African Diaspora. New African studies departments were opened in the United States, Europe and even in Asian countries like China (Zeleza, 2009; Anshan, 2005). This was a time where many leading intellectuals worldwide produced intellectual treatise on subjects pertaining Africa (Wallerstein, 1961; Nye, 1965; Sartre, 1964). This euphoric stage turned out to be ephemeral. This was a mirror image of the decline of political and socioeconomic condition of Africana community is the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s, W.E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were no longer alive. And, in Africa Nkrumah was overthrown, Lumumba was killed, Nasser died and an ideological rift was created between socialist leaders like Nyerere and his capitalist counterparts like Boigny. While

Africa fell in the hands of dictators, the international communitys attention was diverted to the Arab-Israel crisis. The subsequent oil embargo by Arab countries damaged the economy of African countries. The crisis also altered the political interest of North African countries, especially Egypt, from Africa to the Middles East (Meredith, 2006). The political and economic crisis of the 1970s continued in the 1980s. The oil exporting Arab countries stored huge financial reserve in Western banks who in turn decided to channel the money to African governments without risk assessment. Besides, the Superpowers waged proxy wars in African soil by arming dictatorship and supporting civil war. As a result, a significant level of African intellectuals migrated to the West. This new wave of African intellectuals has somewhat joined and gradually dominated the African studies departments in Western Universities. During this period, Pan Africanism was largely influenced by dependency school in Latin America (Stiglitz, 2002; Zeleza, 2009). In the 1990s, the Cold War was over. However, Africa fell prey to International Financial Institutes who perceived it as a basket case. Africa became the subject of unexamined Structural Adjustment Program of the World Bank. In the mean time, however, a new hope was kindled with the fall of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The new South African leadership assumed its responsibility in reforming the Organization of African Union. The African Union was inaugurated in Durban in 2003. The NEPAD was also created. Meanwhile, most dictatorships were replaced by new generation of African leaders (Meredith, 2006). Hence, with this, a new school against the Western imposed neo-liberal ideology begun to appear. The concept of the developmental-State replaced that of dependency school of the 70s and 80s. Essentially, the development state advocates that the government major objective should be development by regulating the market. Unlike dependency school that was inspired by Latin America, this new school derives its inspiration from East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea and China (Zeleza, 2009).