Pan-Africanism and Development in Africa

Abstract

Abstract This chapter deals with the relevance of Pan-Africanism for African development trajectories and prognoses. Pan-Africanism has historically evolved from being a liberation movement to eradicate oppression, slavery, and colonialism to an ideology of achieving continental unity, interdependence, self-sufficiency, and economic transformation. In other words, the traditional Pan-Africanism served as a strategy of decolonization, anticolonial struggle, and “Black” unity, whereas modern Pan-Africanism emerged as a strategy of neocolonial struggle and collective self-reliance, and a development framework or an ideology of economic transformation. Therefore, modern Pan-African developmental regionalism derives from the Pan-Africanist philosophical postulations of Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and Nnamdi Azikiwe. African scholarship concerning Pan-African developmental regionalism has been dominated by Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism. This chapter departs from both outlooks by embracing the emerging Afro-realism.