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Gibson Nyikadzino-Correspondent

With Africa’s institutional organisation on its 60th anniversary an achievement to celebrate, the biggest question is what will the continent look like in 2063?

The 21st century was meant for the entirety of the African people to progress and advance their endeavours from all fronts. 

Because in the 20th century, there was no continent with political enlightenment more than Africa, as its inhabitants expressed their resolve towards independence and decolonisation as pioneered by people like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Algeria’s Ben Bella and Guinea’s Sekou Touré, among others. 

These leaders fought for Africa’s liberation from all colonial vices, having the consciousness to that liberty enthused in the days of their youth and the prime of their lives. 

Towards the end of the past millennium, a remarkable African renaissance set the tone for what Africa was to be post-2000. 

Some key African people had occupied offices of governance pedigree, young people had defied odds in the sporting sector, the arts sector was tilting for an African takeover from 2000 onwards. 

Developments that occurred from 1992 about the remarkable successes of the people of the Global South were giving a positive signal on what the rest of the world was to expect from Africa. 

These developments were not a coincidence. The decade of 1990 to 2000 was key in reshaping, refining and remodelling Africa’s image. 

In 1992, Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali assumed the post of the secretary general of the United Nations, which he then passed to Ghana’s Kofi Annan in 1996. 

In the same year, Nigeria’s soccer youthful soccer team in the under-23 category beat Brazil to win the gold medal at the centennial Olympic games in 1996 in Atlanta.

Here in the southern part of Africa, Zimbabwe was beginning to fashion its concerns about how to retrieve its economic heritage from farmers of British descent by organising the Land Donor Conference in 1998 to ensure resource equality among citizens. 

Post-2000, by 2002, when the Senegal national football team beat France, a former colonial power at the Korea-Japan FIFA World Cup finals, the hope of Africa was that everything can be achieved and that even colonial powers could be challenged and overpowered in many regards.

These achievements were not only done because “we are Africans” but because along the way, from the Pan-Africanist and nationalist generations in Africa, the people of this continent were refining their endeavours since Ghana’s independence in 1957, and the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 and its renaming to the African Union in 2002. 

Which path to follow?

The African generation that sought to unite the continent shared the continent’s unity as a goal, though methodologies to reach that goal differed, there was no animosity towards each other. 

By the basis of their methodical differences, the common highlights involved having an Africa that remained on the path of decolonisation, independent and dependent, only, internally on each other. 

This explains why Ghana’s Nkrumah said “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked to the total liberation of Africa.” 

It is evident this was coming from a Pan-African ideologue. 

From the Pan-Africanist generation, the baton of African consciousness was handed to the national generation, comprising of nationalist figures whose execution of the liberation of Africa reflected Pan-African ideas and nationalist identities, galvanising people towards freedom. 

Their determination was to remove the oppressive colonial regimes that legalised oppression, instituted human rights abuses and orchestrated economic marginalisation. 

Both the pan-African and nationalist generations advocated for an inward-looking approach to Africa’s problems. African solutions to Africa’s challenges. 

 Apparently, the emergence of two other generations that have sought to spoil and alter the early vision of Africa’s founding fathers not puts the African millennials at the cross-roads of what to follow. 

The globalist and diaspora generations, characterised as those who embrace the Western ideologies and values, and those that have lived and are living in Western countries. 

These majority from these two generations during their stay and interaction with Western institutions have adopted ideas that are not congruent with the ideals of Africa’s progression. 

Their thoughts have been redirected to no longer think about Africa and her goals, but to infuse Western orientation. 

They think, act and reflect Western society. By and large, they are well-polished victims who do not believe in African superiority. They think in inferior terms!

While Africa is not a personal project that can be described as a product of pan-Africanists and nationalists, for the globalist and diaspora generations, their biggest weaknesses have been their inability to face the continent’s challenges with the mind of an African habitant. 

These generations are the ones that mainly advocate for Western dependency and reject the identification of African priorities that endure and sustain the multiplicative well-being of all people.

This is now the dilemma the 21st century youth, the millennials, are facing regarding the path to follow as the continent moves towards its 2063 agenda. There are two roads to this destiny, either the African way or the non-African way.

Re-awakening African 

consciousness

 Never in any historical moment has Pan-Africanism been useful than at this critical moment in which Africans are now living in a world that the Western countries want to dominate. 

Such is the time for the African man and woman to refine themselves. This is not new. The experiences faced by those in the diaspora, they have not lived comfortably and in those circumstances cannot fulfil the African dream.

In 1962, Nkrumah said: “An important aspect of Pan-Africanism is the revival and development of the African personality, temporarily submerged during the colonial period. It finds expression in a re-awakening consciousness among Africans and peoples of African descent of the bonds which unite us – our historical past, our culture, our common experience and our aspirations.”

It is key to re-awaken African consciousness at a time Africa is mindful that conflict in the continent will affect the implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). 

The outbreak of war in Sudan, the violence being perpetrated by the M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Western sponsorship given to ‘terrorist’ groups in the Sahel region are all incidents that are calling for a re-awakening of African consciousness. 

This re-awakening should take Africa to that epoch where there is a value consensus on what needs to be done. 

Countries and people who share similar values do not engage in conflict with one another. The values of Africa have to take centre stage if the search for African unity, co-operation, and integration is to be achieved.

Unity and co-operation should not be seen as having ceased with the transfer of the OAU to the AU.

Pan-Africanism and the Pan-African movement are relevant today as they were before because to unlock Africa’s potential further, the two ideas should be allowed to operate as the ideological beacon in fostering intra-African unity, cooperation, and integration.

What is key is to understand that Pan-Africanism and the Pan-African movement from the 1950s and 1960s championed the struggle of Africans and peoples of African descent for emancipation and the restoration of their dignity against slavery, colonialism and all forms of racism and racial exploitation, and to overcome developmental challenges. 

Even so, modern challenges can be overcome by the same principles.

A common destiny

Those who believe in Africa’s success without individualism can share the similar view that Pan-Africanism is an ideology and movement that promotes African unity everywhere. 

Its relevance is based on the concept that unity is essential for economic, social, and political advancement. This idea presented by our founding fathers seeks to unify and uplift people of African origin. 

The modern African man who does not want to respect the founding values that stitched and knit the essence of Africa’s ability to struggle and overcome racist colonial hardships, is no good man but a traitor to the continued struggle for African modernity.

There is more work that needs to be done in the 21st century, which Africa is supposed to conquer considering how people like Boutros-Ghali, Annan and the under-23 Nigeria soccer team conquered the world during the last years of the last millennium.

Today, the fortunes of all African peoples and countries are interwoven. 

It is never wrong to believe that the belief that African peoples on the continent and in the diaspora share not only a common history, but also a common destiny, is the basis to instruct Africa’s collective prosperity.

As Africa unites towards 2063, Zimbabweans, do remember we are one. 

This is homeland!