Forging African unity in a globalizing world: a postcolonial challenge

Abstract

Balkanized, fragmented and disintegrated are a few of the qualifiers of some anti-colonial, Africanist and postcolonial criticism of colonization and push for a unified Africa. Yet, was Africa ever a unitary whole or claim a unified past? My paper explores the dilemmas of ongoing African unity talks against the background of the plurality of political agendas. It examines this in the contest of the African Union and in relation to external political interests. Arguing that the ongoing unity efforts have been stalled by parochial interests, it asserts that progress can be made only when the unity talks are understood within the context of the complexities of the continent and its history. It shows that issues of statehood, ethnicity and colonialism, which confront Africa today, can only be understood within the context of the nationalist struggles, socio-economic realities and lessons from the radical ideological framings of the post-independence nationalist projects of the 1960s