Feature

Shaping a New Future for Africa

By H.E. Alpha Oumar Konare



From the speech of His Excellency Alpha Oumar Konare, chairperson of the Commission of the African Union and former president of Mali, at the opening session of the Conference of Intellectuals from Africa and the Diaspora (CIAD), Dakar, Senegal, October 7, 2004.

We come from all the regions of Africa, and from all the African Diaspora communities in Europe, America and Asia, but we are all imbued with the same conviction: the conviction that our Africa, the continent which was the first to see humankind walk upright--the cradle of humankind--deserves, at the beginning of the new millennium, all the attention of its sons and daughters. The conviction that the renaissance of our continent is within the realm of the possible, within our reach.

The Africa which unites us is the one which patiently recaptures its memory, a memory in which the wounds inflicted by painful experiences have not completely healed. For, since 1441, when Africans were captured along the West African coast and taken away as slaves; since 1502, when the slave trade became systematized, the history of Africa has become synonymous with tragedy.

Millions of young men and women, in the prime of their youth, were snatched from their land and ferried away under the most horrible conditions. Those who survived were subjected to the most atrocious exploitation in the Americas, while the continent was greatly weakened by this unprecedented demographic hemorrhage. It would be unpardonable to forget this crime against humanity. 

But beyond this tragedy, the Africa which unites us is a continent whose memory fabric is made of resistance to oppression.

It is this capacity to resist by using all possible weapons--weapons of political struggle, armed struggle, literary and artistic expression--that enabled us to succeed in defeating colonialism and the abominable system of apartheid. It is this strong determination to face adversity that gave birth to Pan-Africanism, both an ideology and a major movement. We need to celebrate this multifaceted resistance of our peoples as an integral part of our heritage. 


Pantheon of Heroes

Anne Zingha, Béhanzin, Moulay Ismaël, Aline Sito, Lat Dior, Omar Mokhtar, Chief Manouma, Samory Touré, Chaka, Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, but also the poets Césaire, Damas, Senghor and with them Alioune Diop but also Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Cheikh Anta Diop and Blyden, Sylvester Williams, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, William Du Bois; all occupy a high place in this Pantheon which we should erect, so that we can say loud and clear to the whole world and to future generations that, despite the flagrant insults of our time, the ignominy of the slave trade and the savagery of colonialism, Africa is still standing firm on its feet like the imposing pyramids of Giza, the enigmatic Sphinx, the ocher walls of Timbuktu, the sacred hill of Mapungubwe and the stone walls of Monomotapa. 

Above all, the Africa which unites us is one which has to conquer its future; an Africa that must first use its rich past as a resource to face up to the difficulties of the present, and as a springboard for a leap into the future. It is a continent for which "human" value will remain fundamental. This is the Africa of the future that must be explored and built. The challenge is not only "to block the holes in the perforated jar" but also, and above all, to mold a new Africa. A new Africa in which democracy, peace and institutional stability and effective citizenship will be the daily realities. 

Children in Soweto, South Africa

An Africa which will no longer fear the divergent forces encompassed in political pluralism, nor the multiplicity of identities associated with broad cultural diversity, but will be in a position, rather, to recognize these identities, cherish them and give them value.

A new Africa in which religious and ethnic plurality would be revisited and reinvented, rather than lead to the tragedies that we deplore in many parts of the continent.

Who does not perceive behind this outline of the new Africa the dreams and ambitions of African renaissance?

Tomorrow can certainly belong to Africa, in spite of HIV/AIDS and conflicts resulting from bad governance. But for the possible to become a reality, it is absolutely necessary for the intellectuals of the continent and of the Diaspora to be mobilized. 


Leading Role of Intellectuals

The world of today to which Africa belongs is, more than ever before, built on knowledge, as evidenced by the dematerialization of production in the industrialized countries, impacting negatively on our economies which are based essentially on the export of raw materials. 

It is, therefore, in the field of research and production of knowledge that the African identity should manifest itself. For this reason, the intellectuals of Africa and of the Diaspora, you whose profession is to think critically, you who confer legitimacy to issues and who question prevailing trends and paradigms, you are called upon to spearhead an African modernity which, today, is still to be invented. 

We hope to find appropriate ways and means to liberate the intellectual capital of the continent and of the Diaspora communities, mobilize this creativity, open it up to modernity through ownership of the new information and communication technologies and also lay the foundations for a new contract between the intellectuals and their peoples. It would be a solid contract which should relegate into the backwaters of history the marginalization of our intellectuals. A contract that will create the conditions for the emergence of a genuine African intelligentsia capable of rising to the current and future challenges of the continent. 

Such an intelligentsia will deserve its name if it eschews complaints and, instead, helps find credible responses, genuine African responses, to the issues that have been raised in connection with globalization that is built on market fanaticism and unfair trade. 
Such an intelligentsia will deserve its name if it asks questions about the financing of development in Africa, knowing that neither the total cancellation of debt, nor the doubling of Official Development Assistance will be enough. Should it not look for new sources of financing? Should it not ask questions about the conditions for the exploitation of our resources?

Such an intelligentsia will deserve its name because it will have developed our national languages, because it will have created new epistemologies which integrate local knowledge systems, in recognition that "all languages are beautiful, which makes it possible to recognize dignity even in the slave . . . ," to quote the Senegalese philosopher Moussa Ka.

Such an intelligentsia will deserve its name because it will have found the ways and means to spread in society a critical rationality without denying the importance of values and the place of the divine and of revelations in African societies.


African Identity

It will be an intelligentsia which will deserve its name because it will own the struggle for integration, for a modernity in which the Malinké person will call the Bantu his brother, in which the binary rhythm of Arab music will be captured by the Zulu dancer, a modernity in which men and women of Africa--from the foothills of the Atlas Mountains to Manenberg through Kilimanjaro will recognize themselves and join voices to extol genuine Africanness; an Africa that is first and foremost African before being Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone or Lusophone; an Africa that will have made Afro-Arab brotherhood a catalyst for its progress.

Nobel Laureate for Literature (1986) Wole Soyinka addresses  the CIAD conference's Gala Evening

The Africa we are talking about, the Africa of tomorrow, is one and indivisible, from Tangiers to Cape Town, from Dakar to Djibouti, both black and white, west and east, below and above the Sahara; an Africa which is a harmonious blend of all its various dimensions, an Africa which transcends its continental borders and integrates its diasporas. It is this diverse and pluralistic Africa that we have to build in order to have our voice heard loud and clear in the concert of nations and to assert our renaissance.

On this score, I would like to suggest that it is necessary for us to craft a new nationalism founded on Pan-Africanism. 

It is necessary for us to devise a new objective relationship with knowledge and expertise in all its forms, including endogenous knowledge. For development in Africa will be endogenous or it will never come about. Is it also not appropriate for each and every one of us, individually and collectively, in order to deserve the name of intellectual, to analyze our disciplines in relation to their being in the service of our continent Africa?

Such an intelligentsia will merit its name because it will have contributed to the work of the African Union and its program, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)--based on good governance, liberation of initiative, respect for the rule of law, greater attention to the rural world, use of endogenous knowledge and expertise and mobilization of internal resources to undertake major continent-wide programs, particularly in the areas of culture and infrastructure.


Unity and Renaissance

African union is, today, the condition sine qua non for all decisive changes that will take place in Africa. It could be a stage toward a United States of Africa. The African Union, an integration organization, is different from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) which was an international cooperation organization, one which fully accomplished its historic mission of liberating the continent and combating apartheid. The African Union is a union of states, for sure, but particularly a union of the peoples with greater space for women, civil society and the Diaspora, which it was hoped would be the sixth region of the continent. 

If there is any word around which we have to rally, it is, in my view, the word "renaissance;" the widening of space for freedom: cultural freedom, academic freedom, freedom of women from the grip of misogynous patriarchy, freedom for entrepreneurship, freedom for workers, freedom for youth to aspire to a better future.

More than ever, renaissance should remain high on our agenda, if this term indicates the deepening of the ongoing democratization process in our societies.

It is more than desirable, today, to seal an alliance between the politician and the intellectual. In so doing, we will give politics its true meaning, which is, to make possible what is desirable.

Youths, women, entrepreneurs and intellectuals of Africa are ready, because they are aware that their destiny lies in their own hands, and that nobody will build Africa in their place. They wish for a more open, interdependent world, for neither the unacceptable charters nor the police measures nor the unacceptable pressures exerted on African states can constitute a solution to immigration.

They wish to move freely everywhere on the continent, to offer their talents. To repeat the words of Joseph Ki-Zerbo, we need to go beyond these warmongering boundaries which made us strangers in Africa. Through integration and decentralization let us turn them into real frontier countries. Let us freely build a new sovereignty in place of the sovereignties granted to us.

Far from being an incantation, our solidarity is a blueprint for action.

Another Africa is possible for a more interdependent and fairer world.

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