Hakim Adi w/ Josh Myers on Pan Africanism: A History

Africa World Now Project

[originally produced & aired May 2018]

What is meant by the term “Pan-Africanism?” What do we – can we - make of “pan Africanism”? There have been various attempts by scholars, activist, artist, musicians, to develop a clear definition of Pan Africanism. While a clear and solidified definition of Pan Africanism has been the preoccupation of these thinkers, others have hesitated due to the vast diversity of thought and activity found among self-identified Pan-Africanists across time and space. According to Hakim Adi in his work Pan Africanism: A History, Pan-Africanism is considered a composed of ideas and movements “concerned with the social, economic, cultural and political emancipation of the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora.” Broadly speaking, it stems from “belief in the unity, common history and common purpose of the people of Africa and the African diaspora” and their interwoven futures. Finally, historically Pan-African “thought and action” emerges within efforts to connect and reconnect those in the African diaspora created, in particularly, through the forced dispersal of enslaved people from continental Africa simultaneously with the solidification and emergence of global racial capitalism, “European colonial rule and anti-African racism” (2). While containing a multitude of diverse ideological, political, cultural, and organizational expression, Pan-African thought and action share a commitment to resist “the exploitation and oppression of all those of African heritage,” rejecting anti-African and African-descent racism and celebrating “African achievement, history, and the very notion of being human through a positive construction of an “African” identity (3).

Today, AWNP’s Josh Myers is in discussion with Dr. Hakim Adi on his new book, Pan Africanism: A History

Professor Hakim Adi is Professor of History at the University of Chichester, focusing on the history of Africa and her diaspora. Author of a number of works, including West Africans in Britain (1998), Pan-African History: Political Figures from African and the Diaspora from 1787 (with Marika Sherwood) (2003), and Pan Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919-1939, Adi’s scholarship is grounded in understanding the historiography of various struggles for African liberation. We interviewed him about his latest effort to engage with the histories of that struggle, in his recent book, Pan-Africanism: A History.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!