African Liberation Day 2022 - Pan African Congress

As part of the 2022 African Liberation Day celebration, the Global Pan African Movement (GPAM) will host a discussion to examine the current prospects of Pan African solidarity and the unification of African peoples.

Date: May 28, 2022 Time: 1pm (EST)

2022 Speakers

Walter Bgoya

Walter Bgoya is a staunch Pan-Africanist with a long history of activism not only in Africa but also in the US as a student leader in the civil rights movement on campus between 1961 and 1965. He is a publisher in Tanzania, and has been so for fifty years, first as General Manager of state-owned Tanzania Publishing House and then as owner publisher of Mkuki na Nyota Publishers. It was at TPH and the University of Dar es salaam that he met Dr Walter Rodney and published How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. He has since then published numerous progressive and left books on a range of subjects about Tanzania, Africa and the global South, shaping discussions and debate in East Africa.

Prior to that, Walter Bgoya was in the Tanzania foreign service working closely with African liberation movements through the OAU liberation committee based in Dar es salaam and also as a diplomat in Addis Ababa and Beijing at different times. He developed close contacts with nearly all leaders of the liberation movements, some of whom are still alive. He has been involved in initiatives on strengthening Pan-African publishing and has written extensively on the subject. He was founding member and Chairman of the African Books Collective. Walter Bgoya worked with Mwalimu Nyerere as one of his team of advisors in the Arusha Peace process on Burundi until his passing and has deep interest in issues pertaining to the Great Lakes region

Brian Kagoro

Brian Kagoro is a Human Rights Activist and Constitutional Lawyer. He is a Founding Member of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) which drafted a new constitution, designed to better articulate and protect the rights of all sectors of Zimbabwean society. He is also the Founder of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition where he served as Spokesperson and National Coordinator, respectively.

Kagoro is a former student leader at the University of Zimbabwe, an Amani Trust Board Member and also Legal Advisor to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. He is a former Board Secretary for the Zimbabwe National Students Union and a frequent commentator on human rights, constitutional reform and political affairs. Kagoro holds a Masters in Law from Warwick University. His current thoughts can be found at: Brian Kagoro

Kioko Mwosa

Kioko Mwosa has over 25 years experience working in the high tech industry. He is a thought leader in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), Asset Management, Blockchain and Sustainability. He is originally from Kenya and lives in the Boston-area with his filmmaker wife, Thato, and their 3 kids Sifa, Bosa and Tuli. He races mountain bikes for fun.

Mahder Habtemariam Serekberhan

Mahder Habtemariam Serekberhan is a Political Science PhD student enrolled at Syracuse University. She recently graduated her MA Pan African Studies program under the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. Her research has explored the 2019 Sudanese uprising and the fundamental role of women to liberation struggles with radical possibilities. Her current research interests include African social and women’s movements, grassroots mobilization, political organization, and African transformational politics.

Mahder was raised and born in Ethiopia and lived in Malaysia before coming to the United States. She has worked with research institutions and a women’s organization in Ethiopia. In 2017, Mahder spearheaded Linn County’s first Expungement and Resource Clinic in Iowa, which was meant to alleviate the disparate burdens faced by formerly incarcerated people. She is currently serving as a Board Member of the Africa Initiative. She also serves as Vice Chairperson of the Global Pan African Movement North American Delegation.

Julialynne Walker (Moderator)

Julialynne Walker is passionate about food injustice – the connections between healthy food, growing healthy food and marketing healthy food, especially within traditionally African-American communities as an outgrowth of her international public health and African Diaspora work (KLB_TEDx https://youtu.be/fpp4F6uofag). With over 30 years of experience working with movements for social change, beginning with the civil rights movement and continuing with African liberation struggles, she is still engaged in consolidating the Pan African Movement as a member of the Global Pan African Movement.

More about the Conference

With the acknowledgement that the question of full independence has not been totally achieved, our African Liberation Day celebration intends to serve as a critical effort to educate, motivate, and mobilize our people. The collective struggle of African peoples on the continent and in the wider African world demand that we highlight the past victories while being humble about the challenges ahead.

The discussion will highlight important lessons from the intentionality, grassroots efforts, overarching collectivism and Pan African solidarity against colonialism and neocolonialism that can be adapted from the 20th century struggles to the current context. During that era, foremost Pan Africanist and former president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, asserted that the breaking down of colonial borders and the unification of Africa is “an inescapable desideratum” if the continent is to undergo complete political and economic liberation.

More than half a century later, the project to strengthen Pan African solidarity and unify African peoples for the total liberation of Africans everywhere remains an unfinished business, facing critical economic, social, political, and climate-related challenges. While focused on these short-term challenges, one may be pessimistic about the possibility of strengthening Pan African solidarity and the unification of the peoples. But on a closer examination of these challenges there are embedded opportunities that reinforce the need to unite African peoples, not just governments, for the economic transformation of the continent and liberation of all the peoples.