Pressures for clarity of the goals of the Pan African Movement
Pressures for clarity of the goals of the Pan African Movement
Just as how at the 7th Pan African Congress in Kampala there were other initiatives such as the Lagos Initiative, so since 2014 there were parallel initiatives for the Pan African Congress movement. The governments of South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica and Senegal held numerous meetings that brought together intellectuals, economists and other branches of the Pan African Movement. In 2006, there was a major initiative to host a Pan African congress in in Zimbabwe but there was very little agreement about the efficacy of Zimbabwe hosting Pan Africanists of all political persuasions. There were many new formations in the Pan African world such as the African Mathematical Union and African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) that focused on building continental networks among Africans at home and abroad.
As in the Kampala meetings of 1994, one continuing debate was about who is an African. Although the emergence of PAWLO had in many ways settled the new challenges, there were those who opposed the continenatalist line of Pan Africanism. This brand of Pan Africanism based on exclusion went about the organizing of a meeting in a room with specially invited guests and called this the 8th Pan African Congress. It was the view of many of those attending that the AU and its membership of African governments cannot be part of the Pan African movement. The question of the relationship with Africans who lived in the North of Africa was a major point of difference between the forces that claimed the mantle of the 8th Pan African Congress.
