Episode 22: Revisiting the Dream of a United Africa

In a series to celebrate women’s month, we speak with Amira Ali, and Teboho, two Bay Area-based African women activists from Ethiopia and S. Africa, respectively. They have teamed up with others to launch Afrika Moja, a collective that hosts salon-style discussions to explore various ways to unite Africans at home and abroad for the sake of the continent’s future.

A united Africa was perhaps the biggest dream of leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, and Tanzania’s Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was to see an Africa united. They wanted to restore the dignity stolen from the continent’s people by slavery and colonialism. But for that to happen, all African countries needed to be free of European rule. By the time white rule ended with the fall of Apartheid in S. Africa, most of the pan-African nationalists had been overthrown, killed or like Nyerere, had long retired from active politics.

Will today’s pan-Africanists succeed in achieving what they say is the only thing that will guarantee a future of African independence?

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