Celebrating Africa Day with lessons for Latin America and the Caribbean

Today the whole of humanity is celebrating. The continent from which we all come, Africa, celebrates its day. On May 25, 1963, the Addis Ababa summit was held in Ethiopia, where the future of the African countries, many of which were achieving their independence, was envisioned.

At this summit, great African leaders tried to give a practical approach to the Pan-Africanist agenda, based on union, solidarity and the progress of the people.

Sekou Toure, Leopold Senghor, Abdel Nasser, among others, met in Addis Ababa. However, one who stood out at the summit was the Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, who delivered a prodigious speech in favour of the political union of the entire African continent.

Nkrumah's speech has great relevance today, both for Africa and the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Nkrumah pointed out that independence was useless if African countries failed to unite.

Nkrumah argued that Africa should not follow Latin America's example of disunity: “We have already reached the stage where we must unite or sink into that condition which has made Latin America the unwilling and distressed prey of imperialism after one-and-a-half centuries of political independence.”

Nkrumah also pointed out in his speech the immense mineral wealth of Africa. "Africa provides more than 60% of the world’s gold,” and added: “A great deal of the uranium for nuclear power, of copper for electronics, of titanium for supersonic projectiles, of iron and steel for heavy industries, of other minerals and raw materials for lighter industries – the basic economic might of the foreign powers – come from our continent.”

But something very accurate about Nkrumah's speech is that he did not want the union of African countries, which became the Organization of African Unity (OAU) at the end of the Addis Ababa summit, to end up resembling the Organization of American States (OAS). "Or is it intended that Africa should be turned into a loose organization of states on the model of the Organization of American States, in which the weaker states within it can be at the mercy of the stronger or more powerful ones…?”

Nkrumah's speech in Addis Ababa reads as if it was delivered yesterday. The analysis of the political, social and economic reality of Africa from Nkrumah's perspective is not different from the analysis made by Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro years later about the countries of the South. 

In honor of Africa on its day, we must study Nkrumah and apply his legacy as a defense against imperialist threats.

Alvaro Sanchez Cordero is the Charge D’Affaires at the Embassy of Venezuela to Barbados




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