Several post-independence pan-Africanists lost their lives to assassinations which were mostly masterminded by Western powers since their efforts to encourage economic interdependence and unity of African states were deemed dangerous to the West.
Among the many people who were assassinated include Patrice Lumumba of DRC Congo, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, Sylvanus Olympio of Togo, Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Samora Machel of Mozambique and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.
They all must be turning in their graves and laughing in awe as they witness the current Western trend of cutting funding and all forms of charity to Africa; massive deportations of African immigrants from the West and all efforts to limit the entry of African immigrants into Western countries.
In the same way it worked for President Trump, anti-immigration has recently become the assured magical wand for any president or prime minister in North America and Western Europe. Most recently, Friedrich Merz, the newly-elected chancellor of Germany, smoothly found his way to the chancellorship by majorly riding on an anti- immigration card.
Similarly, among his many pitfalls, the former prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, announced his resignation partially because of his failure to put a tight handle on the number of immigrants entering Canada, a phenomenon supposedly blamed for the unprecedented pressure on housing, social services and employment.
It goes without saying that in the upcoming elections, the favourite candidate shall be the one who will promise the harshest anti-immigration policies, which will include harsher visa-vetting criteria and deportation of irregular immigrants.
Certainly, if one waves an anti-immigration card, they can even slaughter innocent babies or shoot to death hundreds of people live on TV a night before the elections and will still go on to win that election.
My tendency is not to gloat over the failure of some Africans to make it to the West. However, the new Western stance, exacerbated by President Donald Trump embodies unforeseen positive gains to pan africanism.
If a kitchen is on fire, and there is no possible exit, doing all it takes to extinguish the fire is not optional. Similarly, if there are limited entry opportunities to the Western world, the Africans in countries with poor resource management (often, wrongly referred to as poor) will have no option other than collectively agitating for sustainable/ African solutions regardless of the cost.
When there are many people benefiting from unlimited streams of money from the West, a pan africanist, who tries to propose solutions for reducing foreign dependency equates to a supposedly very important guest at a wedding who shows up donned in a pair of slippers, shorts and a sleeveless shirt.
The opinions of such a person are confusing even before they say anything. When there is less free money pouring into Africa, there will be more vigilance for the little locally-available resources. The level of vigilance for hunters who are sharing a rabbit is different from the kind of vigilance needed while sharing a buffalo.
Political activists going abroad will not only stay, but a big section of valuable diaspora will opt to return, or others forced to return. The double knowledge and experiences of both the former host and the home countries gives the diaspora that special ability to see through the cracks – the cracks of both the former host nations and the homeland African nations to which they return.
They can, therefore, play a crucial role in articulating and raising the much-needed awareness and consciousness of the masses in the home countries to agitate for true African independence.
Basil Davidson’s assertion in The Black Man’s Burden is that while Africa cannot return to its past, there is still value in considering how some aspects of the African past can provide solutions to our current problems. Obviously, the African traditions may not have answers to some modern challenges such as how to recover data when a smartphone crashes.
Nonetheless, the core challenges facing Africa, such as famine, climate change, and socio-economic conflicts are not without an African precedence from which a solution or two can be found. All human civilisations have been a result of trial and error.
However, one constant has been that after everything else has failed, you can count on human beings doing the right thing. When all the monies from the West to fund hollow democracies in Africa vanish, it will be the right time for Africa to look inward and search for wisdom from the works of the ancestors.
Suffice to say, there has never been a better time in history for Africa to look inward than now when the known world’s democracies are looking more inward; seemingly regretting and re-thinking the universally binding humanitarian treaties and generally turning a blind eye to Africa.
The writer is a social worker.