Pan-Africanism is a nationalist movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous peoples and diasporas of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade and the Trans-Saharan slave trade , the movement extends beyond continental Africans with a substantial support base among the African diaspora in the Americas and Europe.
Pan-Africanism is said to have its origins in the struggles of the African people against enslavement and colonization [ 3 ] and this struggle may be traced back to the first resistance on slave shipsβrebellions and suicidesβthrough the constant plantation and colonial uprisings and the "Back to Africa" movements of the 19th century.
Based on the belief that unity is vital to economic, social, and political progress, it aims to "unify and uplift" people of African ancestry. At its core, pan-Africanism is a belief that "African people, both on the continent and in the diaspora , share not merely a common history, but a common destiny. Pan-African thought influenced the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity since succeeded by the African Union in Pan-Africanism stresses the need for "collective self-reliance".
Crucially, an all-African alliance would empower African people globally. The realization of the pan-African objective would lead to "power consolidation in Africa", which "would compel a reallocation of global resources, as well as unleashing a fiercer psychological energy and political assertion Advocates of pan-Africanismβi.
Critics accuse the ideology of homogenizing the experience of people of African ancestry. They also point to the difficulties of reconciling current divisions within countries on the continent and within communities in the diaspora. As a philosophy , pan-Africanism represents the aggregation of the historical, cultural, spiritual, artistic, scientific, and philosophical legacies of Africans from past times to the present.
