PAN-AFRICANISM AND PAN-ARABISM IN AFRICA: THE THESIS, THE -ANTI THESIS AND IMPERATIVE FOR SYNTHESIS

Abstract

Pan-Africanism has had a very profound impact on the national liberation struggle of the African people. It has helped and indeed has informed the development and articulation of a philosophy for the global engagements of the post-colonial African states. The building of transnational and transcontinental solidarity among the populace of African descent and those in the home land has been one of the most profound fallouts of Pan-Africanism. This was on great display in the liberation struggles waged against slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and racist regimes in Africa and beyond. With the collapse of racist regimes in Africa, it became difficult to sustain or even successfully evoke the Pan-African idea. The paper arrives at such conclusion by positing that Pan-Africanism and Arabism are antithetical to each other. An underlying premise of this hypothesis is that Afro-Arab relations have, to date, been woefully un-balanced and that this asymmetry, as expressed especially in inter-national and inter-racial political relations, has been weighted in favor of the Arabs and woefully to the disadvantage of the Africans