Pambazuka News is produced by a pan-African community of some 2,600 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators who together produce insightful, sharp and thoughtful analyses and make it one of the largest and most innovative and influential web forums for social justice in Africa. 
pan-africanism
What Pambazuka News means to the Pan-Africanist in me
Chambi Chachage
2010-10-13, Issue 500
Pambazuka News has fostered debate about the 'whole spectrum of political colouring' and in so doing played a crucial role in turning ideas into pro-African action, writes Chambi Chachage.
How we wish you were here: a tribute to Mwalimu Nyerere
Firoze Manji
Pambazuka News
2009-10-15, Issue 452
Ten years ago, on 14 October 1999, a giant died and left a cavern in our consciousness, if not in our conscience. Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a man of extraordinary achievements on a a national, continental and international scale, writes Firoze Manji, in this introduction to a special issue of Pambazuka News.
West African Students Union's indelible Nkrumah
Daniel Yao Dotse
2009-10-01, Issue 450
© Africa WithinThe West African Students Union (WASU) was a key organisation in the de-colonisation process of the African continent and one of the first pan-African organisations. In his historical analysis, Daniel Yao Dotse brings us closer to understanding the organisation itself and how it nurtured the growth of the great pan-Africanist and President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah. In this week's Pambazuka News, Yao Dotse discusses the heydays of the organisation, its demise and ultimate rebirth in 2004.
Nkrumah at 100
Ama Biney
2009-09-24, Issue 449
© Africa WithinCommemorating the centenary of Pan-African ‘political prophet’ Kwame Nkrumah on 21 September, Ama Biney pays tribute to ‘a titan of the anti-colonial struggle and African history that all people of African descent – both young and old – should be proud of.’ But what would Nkrumah make of ‘retrogressive developments that have taken place during the last 50 years of Africa’s history’ if he were alive today?
Pan-Africanism in our time
Zaya Yeebo
2009-07-16, Issue 442
cc WikimediaPan-Africanism is not just a throwback to the post-colonial period, writes Zaya Yeebo, the people of Africa are still ‘united by culture, history and identity’. Africans around the continent feel each other’s pain and are bound together as a people by events, says Yeebo, whether it is the struggle for emancipation in the Niger Delta, or the crisis in the DRC. Charting a history of the Pan-African Movement from the first conference in 1900 to the present day, Yeebo calls for Pan-African solutions to African problems, with Pan-Africanism as a ‘collective understanding’ of how ‘we intend to conduct our affairs in today’s globalised world’.
8th Pan African Congress needed to redeem movement
Vincent Nuwagaba
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc xrichxThe Global Pan African Movement is a ’dying institution’, writes Vincent Nuwagaba, and the whole continent and Africans in the diaspora must ‘rededicate their efforts to revive it’. Dismayed by its half-hearted commemoration of the day of the African child, Nuwagaba writes that the problem is that the Uganda-based ‘global’ secretariat ‘has been reduced to a branch and extension of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and State House’. In order to de-link a mass movement from a partisan movement, argues Nuwagaba, ‘all Africans of goodwill must demand the holding of the 8th Pan African Congress and a shift of the ‘global’ secretariat.’
Nkrumah: Model challenge for Ghana’s rulers
Yao Graham
2009-06-18, Issue 438
cc wikimedia.orgKwame Nkrumah brought the Convention People's Party into power within two years of its formation, creating independent Ghana, writes Yao Graham. An overwhelming electoral victory gave Nkrumah a platform for mass anti-colonial mobilisation around Africa. Accra became a staging point for the African anti-colonial movement with the All-African People's Conference, drawing delegates from 62 nationalist organisations, including future ruling parties and post-colonial leaders, who were urged to 'fight for independence now'. Post-colonial construction, however, was different from bringing down colonialism and Nkrumah struggled to generate resources for steady improvement in the living standards of people with expectations fuelled by independence and his own visionary pronouncements. Today Ghana is seen as a development icon, but the challenges Nkrumah grappled with have not been overcome, argues Graham. Reliant on a few commodities for export earnings and aid for public investment, it is far from the independent structurally transformed model Nkrumah wanted to establish as a ‘black star’ for Africa.
Pan-Africanist inspiration: The Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week
Gacheke Gachihi
2009-06-11, Issue 437
From left, Olivier Fanon, Gacheke Gachihi
and an Algerian diplomat in Tanzania
(cc Gacheke Gachihi)Following his attendance at the Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week from 13 to 17 2009 in Dar es Salaam, Gacheke Gachihi discusses the engaging talks given by speakers like Issa G. Shivji, Oliver Fanon and Adebayo Olukoshi and the inspiration he draws from the Pan-Africanist struggle.
Cote d'Ivoire: Request for country condition research and expert advice
2009-05-28, Issue 435
The Hong Kong Refugee Advice Centre Ltd.(HKRAC) is assisting a male, Muslim asylum claimant from central Cote d'Ivoire with family origins in northern Cote d'Ivoire. The claimant was involved in the local branch of the Rassemblement des Republicains ...
Tributes to a fallen giant
Firoze Manji
2009-05-27, Issue 435
In tribute to the passing of a giant of Pan-Africanism, Pambazuka News devotes this edition to the life and inspirational work of Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. Following Tajudeen's tragic death in a car accident on 25 May, Pambazuka has seen a huge response from those wishing to pay their respects and salute a true colossus of African liberation. In inspired remembrance, Pambazuka's editor in chief Firoze Manji rounds up the overwhelming wave of tributes we have received in the wake of Tajudeen's sad passing.
Lessons in Liberation: Remembering Tajudeen
The Pambazuka News team highlights 15 of our favourite Pan-African Postcards
Pambazuka News Editors
2009-05-28, Issue 435
Pambazuka News has published Tajudeen’s weekly Pan-African Postcard regularly since 2004. While we joke that Tajudeen’s writing was ‘an editor’s nightmare’, it was first and foremost a source of penetrating, incisive insight into pan-African affairs, expressed with humour and an underlying sense of optimism and belief that, however great the challenges the continent faces, by uniting and organising, we can build Africa into a great place for all its citizens.
In celebration of Tajudeen’s commitment and contribution to Pan-Africanism – and to the Pambazuka community – we have picked a few of our favourite postcards to share with you. These postcards, listed in chronological order, demonstrate Tajudeen’s uncanny ability to see to the heart of the matter, to understand the workings of the human heart, to clarify complex and controversial issues and to inspire people to work for change.
Tajudeen Abdul Raheem: a giant is lost on African Liberation Day
Firoze Manji
Pambazuka News
2009-05-25, Issue 434
www.justiceafrica.org25 May is Africa Liberation Day. What a day to be woken in the early hours of the morning with the terrible news that one of the leading proponents of Africa's liberation – Tajudeen Abdul Raheem should be so tragically lost in a senseless car accident in Nairobi. Messages have been pouring in from across the world as we all fail to hold back our tears at this loss.
Tajudeen led Justice Africa's work with the African Union since its early days. He combined this with his role as General Secretary of the Pan-African Movement, chairperson of the Centre for Democracy and Development, the Pan-African Development Education and Advocacy Programme, and was a fighter in the struggle to get the UN's Millennium Development Campaign to support meaningful programmes. There was hardly a pan African initiative that took place without Tajudeen's inimitable presence, support, humour and perceptive political perspectives. Quite how he managed to combine all of this with writing his weekly 'Pan African Postcard' that were published regularly in Pambazuka News and in several newspapers including The Monitor (Uganda), Weekly Trust (Nigeria), The African (Tanzania), Nairobi Star (Kenya) and the Weekly Herald (Zimbabwe), has always been a mystery to us. You could always rely on Tajudeen to draw our attention to the most significant aspects of the latest political event in Africa - just as you could rely on him to provide guidance and encouragement during hard times, restoring in us the courage for the longer struggles ahead for emancipation of the continent.
Tajudeen's departure leaves a massive hole in all our lives. We all need to grieve the loss of this giant of a man. But if his life is to mean anything, we must follow his call in the signature line of his every email – 'Don't agonise, Organise!'
As part of our tribute to Tajudeen, comrade, brother and fighter of Pan-Africanism, Pambazuka News invites you to send messages of condolence and tribute either by email to editor AT pambazuka.org or add your comments below.
Tajudeen's last Pan African Postcard: City beautification is destroying livelihoods
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2009-05-25, Issue 434
The irony of Africa being a very rich continent but Africans being some of the poorest peoples in the world is no longer lost on anyone. While we can argue about the historical, structural, attitudinal, personal and institutional causes of this state of affairs the fact remains that majority of our peoples remain in need amidst plenty. Decades of Aid, humanitarian intervention, prayers, activism, development plans, action plans, government declarations and so many other initiatives have not produced fundamental change for the poorest and weakest sections of our societies, writes the late Tajudeen in his last Pan African Postcard.
Pan-Africanism in Mwalimu Nyerere’s thought
Being both king and philosopher
Issa G Shivji
2009-05-07, Issue 431
cc WikimediaOutlining the essential differences between the respective approaches of Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, Issa G. Shivji discusses the gradualist and radical positions of two pillars of the Pan-Africanist movement. Underlining the notion of an independent African state as a ‘national liberation movement in power’ as being at the very core of the movement, Shivji stresses that genuine African nationalism can only ever be Pan-Africanism. As both a head of state and leading Pan-Africanist intellectual, Nyerere found himself supporting contradictory ideas around contesting the imposition of colonial borders while emphasising the centrality of states' sovereignty, Shivji notes. While admitting that he is without a complete answer to the question of what intellectuals' role will be in the development of a new Pan-Africanism for today, Shivji stresses that the challenge will be to push forward a 'new nationalist insurrection', one which perhaps ultimately recognises African unity as a dream rather than a vision.
Nyerere, liberation and unity
Message from Issa G. Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies
Issa G Shivji
2009-04-09, Issue 427
cc WikimediaWith Dar es Salaam on the verge of hosting the Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week from Monday 13 April, Issa G. Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies at the city's university, offers his reflections on the pan-African struggle. Though Africa has undoubtedly suffered from the neoliberal onslaught of the past two decades, Pan-Africanism as a progressive ideology is now firmly back on the historical agenda, Shivji states, uniting in the process the continent's dual quest for unity and liberation.
Nkrumah at 100: Lessons for African leadership
Yao Graham
2009-04-09, Issue 427
© Africa WithinWhile many African leaders have aspired to inherit Nkrumah’s mantle as the visionary and driver of Pan-Africanism and continental unity, writes Yao Graham, a gaping political leadership vacuum remains at the heart of the continent’s collective expression. From an age when there were a number of outstanding African leaders, among whom Nkrumah was preeminent, Graham argues that the African Union’s election of Gaddafi as its leader is a statement of a collective failure of leadership and underlines the crisis in which the Pan-African project is currently mired at the inter-state level. Where, asks Graham, are the African leaders who see opportunities for change in the current crisis, and who are ‘ready to dare and look beyond guaranteeing the sanctity of aid flows?’
Press statement by Paul Muite on threats to his life over extrajudicial executions
Paul Muite
2009-04-09, Issue 427
Having been credibly informed that his life could well be in danger, Paul Muite considers the implications of his willingness to speak out against the Kenyan government's involvement in the assassinations of Oscar Kamau King'ara and Paul Oulu. With the Kenyan authorities themselves at the forefront of extrajudicial killings and threats, Muite highlights the Kenyan citizenry's complete lack of confidence in the government or police to protect people's rights.
Third world prospects in an Obama presidency
Steve Sharra
2008-08-11, Issue 393
The exclamatory commentary that has accompanied Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the presumed nomination of the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate has excited, beneath it, the question of what the nomination itself, and a possible Obama presidency, might mean for the Pan-Africanist world as well as the Third World. While much of the commentary has been laudatory, there have also been cautionary tones, not to mention ambivalent ones. Beyond the excitement, caution and ambivalence of what a possible Obama presidency might entail for Pan-Africa and the Third World, what Obama himself has said in his writing, and has not said, might prove to be revelatory in attempting to explore the discussion that has exercised many minds around the world. We take this exploration by examining some of the issues that have been raised by editorialists and columnists, bloggers and other commentators in Africa and beyond. We also delve into what Obama himself has said in his two best-belling books, as we ponder how the significance of a possible Obama presidency may be realized more in the symbolic transformation of perceptions of race, racism and racial identity in the US and in the world, than in what the office of the US presidency itself is capable or incapable of achieving.
Mandela: A diaspora view
Walter Turner
2008-07-16, Issue 389
"I understand that there are South Africans here tonight - some of whom have been involved in the long struggle for freedom there. In our struggle for freedom and justice in the United States, which has also been so long and arduous, we feel a powerf...
From frameworks and norms on SGBV to action
FAWE in Sierra Leone
Eileen Hanciles
2008-07-14, Issue 388
FAWE is a Pan- African organization with operations in thirty-five countries in Africa. FAWE Sierra Leone was started in 1995, at the height of the civil war. One of the Chapter’s many emergency intervention which was borne from the determination of women to restore dignity to other women and girls is the programme of assistance to victims of gender –based violence in internally displaced camps, returnees and juveniles in domestic settings. In February 1999, after the allied forces regained control of the capital, it was reported that a number of FAWE school students were raped while the rebels were retreating. As some of these victims had already been subjected to rape in their areas of origin, FAWE decided to address the issue of rape once and for all, break the silence and create a culture that says no to violence against women.
Zimbabwe needs a political settlement
Mpho Ncube
2008-07-09, Issue 387
It is common knowledge that the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) party won the parliamentary and presidential elections earlier this year. Based on its performance, it would therefore be fair to say that the MDC would probably have also won last week’s presidential run-off had it not pulled out at the last moment. Yet, despite these facts, Zanu-PF still remains in power today. Robert Mugabe has once again outmaneuvered his opponents in Zimbabwe and abroad, writes Mpho Ncube.
African Liberation Day: the people must prevail
Horace Campbell
2008-05-22, Issue 374
In this essay, Horace Campbell looks at the importance of Africa Liberation Day, its changing relevances as Africans are betrayed by the architects of first independence and how, through struggle, we can reclaim and fulfill its promise.
AGRA and African knowledge systems
Regassa Feyissa speaks to Pambazuka News
Regassa Feyissa
2008-04-10, Issue 361
Regassa Feyissa in this interview talks about AGRA, the fallacy of food aid, knowledge systems in relation to traditional versus scientific and the need to create alternatives to AGRA
Africa's long road to rights
Hakima Abbas
2007-11-13, Issue 328
While setting the scene with an account of how and why Africa has developed its own system for protecting human and peoples' rights, Hakima Abbas concludes that the success of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, in spite of 'the seeming lack of political will on the part of African states and governments to hold one another accountable for violations of fundamental freedoms', lies primarily in the distinctive engagement of civil society.