In his book, Africa Must Unite, Kwame Nkurumah makes his argument for why the newly independent states of Africa must join together to form a cohesive political and economic unit. The goal of this essay is to test the limits and strengths of Nkrumah’s argument for this unit of governance. The tension between the Casablanca group, to which Nkurumah belonged, and the Monrovia group underscores the biggest weakness in his vision for a united Africa: a naive belief that heads of state would willingly relinquish their power to a centralised authority. To understand how I reach this conclusion calls for a reconstruction of his argument for the importance of African unity followed by deliberation over the alternative competing visions of unity presented by the Monrovia group.
Nkrumah’s main reason for African unity could be simplified to the following: a large coalition of African people’s and resources will leave equalise the power dynamics present in relations with imperial powers. He draws attention to how the Pan-African movement allowed for the projection of The African personality on International Affairs. A “one” African voice making demands to imperial powers through forums such as the Pan-African Congress for the rights of all of African descent. Some of these were that of universal suffrage, freedom of the press and the freedom to form trade unions. Nkrumah argued that it is through the wider Pan-African movement that an expression of African nationalism with a clear purpose of obtaining national independence was re-inforced.
The structure of the union proposed by the Casablanca group would be that of complete political,economic and social integration amongst all African nations. There would be one centralised executive, judiciary, and ministry of culture that would be the source of political, social and economic policy. To achieve this, countries and their leaders would have to give up their sovereignty and allow a centralised authority to oversee the affairs of the country. Leading by example, Nkrumah enshrined these values inside the Ghanaian constitution which allowed for the disillusion of the executive and all other state powers into a wider union of African states. The Monrovia group, however wanted to have cooperation between different African nations but without the deep political integreation. Nkurumah believed that this view was based off of sentiment that Liberia had towards external attempts to interfere with their sovereignty. A nation like Ethiopia which had never been colonised, and wanted to maintain its political sovereignty also found itself leaning towards the Montovia groups model for unity. Nkrumah, however, argued that a lack of a central authority in the loose federation proposed by the Monrovia group would eventually lead to the domination of one state over the other due to competing interests between states. It would also undermine efforts such as the proposed African Market which would be able to negotiate better economic deals with imperialist countries.
According to Nkurumah, the Monrovia group’s emphasis on only economic collaboration was not feasible. This is because he considered political unity amongst all African nations as the precondition for economic integration and development. He believed that African states would either unite or have to sell themselves out to imperialist and colonial economic exploitation. This view can be seen from when Ghana finally achieved independence whereby he made it clear that their liberation from colonialism was in vain without continental independence. He argues that many of the economic models deployed in African nations and colonies at the time were limited by colonial imaginations. He points out that much of the industries were exploitative and did not actively or efficiently make use of the resources available to the nation.
That isn’t to say that there was a strict divide between the Casablanca and Monrovia groups. Knowing what we know now, these two groups later formed the basis for the Organisation of African Unity which later transformed into the African Union. The later remains one of the biggest vehicles for African Unity as it boosts a wide human rights charter and provides a platform for African nations to collaborate on economic and political policy. Nkurumah himself maintained that members of both groups kept amicable relationships with each other and believed that African Unity was the best safeguard against neo-colonialism and the balkanization of Africa.
I believe the biggest weakness of Nkurumah’s vision for unity was that it allowed for the implicit non-int. As he campaigned for the independence of other African nations, imperialists took the absence of Monrovia states in the conferences he organized as a sign that his view of African unity was not representative of that of the wider African continent. The lack of compromise between both the Monrovian and Casablanca groups before such negotiations were made undermined attempts at African unity before colonial powers.
Knowing what the know now, Nkrumah was right in his dissatisfaction with a loose federation of African states with no central authority. The eventual amalgamation of the Monrovia and Casablanca groups into the African Union, and the latters inability to curtail corruption and uphoald human rights and democracy among other challenges was something Nkurumah had the foresight to see. Without member states seceding some of their sovereignty to a central authority, there would be no way to coordinate economic policy and enforce continental jurisdrupdence. The latter can be evidenced my the inability of the African Union to enforce its own human rights instrument: The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The union that Nkurumah envisioned did not suffer the same entrappings of the United Nations which he criticized for its inability to enforce its own resolutions in defending Congo.
And this leads to what I consider to be Nkurumah’s weakest point in his argument: that heads of state would ever willingly give up their power soon after they got independence. A realist lens allows us to observe that the concept of nation states was inconceivable with the format for national unity proposed by Nkurumah. The presence of states that hadn’t been colonised before and others which had gained “independence” such as South Africa complicated the matter even further. By not framing independence movements around the idea of joining this union, Nkrumah’s dream of a united Africa would have no tangible teeth. Unlike Ghana which explicilty gained independence with the goal of joining a larger union, most other African colonies did not shape their constitutions around such a view. Many wanted the Monrovian model composed of loose associations between states such that they could preserve their own political sovereignty. The fact that Nkurumah choose to abide by such a view, given the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, despite knowing the flaws inherent to such a union reinforces a sense of cognitive dissonance that I have while reading this specific chapter.
Source:
Kiano, J. (1963). Africa Must Unite by Kwame Nkrumah London, Heinemann, 1963. Pp. xvii 229. 21s. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 1(3), 405-406. doi:10.1017/S0022278X00001877