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For Pan-African Unity

We want to share a project consisting in the creation of a united Pan-African platform Front that I think with all due modesty will enable the African liberation struggle to move forwards.
 
This new dynamic involves the construction of a frame work that will bring together the various Pan-African movements around shared goals. This platform through its communication, cooperation’s mechanisms and structures, will allow us to learn from each other, to think and work together.
 

• To provide the African community, with a platform that would serve as a bridge between the different movements, organizations and the African masses,
• To strengthen the bonds of brotherhood and solidarity among Africans worldwide in order to have more influence on the major policies and issues that concern us,
• To mobilize our knowledge, skills, and networks that are needed to face our challenges , increase our collective resilience and achieve economic Freedom,
• To contribute in spreading of Pan-African ideas and raising political awareness that will enable people to resist more effectively to all forms of exploitation and oppression and to initiate the needed changes for their liberation.

 
This platform will serve as a basis to build structures which, by allowing us to mobilize beyond class, ethnic, religious or national affiliations, and to experiment new forms of political activism will enable the Pan-African organizations to convert the pressing social demands of the masses, into effective policies. 

Our motivation is to support the aspiration for Freedom, Justice and Dignity for African worldwide, and to participate to the establishment of Peace, Prosperity and Security throughout the African continent, which are the prerequisite of any Human Progress.
 
How pretentious this project may sound, we think that, in light of the current international context, it is more than a reasonable ambition , but rather a compelling necessity requirement, especially for Africans who are dedicated to the struggle for Freedom and Justice.
 
We may sound utopist, but we think that we must give a new chance to the Unity of African Progressive Forces.
 
We must no longer support the strategy of the division that has succeeded in playing Africans off against each other, those of the continent against those living outside. That strategy of division lead to economic competitions between our micro dominated states, infighting between individuals for access to resources and signs of recognition from powerful groups and organizations.
 
The need for Unity and Solidarity, with regard to our collective vulnerability before our oppressors, should prevent us from maintaining internal divisions, on the basis of religious or ethnic affiliations.
 
The cultural and linguistic differences, the geographical distance, as well as the several and frequent bloody wars which have opposed Europeans, within their continent as well as, in their colonies and still oppose them today, through proxy wars, far from their continent, did not prevent them from silencing their rivalries, to maintain their hegemony.
 
In this resolutely global vision of Pan-Africanism, we consider Africans living outside the continent, who endorse nationalities imposed by the vagaries of history or have of different beliefs, in the same we way as those living inside the continent. Because we can observe that on the same continent, the different historical and social-political experiences have molded in different ways, the people’s temperaments, depending on whether they have known or not, independence wars, lived under dictatorships, or have endured proxy wars, etc.
 
Africans, wherever they may be, whether they have lost their original names or languages, (this phenomena do also affect African living on the continent), must be considered and treated as fully -fledged African citizens. For in the final analysis, there are only two types of Africans, those who are on their knees and those who are standing up with dignity. The differences in life trajectories and experiences, as well as the numerous sources of internal contention or conflicts, should in no way hamper the unification process of Forces that seek Change. These differences must not lead to any feelings of superiority towards one another. Once we understand that the struggles are shaped by the different contexts in which they take place; giving them a global dimension, will necessarily require adjustments. The fight against African oppression at a global level, should be as, flexible and creative - if no moreso - than the system that oppresses us.

Sidya Diop