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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | President Nyerere's Panafricanism |
Author: | Lisicka, Hanna |
Year: | 1987 |
Periodical: | Afryka, Azja, Ameryka Lacinska: studia i materialy |
Volume: | 65 |
Pages: | 107-113 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | political unification pan-Africanism |
Abstract: | The Panafricanism of President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania is primarily a political programme for the unification of Africa, a mixture of utopian elements and pragmatic conceptions, and is not meant as an affirmation of African personality, an idea more common in francophone Africa. In his programme for the formation of an African federation, presented in 1965, Nyerere postulated the formation of a continental government without, however, specifying a particular sociopolitical system. The federation of all African States which Nyerere had in mind was to defend the continent against the influence of the former colonial powers, the Soviet Union and the United States; break the postcolonial economic structure and increase economic cooperation among African States; facilitate the revision of frontiers, which were often artificial from the ethnic point of view; and lead to the unification of the continent's armed forces. Nyerere saw in the formation of an East African Federation (Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika), an idea born in the British Colonial Office, the first phase in the integration of the African continent. The idea never took shape, however. The idea of a United States of Africa has also proved unrealistic, in view of the contradiction between Panafricanism and Panarabism, the continent's linguistic, religious, political and ideological differentiation, and the incoherence of the idea of regional federations as the initial step towards continental unification. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |