Pan-Africanism

The African scramble for independence has led to two major political trends which have at least the superficial look of being contradictory but which may still turn out to be complementary. One is the consolidation of states, and, it may be, of nations, within the frontiers traced on the map of Africa with an imperial flourish by the colonial powers. The other is the unceasing agitation and conferring to secure some sort of African unity which would bring together within a common framework either all the African peoples or such more limited groupings of them as are now prepared to join forces for general or particular purposes. The unanswered, and still unanswerable, question is whether the states which have been emerging in such quantities, with more still to come—29 African Members of the UN at the end of 1961 as against five in 1955—will serve as the building blocks for a greater African union or whether they will jealously guard the separate identity which they have now achieved.