How Africans in the Continent and in Diaspora Responded to various Policies of the United States

Global and domestic policies of the United States can be traced as far back as the period of Atlantic Slave Trade. Ani and Ojakorotu (2017) assert that slave trade was institutionalized by the European slave merchants who in collaboration with their African mercenaries began to export many Africans to America, Europe and West Indies. With time the slaves started resisting and did so successfully in Haiti from 1791-1803 under the leadership of Touissant L’Ouverture who defeated the French.    

After American independence of 1776, continued interest in the developments on the African continent by those of African descent in the Americas led to the formation of groups such as The Council on African Affairs (CAA), the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa (ANLCA) and the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC) that worked within the United States to support African causes between 1939 and 1977. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) over the years emerged as an ‘unofficial’ African lobbyist group within the US (Erhagbe, 1995).

In the 1950s, Ghana was considered a symbol of success by African Americans who in turn put pressure on the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower to give more importance to the decolonization of the nation under Kwame Nkrumah from British control. In their struggle for racial equality, African Americans found inspiration in Ghana’s decolonization (Grimm, 2013). According to Ekwealor and Mtshali (2018), Nkrumah and the radical Casablanca bloc in the 1960s called for ‘United States of Africa’ as a means of survival of the African continent but this is yet to be implemented even though Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi made an attempt towards the end of his days to resurrect it –the respective debates gave birth to the Organisation of African Unity and now the African Union. It is important to note that Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanism and that of Sékou Touré, Léopold Senghor, Banar Abdel Nasser and Ali Ben Bella benefited from earlier works of W.E.B du Bois, Henry Sylvester Williams and Marcus Garvey (Olaopa and Amusan, 2018). 

Whereas Africans were actively lobbying in the United Nations to push through their demands, they did not use the same energy to reach out to the US black community to influence American policies in their favor. Nevertheless, the Congressional Black Caucus was very instrumental in attacking Reagan administration’s apartheid sympathetic policy towards the Republic of South Africa (Ohaegbulam, 1992). The only setback in the eyes of Erhagbe (1995) is that the CBC was partly limited in its efforts to get the US to adopt more progressive policies in some parts of Africa due to the perceived communist ideology of most of the liberation groups and totalitarianism of military regimes on the continent. 

There is no doubt that the United States has been a beneficiary of slave trade and colonialism in Africa whether directly or indirectly.  By the end of 1990s, colonialism had to a great extent been dealt a blow on the African continent prompting the likes of Olusegun Obasanjo, Thabo Mbeki, Abdulazziz Bouteflika and Hosni Mubarak to start talking about the African renaissance through poverty eradication and societal development but efforts to unite the continent remain impeded by the neo-imperial agenda of foreign powers led by China, the European Union and the United States (Ani and Ojakorotu, 2017).

Meanwhile, Ogo (2018) credits Thambo Mbeki’s talk of ‘African Renaissance’ to the formation of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) who reasoned at the time that democracy and sustained development are possible only in conditions of peace and stability. The idea is meant to enable Africans develop home-grown solutions in their relations with the rest of the world instead of continually following Western drafted policies for economic emancipation.

In conclusion, Africans have endured policies by global powers that over the years have continued the massive exploitation of the continent starting from slavery, colonialism and now neo-colonialism. The United States has been an active participant benefitting directly or indirectly from such endeavors. Africans on the continent and in the diaspora were left with no option but to embrace Pan-Africanism, liberation struggles, lobbying through the United Nations, the push for continental unity and the endless pursuit of favorable trade terms.

References

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