In Addis Ababa, before the African heads of state gathered for a decisive moment in the history of the continent, Kwame Nkrumah delivered a speech that has remained famous: “Africa Must Unite.” In this visionary address, the Ghanaian leader defended the idea of a political, economic, military, and monetary union of Africa as the only response to colonialism, neocolonialism, and the fragmentation inherited from empire.
Kwame Nkrumah: the historic speech “Africa Must Unite”
Excellencies,
My dear Colleagues,
My brothers,
My friends,
I am happy to be in Addis Ababa on this highly historic occasion. I bring with me the hopes and fraternal congratulations addressed by the Government and the people of Ghana to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie and to all the African Heads of State gathered in this ancient capital on this day that will mark an epoch in our history. Our objective is, from this moment, African unity. There is no time to lose. We must now unite or perish. I am certain that through concerted efforts and our firm determination we shall lay here and now the foundations upon which a continental union of African states will rise.
At the first meeting of African Heads of State, where I had the honour of receiving our guests, there were only eight representatives of independent states. Today, five years later, we are gathered in Addis Ababa as representatives of African states whose number has risen to thirty-two, as guests of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I and of the Government and People of Ethiopia. To His Imperial Majesty I wish to express, in the name of the Government and the People of Ghana, the deep gratitude I feel for such a cordial welcome and such generous hospitality.
The growth in our numbers in this short period of time is striking testimony to the indomitable and irresistible drive of our peoples toward independence. It is also a sign of the revolutionary character of world events in the second half of our century. In the task before us for the unification of our continent, we must keep pace with this rhythm or risk falling behind.
This task cannot be approached at a tempo that belongs to another age than our own. If we lag behind in this unprecedented momentum that drives contemporary actions and events, it will mean that we are heading toward failure and consuming our own ruin.
An entire continent has entrusted us with the mandate to lay the foundations of our union at this conference. The responsibility rests upon us to carry out this mandate by creating here and now the bases upon which the necessary superstructure must rise.
On our continent it did not take us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end when national independence has been achieved. That independence is only the prelude to a new and more complex battle for the right to direct our own economic and social affairs free from the crushing and humiliating restraints of neo-colonialist domination and intervention.
From the beginning we were threatened with frustration in our efforts when rapid change was an absolute necessity, and we risked sinking into instability when sustained effort and precise rules were indispensable. No sporadic actions and no pious intentions can resolve our present problems. Nothing will serve us except action carried out by a united Africa.
We have already reached the stage where we must unite or sink into the condition in which Latin America has, against its will, become the sad prey of imperialism after a century and a half of political independence. As a continent we have emerged into independence at a different time, when imperialism has become stronger, more relentless, more experienced and more dangerous in its international associations. Our economic development demands the end of colonial and neo-colonial domination in Africa.
But if we have understood that taking control of our national destinies required that each of us possess political independence and if we concentrated all our strength to achieve it, we must likewise recognize that our economic independence lies in our African Union and requires the same concentration of effort on political achievements.
Yet the unity of our continent, as well as our independence, will be delayed—if not lost—if we yield to colonialism. African unity is above all a political kingdom that can be won only by political means. The social and economic expansion of Africa will take place only within this political kingdom, and not the other way around. The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics resulted from political decisions taken by revolutionary peoples before becoming powerful realities of social strength and material wealth.
How, except through our joint efforts, will the richest and still subjugated parts of our continent be freed from colonial occupation and join us in the total development of our continent? Every stage in the decolonisation of our continent has provoked increased resistance in the sectors where colonialism maintains its garrisons. All of you who are here know this.
The grand design of imperialist interests is to reinforce colonialism and neo-colonialism, and we would deceive ourselves most cruelly if we considered that their actions were separate and unrelated.
When Portugal closes the borders of Senegal, when Verwoerd devotes one seventh of South Africa’s budget to the army and the police, when France builds as part of its defence policy an intervention force capable of acting particularly in Francophone Africa, when Welensky speaks of linking Southern Rhodesia with South Africa, when Great Britain sends arms to South Africa, all this forms part of a carefully elaborated overall plan directed toward a single objective: the continuation of the subjugation of our brothers who are still dependent and an assault on the independence of our sovereign African states.
Against these plans, do we have any weapon other than our unity? Is not this unity essential to safeguard our own freedom and to win the freedom of our oppressed brothers, the fighters for liberation? Is it not unity alone that can forge us into an effective force capable of creating its own progress and making a valuable contribution to world peace?
What independent African state is there among you that can claim its financial structure and banking institutions are entirely devoted to its national development? Which of you can claim that its material resources and human energies are available for its own national aspirations? Which of you will not admit a substantial degree of disappointment and disillusionment in the execution of its agricultural and urban development plans?
In independent Africa we are already beginning to feel the instability and frustration that existed under colonial domination. We are learning quickly that political independence alone is not enough to free us from the consequences of that colonial domination.
The mass movement of the peoples of Africa for liberation from this form of domination was not only a revolt against the conditions imposed by it.
Our peoples supported us in our struggle for independence because they believed that the advent of African governments would cure the evils of the past in a way that would never have been possible under colonial rule. Therefore, if now that we are independent we allow the same conditions that existed in colonial times to persist, the resentment that overthrew colonialism will mobilize against us.
The resources are there. It is up to us to mobilize them for the active service of our peoples. If we do not do this through concerted efforts within the framework of our common planning, we will not progress at the pace demanded by today’s events and by the will of our peoples. The symptoms of our troubles will only grow, and these troubles themselves will become chronic.
It will then be too late, even for Pan-African Unity, to ensure stability and tranquility in the efforts we make to create a continent of social justice and material well-being. If we do not create African Unity now, we who sit here today will tomorrow be the victims and martyrs of neo-colonialism.
Everywhere, everything proves to us that the imperialists have not withdrawn. Sometimes, as in Congo, their intervention is overt, but generally it hides behind the mask of numerous institutions that meddle in our internal affairs to sow dissension on our territory and create an atmosphere of tension and political instability. As long as we have not uprooted the causes that feed this discontent, we will be aiding these neo-colonial forces and will become our own executioners. We cannot ignore the lessons of history.
Our continent is probably the richest in the world in terms of mineral production and raw materials for industry and agriculture. From the Congo alone, Western companies exported copper, rubber, cotton, and many other products, totaling $2,773,000,000 during the decade 1945–1955. In South Africa, companies exploiting gold mines earned, over the six years 1947–1951, profits of $814 billion.
Certainly, our continent surpasses all others in hydroelectric potential, which, according to some experts, represents 42 percent of the global total. Why should we continue to be employed cutting wood and fetching water for the industrialized areas of the world?
Of course, it is said that we lack capital, industrial techniques, transport infrastructure, internal markets, and that we cannot even agree among ourselves on the best way to use our resources for our own social needs.
And yet, all the world’s financial markets are concerned with the gold, diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper, and iron ores that exist in Africa. Our capital flows in torrents to irrigate the entire economic system of the West. It is estimated that fifty-two percent of the gold currently held at Fort Knox, where the United States of America stores these reserves, comes from our coasts. America supplies more than 60 percent of the world’s gold.
A large amount of uranium used for nuclear energy, copper used for electronics, titanium used for supersonic projectiles, iron and steel used by heavy industries, and other minerals and raw materials used by lighter industries (in fact the very foundations of the economic power of foreign powers) come from our continent. Experts have estimated that the Congo Basin alone can produce enough food crops to satisfy the needs of nearly half the world’s population. And here we are, sitting and talking about regionalism, gradual progress, one step at a time. Are you afraid to take the bull by the horns?
For centuries, Africa has been the cash cow of the Western world. Was it not our continent that helped the West build this accumulated wealth?
It is true that at this moment, we are rejecting the yoke of colonialism as fast as we can, but alongside our success in this direction, imperialism is making intensive efforts to continue exploiting our resources, by stirring up dissensions among us.
When the colonies of the American continent sought, in the 18th century, to free themselves from imperialism, there was no threat of neo-colonialism, as we know it today in Africa. The American states were therefore free to form and shape the unity that best suited their needs and to draft a constitution that could maintain their unity, without any form of external intervention, whereas we must take these foreign interventions into account. Under these conditions, how much more do we need to come together in African Unity, which alone can free us from the claws of neo-colonialism and imperialism.
We have the resources. It was primarily colonialism that prevented us from accumulating actual capital, but by ourselves, we have not fully used our power in independence to mobilize our resources and start in the most effective way a process of economic and social expansion with profound repercussions. We are too exclusively focused on guiding the first steps of each of our states to fully understand the fundamental necessity of a union whose roots lie in common resolution, common planning, and shared efforts.
A union that does not take these fundamental necessities into account is only an illusion. It is only by uniting our production capacity and the wealth it generates that we can amass capital. Once triggered, this momentum will only grow. With capital managed by our own banks, dedicated to our true industrial and agricultural expansion, we will be able to progress.
We will accumulate industrial equipment; we will be able to create steelworks, iron foundries, and factories; we will unite the various states of our continent by creating transportation networks; we will astonish the world with our hydroelectric power; we will drain swamps and marshes, purify infested areas, feed those who are malnourished, rid our populations of parasites and diseases.
It is within the power of science and technology to make even the Sahara bloom and transform it into a vast cultivated field, bringing forth lush vegetation for our agricultural and industrial expansion. We will harness radio, television, and giant printing presses to lift our peoples out of the dark abyss of illiteracy.
Only ten years ago, all of this would have seemed merely the words of visionaries, the fantasies of idle dreamers. But we live in an era where science has transcended the limits of the material world, and technology has invaded the silence of nature. Time and space have been reduced to abstractions of little significance.
Giant machines carve roads, clear our forests, construct dams and airfields; monstrous trucks and airplanes distribute all products; powerful laboratories produce medicines; the most complex geological surveys are conducted; massive power stations are built, colossal factories rise toward the sky—all at an incredible speed.
The world no longer progresses along bush tracks, on the backs of donkeys or camels. We can no longer afford to base our needs, our development, and our security on the pace of camels and donkeys. We can no longer afford to leave unchallenged the overgrown bush of outdated attitudes that obstruct our path to the great modern highways of the broadest and fastest achievements in economic independence and the highest standard of living for our peoples.
Even for other continents that do not possess Africa’s resources, the time has come to end human distress. For us, it is simply a matter of seizing with certainty our rightful inheritance, using the political power created by our unity: all we need is to develop the enormous resources of our continent with our collective strength.
A united Africa will offer a stable environment for foreign investments, which we encourage as long as they do not act against our African interests, because such investments must support the expansion of our continent’s economy, the employment of our labor force, the technical training of our workers—and Africa will welcome them. By dealing with a united Africa, investors will no longer need to worry about negotiating, over a period of time, with governments that may no longer exist in the immediate future. Instead of negotiating with a large number of separate states, they will deal with a single united government pursuing a harmonious continental policy.
Is there any other way? If we fail at this stage and allow time to slip by, giving neo-colonialism the opportunity to consolidate its position on our continent, what will be the fate of our freedom fighters? And finally, what will be the fate of other African territories that are not yet free?
Unless we can create powerful industrial complexes in Africa—which is only achievable in a united Africa—we must leave our peasantry at the mercy of foreign markets that harvest their crops, and we will face the same impatience that overthrew the colonialists. What use is education and mechanization to the farmers? What use is capital, if we cannot ensure that the peasants and workers gain from political independence, as long as we cannot guarantee them a fair return on their labor and a higher standard of living?
As long as we cannot create large industrial complexes in Africa, what benefits will city workers and rural farmers on overpopulated lands derive from political independence? If they are to remain unemployed or restricted to tasks reserved for unskilled labor, what purpose will advanced facilities for education, technical training, and energy serve, which independence allows us to provide?
Hardly a single African state exists without a border problem with neighboring states. It would be unnecessary for me to list them, as these problems are already familiar to you. But allow me to suggest that this fatal vestige of colonialism could draw us into civil wars, just as our industrial expansion proceeds without plan or coordination, exactly as happened in Europe.
As long as we fail to eliminate this danger through mutual understanding of fundamental issues and through African unity—which will render current borders obsolete and superfluous—our struggle for independence will have been in vain. Only African Unity can heal the festering wound of border disputes between our various states.
Excellencies, the remedy for these ills lies in our very hands. It confronts us at every customs barrier; it cries out to us from the depths of every African heart. By creating a genuine political union of all independent African states, endowed with executive powers to exercise political leadership, we can, with hope and confidence, respond to every critical circumstance, every enemy, every complex problem.
Not because we are a race of superhumans, but because we have arrived in the era of science and technology, poverty, ignorance, and disease will cease to be masters—they will simply become fleeing enemies of humanity. We have reached the age of socialized planning, where the production and distribution of goods will no longer be governed by chaos or self-interest, but will be guided by social needs. Alongside the rest of humanity, we awaken from utopian dreams to put practical plans for progress and social justice on paper.
Above all, we have reached a time when a territorial mass of a continent like Africa, with its population approaching 300 million, is necessary for economic capitalization and for the yield of modern methods and techniques of production. None of us, working alone and individually, can achieve full development.
Certainly, under current circumstances, we will not have the capacity to provide sufficient assistance to sister states striving, under the most difficult conditions, to improve their economic and social structures. Only a united Africa functioning under a union government can have the power to mobilize the material and moral resources of our diverse countries and use them effectively and energetically, so as to bring about rapid change in the condition of our people.
If we do not approach Africa’s problems with a common front and shared resolve, we will waste our time in bargaining and empty arguments, until the moment we are recolonized and become instruments of a colonialism far more powerful than what we have suffered until now.
This union must be achieved, without necessarily sacrificing our various sovereignties, great or small. Even now and here, we have forged a political union based on common defense, foreign affairs and diplomacy, a common nationality, an African currency, an African monetary zone, and an African central bank. We must unite to achieve the full liberation of our continent. We must create a common defense system, led by a supreme African command, to ensure Africa’s stability and security.
We have been entrusted with this sacred task by our peoples; we cannot fail them or betray their trust. We would mock the hopes of our peoples if we showed the slightest hesitation or brought the slightest delay in addressing this question of African Unity objectively.
The provision of arms or other military aid to Africa’s colonial oppressors must be seen not only as assistance to those seeking to triumph over liberation fighters in their struggle for African independence, but as an act of aggression against all Africa. How can we face this aggression except with the full weight of our united power?
Many of us have made non-alignment a matter of faith on our continent. We have no desire, no intention to be drawn into the Cold War, but given the current state of weakness and insecurity of our states, in the context of global politics, the search for bases and spheres of influence brings the Cold War into Africa, with its dangers of nuclear annihilation. Africa must be declared a nuclear-free zone, free from the pressures of the Cold War. But we cannot give this demand any force unless we present it from a position of strength, which can only be achieved through our Unity.
Yet, instead of adopting such an attitude, several independent African states are bound by military pacts with former colonial powers. The stability and security these arrangements seek to establish are illusory, for the metropolitan powers seize the opportunity to reinforce their neo-colonialist domination by involving African power in military agreements.
We have seen how neo-colonialists use their bases to entrench themselves and even to attack neighboring independent states. Such bases are centers of tension and potential points of military conflict. They threaten the security not only of the country in which they are located but also of neighboring countries.
How can we hope to make Africa a nuclear-free zone, free from Cold War pressures, when our continent is thus involved in military matters? Only by balancing a common defense force with a shared desire to achieve an Africa free from any foreign-imposed diktat or military and nuclear presence. This will require a supreme African command whose authority extends across the continent, especially if we are to renounce military pacts concluded with imperialists. This is the only way to break the direct links between past colonialism and the neo-colonialism that currently breeds divisions among us.
We do not intend to create, nor do we conceive of, a supreme African command modeled on the political powers that now govern much of the world, but as an essential and indispensable instrument for stability and security in Africa.
We need unified economic planning for Africa. As long as the economic power of our continent is not concentrated in our hands, the masses cannot have any real interest, any genuine concern to cooperate in safeguarding our security, maintaining the stability of our regimes, and putting their strength at the service of our objectives. With the gathering of our resources, energies, and talents, we have the means, as soon as we choose, to transform the economic structures of our various states and take them from poverty to abundance, from inequality to the fulfillment of the needs of our peoples.
It is only on a continental basis that we will have the opportunity to establish a plan for the just use of all our resources and for their dedication to the full expansion of our continent.
By what other means can we retain our own capital for our own economic development? By what other means can we create an internal market devoted to the services of our own industries? If we belong to different economic zones, how can we break down the barriers that obstruct the movement of currency and trade between African states, and how will those who are economically stronger among us be able to assist the weaker and less developed states?
It is important to remember that independent financing and development are impossible without an independent currency. A monetary system supported by the resources of a foreign state is ipso facto subordinated to the commercial and financial arrangements of that foreign country. Because we have lacked customs and monetary barriers and have been subjected to the different monetary systems of foreign powers, the fissure that separates us in Africa has automatically widened.
How, for example, can related communities and families connected by commercial ties successfully help one another if they are divided by national borders and monetary restrictions? The only means available to them under such conditions is to use smuggled currencies and enrich international rackets and swindlers who thrive on our financial and economic difficulties.
No independent African state today has, by itself, the ability to follow an independent path of economic development, and many of us who have attempted it have been nearly ruined or forced to return to the fold of our former colonial masters. This situation will not change until we have a unified policy operating on a continental level. A first step toward a coherent economy should consist of creating a unified monetary zone, beginning with an agreement on the parity of our currencies. To facilitate this arrangement, Ghana would agree to adopt the decimal system.
Once we see that our agreement on a common fixed parity works successfully, there seems to be no reason not to create a common currency and a single issuing bank. When we have a common currency issued by a single central bank, we should be able to stand on our own, for such an arrangement would be fully backed by the combined national output of the states that make up our union. After all, the purchasing power of currency depends on the productivity and the productive exploitation of a nation’s natural, human, and physical resources.
While we ensure our stability through a common defense system, and while our economy is oriented outside any foreign domination through a common currency, a monetary zone, and a central issuing bank, we will be able to determine whether we possess the greatest potential for hydroelectric power and whether we can harness it, along with other energy sources, for the benefit of our own industries. We can begin planning our industrialization on a continental scale and build a common market for nearly three hundred million human beings.
This common continental planning, in service of Africa’s agricultural and industrial development, is a vital necessity.
So many blessings must flow from our Unity, so many disasters must result from maintaining our disunity, that if we fail to unite today, this failure will not be attributed by posterity only to a lack of reasoning or courage, but to the fact that we have capitulated in the face of the combined forces of neo-colonialism and imperialism.
The hour of history that has brought us to this assembly is a revolutionary hour. It is the hour of decision. For the first time, the economic imperialism that threatens us is itself being challenged by the irresistible will of our people.
The masses of Africa cry out for Unity. The peoples of Africa demand that the borders that divide them be removed. They demand, among brother African states, the cessation of border disputes that originate from the artificial barriers imposed by colonialism, which formally intended to divide us. It was its will that left us prey to this border irredentism and that delayed our ethnic and cultural fusion.
Our peoples long for this Unity, so that they may not risk losing their heritage to the perpetual service of neo-colonialism. In this fervent pressure they exert toward Unity, they understand that only this achievement will give full meaning to their freedom and to our African independence.
It is this firm popular resolve that must lead us to a Union of independent African states. In any delay lies a danger to our well-being and to our very existence as free states. It has been suggested that our march toward Unity should be gradual and proceed in a scattered order. This view conceives Africa as a static entity charged with solving “frozen” problems one after the other, so that once this task is completed, we will gather and declare: “now all is well; let us now achieve our Union.”
This conception takes no account of the impact of external pressures and is unaware of the danger that delay can intensify our isolation or exclusion and widen our divergences, so that we drift ever farther apart into the snares of neo-colonialism, and our Union becomes nothing more than a fleeting hope, and the Grand Design of Africa’s full redemption may collapse forever.
Some have also expressed the opinion that our difficulties can be resolved simply through greater collaboration, achieved through a cooperative association in terms of our intra-territorial relations. This way of considering our problems amounts to denying the proper conception of their internal and reciprocal relations. It nevertheless denies an open future for African progress in African independence. It betrays the feeling that a solution can only be found by continuing reliance on external sources, through bilateral agreements that organize assistance in economic and various other forms.
One thing is certain: although we have collaborated and associated in various joint ventures even before the colonial era, this did not give us a continental identity or the political and economic strength that could help us effectively resolve the complex problems Africa must confront today. If it is a matter of external assistance, a united Africa would be in a much stronger position to attract it.
There is also, in such an arrangement, the additional advantage that makes this course even more compelling: assistance will flow from all directions toward a united Africa because our bargaining power will be infinitely stronger. We will no longer depend on aid accompanied by restrictive conditions. The entire world will be at our disposal.
What are we waiting for now in Africa? Are we waiting for charters modeled on the United Nations? Are we waiting for a type of organization fashioned on the UN model, where decisions are based on resolutions that experience has shown are sometimes disregarded by member states? Should it be an organization within which groups form and pressure is applied according to the interests of different groups?
Or do we intend for Africa to become a loosely organized group of states on the model of the American states, where the weakest risk being at the mercy, politically or economically, of the strongest or most powerful, and where all states are at the mercy of a few powerful nations or groups of foreign nations? Is this the type of association we want to establish? Excellencies, allow me to ask you a question:
Is it a framework? An arrangement that in the future could allow, for example, Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan, Liberia, Egypt, or Ethiopia to use the leverage of superior economic or political power to impose, for example, on Burundi, Togo, or Nyasaland, a direction for their trade toward Mozambique or Madagascar?
We all want a united Africa, not only in the concept implied by the term “unity,” but also through our desire to move forward together in solving all problems that can only be addressed on a continental basis.
When the first Congress of the United States met several years ago in Philadelphia, one of the delegates struck the first chord of unity by declaring that they were meeting in a “state of nature.” In other words, he was not in Philadelphia as a Virginian or Pennsylvanian, but as an American representing a new and strange experiment at that time.
May I also attest today, Excellencies, that we are not gathered as Ghanaians, Guineans, Egyptians, Algerians, Moroccans, Malians, Liberians, Congolese, or Nigerians, but as Africans. It is Africans who are gathered with the firm resolve to remain together until they have decided among themselves what guarantees a new continental government agreement can currently and in the future provide.
If we succeed in establishing a new set of principles as the basis for a new charter or statute creating continental African unity and social and political progress for our peoples, then, in my view, our conference must mark the end of our various groups and regional blocs. But if we fail, and if we let slip this noble and historic opportunity offered to us, we will trigger a strengthening of dissension and division that the African people will never forgive us. We would be condemned by the popular and progressive forces and movements that exist within Africa. Therefore, I am certain that we will not disappoint these hopes.
Excellencies, if I have spoken at some length, it is because it is necessary to explain the real situation, not only to each person present here, but also to the peoples who have entrusted us with the fate and destiny of Africa. We must not leave here until we have put in place an effective mechanism for the realization of African Unity. To this end, I propose the following measures for your consideration:
As a first step, a declaration of the principles that unite us and bind us, to which we must all adhere faithfully and loyally, laying the foundations of Unity. We must also issue an official declaration by which the independent states of Africa themselves decide, starting now, to create a Union of African States.
A second measure, also urgent, for achieving the unification of Africa, is the creation, immediately, of a Pan-African Committee of Foreign Ministers. Before we depart from this Conference, a date should be set for the meeting of this committee.
This committee must, on behalf of the Heads of our governments, establish a permanent body of officials and experts responsible for implementing the organization that will ensure the functioning of the African Union government. This body of officials and experts should be composed of the two best minds from each independent African state. The various charters of current groupings and other relevant documents may be presented to these officials and experts. A presidium composed of Heads of Government of the independent African states should then be convened to adopt a Constitution and other recommendations that will trigger the launch of the African Union government.
We must also decide on the location where this body of officials and experts will work, which will constitute the new central headquarters, or the capital, of our Union Government. The fairest suggestions could include a central city, either Bangui in the Central African Republic or Léopoldville in the Congo. Our colleagues may have other proposals. In any case, this Committee of Foreign Ministers, officials, and experts must be able to create:
- a commission tasked with drafting a Constitution for a Union Government of African States;
- a commission tasked with developing a continent-wide plan organizing a unified and common economic and industrial program for Africa; this program should include proposals for the creation of:
a) a common market for Africa;
b) an African currency;
c) an African monetary zone;
d) an African central bank;
e) a continental telecommunications system;
- a commission tasked with developing a detailed plan for foreign policy and common diplomacy;
- a commission tasked with presenting plans for common defense systems;
- a commission tasked with presenting proposals for the creation of a common African citizenship.
These commissions will report to the Committee of Foreign Ministers, which will, in turn, submit their recommendations to the presidium within six months. The presidium, convened at the Union headquarters, will study and approve the recommendations of the Committee of Foreign Ministers.
To ensure the immediate funding necessary for the work of the permanent officials and experts at the Union headquarters, I suggest that a special committee be established to draft a budget proposal.
Excellencies, through these measures, I believe that we will be irrevocably committed to the path that will allow us to create a Union Government for Africa. Only a united Africa, with a central political leadership, can successfully provide effective material and moral support to our liberation fighters struggling in Southern Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique, South West Africa, Bechuanaland, Swaziland, Basutoland, Portuguese Guinea, and, naturally, South Africa. The whole of Africa must be liberated now. It is therefore imperative for us to create here and now a Liberation Office to serve African fighters.
Its primary objective, to which all governments must subscribe, will be to accelerate the emancipation of the rest of Africa, which is still under colonial and racist domination and oppression. We must collectively assume the responsibility to support and fund this office. As these territories gain independence, they will automatically join the Union of African States, thus strengthening the structure of Africa. We will depart from here having laid the foundations of our Unity.
Excellencies, nothing could be more fitting than the birth of African unification on the soil of the state that has stood for centuries as the symbol of African independence.
Let us return to our peoples of Africa, not empty-handed or burdened with trumpet-blown resolutions, but with the firm hope and absolute certainty that, at last, African Unity has become a reality. We will then undertake the triumphant march toward the Realm of African personality, and toward a continent of prosperity, progress, equality, justice, activity, and happiness. This will be our victory, achieved within a continental government of a Union of African States. This victory will give our voice greater weight in world affairs and allow us to influence more strongly on the side of peace on the scales of the world.
The world needs a peace in which it can fully benefit from the blessings of science and technology. Many of the evils from which the world currently suffers stem from the insecurity and fear engendered by the threat of nuclear war. New nations, in particular, need peace to pave their way toward a life of economic and social well-being in an atmosphere of security and stability, which will enable moral, cultural, and spiritual development.
If in Africa we can set the example of a united continent, with a common policy and resolution, we will have brought the peace to which all men and women aspire today—the most beautiful contribution within our grasp, which will immediately and forever dispel the growing shadow of global destruction that threatens humanity.
AFRICA MUST UNITE.
Notes and references
- Kwame Nkrumah, speech delivered in Addis Ababa on May 24, 1963, at the conference of African heads of state preceding the creation of the Organization of African Unity.
- Organization of African Unity, Addis Ababa Charter, adopted May 25, 1963.
- African Union, OAU Charter, Addis Ababa, 25 May 1963.
- AfricanLII, OAU Charter.
- Africa Must Unite by Kwame Nkrumah, London, Heinemann, 1963.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry “African Union.”
- New African Magazine, “We must unite now or perish” – President Kwame Nkrumah.
- African Knowledge Sharing Platform / African Union, OAU Charter, Addis Ababa, 25 May 1963.
Contents
- Kwame Nkrumah: the historic speech “Africa Must Unite”
- Notes and references
