Your Excellences, Colleagues, Brothers and
Friends,
At
the first gathering of African Heads of State, to which I had the honour of
playing host, there were representatives of eight independent States only.
Today,
five years later, we meet as the representatives of no less than thirty-two
States, the guests of His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie, the First, and the
Government and people of Ethiopia. To His Imperial Majesty, I wish to express,
on behalf of the Government and people of Ghana my deep appreciation for a most
cordial welcome and generous hospitality.
The
increase in our number in this short space of time is open testimony to the
indomitable and irresistible surge of our peoples for independence. It is also
a token of the revolutionary speed of world events in the latter half of this
century.
In
the task which is before us of unifying our continent we must fall in with that
pace or be left behind. The task cannot be attached in the tempo of any other
age than our own. To fall behind the unprecedented momentum of actions and
events in our time will be to court failure and our own undoing.
A
whole continent has imposed a mandate upon us to lay the foundation of our
Union at this Conference. It is our responsibility to execute this mandate by
creating here and now the formula upon which the requisite superstructure may
be erected.
On
this continent it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against
colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence.
Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the
right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society
according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating
neo-colonialist controls and interference.
From
the start we have been threatened with frustration where rapid change is
imperative and with instability where sustained effort and ordered rule are
indispensable. No sporadic act nor pious resolution can resolve our present
problems.
Nothing
will be of avail, except the united act of a united Africa. We have already
reached, the stage where we must unite or sink into that condition which has
made Latin America the unwilling and distressed prey of imperialism after one
and a half centuries of political independence. As a continent we have emerged
into independence in a different age, with imperialism grown stronger, more
ruthless and experienced, and more dangerous in its international associations.
Our
economic advancement demands the end of colonialist and neo-colonialist
domination in Africa. But just as we understood that the shaping of our
national destinies required of each of us our political independence and bent
all our strength to this attainment, so we must recognise that our economic
independence resides in our African union and requires the same concentration
upon the political achievement. The unity of our continent, no less than our
separate independence, will be delayed if, indeed, we do not lose it, by
hobnobbing with colonialism.
African
Unity is, above all, a political kingdom which can only be gained by political
means. The social and economic development of Africa will come only within the
political kingdom, not the other way around.
The
United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were the
political decisions of revolutionary peoples before they became mighty
realities of social power and material wealth. How, except by our united
efforts, will the richest and still enslaved parts of our continent be freed
from colonial occupation and become available to us for the total development
of our continent? Every step in the decolonisation of our continent has brought
greater resistance in those areas where colonial garrisons are available to
colonialism.
This
is the great design of the imperialist interests that buttress colonialism and
neo-colonialism, and we would be deceiving ourselves in the most cruel way were
we to regard their individual actions as separate and unrelated. When Portugal
violates Senegal's border, when Verwoed allocated one-seventh of South Africa's
budget to military and police, when France builds as part of her defence policy
an interventionist force that can intervene, more especially in French-speaking
Africa, when Welensky talks of Southern Rhodesia joining South Africa, it is
all part of a carefully calculated pattern working towards a single end: the
continued enslavement of our still dependent brothers and an onslaught upon the
independence of our sovereign African States.
Do
we have any other weapon against this design but our unity? Is not our unity
essential to guard our own freedom as well as to win freedom for our oppressed
brothers, the Freedom Fighters? Is it not unity alone that can weld us into an
effective force, capable of creating our own progress and making our valuable
contribution to world peace? Which independent African State will claim that
its financial structure and banking institutions are fully harnessed to its
national development? Which will claim that its material resources and human
energies are available for its own national aspirations? Which will disclaim a
substantial measure of disappointment and disillusionment in its agricultural
and urban development?
In independent Africa we are already
re-experiencing the instability and frustration which existed under colonial
rule. We are fast learning that political independence is not enough to rid us
of the consequences of colonial rule. The movement of the masses of the people
of Africa for freedom from that kind of rule was not only a revolt against the
conditions which it imposed. Our people supported us in our fight for
independence because they believed that African Governments could cure the ills
of the past in a way which could never be accomplished under colonial rule. If,
therefore, now that we are independent we allow the same conditions to exist
that existed in colonial days, all the resentment which overthrew colonialism
will be mobilised against us. The resources are there. It is for us to marshal
them in the active service of our people.
Unless
we do this by our concerted efforts, within the framework of our combined
planning, we shall not progress at the tempo demanded by today’s events and the
mood of our people. The symptoms of our troubles will grow, and the troubles
themselves become chronic. It will then be too late even for Pan-African Unity
to secure for us stability and tranquillity in our labours for a continent of
social justice and material well-being. Unless we establish African Unity now,
we who are sitting here today shall tomorrow be the victims and martyrs of
neo-colonialism.
There
is evidence on every side that the imperialists have not withdrawn from our
affairs. There are times, as in the Congo, when their interference is manifest.
But generally it is covered up under the clothing of many agencies, which
meddle in our domestic affairs, to foment dissension within our borders and to
create an atmosphere of tension and political instability. As long as we do not
do away with the root causes of discontent, we lend aid to these
neo-colonialist forces, and shall become our own executioners. We cannot ignore
the teachings of history.
Our
continent is probably the richest in the world for minerals and industrial and
agricultural primary materials. From the Congo alone, Western firms exported
copper, rubber, cotton, and other goods to the value of 2, 773 billion dollars
in the ten years between 1945 and 1955, and from South Africa, Western gold
mining companies have drawn a profit, in the four years, between 1947 to 1951,
of 814 billion dollars.
Our
continent certainly exceeds all the others in potential hydroelectric power,
which some experts assess as 42 per cent of the world's total. What need is
there for us to remain hewers for the industrialised areas of the world? It is
said, of course, that we have no capital, no industrial skill, no
communications and no internal markets, and that we cannot even agree among
ourselves how best to utilise our resources.
Yet
all the stock exchanges in the world are preoccupied with Africa's gold,
diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper and iron ores. Our capital flows out in
streams to irrigate the whole system of Western economy. Fifty-two per cent of
the gold in Fort Knox at this moment, where the U. S. A. stores its bullion, is
believed to have originated from our shores. Africa provides more than 60 per
cent of the world's gold. A great deal of the uranium for nuclear power, of
copper for electronics, of titanium for supersonic projectiles, of iron and
steel for heavy industries, of other minerals and raw materials for lighter
industries - the basic economic might of the foreign Powers - come from our
continent. Experts have estimated that the Congo basin alone can produce enough
food crops to satisfy the requirements of nearly half the population of the
whole world.
For
centuries Africa has been the milk cow of the Western world. It was our continent
that helped the Western world to build up its accumulated wealth. It is true
that we are now throwing off the yoke of colonialism as fast as we can, but our
success in this direction is equally matched by an intense effort on the part
of imperialism to continue the exploitation of our resources by creating
divisions among us. When the colonies of the American Continent sought to free
themselves from imperialism in the 18th century there was no threat of
neo-colonialism in the sense in which we know it today. The American States
were therefore free to form and fashion the unity which was best suited to
their needs and to frame a constitution to hold their unity together without
any form of interference from external sources.
We,
however, are having to grapple with outside interventions. How much more, then
do we need to come together in the African unity that alone can save us from
the clutches of neo-colonialism. We have the resources. It was colonialism in
the first place that prevented us from accumulating the effective capital; but
we ourselves have failed to make full use of our power in independence to
mobilise our resources for the most effective take-off into thorough going
economic and social development. We have been too busy nursing our separate States
to understand fully the basic need of our union, rooted in common purpose,
common planning and common endeavour. A union that ignores these fundamental
necessities will be but a shame.
It
is only by uniting our productive capacity and the resultant production that we
can amass capital. And once we start, the momentum will increase. With capital
controlled by our own banks, harnessed to our own true industrial and
agricultural development, we shall make our advance. We shall accumulate
machinery and establish steel works, iron foundries and factories; we shall
link the various States of our continent with communications; we shall astound
the world with our hydroelectric power; we shall drain marshes and swamps,
clear infested areas, feed the under-nourished, and rid our people of parasites
and disease. It is within the possibility of science and technology to make
even the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for
agricultural and industrial developments.
We
shall harness the radio, television, giant printing presses to lift our people
from the dark recesses of illiteracy. A decade ago, these would have been
visionary words, the fantasies of an idle dreamer. But this is the age in which
science has transcended the limits of the material world, and technology has
invaded the silences of nature. Time and space have been reduced to unimportant
abstractions. Giant machines make roads, clear forests, dig dams, layout
aerodromes; monster trucks and planes distribute goods; huge laboratories manufacture
drugs; complicated geological surveys are made; mighty power stations are
built; colossal factories erected - all at an incredible speed. The world is no
longer moving through bush paths or on camels and donkeys.
We
cannot afford to pace our needs, our development, our security to the gait of
camels and donkeys. We cannot afford not to cut down the overgrown bush of
outmoded attitudes that obstruct our path to the modern open road of the widest
and earliest achievement of economic independence and the raising up of the
lives of our people to the highest level. Even for other continents lacking
tile resources of Africa, this is the age that sees the end of human want.
For
us it is a simple matter of grasping with certainty our heritage by using the
political might of unity. All we need to do is to develop with our united
strength the enormous resources of our continent. A United Africa will provide
a stable field of foreign investment, which will encourage as long as it does
not behave inimically to our African interests.
For
such investment would add by its enterprises to the development of the national
economy, employment and training of our people, and will be welcome to Africa.
In dealing with a united Africa, investors will no longer have to weigh with
concern the risks of negotiating with governments in one period which may not
exist in the very next period. Instead of dealing or negotiating with so many
separate States at a time they will be dealing with one united government
pursuing a harmonized continental policy. What is the alternative to this?
If
we falter at this stage, and let time pass for neo-colonialism to consolidate
its position on this continent, what will be the fate of our people who have
put their trust in us? What will be the fate of our freedom fighters? What will
be the fate of other African Territories that are not yet free? Unless we can
establish great industrial complexes in Africa – which we can only do in united
Africa – we must have our peasantry to the mercy of foreign cash crop markets,
and face the same unrest which overthrew the colonialists?
What
use to the farmer is education and mechanisation, what use is even capital for
development; unless we can ensure for him and a fair price and ready market?
What has the peasant, worker and farmer gained from political independence,
unless we can ensure for him a fair return for his labour and a higher standard
of living? Unless we can establish great industrial complexes in Africa, what
have the urban worker, and all those peasants on overcrowded land gained from
political independence? If they are to remain unemployed or in unskilled
occupation, what will avail them the better facilities for education, technical
training, energy and ambition which independence enables us to provide? There
is hardly any African State without frontier problem with its adjacent
neighbours.
It
would be futile for me to enumerate them because they are already familiar to
us all. But let me suggest to Your Excellences, that this fatal relic of
colonialism will drive us to war against one another as our unplanned and
uncoordinated industrial development expands, just as happened in Europe.
Unless we succeed in arresting the danger through mutual understanding on
fundamental issues and through African Unity, which will render existing
boundaries obsolete and superfluous, we shall have fought in vain for
independence.
Only
African Unity can heal this festering sore of boundary disputes between our
various States. Your Excellences, the remedy for these ills is ready to our
hand. It stares us in the face at every customs barrier, it shouts to us from
every African heart. By creating a true political union of all the independent
States of Africa, we can tackle hopefully every emergency, every enemy and
every complexity. This is not because we are a race of superman, but because we
have emerged in the age of science and technology in which poverty, ignorance
and disease are no longer the masters, but the retreating foes of mankind. We
have emerged in the age of socialized planning, when production and
distribution are not governed by chaos, greed and self-interest, but by social
needs.
Together
with the rest of mankind, we have awakened from Utopian dreams to pursue
practical blueprints for progress and social justice. Above all, we have
emerged at a time when a continental land mass like Africa with its population
approaching three hundred million are necessary to the economic capitalization
and profitability of modern productive methods and techniques. Not one of us
working singly and individually can successfully attain the fullest
development. Certainly, in the circumstances, it will not be possible to give
adequate assistance to sister States trying, against the most difficult
conditions, to improve their economic and social structures.
Only
a united Africa functioning under a Union Government can forcefully mobilize
the material and moral resources of our separate countries and apply them
efficiently and energetically to bring a rapid change in the conditions of our
people. If we do not approach the problems in Africa with a common front and a
common purpose, we shall be haggling and wrangling among ourselves until we are
colonized again and become the tolls of a far greater colonialism than we
suffered hitherto. Unite we must. Without necessarily sacrificing our
sovereignties, big or small, we can, here and now, forge a political union
based on Defence, Foreign Affairs and Diplomacy, and a common Citizenship, an
African currency, an African Monetary Zone and an African Central Bank.
We
must unite in order to achieve the full liberation of our continent. We need a
common Defence system with an African High Command to ensure the stability and
security of Africa. We have been charged with this sacred task by our own
people, and we cannot betray their trust by failing them. We will be mocking
the hopes of our people if we show the slightest hesitation or delay by
tackling realistically this question of African Unity.
The
supply of arms or other military aid to the colonial oppressors in Africa must
be regarded not only as aid in the vanquishment of the freedom fighters
battling for their African independence, but as an act of aggression against
the whole of Africa. How can we meet this aggression except by the full weight
of our united strength? Many of us have made non-alignment an article of faith
on this continent. We have no wish, and no intention of being drawn into the
Cold War.
But
with the present weakness and insecurity of our States in the context of world
politics, the search for bases and spheres of influence brings the Cold War
into Africa with its danger of nuclear warfare. Africa should be declared a
nuclear-free zone and freed from cold war exigencies. But we cannot make this
demand mandatory unless we support it from a position of strength to be found
only in our unity. Instead, many Independent African States are involved by
military pacts with the former colonial powers.
The
stability and security which such devices seek to establish are illusory, for the
metropolitan Powers seize the opportunity to support their neo-colonialist
controls by direct military involvement. We have seen how the neo-colonialists
use their bases to entrench themselves and attack neighbouring independent
States. Such bases are centers of tension and potential danger spots of
military conflict. They threaten the security not only of the country in which
they are situated but of neighbouring countries as well.
How
can we hope to make Africa a nuclear-free zone and independent of cold war
pressure with such military involvement on our continent? Only by
counter-balancing a common defence force with a common defence policy based
upon our desire for an Africa untrammelled by foreign dictation or military and
nuclear presence. This will require an all-embracing African High Command,
especially if the military pacts with the imperialists are to be renounced. It
is the only way we can break these direct links between the colonialism of the
past and the neo-colonialism which disrupts us today. We do not want nor do we
visualize an African High Command in the terms of the power politics that now
rule a great part of the world, but as an essential and indispensable
instrument for ensuring stability and security in Africa.
We
need a unified economic planning for Africa. Until the economic power of Africa
is in our hands, the masses can have no real concern and no real interest for
safeguarding our security, for ensuring the stability of our regimes, and for
bending their strength to the fulfilment of our ends. With our united
resources, energies and talents we have the means, as soon as we show the will,
to transform the economic structures of our individual States from poverty to
that of wealth, from, inequality to the satisfaction of popular needs.
Only
on a continental basis shall we be able to plan the proper utilisation of all
our resources for the full development of our continent. How else will we
retain our own capital for our development? How else will we establish an
internal market for our own industries? By belonging to different economic
zones, how will we break down the currency and trading barriers between African
States, and how will the economically stronger amongst us be able to assist the
weaker and less developed States? It is important to remember that independent
financing and independent development cannot take place without an independent
currency.
A
currency system that is backed by the resources of a foreign State is ipso
facto subject to the trade and financial arrangements of that foreign country.
Because we have so many customs and currency barriers as a result of being
subject to the different currency systems of foreign powers, this has served to
widen the gap between us in Africa. How, for example, can related communities
and families trade with, and support one another successfully, if they find
themselves divided by national boundaries and currency restrictions? The only
alternative open to them in these circumstances, is to use smuggled currency
and enrich national and international racketeers and crooks who prey upon our
financial and economic difficulties.
No
independent African State today by itself has a chance to follow an independent
course of economic development, and many of us who have tried to do this have been
almost ruined or have had to return to the fold of the former colonial rulers.
This position will not change unless we have unified policy working at the
continental level.
The
first step towards our cohesive economy would be a unified monetary zone, with,
initially, an agreed common parity for our currencies. To facilitate this
arrangement, Ghana would change to a decimal system. When we find that the
arrangement of a fixed common parity is working successfully, there would seem
to be no reason for not instituting one common currency and a single bank of
issue. With a common currency from one common bank of issue we should be able
to stand erect on our own feet because such an arrangement would be fully
backed by the combined national products of the States composing the union.
After
all, the purchasing power of money depends on productivity and the productive
exploitation of the natural, human and physical resources of the nation. While
we are assuring our stability by a common defence system, and our economy is
being orientated beyond foreign control by a Common currency, Monetary Zone and
Central Bank of Issue, we can investigate the resources of our continent. We
can begin to ascertain whether in reality we are the richest, and not, as we
have been taught to believe, the poorest among the continents.
We
can determine whether we possess the largest potential in hydroelectric power,
and whether we can harness it and other sources of energy to our own
industries. We can proceed to plan our industrialization on a continental
scale, and to build up a common market for nearly three hundred million people.
Common Continental Planning for the Industrial and Agricultural development of
Africa is a vital necessity.
So
many blessings must flow from our unity; so many disasters must follow on our
continued disunity, that our failure to unite today will not be attributed by
posterity only to faulty reasoning and lack of courage, but to our capitulation
before the forces of imperialism. The hour of history which has brought us to
this assembly is a revolutionary hour. It is the hour of decision. For the
first time, the economic imperialism which menaces us is itself challenged by
the irresistible will of our people. The masses of the people of Africa are
crying for unity.
The
people of Africa call for a breaking down of boundaries that keep them apart.
They demand an end to the border disputes between sister African States –
disputes that arise out of the artificial barriers that divided us. It was
colonialism’s purpose that left us with our border irredentism that rejected
our ethnic and cultural fusion. Our people call for unity so that they may not
lose their patrimony in the perpetual service of neo-colonialism.
In
their fervent push for unity, they understand that only its realization will
give full meaning to their freedom and our African independence. It is this
popular determination that must move us on to a Union of Independent African
States.
In
delay lies danger to our well-being, to tour very existence as free States. It
has been suggested that our approach of unity should be gradual, that it should
go piece-meal. This point of view conceives of Africa as a static entity with
“frozen” problems which can be eliminated one by one and when all have been
cleared then we can come together and say: “Now all is well. Let us unite”.
This view takes no account of the impact of external pressures. Nor does it
take cognizance of the danger that delay can deepen our isolations and
exclusiveness; that it can enlarge our differences and set us drifting further
and further apart into the net of neo-colonialism, so that our union will
become nothing but a fading hope, and the great design of Africa’s full
redemption will be lost, perhaps, forever.
The
view is also expressed that our difficulties could be resolved simply by a
greater collaboration through cooperative association in our inter-territorial
relationships. This way of looking at our problems denies a proper conception
of their inter-relationship and mutuality. It denies faith in a future for
African advancement, in African independence.
It
betrays a sense of solution only in continued reliance upon external sources
through bilateral agreements for economic and other forms of aid. The fact is
that although we have been cooperating and associating with one another in
various fields of common endeavour even before colonial times, this has not
given us the continental identity and the political and economic force which
would help us to deal effectively with the complicated problems confronting us
in Africa today.
As
far as foreign aid is concerned, a United Africa would be in a more favourable
position to attract assistance from foreign sources. There is the far more
compelling advantage which this arrangement offers, in that aid will come from
anywhere to Africa because our bargaining power would become infinitely
greater. We shall no longer be dependent upon aid from restricted sources. We
shall have the world to choose from. What are we looking for in Africa? Are we
looking for Charters, conceived in the light of the United Nations example? A
type of United Nations organisation whose decisions are framed on the basis of
resolutions that in our experience have sometimes been ignored by member
States? Where groupings are formed and pressures develop in accordance with the
interest of the group concerned? Or is it intended that Africa should be turned
into a lose organization of States on the model of the organization of the
American States, in which the weaker States within it can be at the mercy of
the stronger or more powerful ones politically or economically or at the mercy
of some powerful outside nations or group of nations? Is this the kind of
association we want for ourselves in the United Africa we all speak of with such
feeling and emotion? Your Excellences, permit me to ask: is this the kind of
framework we desire for our United Africa? And arrangement which in future
could permit Ghana or Nigeria or the Sudan, or Liberia, or Egypt or Ethiopia
for example, to use pressure, which either superior economic or political
influence gives, to dictate the flow and the direction of trade from, say,
Burundi or Togo or Nyasaland to Mozambique? We all want a United Africa, united
not only in our concept of what unity can connotes, but united in our common
desire to move forward together and dealing with all the problems that can best
be solved only on a continental basis.
When
the first Congress of the United States met many years ago at Philadelphia, one
of the delegates sounded the first chore of unity by declaring that they had
met in a “state of nature” in other words, they were not at Philadelphia as
Virginians, or Pennsylvanians, but simply as Americans. This reference to
themselves as Americans was in those days a new and strange experience.
May
I dare to assert equally on this occasion, Your Excellences that we meet here
today not as Ghanaians, Guineans, Egyptians, Algerians, Moroccans, Malians,
Liberians, Congolese or Nigerians but as Africans. Africans united in our
resolve to remain here until we have agreed on the basic principles of a new
compact of unity among ourselves which guaranties for us and future a new
arrangement of continental government. If we succeed in establishing a new set
of principles as the basis of a new Charter or Statute for the establishment of
a Continental Unity of Africa and the creation of social and political progress
for our people then, in my view, this Conference should mark the end of our
various groupings and regional blocs.
But
if we fail and let this grand and historic opportunity slip by then we should
give way to greater dissension and division among us for which the people of
Africa will never forgive us. And the popular and progressive forces and
movements within Africa will condemn us. I am sure therefore that we should not
fail them. I have spoken at some length, Your Excellences, because it is
necessary for us all to explain not only to one another present here but also
to our people who have entrusted to us the fate and destiny of Africa. We must
therefore not leave this place until we have set up effective machinery for
achieving African Unity.
To
this end, I now propose for your consideration the following: As a first step,
Your Excellences, a Declaration of Principles uniting and binding us together
and to which we must all faithful and loyally adhere, and laying the
foundations of unity should be set down. And there should also be a formal
declaration that all the Independent African States here and now agree to the
establishment of a Union of African States. As a second and urgent step for the
realization of the unification of Africa, an All-Africa Committee of Foreign
Ministers be set up now, and that before we rise from this Conference a day
should be fixed for them to meet.
This
Committee should establish on behalf of the Heads of our Governments, a
permanent body of officials and experts to work out a machinery for the Union
Government of Africa. This body of officials and experts should be made up of
two of the brains from each Independent African State. The various Charters of
the existing groupings and other relevant document could also be submitted to
the officials and experts. A praesidium consisting of the Head of the
Governments of the Independent African States should be call upon to meet and
adopt a Constitution and others recommendations that will launch the Union
Government of Africa.
We
must also decide on allocation where this body of officials and experts will
work as the new Headquarters or Capital of our Union Government. Some central
place in Africa might be the fairest suggestion either at Bangui in the Central
African Republic or Leopoldville in Congo. My colleagues may have other
proposals. The Committee of Foreign Ministers, officials and experts should be
empowered to establish:
- A Commission to frame a Constitution for a
Union Government of African States;
- A Commission to work out a continent-wide plan for a unified or common economic
and industrial programme for Africa; this plan should include proposals for
setting up:
A Common Market for Africa
An African currency
African Monetary Zone
African Central Bank, and
Continental Communications System;
- A Commission to draw up details for a Common Foreign Policy and Diplomacy;
- A Commission to produce plans for a Common System of Defence;
- A Commission to make proposals for Common
African Citizenship.
These
Commissions will report to the Committee of Foreign Ministers who should in
turn submit within six months of this Conference their recommendations to the
Praesidium. The Praesidium meeting in Conference at the Union Headquarters will
consider and approve the recommendations of the Committee of Foreign Ministers.
In
order to provide funds immediately for the work of the permanent officials and experts
of the Headquarters of the Union, I suggest that a special Committed be set up
now to work a budget for this.
Your
Excellences, with these steps, I submit, we shall be irrevocably committed to
the road which will bring us to a Union Government of Africa. Only a united
Africa with central political direction can successfully give effective
material and moral support to our Freedom Fighters in Southern Rhodesia,
Angola, Mozambique, South-West Africa, Bechuanaland, Swaziland, Basutoland,
Portuguese Guinea, etc., and of course South Africa.
