Africa must UNITE!!!

On Africa Liberation Day, 2023 the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) salutes the peoples of Africa.
Foreign exploitation, underdevelopment, and oppression of Africa continues to intensify in the 21st century. Africans in the Chagos Islands, in Western Sahara and in Ceuta still suffer colonial rule. We suffer an unjust and unpayable debt imposed by Western Banks and our traitorous spendthrift Neo-colonial political leaderships. We suffer the cruellest consequences of climate change even though we have not contributed to or benefited from the reckless capitalist industrialisation that has thrown the climate out of balance. Our continent is literally cut in half by warfare and conflict imposed by Imperialist armies and their client local militias. We suffer deficits in nutrition, healthcare and meaningful education leaving us uniquely vulnerable to scourges like Covid-19 while a tiny global elite continues to extract and expatriate the fruits of our collective labour for its own narrow, and bloated opulence.

Because exploitation and oppression continue, Africa’s centuries-long struggle for self determination, development, equality, and dignity also continues unabated. This struggle cannot be suppressed or hidden – no matter how much imperialism and its global corporate media seek to distort and demoralise.

The fight against disinformation is a key fight for Africans. Corporate and social media insist subtly that “Africans are our own worst enemies”, that “Africans are essentially and immutably tribal”, that “Africans lack the civic consciousness and fortitude to unite”. They tell us that African leaders are so hopelessly corrupt that we cannot change our landscape. They urge us to limit our aspirations and continue to seek outcomes consistent with continued subordination to the West. We must reject these and the many other imperialist stereotypes used to weaken our ambitions.

SMG believes that continental unity must be placed at the centre of Africa’s struggle for transformation.

Africa needs unity so we can together build the continental economic and political institutions that allow us to plan our continental development rationally and in our own interest.

Africa needs unity so we can sustainably and collectively own and deploy our vast natural resources (soils, waters, minerals, forests, oil and gas, biodiversity). Our resources cannot remain under the control of hereditary neo-feudal institutions that pull us backward into petty tribal political identities.

Africa needs unity so we can develop our immense human resource (soon to be the largest workforce in the world) to tackle our nutrition, healthcare, housing, education, and culture free from the domination of foreign profit or geopolitical interests.

Africa needs unity so we can defend every inch of our territory and expel foreign armies that are turning our lush lands into killing fields. Africa needs unity so we can participate in global affairs from a position of respect and non-aligned self-interest and not as surrogates for external interests.

As President Nkrumah declared famously on 24 May 1963 “So many blessings flow from our unity; so many disasters must follow on our continued disunity.”

Amid the darkness of our long struggle there are important signs that an anti-imperialist, pan-Africanist, and even socialist struggle is raging across our continent. For example, SMG applauds the foundation in December 2022 of a West Africa People Organisation (WAPO) comprising key actors in the Labour, Gender, Youth, Cultural, and political movements in our subregion.

WAPO is committed to remobilising West Africa’s masses into the fight for anti-imperialist Pan-Africanism. SMG also notes with pride the growing pushback in West and Central Africa against pernicious and anachronistic French Neo-colonialism. We hail the increasing tendency of militant leaders notably in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea towards national political unification as a key solution to the terrible problems of underdevelopment, instability and geopolitical conflict imposed on our people in these states. We have no illusions that this is a tremendously difficult challenge and that it will be opposed by the Imperialist world and by the Neo-colonial elites of the Region and their forum, ECOWAS. But it is a development that deserves and will receive the full support of Africans across the continent.

SMG calls on all Africans and especially Africa’s Youth to escalate the fight for an anti-imperialist revolution in Africa and to focus unwaveringly on continental unification. SMG stands with the all those fighting for a unified, anti-imperialist, and socialist Africa.

www.smghana.org
P.O. Box NT 272, Accra – Newtown Accra

Kwesi Pratt jnr
General Secretary
Accra