When trying to analyze the evils of the African continent, it is essential not to forget to address the ideologies on which Africa is aligned in an attempt to emerge on the geopolitical chessboard.
The absence of ideological independence
In the 1960s, African nations gained their independence, but not de facto. Being independent does not only mean having control of one’s own territorial primacy. It is necessary to be able to apply a singular paradigm in the perspective of a geopolitical multipolarity. This has been the fundamental problem of Africa, of having rooted itself in exogenous ideologies conceived by others, for others, and therefore not in correspondence with the realities of the African continent. After colonization, several African nations adopted ideologies such as liberalism, communism, socialism, capitalism, social democracy, etc.
The will of an Afro-endogenous socialism for an African renaissance
At the time, the world was divided into two bipolar blocs: the Soviet communist bloc to the east and the western capitalist bloc to the west. In this context of the cold war, the African neo-nations have been forced to choose a very specific position to be recognized and supported in the face of an emerging evil, namely Western neo-colonialism. It cannot be denied that the Soviet Union under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev brought great support to the anti-colonial liberation movements in Africa, but this happened from a purely ideological point of view, as it was necessary to spread the ingredients of Marxism throughout the African continent. Respectable Pan-African personalities such as Ahmed Sékou Touré (first president of Guinea), Kwame Nkrumah (first president of Ghana) or Mathie Kérékou (first president of the People’s Republic of Benin following a coup) have opted for this path. However, not all African leaders accepted Marxism-Leninism, as they felt that it was too limited for Africa, except for some ideas, which are the essence of Pan-African humanism, such as solidarity, anti-capitalism, popular sovereignty and anti-imperialism. The rejection of the eternal class struggle and the acceptance of religion as an integral part of traditional African societies constituted the main point of separation between African socialism and Soviet Marxism. It is this dynamic that has prompted some African leaders to undertake an endogenous African socialism. Among these we can mention Muammar Gaddafi (leader of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), who theorized in his famous ” Green Book ” a Third Universal Theory opposed to liberal democracy and communism, or Julius Nyerere (first president of Tanzania) who theorized in the book “Ujamaa: Essays on socialism”, a model of socialism without Marxism and without capitalism. His conception of Ujamaa had to be based on communitarianism, because he believed that African societies were communal, and not communist, without, however, that the principles of equality, solidarity, sharing and fraternity were obliterated.
“The African is not a communist in his thinking; it is, if I may use an expression, communitarian. ” Julius Kambarage Nyerere.
For Nyerere, the eternal class struggle in Africa had no meaning, because man could not be divided into groups (in this case into classes). Socialism had to put the Muntu (person) at the center of the community and the village. This reflection will not cancel its visceral anti-capitalist dynamic. For him, the people should oppose international capitalism and not oppose their fellow men in societies where classes have never existed (unlike in Europe). In Africa, there have historically been traditional castes which harmonized city or village life, which practiced social cohesion in an equitable way, but there has never been any subordination of a specific group under another.
A parallel thought is found in the book “Consciencism” by Kwame Nkrumah. The latter had its Marxist-Leninist phase, but did not accept its full and complete principles. For him too, religion was part of the life of Africans. Personalities such as Nyerere, Nkrumah and other Pan-African contemporaries had therefore sought to undertake an alternative path to the ideological models deriving from modern world. Socialism in its various African variants worked as long as the support of Soviet power was not lacking at the time. African leaders had seen the latter as a key ally in opposition to the Western and imperialist capitalist bloc. But when the USSR began to weaken, implement a certain liberalization and openness to the Atlanticist bloc (which led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 and the break-up of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991), African nations are become ideological orphans abandoned to their fate.
Ideologically Orphan Africa: What Solutions?
In 1945 nationalism, in its chauvinist and imperialist drift that characterized Europe (fascism/national-socialism), was defeated before the liberal axis. Since then, the ideological-political diatribe had become bipolar between liberalism and communism / socialism. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the decomposition of the USSR gave way to the last ideology which is that of the west liberalism. In this post-bipolar context, Africa has found itself lost, orphaned, without ideological singularity and has integrated neoliberalism into its paradigm of civilization. Social democracy (reformist socialism with moderate economic liberalism) quickly imposed itself in opposition to the micronationalisms and revolutionary socialisms of African independence. There is therefore a political and economic line that supports concepts that do not correspond to our African realities. The only way forward is that of Pan-Africanism, in the footsteps of the fathers of independence, adapted to the realities of our time. A personality, namely Kemi Seba, a leading figure in the African resistance in the 21st century and founding president of the NGO Urgences Panafricanistes that I represent in Italy, alludes to this in his book “L’Afrique libre, ou la mort”.
Today we need an African political philosophy that is not communist, nor liberal, nor nationalist, but 100% pan-African and endogenous. A philosophy centered on Ubuntu (african communitarianism), mutual aid, African identity, federalism in view of the creation of a sovereign, multipolar and anti-imperialist block of African civilization, rejection of capitalism, Primordial Tradition (in its divine sense, as taught by the perennialist school ) whatever our religious sphere and the African Woman, because she is the pillar of our civilization.
We can summarize these concepts under the name of “Afrocracy“, a name that we can decree for a fourth way in its African meaning. Because it is in these aforementioned realities that the destiny of our true power lies. Economic and political decolonization is vital, but ideological decolonization is an urgent factor for an African renaissance.