The absence of a strong external military threat for Africa has created an atmosphere whereby attempts at institutionalizing pan-Africanism are typically weak and it has typically been through the pressures of crises (warfare, famines and geopolitical competition) that more substantive efforts at regional cooperation have emerged.

In 60 years as the principal African organization, both as the OAU and the AU, the African Union has been tasked with managing a wide range of conflicts on the continent. The AU has made great strides in diverging from the position of the OAU on peacekeeping intervention. But efforts are all it will remain if the AU does not deal with the holdbacks that hindered the OAU.

Growing up in Ghana in the 1980s, there were certain writers you didn’t escape. Ama Ata Aidoo, who passed away in May 2023, was one such writer, Nii Ayikwei Parkes writes. Hers is a timeless legacy of a writer who triumphed over the double battle of high-level literary creation and persistent erasure, and became one of the world’s leading thinkers and writers.

The African Continental Free Trade Area has always held great promise for African economic integration and the achievement of pan-Africanism. Historically, however, there have been many obstacles to African integration and pan-Africanism. While its full implementation has been delayed, the AfCFTA still holds great promise for African economic integration, and its potential should not be underestimated.

South Africa’s complex migration policy highlights the contradiction between its commitment to free movement within the African continent and its stringent immigration regulations. The country’s political, philosophical, and economic underpinnings of free movement struggles against the AU’s Agenda 2063 and international treaties.