On February 12, 2025 Doctor Cheikh Tidiane GADIO, President of the Pan-African Institute of Strategies, President of the MPCL, Former MAE of Senegal and current President of the Diplomacy and International Relations Commission of the International Preparatory Committee of the Pan-African Federalist Movement (PAFM) delivered the lecture entitled, "THE URGENCY OF A UNITED AFRICA in a context of global geopolitical recompositions" for the Webinar Series #2 of the The Sino-African Confluences (SAC) - Center for Studies and Research on African International Dynamics (CERDIA) - China-Francophone Central Africa Expert Network (RECAF).
WATCH DR. GADIO'S PRESENTATION (FRENCH)
On February 23, Dr. Joomaay Faye, General Secretary of the International Preparatory Committee of the Pan African Federalist Movement delivered the lecture entitled, "The Foundation for United African States by 2030" at the Molefi Kete Asante Institute.
WATCH DR. FAYE'S PRESENTATION (ENGLISH)
Pan African Federalist Movement
PAFM
IPC General Secretariat
Email: pafmmfpa@gmail.com
Website: http://www.pafmuas.org
Greetings everyone!
Peace and love to all of you who despite the cold, have come to be part of this conversation.
First and foremost, allow me to express my happiness to be here again with you all and gratitude to my dear big brother and mentor Prof Molefi Asante and his Wife and companion in the struggle for the restauration of the Sovereignty of “Africans of the Blood” as Aly Mazrui would call people with a very beneficial high level of melanin in their bodies put simply, Black People. Black is not only beautiful but it’s useful!!!
Thank you, Big Brother Molefi and Big Sister Ana, for giving me again the opportunity to share ideas and physical warmth with you all!
I am very excited to share with you who are present in this room or are following this conversation through social media, the objective reason behind the Pan African Federalist Movement’s warning to African people on the continent and throughout the World: Unite politically the African countries before the end of this decade of the 2020s or let others finish putting in place their plans to control your destinies for the foreseeable future.
Many people who are familiar with the Pan African Federalist Movement (PAFM) have wondered or expressed their doubt on the wisdom of the PAFM’s central Slogan: The United African States (UAS) by the end of the decade 2020-2030!
This slogan was neither pulled out of a magician's hat nor is the expression of the optimistic wish of delusional or unrealistic dreamers. It is derived from a profound and careful Analysis of today's World Geopolitical Affairs and the present reality in the African Countries of the Continent and those in Caribbean Islands like Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, etc.
This warning is anchored on four factors:
The de facto inability of the African countries to take advantage of the Demographic dividend and the havoc it is causing among the African youth, the overwhelming majority of the population of the African countries,
The arrival of the imperialist mode of production at its limit for the creation of enough opportunity for self-betterment particularly for the intellectual petite bourgeoisie class, the provider of it political supporters and the enablers of the action plans for its preservation.
The ripeness of the conditions for ending the present mode of production.
The new scramble for Africa going on right before our own eyes,
Let us address these issues one by one!
The fact that the imperialist mode of production has reached its limit
First and foremost, allow me to explain what the difference between Imperialism, Colonialism and Neocolonialism is.
Imperialism is an economic mode of production and distribution, just like the feudal mode of production, the slavery mode of production. Imperialism is a variant of the Capitalist Mode of Production.
Colonialism and Neocolonialism are the political systems which allowed the imperialists countries to impose this oppressive and exploitative mode of production on many nations worldwide. All African nations on the continent, except Ethiopian and Liberia and the Caribbean Islands are victims of this system.
Since the middle of the 19th Century, it is the imperialist Mode of Production which is imposed to the African people of the continent of Africa and in the Caribbean Islands where they make up the overwhelming majority of the Citizenry. First it was by military might and an army of colonial administrators. Then in the middle of 20th century it was the African intellectuals who were entrusted with watching over the interest of the imperialists in exchange of a small Rental fee of their independent countries.
What exactly is imperialism?
Capitalism started by creating a class of individuals who were dispossessed of their land and their transformation into propertyless individuals who have nothing to sell for their survival but their capacity to work. Karl Marx referred to them as Proletariat in his Seminal work, Das Capital. When in Western Europe capitalism arrived at a point where it was no longer able to create more jobs, imperialism became their new invention. This consisted in the transformation of entire nations in Proletariat for the extraction from them the entire national surplus-Value of their economies. This survival choice became a necessity to avoid social upheavals which will overthrow their political and economic mode of ruling and exploiting their popular masses.
As we all know it is the Surplus-Value of a national economy which makes capital growth possible and economic prosperity of nations if it is reinvested within the perimeters of the nation which produced it OR on its behalf if it is invested outside of those perimeters. If it is siphoned out of the nation which produces it, growing poverty becomes the outcome. This is why African countries where the imperialist Mode of production is the dominant one are being impoverished year after year.
The observation of this fact was what made Callisto Madavo, a former Vice President for Africa of the World Bank to bitterly say; “while Africa is home to only 10% of the world population, roughly 30% of the world’s poor are Africans. Since the mid-1980s the number of poor in Africa has doubled to some 300 million and is expected to climb as high as 400 million by 2015. Thus, Africa is the only region of the world where poverty is increasing in stark contrast to the dramatic gains in the fight against poverty that are seen elsewhere, most notably in Asia”.
How can we end the irrational poverty in Africa where the abundance of natural resources and an underemployed workforce is indisputable?
The obvious response of an honest economist like Paul Baran is: Stop the siphoning of their national surplus value from these countries and let it be invested domestically!
However, the most popular theories fed to African intellectuals who repeat them like parrots are produced by a whole bunch Western economists like Jeffrey Sacks and Paul Collier. These popular academics have worked hard to blind African Academics regarding the real reason of growing poverty in the African countries. They are telling them that the rise of poverty in Africa is caused by lies like Africans are making too many babies and are not being wise about how they manage the political and economic crumbs left behind by imperialists through misgovernance and corruption. These so called two reckless and immature behaviors of the African leaders are their favorites when they diagnose why an African country is in economic trouble. There are others at the service of financial capital who are engaged in painting Foreign Direct Investment as the best way for African industrialization neatly hiding the fact that surplus-value, returns to where capital originated from. Therefore, foreign direct investment can only lead to more poverty down the line as Japanese had understood in the middle of the 19th century after the Meiji Restoration.
Regardless of the efforts they will make, it is an illusion to believe that such modes of production only fueled by greed can last forever. The fate of the imperialist mode of production was well explained by Lenin in “Imperialism the last stage of capitalism”. Kwame Nkrumah in “Neo-colonialism the last stage of imperialism” clearly demonstrated that neocolonialism, the political, not economic reform of colonialism, is the last stage in the life of imperialism.
The neocolonialist plan, which produced the independences that were granted to the non-viable African countries in the 60s of the last century, was nothing but the improvement, for the benefit of the colonizers, of the chances of survival of the imperialist mode of production. Getting rid of the most visible and hideous aspects of colonialism, drastic reduction of the foreign occupation army and replacement in the Administration and political leadership of foreign occupiers by “White Skin black mask Africans” gave a new life to the imperialist mode of production.
The neocolonial system targeted the African intellectuals to serve as political interfaces between the imperialist and the people. The domestic comprador bourgeoisie ensured of the collection and exportation of raw materials and the sale in their countries of the finished products coming mostly from those raw material. This is how national surplus values were and are still being extracted legally from the neocolonies leading to the worsening of their poverty index.
As I said above, all class-based modes of production have limits. Since the early 1990s the imperialist mode of production has slowly but surely been getting closer to its limits in being able to provide jobs for the thousands of new hands which arrive in the Job markets of the neocolonies. The inability of the job markets of these countries to absorb these new job seekers, the Demographic Dividend of which we will more about later, has today led to the rise of terrorism and risky migrations which are costing most African countries the lives of thousands and thousands of young people and creating social unrests, easy recruitment grounds for war lords and terrorist groups in most African countries.
Luckily for us who are trying to end imperialism and it political system neocolonialism, the arrival of the imperialist mode of production at its limits has created a rise in the awareness of the among the Young African Intellectual on the real cause of their desperate situation. The Support by the youth of the Coup d’états in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and even Guinea was rooted on their declaration of their commitment to end French domination. In Senegal the youth and the Senegalese expatriate who made the election of President Diomaye possible were answering to the call of his political party for Systemic Change in other word end of French domination.
This rise in the awareness of the African youth which makes up the majority of the African countries is the obvious reason why the conditions to end neocolonialism, the political system which makes imperialist domination possible, are ripe. When Dr Nkrumah in the early 1960s stated that “African people are crying for unity” his statement was not as obviously correct as it is today. The African youth is today crying for Political Unity because it is the only viable way to take away the burden making African Countries vulnerable to the imperialist plans for political domination and economic exploitation. That burden is made up of the portions of their Sovereignty, such as diplomacy, defense, indebtment, currency, to only name the most obvious, they have proven to be unable to properly managed. Today they have surrendered these portions of their people’s sovereignty, or are in the process of doing so, to the former or new colonizers like Russia, China the United States, Turkey, India, Japan etc. This surrender of major portions of their Sovereignties is about to seal, for a long time, their control by foreign nations.
The de facto inability of the African countries to take advantage of the Demographic dividend
The arrival of a throng of new job seekers in the job market is an omen for a mode of production which can absorb most of these new hands. The sum of these ready to get employed people is called demographic dividend. This demographic dividend can be produced by young people born in the country and have reached the age of employment or migrants looking outside of their borders for better opportunities and living conditions. If the job market can absorb the majority of these new job seekers, then economic growth will be the result. If it is the opposite, then social unrest and instability is what happens. The arrival, in the overwhelming majority of the African countries, of the imperialist Mode of Production to its inability to make use of this demographic dividend has created restlessness. The young intellectual Petit-Bourgeoisie group is the most affected by the paucity of the Job Market in the African countries. This is why reckless migrations causing thousands of deaths every year in the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean ocean have become popular within this group. This economic situation also creates a fertile terrain for the recruiters of the terrorist groups and war lords. The Sahel in today the epicenter of the insecurity caused by the easy recruitment by the terrorists’ employers.
As long as the inability to take advantage of this demographic dividend will persist, what we are observing now will remain.
The Only way out of this situation is political unification and the creation of a labor market which will be able to absorb most of these job seekers. Some will say that the creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could be the answer. This is far from the truth. The AfCTA is nothing but an economic ploy, as neocolonialism was, for the elongation of the life of the imperialist mode of production. Only pollical unification can create the level of access to credit with the kind of interest rates which will make the nascent industries on the continent capable of offering competitive prices to products coming from China, the USA, Europe. Only a Federal Government of the African people by the African people could regulate the competition of these foreign goods with locally produces ones in a manner that can preserve the interest of the indigenous industries built by domestically owned capital.
The ripeness of the conditions for ending the present mode of production.
After World War II and the lessons learned on the battle fields by the African Soldiers, the crushing defeat of the French by the Vietnamese General Giap at Diem Bien Phu in 1954 and the beginning of Armed Liberation Movements in Africa particularly in Algeria with FNLA and Cameroon with the UPC, the imperialists realized that the political system which was serving them was no longer adequate. This is what gave birth to the Neocolonial Political System for the preservation of Imperialist Mode of Production. This consisted of getting rid of the most hideous aspect of colonialism. These were the colonial administrators and the occupying army. Neocolonialism is therefore an enhanced mode of colonization with the help of the indigenous “Black Skinned White Masked”. Frantz Fannon consecrated a whole book on this issue. For those who want to deepen their understanding of the mentalities of those handpicked and trained to serve agents of neocolonialism in the newly independent African Countries, this book of Frantz Fanon is a must read.
As we said earlier, when Dr Nkrumah stated in the early 1960s that the “African people are crying for unity” and we know he meant political unity, that statement was not as correct as it is today. The African people, particularly the Youth, are crying for unity.
The arrival of the imperialist mode of production and the unsustainability of its political system neocolonialism at their limits has created a RISE in the awareness of the Young African Intellectual as to what is the real cause of their desperate situation, they have found themselves today. The Support by the youth of the Coup d’états in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and even Guinea was rooted on their declaration of a commitment to end French domination. In Senegal the youth and the Senegalese expatriate who made the election of President Diomaye possible were answering to the call of his political party for Systemic Change in other word end of French domination.
This awareness of the people as to what is the source of their problems regarding security and reasonable access to the opportunities for Self-Betterment is rooted in the reality of the conditions in which they live. It is therefore a fact based one and cannot be made disappear by the conniving theories of the imperialists and their Parrots, the majority of the African Academics.
It is today visible, through what has happened in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea and Senegal, that the African youth have completely lost hope in the capacity of neocolonialism and its imperialist mode of production to create an environment where “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is possible. At every opportunity which is given to them, they demonstrate their readiness to switch to a new system which can create realistic hope for the fulfillment of the majority of people’s dreams of bettering their life if they are ready to work for it. Supporting the Coup d’états of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea and waving the Russian flag is not an advocacy for a New Imperialist’s control of their destiny. It is an unequivocal rejection of French imperialism.
The best know quote from Frantz Fanon is without a doubt that “each generation must, in the relative opacity of things, discover its mission, accomplish it or betray it”. The present generations of African people’s mission is to cease the opportunity of the ripeness of the condition to deal its last blow to the imperialist mode of production imposed on our people and ending neocolonialism, the political system which sustains it. We have no right to miss the opportunity offered to us today to finish the job started by the independentists and civil right leaders generations of Africans.
The new scramble for Africa
When in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and then a year or so later the USSR was dissolved, the United States of America and its Western European allies were ecstatic for their hard-won victory in the Cold War. Which was not cold in the countries where civil wars, wanton assassination of genuine nationalist political leaders was its form of expression. This war was declared between the former Allies against Nazism in World War II caused millions of death around the World. The Vietnam war was only the tip of the iceberg of the devastation caused by the war wrongly call “Cold War. The end of this war was the beginning of the “Global Pax Americana” Era which was declared by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice. A document, entitled “Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources For A New Century”, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Not to be left behind some academics jumped into the Band Wagon and published books and articles to tell the rest of the world to accept the fact that the American Models of Political and Economic Development are the most perfect that humankind will ever arrive at. Francis Fukuyama expressed it the best through the title of his Best Seller “The end of History the last man standing”. What he and the members of his band didn’t know, or at best were pretending not to know, was that they were repeating the same mistake made by Friedrich Hagel, the modern father of Dialectic, in the mid-19th century when he declared the Prussian State was “the Image and reality of reason”.
It didn’t take long before China dampened their enthusiasm by proving them wrong through the inroads it was making, particularly in Africa, in its imperialist ambition. Thanks to a humongous amount of cash reserves accumulated through the compulsory savings imposed on the Chinese salary earners, China was offering credits with interests rates much lower than the financial capitalist of the West. It engaged in building railroads and other infrastructure with these so-called cheap loans and mainly Chinese workforce, enriching its people while further impoverishing the people of the African countries who took these loans.
This Chinese breakthrough in the “Global Pax Americana” geopolitical map of the world, opened the gate for Russia and Valdmir Putin didn’t waste his time jumping into the band Wagon of this New Scramble for the grab of a piece of Africa. India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey also joined this new race for a piece of the African cake. Each one of these profit hunters recruited its own set of African Intellectuals, particularly Academics to be the advocates of the plan to get their piece of the African Pray. The role of these Academics was to feed the African people, particularly the youth, with an attractive painting of the type of relationship their imperialist employer wants to develop, particularly at the economic level, with their country.
The New Scramble for the African Lands in Africa and the Caribbean is today in full Motion. I strongly believe that this was what prompted Mwalimu Julius Nyerere to declared in Accra in 1997, that without continental unity, there is no future for Africa. One of the wisest African political giants stated in the same speech that he was wrong in May 1963 and Dr Nkrumah was right. Which meant Regional Unions will not get the African people out of the reach of the imperialist’s ambitions in this Redesigning of the African Colonial Map. Historically geopolitical reorganizations processes take about a Generation to complete their Course. Which means that if Africans do not find a mean to stop this New Scramble which started in the beginning of the 1990s, we will be recolonized, through means that are even more dangerous than sending armies on our soils. The political instability in Ethiopia is today, the battle ground between the USA, and China and in the Central African Republic between France and Russia are obvious evidence of the battle to carve Africa once again in foreign controlled zones.
As far as the PAFM is Concern ONLY the Political Unification of a Critical Mass of African countries for the constitution of a contiguous geopolitically viable Entity, can Prevent this New Scramble from Complete its Course.
So, in a Nutshell, "the United African States by the end of the decade 2020-2030" is not a promise that the PAFM is making but a warning to Africans around the globe.
Conclusion
In the mid-1980s the Structural Adjustment Programs of the World Bank and the Structural Adjustments Facilities of the IMF, which were a payment plans of the reckless debt fed to the African governments by the Citibank for the [purpose of using its huge stock of Petro Dollars, were imposed on the African countries. Prior to the implementation of these programs and facilities, the Intellectual petite bourgeoisie had no material reasons to rebel against the political system which served for the maintenance of the imperialist mode of production, neocolonialism. Today, its class interests are at odd with the neocolonial political system and its mode of production, imperialism. It is desperately searching for a way out of the crisis. History has taught us that radical systemic change is rarely the choice of the majority of people. But a determined minority, like in Cuba, Russia, Japan etc. can sway them towards that needed revolutionary change. This is the “raison d’être” of the PAFM. In other words, “the organized few always lead the unorganized many”. This is why we are laser focused on building a campaign machine of a few thousands determined individuals to usher the African masses towards the rejection, through a democratic process, of keeping the African Countries as singleton and uniting them politically to create the United African States.
Some people, not necessarily afro pessimists, will argue that this cannot be done because those who have interest in the balkanization of the African States will not let us Africans unite, they have too much to lose. They will cite the examples of Nkrumah in 1963 and Khadafy in 2007. What those doubters forget or do not factor in, is that "a people united cannot be defeated". Both Nkrumah and Khadafy did not put African people at the driver seat of their effort to unite the African States. The PAFM, a grassroots coalition of Africans have learned the lessons taught by the Nkrumah and Khadafy experiences.
We Will Unite Africa if a few of us are ready to pay whatever price it may cost them for the recovery of the Sovereignty of African people as well as the reparation of the image of Black people!!!
Thank you for listening!
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