Dr. Kojo Opoku Aidoo, a Senior Research Fellow at IAS, was invited to speak at the 9th Annual African Unity for Renaissance Conference in Pretoria, South Africa by the Africa Institute of South Africa of the Human Sciences Research Council. In his presentation, Dr. Aidoo called on African leaders to muster courage to surrender the sovereignties of the nation-states in furtherance of African political unification. Dr. Aidoo stressed that the near-consolidation of the nation-state constitutes the single most inordinate obstacle to continental unification. He recommended the monumental work by Osagyefo Nkrumah - " Africa Must Unite' - to be read by the new breed of pan Africanists as it contains the roadmap to African redemption in an increasingly globalizing world. He further observed that trade barriers, xenophobia, and neocolonialism are problems that must be tackled in a concerted effort. Finally, Dr. Aidoo called for grassroots pan Africanism to be taken seriously as the pan African project can only be politically charged, and politically driven by the subaltern classes.
