Publisher's Synopsis
It is 127 years since the Scramble for Africa divided up the continent, imposing borders that have led to conflict rather than peace and stability. It is 100 years since the African National Congress (ANC) was founded as the first African liberation movement with pan-African roots. It is nearly 50 years since the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was founded in May 1963 and ten years since the African Union (AU) was born with a vision that seeks 'the actualisation of human dignity, development and prosperity for the entire African people ... anchored on a vision of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa...driven and managed by its own citizens...and representing a dynamic force in the international arena'. The achievement of the AU vision is predicated on colonialism being dead. However, it has actually been replaced by neocolonialism, which requires extra vigilance from Africa and its diaspora in order for the unity and renaissance dreamed of to become a reality. The chapters in Africana World: From Fragmentation to Unity and Renaissance address colonial and postcolonial African realities with a view to present a holistic and transcontinental appraisal of questions, issues and challenges that confront the continent. Contributors are drawn from different parts of the world - Africa, Europe and the Americas - and it is this eclectic range of scholarly views that lends a rich historicity to the meaning of Africanity. The book contains multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary engagements with Africa's rich cultural heritage, its lingering contemporary challenges, its multifaceted systems of knowledge and its future in the exciting context of the twenty-first century. Africana World: From Fragmentation to Unity and Renaissance is put together in order to help develop the study and knowledge of African liberation across the continent and the diaspora. This first volume launches a new book series, following the Scramble for Africa conferences held every May to commemorate the founding of the OAU, which will be published annually to support the scholarly study of African unity and renaissance in order to replace the lingering imagery of colonialism in Africa with a fully liberated African consciousness.
