The Accra Declaration: 2nd Kwame Nkrumah Pan African Intellectual and Cultural Festival

The festival which brought together over 400 participants including cultural artists, academics, community members, international and local Pan-Africanists, students and institutions from over 20 countries across the world, provided an ideal platform to review and critically re-assess urgent tasks indispensable to deepening the technical and intellectual skills needed for training the next cadre of progressive thinkers and practitioners required to promote Pan Africanism and accelerate the attainment of structural transformation demanded by peoples of Africa.

The theme “Global Africa 2063: Education for Reconstruction and Transformation” has therefore offered a springboard for further research into ways the eleven regions in the Global African Family and their respective institutions of higher learning and intellectuals could collaborate to facilitate the internationalization and realization of Agenda 2063 within the five (5) regions of continental Africa and the six (6) African regions overseas.

The festival had 46 sessions which were grouped into twelve parallel sessions over five conference days. These sessions reverberated with discussions on indigenous knowledge, reparations, African fractals, Pan Africanism, transformative education in Africa, and institutional collaboration across the African world, to name a few. There were plenary sessions which took place once each day before the first parallel sessions started. These sessions had panellists with diverse backgrounds that challenged forms of education and knowledge production which facilitate imperialism. Expectedly, the plenaries also explored how African centred education and knowledge production could shape the transformation agenda in Africa.

In the opening of the Festival on Monday 26 June 2017, the Keynote Speaker Professor Hillary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of the University of West Indies, bemoaned the lack of collaboration on the part of African governments to support reparation claims. It was the contention of the renowned professor that, arguments about the complicity of some African chiefs in the condemned transatlantic slave trade cannot justify the indifference on the part of African heads of state regarding the call for reparative justice.

The film shows, drama performance, variety show and banquet joined the intellectual aspects of the Festival to showcase rich African culture, the drive towards unity, and the resurrection of “can do spirit” among conference participants.

The Accra Declaration of the Festival comprises the following core points:

• African Universities and Educational Institutions should get involved with research and teaching that would help fulfil the task of unifying Africa.
• African peoples should pressure their governments to support the Caribbean people in their demands for reparative justice.
• Youth across Africa should mobilize for a peaceful, strong and prosperous continent.

 Below is the summary of the final communique which came out of the 2^nd Nkrumah Festival.

FINAL COMMUNIQUE (SUMMARY) OF THE SECOND KWAME NKRUMAH

PAN-AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL FESTIVAL

Institute of African Studies

University of Ghana

Accra, Ghana

The 2nd Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Intellectual & Cultural Festival was hosted under the auspices of the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies by the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana from 25^th June to 1^st July 2017, under the theme “Global Africa 2063: Education for Reconstruction and Transformation”.  Over 400 Delegates from over 20 countries were in attendance.  The Conference set itself the following objectives:

1. Reflect on the goals of the specialized committees of the African Union with respect to the kind of education that must be set in motion to realize Agenda 2063.
2. Renew efforts to reclaim Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan African agenda modified as required in the light of contemporary realities.
3. Provide a critical impetus for the promotion of a major international thrust to popularize and update Pan-African thought and action.
4. Serve as an impetus to bridge the gap among academic, cultural and community based Pan-Africanists.

In addressing the conference objectives, the participants agreed, inter-alia, as follows:

• To establish a ‘Global Pan-African University Network’ to ensure that the core values of the respective institutions are undergirded with the values of Pan-Africanism.
• Re-examine Nkrumah’s independence and Pan-African project, to assess its current applicability to contemporary challenges, to assess its strengths and weaknesses, and to chart a way forward towards 2063.
• To stimulate the research agenda necessary to strengthen the on-ground efforts by the people to integrate and unify Africa, including support for the African Union’s role with the Encyclopaedia Africana and the research work necessary for the expedition of the process of establishing the African Currency and the African Monetary Union.
• The meeting examined and discussed existing expressions of neo-colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy and racism, and called on the African Union (AU), Economic, Social, and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC), CARICOM and the Global Pan-African movement to forcefully condemn the acts of aggression and dehumanisation against African Americans, the people of Palestine, Haiti, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, West Papua and outstanding colonial dependencies. The meeting called on African scholars to intensify support for the peoples of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and to oppose the occupation of this territory. There was strong support for the strengthening of the Decolonization Committee of the United Nations to end all current forms of colonial domination.
• The Festival registered its support for the call of the African Union to silence all guns by 2020. In this regard there was the call for the AU to take seriously its responsibility for the demilitarization of Libya and for the removal of external military forces. There was also the call for the progressive groups to forcefully support the demilitarization of the Central Africa Republic, Somalia, South Sudan and the regions of West Africa now ravaged by violent extremists.
• There was full consensus that all African governments and civil society organisations must by necessity, declare their full and uncompromising support for the global Reparatory Justice Initiatives of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Colombia, Brazil and all states in the Americas, and for all African and Global African communities in respect of the crime against humanity represented by chattel enslavement and trade in human bodies to demand that the governments of Europe who were and are criminally enriched by this evil enterprise participate in the negotiations leading to satisfying the demands as set out in the Ten Point Plan of the CARICOM Reparations Commission.
• That there be convened a Summit on Reparations among universities in Global Africa to identify and develop a common and unified approach on the reparations question.
• Equally supported is that all African governments should join with civil society in Africa and establish Reparations Commissions with a view to pursuing acceptance by the governments of Europe in line with the Durban Declaration that slavery constituted a crime against humanity.
• It was additionally agreed that this acceptance would provide the foundation for the reparations demands by Global Africa to be fully resolved and satisfactorily met by the offending governments of Europe and North America.
• Due to the centrality of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) within Africa, there was a clear call for total demobilization and demilitarization, awareness building of the oppressive civilian situation and for pursuing concrete actions such as support for the processes of democratization in the DRC.
• The meeting recognised that Pan-African unity cannot be advanced without the reality of people to people interaction and exchange, and therefore called for the pursuit of immediate action which would result in the establishment of direct air-links between Africa and the Caribbean, more efficient links between Latin America and Africa, and greater and more effective inter-country waterway, air, land, sea and telecommunications linkages on the African continent.
• The conference acknowledged that the spirit of Pan-Africanists like Walter Rodney continued to demand that efforts be made to develop a consensus against xenophobia, and for the acceptance of difference and building a future around the acceptance of diversity as an asset rather than a weakness.
• The meeting acknowledged that grassroots women and their roles in Pan-Africanism have historically been relegated and resolved to redress this historic imbalance, and to invigorate former structures such as the Pan-African Women’s Liberation Organization (PAWLO).
• The meeting noted the strong and enthusiastic participation of the youth and their expressed commitment to progressive Pan-Africanism, and called for concrete mechanisms to bridge the information gap with respect Pan-Africanism, and to facilitate sustained, structured, intergenerational dialogue.
• The meeting noted the resolute struggles of South African youth and students for democratising access to education and called for the support for universal free access to higher education in Africa as manifested in the “Fees Must Fall” Campaign.
• Traditional (indigenous) knowledge such as the application of African fractals, environmental practices, and social collectivism, were recognized as an increasingly untapped resource around questions of food sovereignty, environmental sustainability, and community empowerment; and called for a progressive Pan-African response to the imperialist use of science and technology, genetically modified seeds, and other capitalist driven practices which have decimated the lives of ordinary people in African communities worldwide.
• In order to advance the conference agenda, and the 2063 process, it was resolved that a Standing Committee be established to ensure the practical pursuit of the conference decisions to avoid the pitfall of non-action of previous conferences, as well as to capture, tap and channel the tremendous energy generation by the conference towards achieving the concrete objectives outlined.
• Given the urgency of Pan-African unity, there was a clarion call on all African people and the Global African Family to read, learn and internalize the ideas and opinions of past great Pan-Africanists like Kwame Nkrumah to help facilitate the Pan-African agenda.
• The Conference noted its gratitude and appreciation to the Government and People of Ghana, the University of Ghana, and the Institute of African Studies for hosting the festival.