Dilemma of African Unity

 The paper examines the dilemma of African unity against the background of the multiplicity of political interests and agenda. It examines this in the contest of the African Union and it sub-regional groupings and in relation to external political interests such as donors, multi-laterals and bilaterals. It argues that the on-going unity efforts have been simplified and enmeshed in a return to a tradition that from the onset had not understood the complexities of the continent and its history. It shows that issues of statism, ethnicity, linguistics and colonialism, which confront modern African states today, can only be understood within the context of history and the lived realities of the peoples caught in its tracks. Hence, such political talk needs to be informed and shaped by the radical ideological framings of the nationalist, early post-colonial era and the projects of Conscienticization, Ujaama and Harambee. Such efforts, in West and East Africa, blended African traditionalism with modernism to rebuild the fragmented and distorted communities that Africa’s colonization had created. It concludes on a critical pan-africanist stance that unless, the current crop of African leaders extricate themselves of their colonial binds ushered in through globalization and embrace a critical postcolonial framework in on-going nation-building efforts, the unity talks would be in vain.