by - Nehemi’EL Ibrihim Simms
Since the time of the talking drums and the traveling griot, walking from village to village, spinning fantastic tales of the people's history, and sewing together the national sinews, an instrument of the traditional socio-political mode of organization, media has been an important part of a distinctly African civilization. The griot, bringing tales of conquering kings, magical animals, and faraway lands, as well as dispersed ideas, arguments, and belief systems, all played a formative role in the development of African civilization.
Complex trade routes, traveling storytellers, and talking drums are all forms of mass media critical to developing the high ideals and democratic ethos characteristic of pre-colonial Africa. In modernity, although mass media developed to serve the interests of capital and globalization, it has also proved to be an irreplaceable tool in the proliferation of the ideals of Pan-Africanism throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
Media and the Development of Pan-Africanism
The advancements in printing press technology, the growing global market, and the emergence of the telegraph allowed words and ideas to spread worldwide. These developments in communication coincided with the political unrest and reconfiguration of the world political order between the Congo Conference of 1885 and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The African world was at the center of this transformation throughout this period, facing pressure from European imperialists. This state of affairs set the scene for the urgent and passionate appeals from a Jamaican printer and trade unionist to capture the imagination and spirit of the African world.
The political expression of Pan-Africanism can be traced back to the African Revolution in Haiti, which began with the slave uprising of 1791. The Revolution of Hispaniola holds significant importance for several reasons:
- It established Haiti as a major political force in the Western Hemisphere. It aided numerous South American countries, such as Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, and northwest Brazil, in their fight against slavery and quest for independence.
- Haiti provided a model for an All-African government, setting an example for future Pan-Africanist ideas, such as Garvey's Great African State and Nkrumah's "United States of Africa."
- Haiti inspired enslaved African people worldwide by conclusively dispelling the propaganda that they were unfit for self-government.
Any African person who set foot in Haiti was automatically granted freedom and citizenship. According to the 1804 constitution, the first class of citizens was "Black."
Emboldened by the assertion of African humanity in St. Domingue and armed with the pen and printing press, Pan-Africanism, still in its early years, was given a fertile empirical and moral foundation. Emerging figures like Prince Hall, John Russworm, Paul Cuffee, and Martin Delany proliferated ideas of an "African people" from a civilization with a particular "African" characteristic. Figures like Edward Wilmot Blyden, an early proponent of "Pan-Negro nationalism," gave expression to ideas like the "African Personality." One of the earliest detections of this new Pan-Africanist identity, forming in reaction to the intense pressures of the white nationalist social order, is Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative, where he brands himself as "the African."
Such discourse in the politics of identity is truly revolutionary for two reasons. To begin with, such an identity as expansive as "Afrikan" has never existed before, but it is born out of a need for unity among the groups subject to the dehumanization and super-exploitation of "Ham's descendants." Also, I am sure that the adoption of a macro-cultural identity and psychology, cutting across the myriad of ethnic and imperialist lines drawn in the socio-political landscape of the Afrikan continent and psyche, would, albeit gradually, cause a great change in the productive relationships of the continent and the labor circles undergirding production in the Western hemisphere.
It was now up to these early pan-Africanists to provide the anthropological basis for such a claim as an interconnected African civilization. What would later be expressed in works like Diop's Cultural Unity had initial expression in Blyden's the Negro, a newspaper designed to serve the "race problem." This "race problem" was the coordination of Afrikan people based on their recognition of an "Afrikaness," or as Diop refers to it …. To survive the refutation of an interconnection that would constitute a "civilization," scholars like Theophile Obenga and Marimba Ani would later do major work.
Armed with the ideology of "Afrikan Fundamentalism," a strong conviction of the universal plight of the Afrikan, and a newspaper, Marcus and Amy Ashwood Garvey organized 11 million Afrikan people, effectively agitating a set of ideas that, with the mounting problems facing Afrikan people, seemed on time. Pictures, newspapers, and literary works played big roles in facilitating the development of movements like the anti-slavery movement and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Afrikan Communities League.
Garvey's Negro World, founded on August 17th, 1918, as a weekly newspaper printed in multiple languages, eventually reached a weekly printing of over five hundred thousand copies and was cited by British intelligentsia to have been instrumental in precipitating revolt in Dahomey, Kenya, and other places (Tony Martin). The newspaper was also critical in the development of the Harlem Renaissance, which proliferated ideas of a new consciousness among Afrikan people, most clearly articulated by Alaine Locke as the "New Negro." Notable contributors to the Negro World included Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, Hubert Henry Harrison, John G. Jackson, Claude McKay, and Arthur Schomburg.
Media played an important role during the Third Iteration of the African Revolution. Technological leaps have empowered Afrikan people to coordinate actions, share experiences, and constructively critique ideas on levels hitherto unknown. Colonialism's primary tactic is a combination of divide and conquer and then isolation. To not allow Afrikans on one plantation to know what Afrikans on another plantation are engaged with. Social media is playing a history-altering role by allowing those of us involved in the struggle in one place to stay abreast of what is happening in other places. Accordingly, this leads to greater coordination and cooperation between sectors.
Africa's Globalization and Service to Capital
The 4th Industrial Revolution, also called Industry 4.0 (mckinsey.com), is a development in productive forces, defined as the "next phase in the digitization of the manufacturing sector" primarily characterized by "cyber-physical systems, improvements in robotics, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and a rise in connectivity." As a result of these changes, new technologies have made it easier and faster to transport people, goods, and information across borders. Additionally, supply chain breakthroughs have made it easier for companies to outsource processes internationally, enabling them to operate more cheaply and efficiently, thereby expanding their global presence.
Consequently, the effects of the accelerated pace of merging global identities – including what Toyin Falola terms the birth of "transnationalism" and a "New Afrikan Diaspora," as well as new perspectives on energy dependency and business administration – reverberates ambivalently among young African people who are becoming wise to the manipulation of supranational governments over their government through the use of "foreign exchange" and "aid" policies keeping capitalist power stable.
Globalization, or internationalization, as defined by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is used to describe the "growing interdependence of the world's economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information (piie.com, 2018)." As a process, globalization has taken its shape over many centuries, but the term gained popularity after the Cold War in the early 1990s, as these "cooperative arrangements" shaped modern everyday life. Globalization is more than just an integration of national economies.
According to "Globalization: A Framework for IMF Involvement (imf.org)," the Bretton Woods Institutions—the IMF and World Bank—have an important role to play in making globalization work better. The resources of the African continent and the labor and intellectual property of African people are the cornerstones of the worldwide system of capitalism. It follows that any discussion of productive forces implicates the African continent and the people. Charyl Prayer, author of the "Debt Trap: the International Monetary Fund and the Third World," writes that the IMF must be seen as the "cornerstone of an entire system."
Energy is a major geopolitical concern for powerful nations. Oil, renewable gas, solar, hydroelectric, and nuclear energy play significant roles in national budgets. Africa is home to some of the world's fastest-growing economies due to its plentiful energy reserves, and Ibrahim Traore from Burkina Faso is involved in building refineries. However, some powerful nations are attempting to portray slavery and genocide as part of "the green energy revolution." Additionally, the media is not covering the acts of terrorism taking place on the continent.
Thus, Afrikan people must develop a consciousness that speaks to them as Afrikans, and the media has a role in that by asking pertinent questions such as
- What are the real effects of the media and technocratic evolution in the context of our trajectory towards either dependency or sovereignty and the way black people are responding to their colonial situation?
- As the productive forces of Western society develop, what can Afrikan people do to use the developments in our own best interests?
- What threats does a techno-industrial society pose for Afrikan people? Where is the Afrikan continent headed?
- How can African people use new modes of communication to form transnational identities and agitate for the political unification of the Black States on the African continent and worldwide?
Uganda and Kenya: Pan-Africanism on the Rise Aided by Media
The imperialist's time-honored weapon is divide-and-conquer. "We mustn't let them communicate with one another," they whisper. Social media and other forms of mass communication, oddly at the helm of this rebirth of pan-African sentiment, are breaking down these barriers.
At the beginning of Summer 2024, Kenyan youth protested, agitated, and downright rebelled against the unaffordable cost of living, rising food prices, and state-imposed IMF back tax hikes proposed to pay the national debt. Braving tear gas, water hoses, and bullets, the youth have been involved in a series of positive action demonstrations calling for Western-backed President William Ruto to step down from the presidency.
Represented in The Kenya Finance Bill 2024 are proposed changes to the Kenyan tax system, which include a plan to raise $2.7 billion to reduce the budget deficit, sitting at about $82 billion; debtors include China ($8bn), the IMF, the United States, and Saudi Arabia (bowmanslaw.com). The debt also includes domestic borrowers. Economists say that more than half the country's revenue goes to paying the national debt. In late June of 2024, at least five people were murdered and 31 seriously injured when Kenyan police fired their weapons into a crowd of protestors outside of the Kenyan Parliamentary Building. The protestors responded by setting the legislative building on fire.
Kenya has been at the center of media attention since early June, as President Ruto opted to deploy a contingent of United Nations-back Kenyan soldiers to Haiti to help contain the growing political unrest in the country (pbs.org). Many people see this as President Ruto and those in power in Kenya scraping to curry the favor of their imperialist overlords. In their struggle to control their destinies, the young people of Kenya have inspired young people in other African countries who are also dissatisfied with their governments, namely those in Uganda and Nigeria. As a result of social media, African people all over the world were able to see the crises unfold in real-time.
The governments of Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria are among the countries facing an angry youth population, taking the fate of their family into their own hands and going up against serious repression. Motivated by the sacrifices of fallen comrades, the youth of Uganda, which included opposition parties and civic organizations, organized an anti-corruption protest against widespread corruption in the government, specifically in parliament. On Sunday, June 21st, President Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, issued a warning in response that protestors would be "playing with fire" (Princewill, 2024, cnn.com) On the following Monday and Tuesday, police blockaded the headquarters of key political opposition and preemptively arrested more than 100 protestors, respectively.
Similarly, young political organizers in Nigeria have been engaged in a coordinated struggle against the Nigerian government for 14 days, against which the Nigerian government has responded with deadly force. Much like the Kenyan and Ugandan governments, police have been used to ensure the "security of the state" and to quell any rowdiness by the people of these countries. Much like the Kenyan and Ugandan governments, the Nigerian government owes billions of dollars to the IMF.
Nigeria, characterized by corruption, inflation, and a high cost of living, has $113 billion in debt (nigerianstat.gov.ng). The external debt of the Federal Government of Nigeria is composed of loans from the World Bank, the IDA, the IMF, the AfDB, the EEC, and bilateral creditors. This financial stress is then put on the citizens of the country in the form of unlivable taxes and low wages. Multinational corporations siphon the surplus value from the country.
The story is the same for all of the Global South. The imperialists and their pseudo-bourgeoisie war dogs are a highly coordinated bunch. Now, the downtrodden masses and their political vanguards can fight back because of the evolution of the media and technology.
References
(2022) What are Industry 4.0, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and 4IR? McKinsey & Company https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-are-industry-4-0-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-and-4ir
(2018) What Is Globalization? And How Has the Global Economy Shaped the United States? Peterson Institute for International Economics https://www.piie.com/microsites/globalization/what-is-globalization
(2002) Globalization: A Framework for IMF Involvement International Monetary Fund https://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/ib/2002/031502.htm
(2024) Kenya: The Finance Bill 2024 Bowans https://bowmanslaw.com/insights/kenya-the-finance-bill-2024/
(2024) 2nd UN-backed contingent of Kenyan police arrive in Haiti to help quell gang violence PBS https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/2nd-un-backed-contingent-of-kenyan-police-arrive-in-haiti-to-help-quell-gang-violence
Princewill, Nimi (2024) Uganda’s President Museveni warns citizens they are ‘playing with fire’ over planned protests CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/22/africa/uganda-anti-corruption-protest-intl/index.html
National Bureau of Statistics https://nigerianstat.gov.ng/elibrary/read/1241381
Nehemi'EL Ibrihim-Simms, a descendant of Harlem Garveyites and Jamaican Maroons, is a journalist-educator who currently uses prose to explore the intersection between the grassroots application of Scientific Pan-African Nationalism and the New School of Thought on African Development in order to make sense of the Black Radical Tradition's mistakes and triumphs, in order to inform contemporary organizing efforts. He is the co-founder of Basimah's Hands Education LLC (basimahshandsed.org), which is a tutoring organization started in 2020, aimed at promoting literacy as an avenue for power and centering the use of Afrocentric Pedagogy in this endeavor. His inaugural publications entitled "A Treatise on The Modern Application of Traditional African Political Philosophy" and "Serudj Ma'at: Thoughts of a 21st Century Race Man" are forthcoming.