A Vision of Unity, Peace, Shared Prosperity, and Progress for Africa based on Ubuntu
This present document is a manifesto of a comprehensive political organization called the Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress (CPP) which seeks to build a universal alliance in the 21st century committed to the creation of the United Nation of Africa through peaceful means. The Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress is a non-profit, holistic, multi-ethnic, multicultural, multiracial, and multifaceted institution and agency. It aims also at contributing to the building of the Grand African Historical Reconstruction (GAHR) and to the advancement of a new dispensation of Pan-Africanism that stands upon an African endogenous philosophy called Ubuntu. The tenets of Ubuntu are unity, sharing, compassion, solidarity, love, peace, and togetherness.
The world is in a moral decay. Africa is faced with a series of serious challenges. It is up against
forces that operate in a coordinated fashion at various levels, political, economic, diplomatic, and cultural, that undermine its quest for progress and sovereignty, such as global governance, globalization, corporate power, and massive dispossession. Africa is again at a crossroads. In this world dominated by the formation of greater blocks, Africa faces a choice: perish or unite? Disintegrate or reunite? Be in a permanent state of war or build a lasting peace? Continue on the road of bad development or develop a new paradigm for sustainable and endogenous industrial development?
This is a defining moment. There is a need to create a comprehensive political movement that reclaims both Pan-Africanism and an African philosophy that encapsulates the spirit of African collectivism and the essence of African identity. The Ubuntu philosophy which is about humanness and togetherness adopted as the transcendental ideology of the Convention for the Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress is the foundation of a psycho-cultural revolution that the movement is seeking to promote. Ubuntu has managed to mark academic and international circles thanks to the rise to power of Nelson Mandela, rose to prominence and is since seen as a valuable, credible, and legitimate philosophy used to inform various sectors of life and projects such as that of sustainable and integrated development of Africa and its unity..
The purpose of the organization is to articulate a strategic thinking, organization, and coordination across African countries and across the globe. That movement ought to pool together various types of skills among like-minded Pan-Africanists and ought to coordinate in synergy efforts of the African unity process as an appropriate response to the way antagonistic forces operate against Africa and its people.
Pan-Africanism has always been the only framework that explains the reality of Africa and its diaspora and provides the tools for an authentic integrated development of Africa. It is not a static construct. It has always been a response to subsequent specific historical conditions and challenges facing Africa and its peoples throughout history, namely slavery, colonialism, racial discrimination, apartheid, imperialism, neocolonialism, neo-liberalism, globalization, global warming and climate change, police brutality, and systemic racism.
Groups of Africans, people of African descent, justice lovers and freedom seekers of all walks of life who have been working for years to promote a Pan-African consciousness decide to reunite with others to create the Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress (CPP) in order to consolidate the resurgence of the Pan-African emotion and to contribute to the acceleration of the Pan-African ideal. In this new dispensation of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century, the CPP will contribute to the forging of a global voice for a unity of action, to the reinforcement of a culture of solidarity and unity, to a sense of common purpose of the African people.
The Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress’ acronym (C.P.P) is identical to that of a historic political organization, the Convention of People’s Party, created by Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana with a different meaning. It was with that political instrument (Convention of People’s Party) that Kwame Nkrumah contributed to the struggle for the independence of Ghana and for the total liberation of Africa. With the historical CPP, Kwame Nkrumah ignited Pan-Africanism in Africa, articulated and implemented a self-reliant and self-sufficient inspiring model of development of Ghana. The Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress (CPP) claims therefore the spirit of the historical CPP, adapts it to the current realities, exigencies, and urgencies and vows to be represented across the continent and across the globe in the truest sense of a real Pan-African organization.
The Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress is not a political party. Its functions transcend those of a mere political organization. It serves as a political movement, a grassroots organization, and as an incubator for a civilizational project that values the Ubuntu consciousness for shared prosperity, constant inventiveness, and progress. The actions and activities of the organization focus on advocacy, cultural diplomacy, technical assistance, advisory support and training, providing information and sustained awareness, raising consciousness, collecting data, conducting research and campaigns, and building agencies. The blueprint of such set agencies is called the Vision Action Plan (VAP).
The goals of the Vision Action Plan are economic and communal empowerment, political liberation, and cultural affirmation of the African people. The Vision Action Plan encompasses a leadership academy that provides afro-centric knowledge and which promotes ethical leadership embedded in the Ubuntu Philosophy, a think tank that provides policy research and analysis for the redemption of the World African Union, and a center of archives that collects written, oral, video, and audio documents about the past, present, and future of the Global African Community. One of the agencies that deserves a particular attention is the Ubuntu Awards ceremony that the Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress plans to organize annually in order to celebrate successful people and agencies who embody the Ubuntu values and who contribute to the resilience and rising of Africa. The organization seeks to promote a positive image of a thriving Africa and that of African owned businesses, facilitate their expansions and reveal the unsung African business champions and African community heroes. The campaigns touch on several areas, namely the decolonization of space and culture, economic justice, economic empowerment. Some of the campaigns the organization seeks to conduct are “Produce African”, “Buy African”, “Get Rid of the Judicial Wig”, Ubuntu Corporate Social Responsibility, African Invention Day, African Cuisine Day, Africa Health Day, and Restitution of African Artwork
The Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress aims at meeting the challenges of the 21st century by leading Africa into a dimension of authentic integrated sustainable development and progress based on its political, cultural, and economic liberation and unity. It intends to revive the deferred dreams, the unfulfilled promises, and the unattained goals of the Pan-African ancestors. Africa, the cradle of civilization and the mother of all inventions and revolutions, is again offering to the world a new civilization that places the human being in the center of all through Ubuntu, which remains a unifying vision of the world.
There are several concepts in the African world that reflect the legendary African collectivism that has survived various systems of African dispossession and acculturation. Reclaiming the Ubuntu philosophy is an act for the decolonization and the restoration of the African civilization which continues to suffer repeated colonizing assaults. The Ubuntu philosophy encompasses an Afro-centric component and its adoption is an expression of the return to the source as it can be traced back to Ancient Egypt. It puts emphasis on the cultural and linguistic unity of Africa and on the common cultural and philosophic fountain of both Ancient Egypt and today’s Africa. Ubuntu serves in the building of a new African persona, whereby African people conscious of their rich and glorious history become the agents and actors of their own political, economic and cultural liberation. Ubuntu which correlates individual welfare to collective wellbeing encompasses the notions of togetherness, collective consciousness, community empowerment, communal responsibility, individual and collective self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and shared prosperity.
The organization intends to help reduce various sources of tension, division and strife between the various layers of the African society, between political parties, ideologies, between rich and poor, old and young, corporations and citizens, between the state and citizens, urban and rural, intellectual and non-intellectual. The movement rejects all forms of extremism, religious, ethnic, racial and intends to contribute to the emergence of a new African personality who cherishes unity, national sovereignty, and puts Africa first above individual, corporate, and ethnic interests.
Even though the Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress claims Ubuntu, it recognizes that economic liberalism is a geopolitical reality that cannot be ignored. Therefore, the project for economic justice should consider social business, corporate social responsibility as some of the means to enhance development. All components of the society, namely the state, the business community, the community, the market, claiming the spirit of Ubuntu, are all called upon to agree on common priorities, to unite in a common destiny and common purpose for the building of a society of peace, progress, shared prosperity, and of social justice.
The principles of Ubuntu applied to various sectors of the society would help in the building of an African spiritual unity, a new African personhood endowed with moral capital, a new African and endogenous democratic system and culture, an African economic identity doctrine (the Ubuntu economy), an African cultural revolution, a social cohesion architecture, an Ubuntu corporate management style, an Ubuntu-driven corporate social responsibility, and of the creation of the Ubuntu Communities Development model.
The Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress vows to bring some adequate solutions to the multiple battles the continent of Africa is engaged in, namely the battle for the soul of Africa, the battle of identity, and the battle of ideas. It strives for the advent of a cultural revolution that would create a new African personality, agent and actor of his or her own economic, political, and cultural liberation. The CPP intends to contribute to unleash the creative genius of Africans for the restoration of Africa and the planet, the protection of the environment and the ecosystem, the advancement of science, technological innovation and progress. It will be accomplished by the production of concepts, paradigms, products, tools, multidisciplinary scientific inventions for the satisfaction of the holistic needs of the African people and all citizens of the world. A project of this magnitude requires the mobilization of various talents, multiple skills, varied potential and ability which could inspire vocations of all kinds for the sustainability of the vision that needs to be transmitted from generation to generation.
The project of the United Nation of Africa and that of an African authentic integrated development do not begin at the level of the states. They begin with individuals, families, communities, and neighborhoods. The Grand African Historical Reconstruction should be built stone by stone, brick by brick, block by block, cities by cities, states by states, nations by nations, and also from the bottom up.
The people of African heritage should conquer the dual power to choose and to implement sound policies individually and collectively, driven by common values namely unity, solidarity, and cooperation, thus building self-developed, self-help, self-sufficient, and self-reliant communities called the Ubuntu Development Communities. In doing so, they ought to invest and control eight areas of life like any other independent and sovereign group does, food, clothing, housing, education, communication, transportation, security, and trade. The Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress will therefore help create and build a network of interconnected Ubuntu Development Communities that will be the building block of the creation of the United Nation of Africa.
Moreover, the new Africans are urged to undertake the common interest works, as a means to reinforce the civic citizenry, humanness, solidarity, and also so to highlight the Ubuntu philosophy. Therefore, focus is put on education in public utility works and of the training in skilled labor jobs. Thus, bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers, farmers, construction workers, welders, road builders, railroad workers, tailors, cobblers, barbers, and street sweepers will play a role as important as that of the scientists, intellectuals, policy makers. Every soul will then partake in the Grand African Historical Reconstruction that could be a model for the entire world.
All the members of the Convention for Pan-Africanism and Progress (CPP) are expected to lead by example, to reflect in their behavior a culture of high standards and expectations, to live up to the values and mission of the organization. They ought to embody service, sacrifice, integrity, transparency, candor, excellence, accountability, humility, and trust, and ought to agree to foster peace, unity, justice, equality, and progress, in all their endeavors for a better Africa and a better world.
Washington, DC, January 13, 2021