Africa and its Diaspora: The principal reciprocal benefits to be derived from the amended Constitutive Act of the African Union

Under article 3(q) (Objectives) of the Protocol on Amendments to the Constitutive Act of the African Union, we read the following: ‘invite and encourage the full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of our continent, in building the African Union (AU)’. According to the AU, ‘The African Diaspora are peoples of African descent and heritage outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and who remain committed to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union’. Not only is this posture entirely consistent with the African development agenda and Renaissance, but it is also congruent with the recent and first-ever AU African Diaspora Summit which was convened on Friday, 25 May 2012, at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg. This is so because the Summit provided us with an excellent opportunity to continue to reflect on, and engage with, issues relevant to the development of the continent and, by extension, its multilingual and globally dispersed Diaspora. In this public lecture, it is argued that the current Amendment to the Constitutive Act of the AU in which the African Diaspora is now considered the sixth Region of the AU – an Amendment which has not yet been ratified by the requisite number of African states and one which might still be in need of some degree of disambiguation – provides the framework within which some fundamental and reciprocal benefits can be derived from an ongoing interaction between Africa and its Diaspora – especially its Older or Historic Diaspora. In essence, it is my contention that the principal reciprocal benefits that can accrue from this interaction between Africa and its Diaspora might best be captured in the language of pan-Africanisation and re-Africanisation respectively.