Pan-africanism, knowledge production and the third liberation of Africa

Pan-Africanism as an ideological and philosophical force has defined the struggle to ensure the collective realisation of the destiny of the Black race across the Atlantic by political and intellectual leaders of African descent both at home and in the Diaspora. The struggle has passed through several phases such as ending obnoxious trade in human beings, colonialism and re-assertion of African identity and sense of being. The epistemological hegemony of the West on knowledge production in African studies and their Eurocentric view of what constitutes the history of Africa as well as what are the appropriate development strategies for the continent constitute another area of struggle for emancipation. Some have argued that a combination of Western reactionary and intellectual forces has kept Africa in chains of poverty and underdevelopment for decades. A counter argument is that Africa is her own worst enemy. The need for intellectual, socio-economic and political liberation of the continent is compelling. This article argues for a Pan-Africanist approach to the realisation of the third liberation of the continent from the shackles of the global matrix of power, which manifest in the perverse form of knowledge production, economic theory and praxis and a political system, the main objective of which is transnational elite accumulation. The proposition is anchored on two historical experiences, in which the first and second liberation of Africa from slavery and colonialism were achieved due to the Trans-Atlantic cooperation between Africans on the continent and those in the Diaspora. Closely aligned to the instrumentality of Pan-Africanism as a reliable force for propelling the third liberation of Africa is the necessity of privileging indigenous knowledge production over exogenous or imported knowledge. In making a case for the decolonisation of knowledge production and complete liberation of Africa, this article employs Mafeje's Afrocentrism as the theoretical basis of interlocution.