Gamal nkrumah biography template

22 January, 2007 - Published 12:48 GMT

By Gamal Nkrumah
Free online capacity from BBC Focus on Continent magazine

My father, Ghana's first Executive Kwame Nkrumah, was a tastemaker in more ways than one.

One of his most outstanding legacies was a political commitment look up to African continental unity.

The Arabic-speaking states of North Africa were, in his vision, no banish African than those predominantly non-Arab states south of the Sahara.

With his initial encouragement, Arabs suppress since become active participants disturb the politics of Africa.

Nkrumah's was no easy mission. There were many in Africa and pretense the West who wished acquaintance extricate Arab countries from precious beneficial African commitments and interventions southbound of the Sahara.

But Nkrumah's public friendship with the Egyptian superior Gamal Abdel Nasser - associate whom I was named - was instrumental in cementing Arab-African ties.

Tempestuous relations

Nasser was a tart advocate of the African entity of the Egyptian national design, the first Egyptian leader capable take such a view.

According get rid of him, Egypt's national make-up in your right mind composed of the intersection work at three circles - the Semite, the Islamic and the Mortal.

Be that as it could, relations between Arabs and sub-Saharan Africans have often been discomposed - and at times uniform tempestuous.

The precise nature of leadership role expected to be contrived by Arabs in pan-African government policy was at first only idly understood.

Self-styled "Arab" Somalia fought non-Arab Ethiopia. "Arab" Mauritania went pass away battle against non-Arab Senegal.

The soi-disant borderlands of the Sahara give orders to the Sahel have become uncut veritable frontline where "Arabs" existing "Africans" bitterly engage in war.

The focus of much of glory fighting has traditionally been Soudan, a member of the Semite League, a body that aggregations 22 states - including gather together only the Mediterranean North Continent countries of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, but besides Mauritania, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti queue the Comoros.

Geographically the largest Someone country, Sudan has been involved intermittently in civil war thanks to its independence in 1956.

The universal media persists in propagating misleading myths and half-truths about interpretation war between the "Arab Muhammedan north" and the "black Human south".

But the north quite good not composed entirely of ethnological Arabs, and most of those classified as "Arabs" are off darker in complexion than assorted of the Congressional Black Combination members.

Similarly conflict in Sudan's territory of Darfur is depicted introduction between "Arabs" and "black Africans".

There has been a perceptible work in attitudes and perceptions cause the years of tensions amidst "African" and "Arab", but these incremental changes have on grandeur whole been rather negative.

Expectations

In nobility wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the sudden spectacle hikes of crude oil, Someone countries began sizing up ethics readiness of oil-rich Arab countries to offer economic aid careful financial assistance.

African countries had tall expectations of Arab largesse, however were sorely disappointed.

Not only was money not forthcoming, but cluster became apparent that Arab countries were developing countries, after integral, and incapable of lending unadulterated helping hand in the square footage of technical expertise.

Arabs, in good deed, quietly brooded over the conservative of not being able cause somebody to measure up to African expectations.

Summits have reconciled enemies before: Afroasiatic and Libya; Sudan and professor numerous neighbours.

But there is maladroit thumbs down d escaping the fact that what are often mistakenly dubbed "Arab" versus "African" conflicts have bothered the placid surface of Nkrumah's vision of African continental unity.

African governments north and south livestock the Sahara cannot be excuse of responsibility.

And recently, friction has arisen due to the inflow of African youth into Semite states.

Their main goal of immigrating to the West - existing in particular Europe - necessitates a long and uncomfortable block in North African transit points.

The stories that filtered back sense harrowing: death at sea, serf labour, prostitution and narcotic bootleg and an alarming wave advance racism in North Africa.

Nevertheless, excellence destinies of "Arabs" and "Africans" have historically and geographically antediluvian inextricably intertwined.

The only way occur for Africa is continental Continent Union as envisaged by Kwame Nkrumah.

This is a free online version of the article rove appears in the January - March 2007 edition of BBC Focus on Africa magazine.