Mohamed Saliou Camara, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair Department of African Studies
Howard University, Washington, DC

Transcript of Keynote Speech
National African Descent Youth Summit

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
June 27, 2024

The statement “Who We Are” may be addressed by reframing it into a question, which is “Who Are We?”

I would first give a straightforward answer by saying that we are the descendants of the continent that is the origine of humanity and civilization. Science has proven beyond all doubts and denials that humans came from Africa and because, as African philosophy teaches us, there can be no humanity without civilization, it goes without saying that Africa is the birthplace of civilization.

So, to the young Afro-descendants present here who might be struggling to connect with their heritage and the history of their motherland and who might feel disempowered because of the disconnect, I say don’t feel lost or disempowered. 

You may ask me then, why is Africa so challenged today and why are Black people struggling so much.

My short answer to these legitimate questions is twofold: First, don’t just consider the challenges facing Africans and Afro-descendants. Consider also and quite importantly what Africans and Afro-descendants have overcome to get where we are today. In fact, African philosophy further teaches us that the best way to fully appreciate the success that a society has made is by understanding the magnitude of the challenges that the society in question had to overcome.

From centuries of enslavement to decades of colonialism, followed by more decades of neo-colonialism and now meta-colonialism in the name of globalization, all rooted in inhuman exploitation and racial discrimination, Africans and Afro-descendants are today raising high the flag of Africanity and Black humanity. The second part of my answer to your question is that we should not succumb to the fabricated narrative that presents anything African in doom and gloom. We must reclaim and own the story of our motherland, of our people, of our cultural heritage, and of our civilizational identity. This is so because if we allow others to continue narrating our history, we will only learn lies and fallacies and, in the process, we will lose our self-worth, self-confidence, and self-respect. 

Indeed, another African philosophical reasoning teaches us that:

• He who defines you to the world, falsifies your identity and dictates how the world will see and treat you.
• He who defines the world to you, counterfeits your authentic worldview and dictates how you see and treat life.
• He who defines you to yourself, adulterates your being and dictates how you understand yourself.

When you learn about the historical and civilizational legacy of African nations such as Ancient Egypt, where renowned Greek philosophers and mathematicians came and learned for years before becoming the ancestors of Western civilization, you will understand that you have nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, you have so much to be proud of and to build upon. Consider for instance the documented fact that both Pythagoras and Socrates studied in Egypt. Consider also the influence that Ancient Egypt had on Greek and Roman architecture, astronomy, philosophy, and other aspects of knowledge and civilization. And this is just one example among many.

So, “Who Are We”?

Without being too academic, I will approach this primordial question by borrowing from a book that I am completing, titled Transcendental Africanity: The Key to Defeating Afrophobia and Reclaiming Global Africa. From this title I will take the liberty to borrow the concepts of Global Africa and Transcendental Africanity and try to define who we are.

First, we are a core component of Global Africa which refers to the dialectical interconnection between Africans in the continent on the one hand, and Afro-descendants and Africans abroad on the other hand. The concept of Global Africa is being used in part to counter the divisive and confusing segmentations of the African Diaspora as “old” and “new” Diasporas; or “slavery-generated”, “colonial” and “post-colonial Diasporas”. While these segmentations may be chronologically accurate in that they point to the timeframe in, and generic circumstances under which the different waves of Africans moved or were moved abroad, they have also been manipulated and instrumentalized to divide the Black Community abroad. 

Second, we are a manifestation of Transcendental Africanity, which is framed in my work as the complex ontological stock of heritage that has made African civilization primordial and perpetual, unique and unified in its indomitable cultural diversity. It is that which underlies the existential and identitary nexus that makes autochthonous Africans and Afro-descendants worldwide one organic, though not homogenous, collectivity and triggers an instinctive drive for intra- and inter-communal bonding, whether consciously or subconsciously, whenever core components of that nexus are under assault anywhere and from anyone in the world. In other words, Africanity is the generic identity that interweaves the cultural diversity and trans-temporal civilizational unicity of the Global Africa Collective. 

Therefore, Transcendental Africanity is the innate power of African civilization that has enabled it to preserve many of its foundational values and characteristics across time and space, and reemerge as a unique landscape of cultural, social, ethical, spiritual, and humanistic identity whose origins can only be traced back to Africa.

PAN-AFRICANISM: An Epitome of Transcendental Africanity and a Manifestation of Global Africa

In the modern era, Africanity and Transcendental Africanity have manifested themselves in various major forms that contributed to solidifying Global Africa.

The first form that comes to mind is Pan-Africanism. It is historically revealing that Pan-Africanism, as an epitome of Transcendental Africanity and solidification of Global Africa, originated from the resistance to the enslavement of Africans, grew into an antislavery, antiracist, and anticolonial movement in the Americas. It is equally revealing that the movement first emerged in the Caribbean and gained early momentum during the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804. No wonder, then, the growth of Pan-Africanism in the late 19th-early 20th centuries followed the geopolitical trajectory of Caribbean-North America-Western Europe-Africa.

To fast forward, it is fitting to recall that Edward Blyden from the West Indies, and Martin Delany and Alexander Crummel of the United States were instrumental in cultivating the idea and ideology of Pan-Africanism in the United States in the mid-19th century. Then, in the 20th century, under the dual leadership of Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey and Afro-American W. E. Dubois, Pan-Africanism gained the stature of a socio-political movement with more concrete goals and objectives.

Through its powerful Congresses held successively in London (1900); Paris (1919); Brussels, London and Paris (1921); Lisbon and London (1923); New York (1927); and Manchester (1945), the Pan-African Movement expanded its reach to Europe and to Africa, mainly through the actions of rising African leaders many of whom were, at the time, studying in the United States and Europe. Hence, future leaders of the African National Liberation struggle and founding fathers of independent African nation-states such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, Jomo Kenyata of Kenya, and Amilcar Cabral of Guinea Bissau, to just name a few, were instrumental in bringing this newer brand of Pan-Africanism to the continent. And, going forward, Continental Pan-Africanism fueled the decolonization movement on the continent, thereby making the 1960s, the decade of Africa at the United Nations, where, by January 1970, Africa had more members than any other continent in the world; even though it was only represented by three countries at the signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945. Those were Ethiopia, Liberia, and for what it is worth, South Africa.

The creation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, marked a new phase in the evolution of our motherland toward more coherent solidarity for the complete liberation of Africa and the defense of the continent’s legitimate interests against the backdrop of the Cold War whereby the American-dominate Western Bloc and the Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc held the rest of the world hostage from 1945-46 to 1990-91.

Let us now turn to GLOBAL AFRICA and The Civil Rights Movement in the United States while still asking: “Who Are We”?

We are the Global Africa Collective that came out as one united community when the Civil Rights Movement geared up in the United States of America between 1954 and 1968, the same period during which the decolonization of Africa was further empowering Black people across the globe: from Canada to Papua New Guinea, from Brazil and Argentina to India, and everything in between, including Africa, the second largest continent in the world endowed with all the strategic resources that industrialized economies need to stay alive. 

Hence, the solidarity that Civil Rights activists in America attracted from Africans in the continent and Afro-descendants in the Caribbean, South, Central and North America, as well as from Afro-Europeans and Afro-Asians, rightfully increased the pressure on the government of the United States and resulted in the adoption and signing of the Civil Rights Acts of September 1957 and March 1964, and the Voting Act of August 1965 that gave Black Americans a more meaningful citizen status.

Indeed, history chronicled the various ways in which Black people around the world expressed support for the heroic actions and activities of their brothers and sisters for the total defeat of Jim Crow Laws and the total emancipation of Afro-Americans. The solidarity of Global Africa was equally unmistakable in the face of the disheartening assassination of Malcom X in February 1965 and Martin Lither King, Jr. in April 1968.

These times of glory and sorrow in the same America where millions of Africans had been enslaved for centuries brought to bear the reemerging vitality of the Global Africa Collective, of which this first National African Descent Youth Summit represents a remarkable milestone.

Now, what about GLOBAL AFRICA and The Struggle against Apartheid in South Africa relative to the same question: “Who Are We”?

When Madiba Nelson Mandela emerged from Victor Vester Prison on February 11, 1990 after 27 years of incarceration by the Apartheid regime, first in Robben Island and then in this latter location; when he won the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk, the last president of Apartheid South Africa; and when Mandela was inaugurated first Black head of state of post-Apartheid South Africa on May 10, 1994, the entire African continent and Global Africa, as well as millions of non-Blacks who supported our struggle across the world, celebrated a majestic sunrise over free South Africa and sovereign Africa.

Again, “Who Are We”?

We are the sons and daughters of the transcendental Global Africa Collective that mobilized our physical, mental, civil, and spiritual forces to defeat Apartheid. Let us recall that the Apartheid regime that was officially enshrined in South Africa in 1948, legally, politically, and socio-culturally instituted discrimination against and subjugation of Black people as a form of government and a way of life.

Let us now consider GLOBAL AFRICA and The Black Lives Matter Movement in the United States.

Police brutality and related forms of abuse of power against Black people has besieged some of our communities in the African Diaspora. Black people began to mobilize more deliberately when Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tomeli created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media in 2013, after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the killing of young African American Trayvon Martin in Florida. The movement amplified in 2014, following the killings of two more African Americans, Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York. Although these events were not directly related to police brutality, the murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis in 2020 underscored the connection. In the following months and years, “BLM” (for “Black Lives Matter”) has gained momentum not only in the United States and Canada, but also among Black communities in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Let us now address GLOBAL AFRICA’S Contribution to Science, the Academy, Sports, the Arts, Entertainment, and the Advancement of a Humanistic Global Civilization.

A question has been raised among Africans and members of the Diaspora. That is, why is it that we, Black people, come together only or mostly when we are faced with problems and common enemies like the ones summarized above?

While this question is valid and legitimate and, as such, deserves a close examination on our part, I would also argue that perhaps it is because we have been too often and for too long been faced with such problems and common enemies, to the point that our acts and actions of solidarity in times of peace tend to fly under our own radar. I say this because when we consider the formidable glory of Black people in vital areas as diverse as the sciences, technology, the arts, sports, the military, music and danse, and humanitarian endeavors, we cannot but acknowledge that we are a gifted global community. Nor can we not come to the realization that some of the challenges and common enemies we constantly face may have contributed to forging in us the indomitable determination, resilience, creativity, and fast forwardness that characterize us. I know, this may sound cynical, but I think it is worth pondering as we continue to reflect on “Who We Are”.

I would like to challenge our youth to dare taking pride in our Transcendental Africanity; to dare building on the noble heritage that our forefathers and foremothers left us, further solidify the unity of the Global Africa Collective. With the African Union having officially proclaimed us, the Diaspora, its Sixth Region, I challenge us to grab the bull by the horns, take the African Union at its word and connect strategically and tactically our wellbeing and the development of Africa. Because no one will develop Africa but we, the Global Africa Collective; that is, Africans in the continent and we of the Diaspora. Also, and very importantly, unless and until Africa gains or regains its rightful place of coequal partner, respected, and self-sustaining player in world affairs, the freedom, dignity, well-being, and respectability of every Black man and Black woman around the world will remain vulnerable to the devastating effects of Afrophobia. 

Allow me then to leave you with this:

• As rising stars of Global Africa don’t be afraid to dream. In fact, dare to dream big.
• But have the courage to wake up and turn your dreams into a vision.
• Then scrutinize that vision and transform it into a mission.
• Next, extract from that mission clear and attainable goals and objectives.
• From there, develop programs and projects that are realistic, doable, and in line with the legitimate interests of the community that you are serving.
• Afterward, develop a strategic plan for a timely and meticulous implementation of those thoroughly articulated programs and projects.
• Identify and mobilize the resources needed to properly execute the plan.
• Next, you and your team must methodically take concrete actions to execute the plan and produce tangible results to meet your goals and objectives.
• Finally, assess objectively the whole process, from dreams to results, identify the lessons to be learned and adjustments to be made; learn those lessons, make those adjustments, and move on to the next phase of your continuing progress.