The need for unity has been a recurring theme in Africa’s irredentist struggles against the forces of fragmentation and general underdevelopment. A truly united Africa however cannot be made without a prior making of the African. Currently, a shared sense of being African is at best still in a state of flux. The idea of Africa itself has also not been satisfactorily settled. With these in mind, discussions of any unity project in Africa must necessarily start with posing and answering some fundamental questions: Who is uniting? What for? And how should the unity proceed? 

 

With gusto and candour, the contributors discuss the various issues, challenges and prospects of Africa’s unity projects in ways that have, perhaps, not been previously articulated in African socio-political thoughts. The 17 contributors – all very senior academics, journalists and researchers from different parts of the world, including Arabia, China, America, Britain, France, Scandinavia and Continental and Diaspora Africa, bring with them different traditions, perspectives and narrative styles in their contributions. While generally agreeing that Africa has the resources to rise above its current challenges, most go further to stress that with a resurgent imperialism, there is an urgent need to bring back the African national project through the triadic notions of Africa-Nation, Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance. These, they see as necessary, both as narratives for development and as counter strategies for the current drive towards hegemony and re-colonisation.

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Mammo Muchie was born in Ethiopia and educated until matriculation in Gonder. He did his undergraduate studies at Columbia University, New York City and obtained his MPhil and DPhil degrees from Sussex University with supervision from the IDS/SPRU. He also studied Measurement Science in Petrograd, Russia.

Professor Muchie has taught and researched at various universities in the USA and Europe including Cambridge University and the Middlesex University (UK); the University of Aalborg (Denmark) and Amsterdam University (The Netherlands). He was made honorary professor at the Jianxing University in China.  He is currently on secondment from the Middlesex University Business School (UK) to the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, where  he is the director of the research programme on Civil Society and African Integration.

He has published profusely in scholarly journals and is also co-editor of: Putting the Last first: The Making of African Innovation Systems  (Aalborg University Press, 2003)