3 - Before Accra

Summary

The late 1950s saw a certain internationalisation of anticolonial campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa, following the nationalisation of the Suez Canal and the independence of Sudan and Ghana in 1955–1958. Chapter 3 asks how this cohort pursued strategies to hold newly independent states accountable to promises of anticolonial patronage, in the lead up to the famous All-African Peoples Conference (AAPC) in December 1958 in Accra. This chapter visits five moments obscured in the AAPC’s shadows: Munu Sipalo’s attendance at the Asian Socialist Conference in Bombay; John Kale’s publishing from his Cairo office; the first Pan-African Students Conference at Makerere; Abu Mayanja’s founding of the Committee of African Organisations in London; Kanyama Chiume’s role in the formation of the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa at Mwanza. Activists continued to think through a regional-generational lens: their activities highlight previously unexplored tensions in the Afro-Asian and pan-African movement and recast factions in the nationalist parties of these four countries. The AAPC was never simply a galvanising force for East and Central African activists.