What is the meaning of the term “African Diaspora” and what is its extent? What is its future? Although the term has long been used for the scattered daughters and sons of Africa in the Americas, little attention has been devoted to delimiting its boundaries. From the fifteenth century onward, over ten million forced migrants left the African continent to people both of the Americas and the islands of the Caribbean. Their culture was never static; it involved syncretistic reformation, subsumption/transmogrification and reintegration/reassertion.

The United Nations Special Session on the Critical Ecnomic Situation in Africa concluded in June 1986 with the Adoption of a Programme of Action which included an explicit recognition of African policy failures and the need for reform:

The academic career has its great obligations. It also has its privileges. It is a particularly gratifying honor to have the opportunity to address this distinguished audience of Africanists drawn from many nations. As your retiring President, this honor is compounded by the great privilege to address you on a subject of my own choosing—apparently simple and innocent enough until one thinks about what an intimidating experience it really is.

The Nigerian civil war is now history. The Republic of Biafra lives in the pages of books, pamphlets, and newspapers. In that form, it is no threat to the people of Nigeria who, in a solemn oath of allegiance in January 1970, pledged to consign Biafra into oblivion and face the task of reconstruction and reconciliation. Biafra is now an issue only for historians who are plagued with the search for an answer to “what might have happened if…” But the war itself has left deep scars not only upon the lives of the survivors, but also on their beliefs and attitudes towards life. Unless he visits the right places in Nigeria, the visitor today may hear nothing and possibly see nothing to remind him of the war.

No one is happy with the Reagan Administration’s southern Africa foreign policy strategy known as constructive engagement. Liberals object to the tilt towards South Africa, to the linkage of Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola to the Namibian negotiations; to the resulting moribund state of those negotiations; and to the deemphasis of human rights and development issues in favor of increased emphasis on military and security issues. Conservatives object to economic assistance packages for African socialist and self-styled states; to the declining U.S. support of Jonas Savimbi’s ostensibly pro-Western UNITA forces in Angola; to Administration efforts to improve relations between the United States and the Marxist states of Angola and Mozambique; and to the Administration’s apparent willingness to accept a SWAPO (i.e., communist guerrilla) outcome in Namibia.

My remarks will be relatively brief because I agree with a great deal of what my distinguished academic colleagues have already said. I do, however, take a different position with respect to American policy toward South Africa and have some ideas of my own concerning our overall Africa policy.

In late February, readers of the New York Times read of a pragmatic Planning Minister in a newly independent African state issuing his country’s first development plan whose strategy was based upon building on the existing economic structures. That same day, readers of the Wall Street Journal read of a revolutionary new African state issuing its guidelines for the radical transformation of its economy toward a new socialist order. The casual reader might not even have of noticed that the two stories were commenting on the same by event: the announcement in Salisbury by Economic Planning Minister Bernard Chidzero of the newly independent Zimbabwean Government’s first development guidelines.

U.S. policy engagement in Africa has entered a phase of dramatic enlargement, begun during President Bill Clinton’s tenure and expanded—unexpectedly—under the administration of George W. Bush. In the last five years, several Africa-centered U.S. policy initiatives have been launched—in some instances backed by substantial funding increases—in trade and investment, security, development assistance, counterterrorism, and HIV/AIDS. By contrast with the Cold War era, recent initiatives—the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, a counterterrorism task force in Djibouti, President Bush’s $15 billion HTV/AIDS proposal, and the $5 billion Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)—have been largely free of partisan rancor or controversy.

In his address to the First Congress of Africanists in Accra on 12 December 1962, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah reminded his audience that they were united by the fact that they wanted to find out the truth about Africa, and when they had found out, they would proclaim it to the world. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah thus underscored the duality of the role of the Africanists in the second half of the twentieth century. Those engaged in African studies were charged to search for the truth about Africa with scientific and academic rigor. They were also exhorted to make known and to share the results of their research and discoveries with the world at large. African studies, according to Dr. Nkrumah, should help to create the launching pad for progressive and dynamic social policy.

As a Jewish political scientist who has lived, taught, and conducted research in Muslim areas of sub-Saharan Africa (particularly Niger and Northern Nigeria), I was more than intrigued with that aspect of the debate between Ali Mazrui and Hailu Habtu-two African Africanists, at least one of whom is of Islamic origin-concerning “Jewish cultural influences on Black Africa” (“The Semitic Impact on Black Africa: Arab and Jewish Cultural Influences”; “The Fallacy of the ‘Triple Heritage’ Thesis: A Critique,” Issue, vol. XIII, 1985). As a reflection on the revolution in Africana studies that has occurred over the past few decades, it is refreshing to note that Westerners (including Jews) may now find themselves to be the objects of intellectual discourse and historical analysis by African scholars-and not, as has traditionally been the case, the other way around.

The population of Africa in 1977 is estimated to be 423 million, which is about 10.3 percent of the world population. For a quarter of the world’s land area, that is a small population.

Sources: Willcox, Durand, United Nations, PRB.

Africa’s share of world population declined between 1650 and 1920, partly because the population of Europe and the Americas was increasing gradually through factors associated with the Industrial Revolution, and partly because of the ravages of the slave trade and the European colonial pacification measures. Since the 1920s, however, Africa’s population has been growing fast, and its share of world population could reach 13 percent by the year 2000.

Africanists struggle with Mohamedou ould Slahi’s story for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the Saharan region is often considered a space betwixt and between. Not only does the Sahara lie between the Maghreb and the Sahel, but Slahi’s experience illustrates how the military and political histories of counterterrorism and the intellectual and social histories of Islamist calls for religious reform are imagined as occurring elsewhere. The upswing in violence in Burkina Faso and Mali, the continued disruptions of Boko Haram, and the deep military involvement and investments in the Sahara remind us that the African continent has been an important site in the global war on terror (Thurston 2017). American and European foreign assistance, often in the form of military aid, has helped expand the surveillance capacities of African states, especially after 2001. In the case of Mauritania, American counterterrorism funds contributed to the consolidation of power in the authoritarian regime of Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, who ruled from 1984 to 2005, while the Mauritanian government ignored demands for democratization from its own citizens and instead pursued repressive policies that accused political opponents of Islamist activity, limiting their freedom of expression (Jourde 2007). Slahi’s story, then, can be seen as part of a much longer history of foreign incursion and neocolonial intrusion into African affairs, as the war on terror has led to a similar bolstering of authoritarian governments, an influx of military aid and funds that encourage corruption, and worrisome increases in weapons at the expense of other needed projects and investment, as happened during the Cold War (Schmidt 2013). Rather than promote economic development and democracy, these policies undermine Africa’s future.

Ever since Raúl Prebisch, UNCTAD's first Secretary General, called attention to it in his famous 1964 report (UNCTAD, 1964), the commodities problem has been a priority item on the international agenda in the various forums where the North-South dialogue has been taking place. When the First Lomé Convention was signed on 28 February 1975 between the nine countries of the European Economic Community (EEC) and forty-six African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) states, it was hailed as a major achievement, exemplary of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) then emerging within the wider framework of the North-South dialogue.

In particular, much was made of the EEC countries' attempt to come to grips with the commodities problem by agreeing to set up a scheme (known as “Stabex” in Lomé parlance) for the stabilization of export earnings from commodities exported by the ACP states to the EEC. This system, generally held as the most innovative feature of the Lomée Convention, seemed to meet some, if not all, of the demands voiced by the developing countries in the context of the NIEO on the problem of commodities.

Yet, this was by no means a gratuitous gesture on the part of the EEC. In the first place, the Community's acute awareness of its dependence on raw materials imports from the ACP states, as well as of the latter's dependence on raw materials exports to the EEC, tended to make it responsive to the ACP states' demands in the area of commodities.

Africana at Howard University, Washington, D.C., developed as records on the African background of the American Negro were required to supplement the Library's collection of works written by and about persons of African descent.

Among the first books acquired by the Library soon after Howard University was incorporated on March 2, 1867, were titles on Africa. Some of the founders of the University interested in foreign missions donated to the Library their files on periodicals, books of travel and description, histories of Africa, and biographies of missionaries. Among these was the first edition of Churchill's Collection of Voyages and Travels issued in four volumes in 1704; seven editions of the works of Hiob Ludolf, the Elder ( … Historia Aethiopica, 1681; … Aethiopicam … commentarius, 1691; … Lexicon Amharico, 1698; … Grammatica Aethiopica, 1702; A New History of Ethiopia, 1682 and 1684); Barbot's Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (1732); the 1639 reissue of the 1632 edition of Africae descriptio of Leo Africanus; and works of travel by Bosman, Proyart, Kolbe, Bruce, Smith, Vaillant, and Sparrman. Some of the serial files presented were the Missionary Herald (1821-1882); Africa's Luminary (1839-1840); African Repository (1825-1900); Mouvement Antiesclavagiste (1889-1906); Liberia (1892-1908); Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (1833-1849); Afrique Explorée et Civilisée (1879-1882); and Bulletin du Comité de l'Afrique Française (1891-1919).

The colonization of Malawi produced a revolution in spatial relations among the inhabitants of the territory. Individuals in different parts of the country experienced colonization in different ways. These divergent effects were the result of three different spatial variables: the location of administrative centers, schools and—paradoxically, least importantly—the African population.

The process began in the early 1890s during the regime of the first British executive officer, Harry Johnston (later Sir Harry), who held the title of Commissioner and Consul-General. Johnston had little in the way of money or military force at his disposal and was obliged to act with extreme circumspection. The British treasury was, as ever, extremely reluctant to provide money for the conquest of the territory, forcing Johnston to rely on Cecil Rhodes for private support. At one point, he had to suspend military activities against the Yao chief, Makanjira, until Rhodes had replenished his coffers.

Given this constraint, Johnston undertook to defeat African kingdoms one at a time in a policy of divide and rule. This put a brake on the British occupation of the land. Johnston did not divide the country into administrative districts in 1894, some three years after the declaration of the formal protectorate. Johnston's first goal was to gain control of the major communications arteries, the Shire River and the western shore of Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi). He divided the protectorate into twelve districts, eight of them south of the lake and four extending westward from the lake shore. Bases in all of these districts would have provided him with a secure military hold on the territory.