What globalisation means for Africa

[afrika]

By: Ali Mazrui

In recent history, Africa has been preoccupied with four goals–liberation, development, democracy and Pan-Africanism.

All these aspects of history need to be viewed in context of globalisation. What, for example, is the impact of globalisation on relations between Africans and African-Americans? Is globalisation bringing them closer together or is it pulling them farther apart?

If globalisation means converting the world into a village, is there for people of African ancestry a globalisation within the current scenario? Is there a globalisation of the Black race within the present setting?

Until the middle of the 20th century, 'Global Africa' meant the people within the continent and in Diaspora. In the last century, there has been more extensive globalisation of 'Global Africa – making the African factor on earth more truly omnipresent.

A major contributing factor to this phenomenon has been issuance of dual citizenships. There has been a new migration of Africans to the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Australia and elsewhere. In a sense, this process has been creating two African Diasporas–one of the colonial period and the other of the slavery era.

The Diaspora of enslavement consists of the survivors of the Middle Passage and their descendants. The Diaspora of colonisation refers to the survivors of the African partition in exile and their descendants. The latter are casualties of the displacement caused either directly by colonialism or indirectly by the aftermath of colonial and post-colonial disruptions.

As part of the Afro-Atlantic paradigm, the Diaspora of enslavement has played a major role in shaping the culture and lifestyle of the Western hemisphere. Perhaps never in history have a people in bondage exerted a greater influence on the culture of their masters.

In the case of the US, for example, whatever is uniquely American in that culture and lifestyle has been due to two very different forces-–the impact of the frontier and the impact of the Black presence in the national experience.

One of the most influential American historians, Mr Frederick Jackson Turner once asserted that what was uniquely American in its institutions was not the Mayflower–famous cargo ship involved in active trade of goods between England and other European countries– but boundless land, and the spirit of taming a rugged frontier. But Turner overlooked one major factor–what was uniquely American was also the Black presence alongside the frontier.

This Black presence is what nurtured American capitalism in its infancy and nurtured democracy in its maturity.

In its infancy, American capitalism needed Black labour. In its maturation in last century, American democracy needed the civil rights movement and de-racialisation to realise its original vision that "all men are created equal".

Civil rights movement

It was Black Americans who held the countries democracy accountable to its own ultimate ideal. And the echoes were heard all over Africa in the new Afro-World Wide Web. The Afro-Atlantic paradigm was at work again. Subsequently, the civil rights movement fed into the feminism.

Young American capitalism needed young black labour, but more mature US democracy needed more mature Black political stimulation. The World Wide Web has forged American links. The African presence in America has also deeply influenced music, literature, food culture, sports and the performing arts.

Clarification of the Diaspora of slavery and that of colonialism gets more complicated with the distinction between African-Americans-–where Americans is the noun and African is the adjective)–and American-Africans–where Africans is the noun and American is the adjective.

As noted, African-Americans are a product of the Diaspora of enslavement. American-Africans on the other hand, are products of the Diaspora of colonisation. They are usually first or second-generation immigrants from Africa to the Americas, and they may be citizens or permanent residents of Western hemisphere countries.

What is distinctive about American-Africans generally is, first, that their mother tongues are still African languages. Secondly, American-Africans usually still have immediate blood relatives in Africa. Thirdly, they are likely to be still attached to the food cultures of their African ancestry. Finally, American-Africans are still likely to bear African family names, although this is by no means universal, especially among Lusophone Africans, Liberians and Sierra Leoneans.

On the whole, African-Americans tend to be more race-conscious in their political orientation than American-Africans. On the other hand, American-Africans might still be more fundamentally 'tribal' when the chips are down.

When does an American-African family evolve into an African-American family? When that family loses its ancestral language. The umbilical chord is language.

For example, my children are now more African-Americans, as they do not speak Swahili, my mother tongue. Their linguistic umbilical chord has been cut because they do not speak an African language.

But when American-Africans become African-Americans, it does not mean that other ties with Africa are cut. Relatives in Africa still abound. Concern for Africa is often still intact. And the Internet is now providing a new network of Afro-Atlanticism, a new language.

The writer is the Chancellor, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya.

READ MORE ARTICLES BY -- PROF. ALI MAZRUI