The 9th Pan-African Congress of Lomé was the subject of decision Assembly/AU/Dec. 848 (XXXVI) of the 36th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government held on February 18 and 19, 2023.
It is a marker of the Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora (2021-2031) as decreed by the 34th Ordinary Session of the AU Summit on February 6 and 7, 2021. The adoption of the Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora was a response to an initial communication and request made by the Republic of Togo on February 10, 2020 during the 33rd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU).
The African Union endorsed the decision for the establishment of a High Level Committee for the implementation of the agenda of the Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora on June 10, 2021, and asked and tasked Togo to lead it. Several meetings of that agency took place. The 6th session of the High Level Committee decided that six preparatory regional conferences be organized in the six regions of the African Union, in the way leading up to the big gathering of the 9th Pan-African Congress: North Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa and the Diaspora.
The Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora is a platform that seeks to help consolidate ties and strengthen the multiple contributions of Afro-descendants to the continent’s sustainable development, as set out in Agenda 2063. It also seeks to prepare, promote and support projects, initiatives and events of people of African ancestry. While it harnesses the talents and contributions of Africans and peoples of African descent in the service of development, it aims at contributing to boost a reinvented Pan-Africanism in a polycentric world of transitions and crises.
The creation of the BRICS intensified the debate about the imperative of a polycentric world in a context of the sovereignty of the peoples. Year after year, since the late 1950’s African leaders have been calling for the reform of international institutions such as the United Nations. They have exhibited their willingness to diversify their commercial partners and not to align with any power as they did during the Ukrainian conflict. In the field of economic integration, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), launched in 2018, in the line of the Agenda 2063, is intended to maximize African economic potential and consolidate the African domestic market.
Under the auspices of the African Union, a number of countries have taken the lead to organize respectively targeted activities. Besides the two Togo-led projects, the Decade of African Roots and African Diaspora (2021-2031) and the 9th Pan-African Congress, Ivory Coast was designated to launch the second decade of Agenda 2063, which clearly called for the political and economic unification of Africa. Ghana hosted a major conference on reparations from November 14 to 17, 2023. CARICOM and the African Union have decided to establish a united front in favor of reparations, which is becoming a cardinal subject in debates on Pan-Africanism as well as in international fora. Kenya and the African Union co-hosted a major conference on climate justice on September 4-6, 2023 in Nairobi. During that Africa Climate Summit, participants called for green growth, green industrialization and economic freedom and justice for Africa. The resurgence of Pan-Africanism, coupled with a renewed spirit of independence, is therefore blowing throughout the global African communities.
The renewed spirit of independence is also expressed through a series of people’s power movements. These series constitute the unifying factors for a new dispensation of Pan-Africanism. Some of these unifying factors are:
The 9th Pan-African Congress is timely and is uniquely suited and fitted to coordinate the various and scattered initiatives undertaken by several agencies for the redemption of Africa and its peoples. It is an opportunity to optimize the current and future processes and initiatives for the regeneration of Africa, so that Africans at home and abroad can play a more important role in the concert of nations, for the transformation of the global political and economic structure for a just world.
During the 9th Pan-African Congress, stakeholders, representatives of African countries, policy makers, civil rights advocates and intellectuals will reflect on how to invent forms of human associations, political organizations and new visions and approaches in order to define what they want and can do for themselves and by themselves. This was coined ‘Africanophonie’ by the driving force behind the Lomé 2024 Pan-African Congress, the Minister of Foreign Relations of Togo, His Excellency Professor Robert Dussey. The 9th Pan-African Congress of Lomé will also examine the vision and means by which the continent’s development can best benefit from capitalizing on the skills, expertise, networks and leadership of the diaspora and Afro-descendants, in the spirit of Pan-Africanism.
The main specific goals of the 9th Pan-African Congress are as follows:
The 9th Pan-African Congress will organize, execute and support a number of campaigns in the implementation of its mission. The list of campaigns includes:
