Conflict and Unity: Towards an Intellectual History of The Forbears of The OAU

Institutions such as the Organization of African Unity (OAU) do not spring up all of a sudden from the blue.… More often than not, such institutions come into being because they answer, in a given historical period and context, the special need of a society or of an international community. For such institutions to be permanent — permanent in the sense that they contain the seeds for self-sustained growth — they must answer a widely and deeply felt genuine need. Diallo Telli, “The Organisation of African Unity in Historical Perspective†in African Forum; A quarterly Journal of Contemporary Affairs, The American Society of African Culture (New York), Vol. 1, no. 2, 1965, p. 7. This article looks at the OAU from an historical and philosophical perspective. It, thereby aims at revealing the processes and dynamic nature of the forces which led to the emergence of the continental organization in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1963. It is not the purpose of the following analysis to offer a mere exposition or chronology of the events and developments which led up to the creation of the OAU. It aims to convey the idea of the potential for conflict inherent in the build-up to the OAU, and the intellectual manifestations of such conflict, especially in the context of the overall pre-OAU period. A convenient starting point for this analysis is the concept of Pan-Africanism.