Imagining the United States of Africa: Discourses on the Way Forward

(Hardback)

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This book frames the debates around the pressing desire for some form of unification that found expression in the pan-Africanist movement and formation of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1963 following the advent of home-rule for many former colonies of the Western powers. Discussions in this volume address the following fundamental issues: nationalism and political integration and how the contradictions between both philosophies can be resolved; the amelioration of corruption in order to attract internal and external investments critical for developing the vast natural resources housed in the continent; the need for Africas adaptation to the ideology and practice of capitalism and liberal globalization to suit the character of African states in a projected federal United States of Africa; solutions to ethnic conflicts that are bound to happen over clashes of competing group interests; the indispensability and promotion of information communication technologies and urgent need to strengthen a network of regional electric power grids that would provide constant energy to the Union and lead to improvement in communication and economic growth; and recommendation of social democracy as the genre of democracy suitable for a proposed United States of Africa.

Reviews

Udogus book helps to understand better the major Africas carcinogenic phenomena that prevent the formation of a United States of Africa with a view to providing relative solutions. Well discussed, researched and written by five scholars of international repute, Imagining the United States of Africa: Discourses on the way Forward, made up of six chapters, is a critical examination of such contemporary and polemic issues in Africa as economic integration, social and political integration, national integration, technology integration, corruption, liberal globalization, leadership, and it may rank among the best books about Africa. This book could be described as the light, the life, the way and the future for all Pan-Africanists. It is not a book of dream and hope, but action as there is ongoing dialogue concerning the matter of Africas political and economic union in this millennium. The terms used by Udogu, discourses on the way forward show that Africans from inside and outside the continent have attained a point of no return. . . .The book is well structured, readable, newsworthy, and interesting in the sense that it provides history, economics, law, political science, and international relations students as well as researchers and all Pan-Africanists with not only the necessary reading material for the effective understanding of the nature of Africas major concerns in the 21st century. * African Studies Quarterly *
Drawing on the scholarship of leading African social scientists, this impressive volume engages the complexities of union government among African states from a variety of academic disciplines, notably political science, economics, and history. Six decades after the clarion call of the great pan-Africanist, Kwame Nkrumah, for African union government, these thought-provoking chapters deftly explore structural challenges and practical opportunities for African political and economic integration. A bold and imaginative work on the study of politics and governance in Africa at the beginning of the twenty-first century. -- Olufemi Vaughan, Amherst College

Author Bio

E. Ike Udogu is professor of African, comparative, and international politics at Appalachian State University.