By Odunayo Adams

Recently, the Tiktok micro-blogging world was agog with a video that has gone viral of two people - Black and White - pretending to be visually impaired, seeking assistance from random passersby to help walk them to their destinations or bypass physical obstacles on the road.

While the White guy had an immediate and spontaneous response of assistance and empathy from the random White folks, the Black guy was instantly rejected without the minutest help, even though he and the White guy were purportedly visually impaired. 

The blogger initiated the video as a social experiment. The message was loud and lucid enough: Blacks are generally discriminated against for whatever reasons, which are essentially legacies of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. 

The case of George Perry Floyd, an unarmed African-American, who was suffocated and asphyxiated to death by a police officer, Derek Chauvin, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, in 2020, despite his repeated pleading that he could not breathe, is still as fresh as those of the horrible stories of extreme maltreatment and paralysing exploitation people of African descent suffered in plantations owned by their White masters. Officer Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for approximately nine and a half minutes, obstructing his breathing before he went limp. His callous murder sparked protests in the US and even across the world. 

Whether they are the over 200 million people who identify themselves as people with African ancestry living in the Americas - USA, South America, Central America, North America or the tens of millions who live outside the Americas in Europe and Asia, not to talk of the ones who live on the African continent, which unarguably is the poorest continent in the world, the challenges facing people of African descent are virtually the same, though in varying degrees and magnitudes. 

People of African ancestry all over the world suffer from racial discrimination, as highlighted in the opening paragraph or the case of Flyod, racial injustice, institutional and non-institutional racism, exclusion, inequality and poverty, among other dehumanising challenges, whose sources are unequivocally traced to colonialism and the slave trade, two twin evils that wrecked Africa - the original home of the Black and its descendants who got farmed out involuntarily to far-flung places where they had to fight for survival on arrival (apologies the late Reggae maestro, Bob Marley), away from their original and natural habitat. 

Although Pan-Africanism, the ideology that preaches the unification of the Black race at home (Africa) and in the diaspora, provided the needed impetus and inspiration to the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe, Leopold Senghor, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and many more, for the many struggles for liberation to end colonialism in Africa, and the subtle and militant activism that ended transatlantic slavery, the common challenges facing people of African descent everywhere have remained essentially unsolved up till now.

While most African leaders and Black activists, intellectuals and thought leaders in the diaspora were fully committed to Pan-Africanism and Black nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries because of the dehumanisation of Blacks, the same cannot be said of the leaders of the race in this 21st century. 

Gasasira Umutoni Honorine, a digital service provider in Kigali, Rwanda, noted that although the Pan-African movement has been male-gendered in its outlook, female activists, groups and individuals have been engaged in the struggle for Africa’s political and economic liberation. 

She said: “They have been a major part of the narrative of Pan-Africanism. Alice Kinloch and Jeanne Nardal played important roles in the emergence and development of the modern Pan-African movement and its ideologies.

“Also, women like Andree Blouin, Josina Machel, Winnie Mandela and Fumilayo Ransome-Kuti were part of the anti-colonial struggles in the Congo, Mozambique, South Africa and Nigeria, respectively.

“Although the documentation of their roles might have been relatively poor, they remain icons of the post-colonial narratives of their countries.” 

Honorine’s statement is factual in that social dealings between men and women and specific ideas about gendered divisions of labour very much moulded Pan-Africanism and the dynamics of the movement. 

Although some significant organisations, such as the Pan-African Women’s Organisation, founded in 1962 and still existing, have no written history and have therefore been excluded from many accounts. Women were generally less prominent than men in the Pan-African movement. Even worse, the literature has often overlooked, underestimated, and sometimes ignored the role of women.

Despite the seemingly chequered history, Titilope Fadare, a journalist with Premium Times, Abuja, Nigeria, predicts that the future of Pan-Africanism in amplifying the voices of African women and girls is bright “because currently, Black women are coming together to project the many issues they face individually and collectively.”

She adds: “They also spotlight issues that affect them particularly as it relates to hazardous effects of activities from developed countries.

“For instance, in 2022, Black women came together to organise the first ever African version of Committee on the Status of Women, a UN event where they demanded climate justice being the top producers in agriculture yet suffering the brunt of climate crisis caused by countries in the global north.

“Another example is the advocacy against Gender-Based Violence like Female Genital Mutilation, which has led to an evidential reduction in its practice in countries like Nigeria and Kenya.”

Several women groups and movements are currently engaged in the struggle for Africa’s development. And as a youth continent with a largely female population, the role of women Pan-Africanists needs to be acknowledged and celebrated. 

Honorine says Africa is awakening on both counts, “where on the one side its youth is rid of complexes and advocating an ‘Africa by and for itself’ vision, and on the other side female African youth is aware of their value through success in school and university, exposure to external modes of representation, and the progress of gender equality policies in many countries of the continent.”

She noted that: “The education curriculum and the workplace both show the African woman today that she is as capable as her male counterpart; self-confident and outspoken, she is actively invested in carving her place in society and making her voice heard on the public forum. 

“She wants all her identities to be recognised and to matter as a woman and African. Consequently, she is an ardent advocate for Africa and an engaged proponent of Pan-Africanism.”

Conversely, Pan-Africanism seeks out all the voices that claim it and increasingly recognises African women’s voices. Social media, in particular, but not only, is an excellent loudspeaker for their expression, and the rise of their voice and influence empowers Black females very directly and at large, continually enticing new female voices to speak out and feed the push for Pan-Africanism.

Pan-Africanism and the empowerment of Black women are attached, one serving and being served by the other, ably and glowingly. 

Fadare adds that: 

“The cross-cultural partnerships among Black women also help break existing stereotypes and limitations imposed on them by spotlighting the emerging ways they are breaking glass ceilings in their endeavours while fostering inclusivity and addressing systemic injustices like increasing the representation of Black women in political leadership roles, among others.”