Innovating the Political Economy of Pan Africanism: Imagination and Renaissance

Africa emerged from the ordeals of colonialism with deeply traumatized population, widespread poverty and backwardness, weak economic and institutional infrastructure, dual economic structure within national economies, arbitrarily drawn and fragmented political boundaries, and vulnerability to persistent tension and instability. The 1960s were considered commonly as the decade of political independence of the continent even though the struggle against colonialism and apartheid somewhat continued in different corners of the continent for much longer period. The initial conditions of liberation and the legacy of colonialism throughout Africa left little room for optimism and magnified the daunting challenges that the new African nation states confronted and had to address within a fairly short period of time.