9th Pan-African Congress – LOME 2024

Bahia, August 29, 2024

Madam Minister of Racial Equality of Brazil ;

Mr. Minister of Human Rights of Brazil ;

Madam Minister of Culture of Brazil ;

Honourable Ministers and Heads of Delegation of African countries;

Distinguished Ministers of the member countries of the African Union High Committee in charge of the 2021-2031 Agenda of the “Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora”;

Excellency Madam Vice-Chairperson of the African Union Commission;

The Governor of Bahia ;

Representatives of Brazil’s Afro-descendant communities ;

Representatives of diaspora and pan-African organisations; 

Ladies and gentlemen, leading figures and representatives of pan-African civil society from around the world, who have come together for this meeting of the African community ;

Distinguished guests;

Dear brothers and sisters ; 

Ladies and Gentlemen ;

At this end of August 2024, Brazil is serving as a rallying point for the entire African community, mobilised and resolutely marching towards the 9th Pan-African Congress in Lomé. On this occasion of fraternal reunion, I would like to salute the quality of the Afro-Brazilian relations that have facilitated the holding of the regional conference of the African Diaspora, the sixth region of Africa, here in Latin America, in Salvador de Bahia. 

On behalf of His Excellency Mr Faure Essozimna GNASSINGBÉ, President of the Republic of Togo, I would particularly like to salute the African inclination of the President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, His Excellency Mr Luiz Inácio LULA DA SILVA, whose political renaissance has been welcomed in Africa as a real relief and throughout the Global South as the sign of a new era and a new hope. 

My sincere thanks – along with those of all my ministerial colleagues members of the AU High Committee in charge of the 2021-2031 Agenda of the “Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora” – also go to His Excellency Mr Mauro VIEIRA, Minister of External Relations of Brazil, whose open collaboration facilitated the materialisation of our project to hold the pre-congress of the Diaspora in a country linked to Africa through blood and historical ties. 

My thanks also go to all my fellow African Foreign Ministers who represent the institutional and political face of the pan-African cause at this meeting. Finally, my thanks go to the delegations from the African Diasporas and Afro-descendant communities of Brazil, from the American continent, from Europe, from Asia, from Oceania and from all over the world. Pan-Africanism is the fraternity of the African community, and this is what I have felt since our arrival in Brazil, whenever I come across a person of African descent.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We began the process leading up to the 9th Pan-African Congress as part of an African policy of revitalising Africa’s relations with its Diasporas and Afro-descendants, which led to the adoption in February 2021 of the Agenda 2021-2031 of the “Decade of African Roots and the African Diasporas “.

The process was also launched in a broken world, where the aspirations of our peoples for greater justice and better representation in global governance are calling for courageous and inevitable reforms.  

The challenge is therefore twofold : to revitalise Africa’s relationship with Africans living abroad and Afro-descendant communities, and to champion the profound aspirations of the peoples of Africa regarding the reform process in a world undergoing radical change. 

The challenge of revitalising relations with the diaspora and Afro-descendants is at the heart of this conference in Brazil, following on from the regional pre-conferences held in Pretoria (South Africa), Bamako (Mali), Rabat (Morocco), Brazzaville (Congo) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Pan-Africanism was born in American and Caribbean Afro-descendant milieus, and we cannot build the Pan-Africanism of the 21st century without the Afro-descendants. 

The dispersion of people of African descent around the world after the transatlantic slave trade imposed on the African community a duty of global unity, a duty whose roots go back to the end of the 19th century and which materialised through the holding in year nineteen hundred (1900) in London of the first Pan-African Conference on the initiative of the Afro-Trinidadian Henry Sylvester-Williams and the various successive congresses.  

The first Pan-African Conference and the first five Congresses, which were held outside the continent, were genuine Pan-African meetings that brought together – to quote William Du Bois – “men and women of African blood”. In the first half of the 20th century, the Pan-African movement spearheaded the emancipation of our peoples on a global scale, and paved the way for the winds of change that were to blow across Africa in the nineteen-sixties. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

William Du Bois said at the first pan-African conference that the African community was destined “to have a great influence on the coming world”, and the question of Africa’s place within international institutions, in particular within the late League of Nations, was already at the heart of the concerns of the first pan-African congress in 1919. 

More than 100 years later, it is with deep regret that we note that Africa has little influence on the world and is under-represented in international organisations and global governance. This is why the 9th Pan-African Congress in Lomé will be held under the general theme “Renewal of Pan-Africanism and Africa’s role in the reform of multilateral institutions: mobilising resources and reinventing itself for action“. 

By making pan-Africanism the cause of reform of multilateral institutions and a paradigm shift in global governance, we are taking on and supporting a Universalist pan-Africanism, whose struggle is in line with that of other global bodies working for the triumph of justice between peoples. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Afro-descendant brothers and sisters, 

The choice of the theme “Memory, Restitution, Reparation and Reconstruction” for the Salvador de Bahia meeting was driven by the conviction that we cannot rally around the pan-African ideal with Afro-descendants without, first, talking about Memory. The memory we are talking about here is the memory of our relatives who were deported, the memory of our brothers and sisters who died on the transatlantic voyage, the memory of the wounds of many Afro-descendants scattered around the world and of their suffering linked to the loss of their origins, the memory of their ‘struggles for freedom’, of their ‘long walk to freedom’, to paraphrase Nelson Mandela.

While saying this, I have a thought for Toussaint Louverture of Haiti, for the victims of the mass crime committed against the Afro-American community in Tulsa in the United States in 1921, a thought for Malcolm X, for Pastor Martin Luther King and, nearer to us, a thought for George Floyd, and for the many anonymous Afro-descendants who shed their blood on the perilous road to freedom, equality and universal dignity.

The work of remembrance makes it possible to break the silence surrounding the history of slavery and to inscribe it in the collective memory of humanity. The 9th Pan-African Congress in Lomé intends to advance this work through a series of remembrance projects and the adoption of a project to institutionalise an African day to commemorate the memory of slavery and colonisation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Similarly, we cannot meet with Afro-descendants without raising the issues of restitution and reparations. These two issues raise the question of justice from a historical perspective. From a historical perspective, justice means restoring what is owed, repairing the damage done, and in this case taking responsibility for the negative impact of the crimes of slavery and colonisation on the African world. 

Requests for restitution, which particularly concern the looted cultural heritage of the African world, are part of the mobilisation of the African community to culturally reappropriate and re-arm itself in a process of self-rediscovery. These demands are part of the reparations issue that is currently mobilising the African community in Africa, North America, South America, as well as in the Caribbean. 

Not only has the transatlantic slave trade of our brothers and sisters not been repaired, but it continues to impact the lives of Africans and people of African descent around the world. This is why we need to intensify mobilisation around the issue of reparations to make it a global concern and against racism and systemic injustices against Africans and people of African descent. 

Addressing the historical dimension of reparations while taking seriously the injustices suffered by Africans and people of African descent in today’s world as a result of slavery – these are the two ends through which the issue of reparations must be approached and dealt with. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

Behind the African community’s demands for reparations, there is an issue of relationality, of rebuilding our relations with the other peoples of the world and an issue of reconciliation between continental Africa and Afro-descendants. So you can see why the pre-congress in Brazil is also addressing the issue of reconstruction.  

The work of reconstruction will enable the African community to develop a shared memory of the traumas of the past, and to restore or strengthen relations between Africans and people of African descent, which have cooled as a result of distance and recrimination. We need to work between Africans and people of African descent to rebuild our relationships and get to know each other better. Rebuilding our ties will make it easier for Afro-descendants interested in the “Back to Africa” cherished by Marcus Garvey to rediscover the countries and families of origin of their parents. The difficult path of return involves a process of reconstitution and reconstruction, and one of the key resolutions of the Pan-African Congress in Lomé will be a continental decision to make it easier for Afro-descendants to return to Africa if they so desire within the framework of the promotion of African citizenship. 

Dear Afro-descendant brothers and sisters,

You sometimes have valid reasons for resenting Africa, because Africa has not always been solidly at your side in your battles, in your struggles, in your adventures. The feeling many of you have towards Africa is one of abandonment, of sons abandoned by Mother Africa, the Africa of your origins and roots. Look at the current situation in Haiti and the lack of mobilisation alongside our Afro-descendant brothers in Haiti. This is unacceptable and fraternally unbearable. 

Other Afro-descendants blame continental Africa for having been complicit in the abduction and deportation of their parents. “You sold us out”. That is the cry of pain from some of you. 

I would like to say to you, dear brothers and sisters of African descent: Your wounds are our wounds, but also our destinies remain linked. The African community is a unity despite its scattering throughout the world, and our Africanity is what distinguishes us as a community and links us to the great family of the human community. Your parents were enslaved in America, just as their relatives in Africa were subjected to forced labour during colonisation. The condition imposed on our African community in fact obeyed the same ideology of subordination, beyond the specificities of the suffering endured by our brothers deported to America. 

That’s why, from the outset, pan-Africanism was intended to bring people together against a backdrop of fraternal solidarity and to demand freedom for Afro-descendants and Africans. As Georges Padmore, one of the best-known figures of pan-Africanism, put it, “The idea of pan-Africanism first arose as a manifestation of fraternal solidarity among Africans and peoples of African descent”. 

Dear Afro-descendant brothers and sisters,

For us current generations, the African renaissance will either happen with you or it will not happen. “Africa Must Unite”, proclaimed Kwame Nkrumah in 1963. You are part of this African unity because you are Africans. Being African is more than being born in Africa, said the same Kwame Nkrumah. Africa is in you wherever you are. You are part of Africa and you are ambassadors for Africa.

In submitting to the AU the project that led to the adoption of the 2021-2031 Agenda for the “Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora “, Togo was convinced of the need for Africa to revitalise its relations with Afro-descendants. Afro-descendants are Africans from the outside, since the pan-Africanism that brings us together at this pre-congress expresses, in the words of the African writer Mongo Béti, “the desire of Africans to come together”. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I remain firmly convinced that the conclusions that will emerge from this meeting on the theme of “Memory, Restitution, Reparation and Reconstruction” will feed into the work of the 9th Pan-African Congress in Lomé, scheduled for 29th October to 2nd November 2024, to which I would like to invite you.

To conclude, on behalf of pan-Africanism, I would like to appeal for solidarity and support for the brotherly Afro-descendant people of Haiti, who have been going through a difficult situation for some time. 

Long live pan-Africanism !

Long live African-Afro-descendant relations !

Long live African fraternity and renaissance !

Long live Afro-Brazilian relations !

Long live African community around the world !

Thank you for your kind attention.