pan-Africanism

Anticolonial movement that believed in the innate unity of all black Africans and their descendants overseas, and advocated a united Africa (see African nationalism). It was founded in 1900 at the first Pan-African Conference in London. Since 1958 pan-Africanism has become partially absorbed into wider movements of the developing world.

Support for the movement was fuelled by the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1933. By the time of the sixth Pan-African Conference 1945, national independence dominated the agenda and the conference was attended by several future African leaders, including Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. In 1963 the Organization of African Unity (OAU; later African Union) was founded to foster cooperation among the newly independent African nations and to continue to fight colonialism, especially in South Africa.