When Ghana became the first African country to gain independence from a colonial power, Kwame Nkrumah declared: “Ghana’s independence is meaningless unless it is linked with the total liberation of Africa”. If Nkrumah were alive today, I think he would be pleased with the recent progress towards his dream of an African Union, though he would have been disappointed for its lack of radicalism in implementation thereof addressing continental challenges.

In Africa Must Unite, Nkrumah talks of the dangers of continued Balkanisation, including potential division and conflict, and the vital need for political unification and All-African economic planning. In Challenge of the Congo, he said “how meaningless political independence could be without economic freedom and how necessary it was for African solutions to be found for African problems”...