“In 1963, 33 African leaders gathered in Addis Ababa with a dream—One Africa. One army. One currency. One voice. Sixty-two years later, that vision is still a dream deferred.”
Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao gave a searing and passionate address, calling out Africa’s failure to actualize the dreams of its founding fathers. Recalling the ideological clash between the Casablanca Group, which demanded immediate unity, and the Monrovia Group, which pushed for gradualism, she declared:
“When the Casablanca Group lost in 1963, Africa lost. That was our moment and we missed it.”
In her address, she asked Africa’s leaders and youth a piercing question:
“Why is it that even the simplest of goals like visa-free travel for Africans within Africa has not yet been achieved?”
She recounted a real story from a border market: women on either side selling tomatoes, unable to trade because of visa restrictions, calling the situation “insane and ridiculous.”
Challenging the continent’s intellectual and political complacency, she exclaimed:
“We have been miseducated. Our curriculum must change. It must become Pan-African.”
She took aim at global institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and the UN, formed after Europe’s tribal wars of 1945, stating:
“These institutions must be dismantled. We have no business being in them.”
She condemned African ministers who still travel to Washington to be told how to devalue their currencies and borrow more:
“And they say, ‘Yes,
master.’ They don’t challenge them. Loans paid a gazillion times over are still counted as debts. When are we going to wake up?”
On stolen African artifacts, she didn’t hold back.
“Our ancestors’ heads sit in European jars, classified not for repatriation—but as ‘trophies of conquest.’ If we’re going to destroy our heritage, let it be us—not them.”
Dr. Chihombori-Quao closed with a fervent call:
“We must reclaim our dignity, rewrite our education, dismantle the chains of neocolonialism, and unite—not tomorrow, but now.”
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