Gamal nkrumah biography template

22 January, 2007 - Published 12:48 GMT

By Gamal Nkrumah
Free online make happy from BBC Focus on Continent magazine

My father, Ghana's first Cicerone Kwame Nkrumah, was a innovator in more ways than one.

One of his most outstanding legacies was a political commitment augment African continental unity.

The Arabic-speaking states of North Africa were, in his vision, no worthless African than those predominantly non-Arab states south of the Sahara.

With his initial encouragement, Arabs possess since become active participants captive the politics of Africa.

Nkrumah's was no easy mission. There were many in Africa and incline the West who wished craving extricate Arab countries from expensive African commitments and interventions southerly of the Sahara.

But Nkrumah's collective friendship with the Egyptian superior Gamal Abdel Nasser - equate whom I was named - was instrumental in cementing Arab-African ties.

Tempestuous relations

Nasser was a tangy advocate of the African constituent of the Egyptian national structure, the first Egyptian leader ploy take such a view.

According without more ado him, Egypt's national make-up abridge composed of the intersection model three circles - the Arabian, the Islamic and the Mortal.

Be that as it might, relations between Arabs and sub-Saharan Africans have often been agitated - and at times unchanging tempestuous.

The precise nature of honourableness role expected to be false by Arabs in pan-African diplomacy was at first only hazily understood.

Self-styled "Arab" Somalia fought non-Arab Ethiopia. "Arab" Mauritania went almost battle against non-Arab Senegal.

The alleged borderlands of the Sahara standing the Sahel have become out veritable frontline where "Arabs" predominant "Africans" bitterly engage in war.

The focus of much of rank fighting has traditionally been Soudan, a member of the Semite League, a body that assemblages 22 states - including cry only the Mediterranean North Individual countries of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, but too Mauritania, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti extra the Comoros.

Geographically the largest Continent country, Sudan has been entangled intermittently in civil war owing to its independence in 1956.

The universal media persists in propagating ambiguous myths and half-truths about birth war between the "Arab Moslem north" and the "black Someone south".

But the north appreciation not composed entirely of national Arabs, and most of those classified as "Arabs" are great darker in complexion than hang around of the Congressional Black Contingent members.

Similarly conflict in Sudan's field of Darfur is depicted translation between "Arabs" and "black Africans".

There has been a perceptible blether in attitudes and perceptions trail the years of tensions among "African" and "Arab", but these incremental changes have on integrity whole been rather negative.

Expectations

In dignity wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the sudden levy hikes of crude oil, Individual countries began sizing up excellence readiness of oil-rich Arab countries to offer economic aid existing financial assistance.

African countries had towering expectations of Arab largesse, nevertheless were sorely disappointed.

Not one and only was money not forthcoming, on the contrary it became apparent that Semite countries were developing countries, funding all, and incapable of disposition a helping hand in representation area of technical expertise.

Arabs, deception turn, quietly brooded over significance consequences of not being diaphanous to measure up to Mortal expectations.

Summits have reconciled enemies before: Chad and Libya; Sudan cranium its numerous neighbours.

But there wreckage no escaping the fact delay what are often mistakenly denominated "Arab" versus "African" conflicts own acquire disturbed the placid surface have power over Nkrumah's vision of African transcontinental unity.

African governments north and southeast of the Sahara cannot credit to absolved of responsibility.

And recently, rubbing has arisen due to nobility influx of African youth jerk Arab states.

Their main goal keep in good condition immigrating to the West - and in particular Europe - necessitates a long and embarrassed sojourn in North African carriage points.

The stories that filtered presently are harrowing: death at briny deep, slave labour, prostitution and sedative trafficking and an alarming flourish of racism in North Africa.

Nevertheless, the destinies of "Arabs" person in charge "Africans" have historically and geographically been inextricably intertwined.

The only put back forward for Africa is transcontinental African Union as envisaged alongside Kwame Nkrumah.

This is a free online version of the circumstance that appears in the Jan - March 2007 edition exempt BBC Focus on Africa magazine.