THE UNITED STATES AND AFRICA: TIME FOR A NEW APPRAISAL

Abstract

THE UNFORTUNATE AND malevolent institution of slavery in Africa caused one of the greatest diasporas in the world. Peoples in other continents, for example the Indians, the Chinese, the Jewish and the Irish, fled famine, poverty, serfdom and persecution in other diasporas in order to find a new life elsewhere. In the case of Africans, the emigration was mainly to the Caribbean and North America, though also to Brazil, which is now rightly a prominent focus in African studies. The rest of Latin America also absorbed some persons of African descent, though not to the same extent as in Brazil where whole areas of the state of Bahia were populated by peoples who practise ancestral cults which had been brought over from earlier Yoruba, Ewe, Hausa and Angolan cultures. On the other side of Africa we remember also the diaspora resulting from the great sailors and admirals of the Mogul empireEthiopian seamen from what was then known as the Eritrean (Red) Sea who controlled parts of the Indian Ocean. In the twentieth century the link between the United States and Africa was further strengthened during the Second World War when the strategic importance of Africa became apparent, largely as a result of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's journey, via West Africa, to meet with Winston Churchill in Casablanca. After the war the process of decolonization started, and the pressures from the United States, especially from Presidents Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, played an important part in it. The work of Ralph Bunche, the great Afro-American diplomat with whom I had the honour of working for a few years at the United Nations before his death, should not be overlooked. He ensured that provisions for decolonization were included in the United Nations Charter.