Afrkan Diaspora Information Center

What is the Afrakan Diaspora?

The Afrakan (African) Diaspora can be described generally, as the population whose descent can be traced to the continent of Africa, but do not live in Africa. The definition directly applies to people who are of African descent, and ancestors were victims of the Transatlantic Human Trafficking system that lasted from the 15th to the end of the 18th century (majority still live outside of Africa and have no citizenship to any AU member states), and people who are citizens of member states to the African Union , living outside of the continent. Thus in simplest terms; Africans: People who are citizens of member states of the African Union, and people whose ancestors came from the continent during the 300 year Transatlantic Human trafficking system. (This definition can be extended and or debated, and does not attend to exclude any who wishes to see the prosperity of Africa under a united continental government) Diaspora: The world outside of a particular people’s homeland. The idea of uniting the two worlds (Pan-Africanism) came at the beginning of the 20th century as a way of creating equality between Europe and Africa, correcting the mistakes of bygone systems in both geographical locations, and heal the wounds of the human race that suffered during the Transatlantic human trafficking system. Lets read about how the effort began with W.E.B. DuBois in his book "The Education of Black People-Ten Critiques, 1906-1960" 1973;

"..my Pan-African movement which began in 1900 when I cooperated with a meeting in London and definitely was started in 1919, in the first Pan-African Congress in Paris. (153)"

                                

Dubois explains that he first organized the plan to unite Black people around the world in the early 20th century. This is an indicator to when the African identity was born as a way of totally describing and uniting the people of sub-Sahara Africa who were simultaneously suffering under colonialism on the continent and exclusion in the western hemisphere. This is important to understand, but difficult to explain without the work of Dr. Dubois in "The World and Africa-An inquiry into the part which Africa has played in world history" 1964, speaking on how merchants from kingdoms and nations in today’s Europe described the people and authority in central Africa; 

"Eventually they came in contact with the kingdom of Benin and a mighty interior empire whose sovereign was the Ogani. (47)".

Dubois is referring to "they" the first people who are descents of Germanic tribes to enter the interior of Africa and begin trade with the kingdoms, the Portuguese in the 1400s. The Portuguese language is similar to that of Spanish (states are adjacent to one another) and Negro is equivalent to the English word Black, and it is assumed that the Portuguese noted coincidental physical characteristics about the people of Benin and the label Negro was used throughout the region now called Europe to define the population within the interior of Africa. It is important to remember that merchants from Portugal did not speak the same language as the population in Benin, and the people of Benin did not describe their selves or land in Germanic languages. This is an example to show that nations of western Eurasia (Europe) did not refer to the people or systems of governance as African, but described the kingdoms and nations as individual territories. This concept would take many pages to prove and/or articulate; The point is that since there was no government or kingdoms called or described as African by proto-Europeans or proto-Africans, no Africans were ever enslaved during the human trafficking era of the western world. As mentioned earlier, the people who were transported from Africa to the area now called the West (Europe, North & South America and the West Indies ) are described as negroes by the proto-European merchants of the time, and the lower case "n” egro was a way to void the enslaved people of nationality or specific identity (hence a slave). Many family-based communities and individuals from bygone kingdoms of the time were enslaved and trafficked to new nations(America, Brazil, Mexico,) being built by then proto-Europeans, for purposes of a labor force, but none were considered African as their descendents are.

                                               

Large family-based communities, nations and kingdoms in Africa vary in physical features and language across the vast continent then and now. The fate of the diverse group's unity was sealed when a combined European force planed and began to execute an invasion of the continent in 1865, in an effort to exert direct control over the resource rich land. The military campaign of the European force was brutal and inhumane, and for part of a generation European nations coerced colonial systems across the continent. Critical thinking leaves me to understand that Europeans attempted in Africa what they succeeded to do in the area we now call North & South America, setting up colonial systems that eventually lead to nations built on white supremacy ideology. The European attempted takeover of the continent was foiled when the word of the Pan-African idea reached the natives of Africa. Grassroot movements across the continent spread like wild fire to rid the continent of super imposed European colonies, and the Africans succeeded, thus creating new nations and unifying them under the umbrella of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. The organization was institutionalized as the African Union  in 2002.

In conclusion, the African Diaspora is loosely  organized by a thread of African nationalist organizations, that are dedicated to teaching descendants of, Ancestors of the African World who witnessed the Middle Passage, about Pan-African culture, history, and the Pan-African goal: The total unification of the continent of Africa under a single political entity, that ensures peace and prosperity for all Africans; correcting the MAAFA, and making sure all Africans are properly represented and spoken for on the world stage. The process has been an intergenerational and continuous one, but the fruit of the labor of our Ancestors are beginning to sprout. Dr. W.E.B Dubois, the first African to earn a PhD from the famed Harvard University of the U.S, and descendant of "Witness Ancestors", continued the work of those who came before him traveling the world studying African people, developing the scholarly language of the African Worldview, and began organizing the Pan-African goal. The Honorable, President Kwame Nkrumah was born under the colonial system, and was the spark that lit the flame of Pan-Africanism on the continent. Today we have successfully buried the color stigma, on a near popular level in the western world, and the Africa Union is constantly working to hurry the integration process as the only concrete solution to the continents development and peace programs. So as we witness, with no help from western media, Africa’s transition; We stand as testimony to the ancestors, of the birth of a new unity in the world, a unity built on peace and the respect of creativity+diversity, a unity that stands on the shoulders of truth and justice, and a unity that celebrates balance, the unity of the Afrakan World.