The Global Politics of African Identity: Pan-Africanism and the Challenge of Afropolitanism

Abstract This paper uses the 20th anniversary of the founding of the African Union (AU) to examine the role of race and identity in Pan-Africanism, from the perspective of International Relations (IR). Pan-Africanism played a crucial role in the decolonization of the African continent and remains the ideological basis for the AU, which leads on issues of continental governance. The paper examines the development of Pan-Africanism, and foundational ideas of race, modernity, and identity that remain as important elements of some strains of the ideology. This is further explored by examining the relationship between these ideas and the rise of nativism, demonstrating the ways that essentialist conceptions of African identity can justify violence and authoritarianism. Finally, the paper stages an engagement between Pan-Africanism and Afropolitanism, examining the ways that Afropolitan approaches provide an important critique of nativist forms of Pan-Africanism, as well as offering more productive ways of engaging with African identity. This is important both for theoretical debates around identity in IR and for the future of the AU, as the institutional home of Pan-Africanism. The argument takes both Pan-Africanism and Afropolitanism seriously as approaches to IR, focusing on the ways that Africa and African ideologies can be viewed as central both to the formation of modern political thought and to conceptualize the future of international politics and global order.