1. Pan-Africanism: Problems and Prospects
Author(s): Edgar S. Efrat
Source: Bulletin of African Studies in Canada / Bulletin des Études Africaines au Canada, Vol.
2, No. 1 (Nov., 1964), pp. 11-24
Published by: Canadian Association of African Studies
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2. Pan-Africanism: Problems and Prospects *
by Edgar S. Efrat
Any examination of the very complex problem of the
feasibility of union among the several African states must
begin by asking a basic question: What type of union can be
contemplated? The answers to this question may range from a
tight federal union to a loose organization of African states
similar in purpose and structure to the Organization of
American States. Either possibility contains elementary
characteristics of federalism.
Other practical avenues of approach to federalism
in Sub-Saharan Africa (and the term "practical" is emphasized
here) may also be considered. Foremost among these is the
proposal to realize in Africa an economic federal organiza-
tion modelled after the European Common Market, and established
within the now existing frame of the Organization of African
Unity (OAU) which may gradually expand from economic federalism
to include, eventually, political federalism, as well. At
the same time, it must be remembered that regardless of how
successfully political and economic notions and systems have
been implemented elsewhere, Africans reserve the right to
achieve for themselves, by trial and error, what they consider
to be the best arrangement. The then Prime Minister, now
President, of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, in his opening address at
the All-African People's Conference in 1958, stated the case
quite unequivocally:
Some of us, I think, need reminding that Africa is
a continent on its own. It is not anextension of
Europe or of any other continent. We want, there-
fore, to develop our own community and an African
personality. Others may feel that they have evolved
the very best way of life, but we are not bound, like
slavish imitators, to accept it as our mold. If we
find the methods used by others are suitable to our
social environments, we shall adopt or adapt themi
if we find them unsuitable, we shall reject them.
lAll-African People's Conference News Bulletin, Vol.
1, No. 1, p. 6.
*Paper given at the annual meeting of the Committee on African
Studies in Canada at Charlottetown, June 14, 1964. The author
is indebted to Prof. L. Gray Cowan of Columbia University for
his constructive comments, some of which have been incorporated
here.

3. - 12 -
Nkrumah and other leaders in Africa and elsewhere, however,
may remember the old maxim that experience is a cheap commodity
if one can buy it secondhand. Federalism has been tried and
found successful under condidtions similar to those existing,
in many instances, in Africa. It has also been tried more or
less successfully in West Africa, in Nigeria. In other
instances, federalism was attempted, but not really given a
chance, as in the defunct Mali Federation, the Central African
Federation, or in the Ghana-Guinea Union. However, regional
arrangements which contain variable federative factors, such
as customs-unions, monetary blocs and a common services organiza-
tion are very much in evidence.
The authors of an important and recent study of
African problems, prepared for the U.S. Senate's Committee on
Foreign Relations, concluded that Africans have shown concern
about the problem of "balkanization" of the continent as well
as about stronger states preying upon weak ones. They are
insistent that independent African states be free to assert
their own personalities while benefiting from wider affiliations
within the continent. The recommendation following upon the
study's conclusion was that the United States should view with
sympathy efforts to create wider associations of African states
to the end that political and economic stability will be thus
promoted, and that the extension of economic and technical
aid will be facilitated.
This is as far as the United States is willing to
impress upon Africa the need for federation. The study here
cited recognizes in principle various situations which invite
a federal system, such as the existence of competitive multi-
racial societies and complementary resources and facilities
existing in separate sovereignties; but it recommends only
(and meekly) that "The United States should exert its influence
to assure peaceful resolution of conflict in the multi-racial
states of Africa" and that "The United States must demonstrate
that in Africa it supplies its domestic policies aimed at
achieving interracial good will and equality." Nowhere in
2U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations,
United States Foreiqn Policy, Compilation of Studies, prepared
under the direction of the Committee on Foreiqn Relations,
Washington, Gov't. Printing Office, Washington. Study No. 4;
Africa. 1961. P. 320. Document No. 24.

4. - 13 -
the report of this study is there even a faint suggestion
that the application of federalism may perhaps have an all-
'round salutary effect upon the emergent states of Africa.
It is difficult to believe that the present frontiers
can be permanent. Some process of ragional combination appears
to belong to the logic of geography. Yet quite early, a French
writer, Andr6 Blanchet, in the newspaper Le Monde, in 1949 has
ventured to give us a very optimistic glimpse of the future.
He foresaw Nigeria, with its rapidly increasing population, as
a black state with 40- or 50-million inhabitants in an Africa
of which it will have perhaps a fifth, if not a quarter, of
the total population. If Nigeria, in the next half-century,
becomes the India of Africa, Blanchet continued, to which its
own vitality and British policy point the way, the rest of
West Africa will have good reason to note the repercussion
and will then, without doubt, imitate the Nigerian example.
The joint declaration of Ghana and Guinea in 1958,
presaging the formation of a United States of West Africa,
the acceptance by all parties and regions of Nigeria of the
principle of federation, and the vote of seven former French
territories in favor of a link with the French Community all
suggest that West Africans recognize the danger and fiscal
luxury of independence in small units.
3Ibid. On pp. 333-335 the study takes note of
"Movements for a United Africa, which is limited to the
constitutional implications of potential two-party unions,
like the Ghana-Guinea Federation, posing the question whether
such a union would enable ex-French Guinea to enter the
Commonwealth through the back door." It also takes cognizance,
in passing, of the Pan-African Movement, dismissed as "The
bond which at the present time unites the states of the African
continent is clearly one of anticolonialist sentiment."
To the present writer it seems that Guinea is
attempting to break the isolation created by its 1958 "non"
vote, by joining the proposed "Free Trade Area" with Liberia,
Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, although its currency alone,
among the few nations, is now convertible. The preliminary
talks took place, in the presence of three heads of state and
the prime-minister of Sierra Leone, in Monrovia, Aug. 20-22, 1964.
4Ibid., p. 331.
5Andre Blanchet in Le Monde, Dec. 30, 1949, Jan. 2, 1950.

5. - 14 -
Looking at sub-Saharan Africa today, particularly
at the recently-created states or those in the process of being
created, one is likely to forget that here is a society which
was, until very recently, basically tribal in its character,
and that its civilization was a bush-culture. This is not to
imply a nation of "barbarism and savagery," for many African
tribes had highly developed cultures centuries ago, but these
cultures were not Western, and it is difficult for many
Westerners to envision any sort of civilization other than
their own. Western society emerged long ago from tribalism
to nationalism, from pantheism and animism to some form of
transcendentalist monotheism and regards itself as somewhat
superior to a society which is just now taking these steps.
In the field of government, Western civilization has created
several systems of government, including a federal form; and
while there may have been federations of African tribes, the
association of sovereign states into a larger organization is
fundamentally a Western development. Also, the "reality" of
government and independence barely penetrates beyond the small
literate segment of the population.
On the other hand, the new African states have
resulted from Western influence, whether colonial, tutorial,
or only economic. Their new governments were modelled upon
the Western pattern, undergoing, sometimes, local modification.
In analyzing these forms of government, one must resort primarily
to their Western origins.
Among the territories that were launched into in-
dependence by Great Britain, three are in West Africa. Nigeria,
under the same aegis as Ghana and Sierra Leone, inherited
British institutions and procedures, but unlike the others,
it was given a federal system. Federalism was the solution
to the problem posed by a framework of Moslem emirates in the
North, which had remained stable under the umbrella of indirect
rule, and the tribal-non-Moslem societies east and west of
the Niger-Benin. It was his encounter with these firmly-
established political systems that led Sir Frederick Lugard
to formulate the theory of indirect rule in the first place.
The emirates had been remnants of an empire founded in a
Moslem holy war at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
One feature especially distinguished the emirates: their
regular system of taxation. This enabled the British colonial
administration to use them as administrative arms, while permitt-
ing them to retain their traditional customs, laws and rulers,
6Herbert J. Spiro, Politics in Africa, Prospects
South of the Sahara, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, p. 156.

6. - 15 -
always subject to British interference. This political ingenuity
and adaptation to local conditions is particularly British.
Therefore, if we wish to examine a case-study of African federa-
tion, Nigeria may well serve as an illustration. Here, in the
largest of her erstwhile colonies in Africa, Britain solved
the problem of diversity among the inhabitants by introducing
a federal system and supervising it, prior to independence,
until it was found to function smoothly. Yet, in its fourth
year of independent existence, it is becoming more evident
that the inherited form will have to undergo modification if
it is to survive at all. Among change mentioned is a further
subdivision of the four regions, election law changes, or,
drastically, secession of the northern region to unite with
(ex-French) Niger.
Britain, by and large, set a good example. As she
relinquished her authority, a well trained civil servant was
ready to take over whenever a white official vacated his post.
(Efficiency may suffer in the exchange, but this will be
remedied with time.) Parliamentary government, on the British
model, functions, on the whole, quite smoothly, and sometimes
imitates Britain to the point of absurdity, as the head of every
African Speaker of the House, burdened with a heavy, powdered
wig, under the tropical sun will perspiringly testify; yet
the centuries-old tradition of Great Britain instilled a sense
of responsibility into most of the officials of the new nations
who came under her influence. And, so far, none of them has
cut the ties which bind it to the Commonwealth.
However, the British were not the only colonial
power to experiment with federation. In 1904, the Government
of French West Africa was reorganized as a federation - but
in the administrative sense only.7 The governor-general had
wide powers which, largely as a result of their legal vagueness,
were steadily increased at the expense of the Minister of
Colonies and of the local governors. Theoretically, the colonial
governors had a status analogous to that of the governor-general,
but in practice they had considerably less freedom of action.
The central government, armed with its own revenues and corps
of officials, frequently intervened in the administrative actions
of the local governors, and permitted them to make independent
decisions on only a few specified subjects.
V. Thompson and R. Adloff, French West Africa,
Stanford, 1957, p. 22.
QL'Evolution de l'Administration Centrale en A.O.F.",
L'Afrique Francaise, January, 1927; January, 1938.

7. - 16 -
Throughout the Federation there existed administrative
councils ranging from those of the governors to those of certain
townships and administrative subdivisions (cercles). Most of
them were composed of higher officials, plus an equal number
of non-official French citizens, African and European and some
native subjects. The African electorate for these councils
comprised functionaries, men with certain educational and
property qualifications, and individuals who had shown conspicuous
loyalty to France. The power of most of these councils was
advisory only.9
Yet, the French left a semblance of order on departure
everywhere but in Guinea. Small as the class of the evolues
was, they were at least trained to occupy the higher positions
of their newly independent nation. They were also able to train
their countrymen in the intricacies of administration, laborious
as such a process may be. France, also, did not sever her ties
with the new nations, again with the exception of Guinea, and
continues to be a source of material assistance and administrative
advice whenever these are requested.
The important question which we must pose to ourselves
at this juncture is: Will federation movements reunite an
area which is fragmented not only by the original structure
of tribalism but also by the artificial frontiers set up by
the European colonizing powers during the nineteenth century?l0
Two experts, Tom Mboya, the Kenyan leader, and an
American authority on African affairs, Vera Dean, in discussing
the prospects for democracy, suggest that an attempt must be
made to restate these problems so that attention is concentrated
not on the form of government, but on its content.11
Thompson and Adloff, op. cit., p. 23.
10R. Theobald (ed.). The New Nations of West Africa.
New York, 1960, p. 117.
11Tom Mboya, "Key Questions for Awakening Africa,"
New York Times Maqazine, June 28, 1959, 8f.; Vera M. Dean,
"Is Democracy Possible in Africa?" Foreiqn Policy Bulletin,
October 15, 1959, 22-24.

8. - 17
An attempt to analyze the implications and background
of this problem has been mad by the Northwestern University
Program of African Studies, which points out that it is not
by chance that the phrase "the Balkanization of Africa" was
first used by Africans in French territory. The same central-
ization of authority that marked France's colonial control,
and which has tended to reduce the force of tribalism in her
former territories, accustomed the African peoples there to
think in terms of larger independent political units.
Among English-speaking Africans, the impulse for a
"United Africa" came from various sources, including the United
States, where several leading African nationalists studied.
Thinking along these lines is also a response to the doctrine
of some economists that a small state is less viable than a
large one, prominent examples to the contrary notwithstanding.
The idea of ultimately achieving a large federation
has been constantly and prominently in the minds of African
leaders. In 1958, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, then Minister of
State of the French Republic and the President of the
Rassemblement Democratique Africain, asserted, "Bientot, 1'
institution d'une Communaute franco-africaine a base federale
permettra l'epanouissemant le plus complet des territoires
d'Outre Mer." 3 Kwame Nkrumah, at a meeting of the leaders
of the now "deactivated" Ghana-Guinea Federation in May, 1959,
said, "We have thought first of a United States of West Africa,
but events have gone so fast that we are now thinking about
the unity of all Africa."1l4 At a meeting in July of the same
year, the Presidents of Liberia and Guinea, and the Prime
Minister of Ghana, approached the question of African unity
in a somewhat different manner. President Tubman was able to
12
12United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on
Foreign Relations, United States Foreiqn Policy: Africa; A
Study, prepared at the request of the U.S. Senate Committee
on Foreiqn Relations, by Northwestern University Proqram of
African Studies, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1959.
13
1Jean-Marc Leger, Afrique Francaise, Afrique Nouvelle.
Ottawa, 1958, p. 8 (The Preface is by Felix Houphouet-Boigny.)
14Northwestern Study, op. cit., pp. 27-29. It is
noteworthy that while Nkrumah is a staunch advocate of Pan-
Africanism, he is just as staunchly opposed to federalism in
Ghana, as his strongly unitarian constitution for Ghana proves.

9. - 18 -
bring his colleagues to his position that while some form of
association between African states is desirable, it should,
for the time being, remain looser than the concept of "union"
implies. These three leaders, deferring action because of
the impending independence of other African territories,
called for the creation of a community of independent African
states.
More than 300 delegates, representing 200 million
Africans in 28 countries, met in Accra, Ghana, December 5-13,
1958, at a non-governmental conference. The group set up a
permanent All African People's Conference, with a secretariat
in Accra, and also passed resolutions on racialism and
discrimination, imperialism and colonialism, on tribalism,
religious separatism and traditional institutions, and on
frontiers, boundaries and federations.15
One of the characteristics of modern Africa is the
celerity with which developments take place. The era which
began in Accra in 1958, when emerging states were "feeling
out" the ways in which they might achieve both greater unity
and the liberation of the whole continent, came to an end with
the Addis Ababa summit conference of African heads of state
or government, held on May 22 to 25, 1963.16 Experiments
which took place in the interim included the various bloc
groupings, such as the Casablanca group of seven states--
Morocco, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Egypt, Libya and Algeria--
which drifted apart after the issues which brought them together
dissipated or actually turned into causes of disagreement.
Another bloc, the Monrovia group, also called the Inter-
African and Malagasy States Organization, had at its peak
nineteen members. Not much was accomplished by these groups.
The former never really "got off the ground," and the latter,
which spoke of "unity of aspirations and of actions" rather
than of political integration, became more and more vacuous.
Other groupings, such as the Union Africaine et Malagache
and the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East and Central
Africa, are regional in character, and lately of short duration
and frequent mutation.
1Current History, July, 1959, 41-46.
16C. Sanger: Foreiqn Affairs, Vol. 42,
January 1964, p. 269.

10. - 19 -
For example: The Afro-Malagasy Union (UAM) of 14
francophone African states is now to be dissolved. This was
decided at a meeting of UAM heads of state or their representatives
at Dakar from March 7 to 10, 1964. In its place is to be a
new organisation, the Afro-Malagasy Union of Economic Co-operation
(UAMCE). This will pursue those objectives of the old UAM
which are not incompatible with and do not duplicate those of
the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The new organisation
will be based on Yaounde in Cameroon, where the OAMCE, one of
the specialised secretariats of the UAM, is already situated.
The OAMCE will continue, as will the posts and telegraphs
outfit (UAMPT), Air Afrique and any other operations in the
technical, cultural and economic fields. What the new organisa-
tion will lose is the political function. The defence organisation
(UAMD) is to be 'adapted'. The charter of the new union, of
which only the broad outlines have been defined, was to be
drawn up and signed at the meeting of Foreign Ministers of
the 14 countries which met at Nouakchott in Mauritania on
April 15. Heads of state will meet at Tananarive next December.
The conference was opened by the outgoing president,
Maurice Yameogo, President of the Upper Volta, who blamed
Africa's present instability on foreign interference, which
found favourable ground in the internal division of African
States. Africa continued to constitute a ground for ideological
action and a field for subversion, he said, and the dangers
inherent could only be prevented "in so far as we succeed in
constituting a zone of effective solidarity." On the relations
between UAM and OAU, the president called for the strengthening
of links within the UAM 'the pre-eminent condition for the
success of what should be our motto: by way of a technical,
cultural and economic UAM towards a political OAU'.
At the Addis Ababa meeting the model of the Organiza-
tion of American States was emulated in the creation of the
Organization of African Unity to the extent that the former
secretary-general of the OAS, the Chilean Manuel Trucco, was
invited as an administrative adviser. The charter of the OAU,
as adopted, is a compromise between the Utopian ideal represented
by Nkrumah, and by Emperor Haile Selassie's pragmatic approach.
The former holds unity as a goal which is to be achieved at
once through the partial surrender of sovereignty by all AfyIcan
states to an all-African federal executive and legislature.
To him, everything falling short of this means handing Africa
over to "neo-colonialism", titularly free but economically
17"UAM: Decision at Dakar", West Africa No. 2441,
14th March 1964) p. 291.
18
1The Africa Institute: International Bulletin,
Vol. I, (July, 1963), p. 153.

11. - 20 -
enslaved. The other ideal is the progressive development of
unity through co-operation between sovereign states. Although
a headquarters is in operation, and a secretary-general, Diallo
Telli, has been appointed, not much has been done in the year
past to bring Pan-Africanism closer to reality, but for one
negative factor: a joining of Black Africa and Arab Africa
in a virtual declaration of war on the remaining parts of white-
governed Africa, the only concrete result of the 1964 Cairo
meeting, which was by no means unanimous.
The Organization of African Unity accords equality
to all members, regardless of size, agrees to respect sovereignty
and outlaws interference in internal affairs. (Two exceptions
to the non-interference rule were, first the refusal of
assembled African heads of state at Organization of African
Unity meetings to seat Nicolas Grunitzky who claimed the place
of Togo's assassinated president Sylvanus Olympio; at the
Addis Ababa session; and at the recent Cairo session, a seat
was refused to Moise Tshombe, Congo-Leopoldville's prime minister.)
There are to be periodic meetings of the Assembly of Heads of
State and Government and of the Council of Foreign Ministers.
The ancillary organizations include a vague "Defense Commission"
and a "Commission of Conciliation, Arbitration and Mediation"-
to which were referred Somalia's border claims on Ethiopia,
Kenya and French Somali Coast, and the problem of how to restore
representative government in Togo. Inspired by the assassination
of President Olympio of Togo, there is a clause outlawing
subversion and the change of governments by force. Asked what
the other states would do if Ghana did not close down its
Bureau of African Affairs, with its subversion school for
members of opposition parties from neighbor states, the Nigerian
foreign minister said: "We should have to take diplomatic
action. "19
What then are the prospects for an implementation
of the Pan-African ideal, and what are the federative factors
which may impel these Central African States to unite? Some
of these factors are:
1. A uniform colonial heritage, (with notable
exceptions, such as Arab North Africa, Liberia and Ethiopia)
and, as a result, a common neo-culture. States which have
19"Pan-Africanism Comes of Age", The New Republic,
Vol. 148, (June 15, 1963), pp. 16-17.

12. - 21 -
until recently been under French tutelage share French as
their common language. Their leaders were educated in French
schools,and their political philosophy is basically French.
Others have a British background. The leaders of the Congo,
parcelled at present into several not-quite-confederated states,
have a Belgian background.
2. Complementary economic interests exist. These
may take many varied forms. Some of the new states, for
example, are landlocked: Mali, Niger, Upper Volta, Chad,
and the Central African Republic. Their basic economic
interest is to be connected by treaty or by other means with
an adjacent state having adequate maritime facilities. This
is important, since all African states are dependent upon
foreign commerce, primarily imports, and their commerce is of
such a nature as to make only cheap transportation economically
feasible.
3. Ethnic interests are important. The old colonial
boundaries were arbitrarily drawn. Occasionally, a major
river, such as the Congo or the Senegal, was pressed into
service as an international boundary, but more often the line
was just a geographical latitude or longitude (such as the
boundary between Cameroun and Gabon, or Mauritania and Spanish
Morocco), or just a mark at the extreme reaches of the effective
power of the colonial force. In almost all instances, exist-
ing boundaries intersected tribal units, language entities,
religious affiliations, and other ethnic affinities. Examples
are too numerous to mention, but major instances include the
frontier of Nigeria, which embraces the Moslem Hausa in a
state with the Christian Ibo and the Pagan Yoruba, rather than
with other Hausa tribes in the French Niger.
These common factors, when taken together, present
a community of interest of sorts, which at least makes negotia-
tions feasible.
The basic requisites for a closer union among the
African states are present, and partially fulfilled. These
states are essentially homogeneous in their immediate past
governmental history and in their ideological approach to
governmental problems. As separate states they are weak and
largely ineffectual. Federalism is the essential compromise
which would enable them to form large, influential states,
and to obtain the advantages of union without wholly sacrific-
ing those of a separate existence within the local, frequently
tribal, traditions such an existence entails. The advantage
of combining national unity with local autonomy would enable
these states to maintain a balance between the centrifugal
and centripetal forces in areas where localism may be widely

13. - 22 -
divergent, but not of sufficient divergence to affect the
national commonweal. More specifically, a federal union,
by its uniformity of legislation, policy, and administration
where such uniformity is essential to the national interest,
would convert them into African, and perhaps global, entities
to be reckoned with; yet it could leave wide diversity in
matters of primarily local concern. On the other hand,
because of the tribal tradition, experiments in local government
may be tried in autonomous districts that could not be attempted
in a unitary state on a nationwide basis. Further, the tribal
chiefs and other local rulers--such as petty officials
vestigially left behind by the outgoing colonial administration--
would become a genuine and responsible part of the administration,
free to determine and execute local policy. This would also
give the local inhabitants the opportunity to observe closely
and be part of the governmental process. The local rulers
may, in many instances, be more familiar with local needs and
conditions; this familiarity would relieve the central
legislature and the central administrative authorities of
concern with numerous local problems, giving them freedom to
direct affairs of national and international concern.
In the emotional upsurge following release from
earlier colonial ties, the new rulers of emergent African nations
desired to have sovereignty as close as possible to absolute,
with all the trappings accompanying it--that is, independent
armed forces, diplomatic missions abroad, and so on. They
craved the patronage power offered by many available positions
as high government officers. This may have weighed more
heavily than having only the international status of a component
unit of a federation.
What, then, is the future of federalism in sub-
Saharan Africa? For the present, Nigeria stands alone, a
category in itself. Other federations in Africa, enumerated
earlier, have already disappeared if, indeed, they ever amounted
to anything beyond a brief life-span or utterances by visionary
politicians, and for the being at least Senegambia and "Kenugatan"
(one name for Kenya-Uganda-Tanganyika) are in that category.
The Tanzanian union, on the other hand, has become a reality.
Three sorts of obstacles present themselves to
federalism or real Pan-Africanism: First, leadership. The
independence movement of the emerging states brought to the
fore a cadre of leaders, usually ambitious politicians, who
elbowed their way to the top and frequently, as they did so,
endured years of great personal hazards and sacrifices. They
did not reach the top by parliamentary means. They reject a
democratic form of government when it affects their own positions,
which is usually the case. These leaders will not voluntarily

14. - 23 -
relinquish their hard-won positions of power to a co-national;
still less will they step aside for a "foreigner." A federation
has only one position at the top; other positions are, in one
form or another, subordinate, and the surrender of power,
personal and national, by component units and their leaders
is an essential requirement of a workable federal union.
Secondly, at the moment, the flush of independence
may well dictate periods of full, and frequently autocratic,
self-rule by the countries achieving independence before they
can be expected to consider seriously the possibility of
larger unions.20 The fledgling nations are at present engaged
in fully savoring the sweet fruits of independence after what
they consider to have been the bitter years of subjugation
and colonialist exploitation. As an experience in national
life, independence is new and exciting. The new nations and
their leaders are, as it were, dazzled and captivated by the
perquisites and symbols of their new positions of power:
representation at the United Nations, embassies, diplomatic
immunity, international means of transportation (regardless
of how wasteful in an economic sense), and an opportunity to
demonstrate national force which previously belonged to their
"masters". Obviously, a federation would so broaden the base
as to make these privileges and perquisites less meaningful
to the smaller entities composing it.
Third, at close range the new leaders find it
difficult to "see the forest for the trees." They are deeply
and constantly preoccupied with each local problem, such as
tribalism, the urgency to combat rampant diseases, poverty
of abject proportions, low productivity and such catastrophes
as floods, drought, soil erosion, etc., and do not perceive
the over-all picture. As a result, they relegate thoughts of
federation, even while admitting its potential benefits, to
the distant future. This postponement occurs not only because
the young nations are taxed to the limits of their statesman-
ship by the close-range local problems, but also because their
leaders believe that future improvement of their nations
will afford them a better bargaining position in any supra-
national arrangement.
Among other obstacles which may complicate the
creation of federal systems in Africa are the traditional
separations between social classes, differences between tribes,
20G.M. Carter, Independence for Africa, New York,
1960, p. 162.

15. - 24 -
education and occasionally even economic conflicts. These
are serious, but all these obstacles are to be found in Nigeria:
the gulf between social classes, even within one region, such
as the difference between Emirs and the talakawa (peasantry)
in the North is immense. Tribal differences between the
Christian Ibo and the animist Yoruba and a host of other
tribes are equally vast, and the economies of the coastal
sector in the two maritime regions are competitive. The
Nigerian experiment in federalism has shown conclusively that
these obstacles are not insurmountable. Yet the three
considerations enumerated first prevent immediate coagulation
of federal unions among the emergent states and are almost
universal in the area. The advantages of federalism over
narrow nationalism will have to be demonstrated to the new
states or, perhaps, even forced upon them--not so much by
physical as by economic pressure. The change will ultimately
prove to be of the greatest benefit to the underdeveloped
nations. As Professor Boutros-Ghali summarized it: "The
Africa of many nations is a reality. It was with this in
mind that the Addis Ababa Charter was drawn up. When the
African states themselves recognize that in the second-half
of the twentieth century no development is possible outside
the framework of large federal groupings, they will move
from the stage of little states to that of large ones--from
micro-nationalism to macro-nationalism. Federalist movements
are germinating and the problems of regrouping can be 2xpected
to dominate the African scene in the coming decades."
University of Victoria (B.C.)
2Boutros-Ghali, B.: "The Addis Ababa Charter."
International Conciliation. #546, Jan. 1964, p. 52.