At the Annual Pan-African Intercultural Dialogue organized by the Center for Black, African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, culture experts have urged African countries to leverage on their shared values of language and communalism to unite the continent.
They recommended negotiating with European countries who are never going to leave Africa, in order to come out on top.

The advice comes post Professor Mudasiru Ilupeju Akanbi’s keynote address which rooted Africa’s disunity to European countries division of Africa in 1835 – which resulted in the continent’s division along (3) language lines and their accompanying ideologies. Consequently, Africans only acknowledge their brotherhood when they are outside the continent, but resort back to hate and strife once they set foot on African soil.

The Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, compares the above to the scenario to Nigeria – where Nigerians think of the country in terms of states than a united people, so also do African countries think of Africa. In fact, he added that several lighter-skinned Africans do not view themselves as Africans, considering themselves more superior than the darker skinned ones.

While he persists that there is no way forward barring Europe exiting African nations, Africa must take the alternative of negotiating affairs with Europe and the rest of the world to their own benefit.

“Europe will never leave Africa. Do you want the person milking you to die? We can’t fix the situation. We can only ameliorate it. And that starts with cohabitation and negotiation. Now that we have discovered the truth, and they know that we know what they do, that they come to steal from us, and instigate strife, conflict to do so, we can invite them to come negotiate and trade what we have that they need for a price. We tell them the price. Not them telling us what to sell or who to sell to.

“It also means speaking the same language, by which I do not mean linguistically, rather it is about reasoning the same way. The way an African Yoruba mother’s facial expression without words is perfectly understood by her child,” said Akanbi.

On the other hand, Mr Tunde Babawale said there exists language similarities amongst African countries that can be leveraged on, in addition to a shared communalism to a help unite Africa to greater development and advantage at the global stage.

While the tempo of Africa’s unity established with FESTAC ‘77 had diminished to an all-time low since the festival, owing to western influences on African culture and neocolonialism, a return to her cultures and shared cultural values, he said, can reset the festival’s objectives – which is uniting Africa via the promotion of understanding of African cultures.

“There is abundance historical evidence to show that our languages are connected. The languages of many ethnicities in west Africa belong to the linguistic family known as the Niger/Congo family. Meaning that they have a lot of commonalities among those languages. Much as Igbo and Yoruba languages look different, there are certain words in the two ethnicities that are similar like ‘okwute’ in Igbo, and ‘okwuta’ in Yoruba.

“There is also our shared belief in being our brother’s keeper. That is an African thing. Don’t forget European culture is inherently individualistic. Ours is communalistic. it is the invasion of western civilization that has corrupted our culture, which has made us begin to live individualistic lives. Before we live in communities. You eat together. Neighbours are like your family. Why don’t we go back to that?
“These things we have in common, we can hang onto to have a united African continent,” concluded Babawale.

Themed “Cultural Diplomacy And African Unity: Promoting Pan African Intercultural Dialogue”, the 2025 Annual Pan-African Intercultural Dialogue is aimed at exploring how cultural diplomacy can help unite Africa.