The issue of unity : pan-Africanism and the tribal phenomenon of the gold coast

Abstract EN

The Scramble for Africa (1884-1914), was the meeting in which major European countries took territory and power from existing African people by dividing the continent according to their own interests, here by, neglecting its inhabitants with all their similarities or even differences.

Even worse, these colonial powers intensified this division further when they adopted the 'divide and rule' policy: it is with this phase that tribalism was created and deep-seated within the already living African communities.

This indigenous political division offered a difficult and deeply-rooted obstacle to overcome by the late anti-colonial national attempts.

However, there occurred this movement, Pan-Africanism, which promoted unity and fought for all African people founded upon their identical colonial experience of suffering injustice, discrimination, oppression and domination.

Because they are tribally tied, Pan-Africanism came to show these African tribes how much they should be connected to their ancestral land, Africa, and how they should unite their efforts to set it free from the hands of colonialism.

Therefore, the focus of this research paper is the emerging Pan-African ideas of unity in the Gold Coast and the way the divided tribal and ethnic groups, existing in the area, reacted to this unifying force.

The study employed a case study, the Gold Coast, research design.

Moreover, the research used both primary and secondary data collection methods.

Data was collected using content analysis which involves reviewing literature relevant to Pan-Africanism and tribalism in the Gold Coast.

Indeed, Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana( a new name for the Gold Coast), succeed in reversing this divisive force of tribalism into a source of strength and unity through the use of these tribes' common bonds of language and tradition against colonial rule by which he granted his country independence in 1957.