AT every Africa Day celebration, calls have been made for Africa to unite.
And this year’s celebrations are no exception.
The song continues, Africa unite! Unite Africa!
Nonetheless 54 years after formation, ‘divisions’ still beset the corridors of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa.
In spite of all the economic and political difficulties that Africa faces today, the continent still has to deal with the apparent conflict between Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone countries.
Anglophone and Francophone countries make up two-thirds of the member-states of the AU with the remainder being the Lusophone and Hispanophone.
These communities seem to be divided along various lines, mainly political, economic, cultural as well as social.
As the AU’s ancestor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), was created in particular to fight the last bastions of colonialism; it seems paradoxical that the divide between its members results from the scramble for the continent by its colonisers.
Europe’s arbitrary post-colonial borders left Africans bunched into countries that do not represent their heritage, a contradiction that still troubles them today.
Observers have blamed trends like a rising tide of jihadism and incursions by Islamic State militants, but African scholars have long maintained that the national borders in Africa, most of which date back to the period in the late 1800s when European powers divided up most of the continent in a flurry of diplomatic agreements and colonial wars now known as the ‘Scramble for Africa’, are actually one of the biggest sources of its present-day strife and violence.
This colonial division of the continent was decided at the Berlin Conference of 1885-6, where powers of the day — France, England, Portugal, Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium — shared out the spoils of the ‘dark continent’.
These borders were drawn without attention or sympathy to the people already living on the continent — most of the European diplomats negotiating new territorial borders had little or no knowledge of the terrain or populations they were apportioning.
In 1890, the British Prime Minister noted that: “We have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were.”
By the time the First World War broke out, the continent was crisscrossed by novel political borders that had no consideration of the people on the ground.
Most African colonies gained independence as new nations during the 1950s and 1960s, and in many cases inherited the borders that had been haphazardly drawn decades before.
That left many ethnic groups divided across borders, sparking strife and civil wars, and leaving the continent with dozens of separatist movements up to today.
And today at the AU, decisions within the organisation are influenced by the dynamics of this colonial legacy; mainly between Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone states.
Lusophone Africans are people who speak the Portuguese language who were colonised by Portugal.
‘Luso’ derives from the Latin term for an area roughly corresponding to modern Portugal, called Lusitania and the suffix ‘phone’ derives from the Ancient Greek word ‘phone’ meaning ‘voice’.
Anglophone are English-speaking people and these countries were mainly colonised by Britain while Francophone are French-speaking and were colonised by France.
Britain had many colonies in Africa: In British West Africa there was Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Southern Cameroon, and Sierra Leone; in British East Africa there was Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika and Zanzibar); and in British South Africa there was South Africa, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Nyasaland (Malawi), Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland.
Britain had a strange and unique colonial history with Egypt and Sudan.
The Sudan, formerly known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, was jointly ruled by Egypt and Britain, because they had jointly colonised the area.
In addition, France also had 20 colonies while Portugal, Germany and Italy had six, nine and four respectively.
French colonies in Africa are Ivory Coast, Benin, Mali, Guinea, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Togo, Gambia, Chad, Central African Republic, Madagascar, French Mauritius, French Cameroon, French Somalia and Seychelles.
Lusophone countries are Mozambique, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Cape Verde as well as Sao Tome and Principe.
And today, Africa is divided along the colonial ideology, boundaries and language grounds.
When it comes to AU decisions, Lusophone countries usually side with Francophone countries as these colonies had the same method of assimilation.
The Anglophone-Francophone divide often comes up when the organisation’s members prepare to choose a new leader for the AU Commission (AUC) in Addis Ababa.
The tough competition for the position of chairperson of the AUC in 2012 revived this divide, which many hoped would be obsolete by now.
The victory of South Africa’s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma over the incumbent Jean Ping was seen by some as a victory for Anglophone Africa over Francophone Africa.
At the AUC chairpersonship in 2012, Ping was largely backed by Francophone countries while Dlamini-Zuma was supported by Anglophone countries.
One of the issues that divide Anglophone and Francophone countries within the AU is their approach to the West and to their former colonial states, with Francophones often accused of being too close to France.
This divide, according to experts, lies in the differing natures of the French and British colonial regimes which saw direct (French) and indirect (British) rule. This in turn had an impact on the profile of African elites at independence.
British historian Michael Crowder noted: “The French did some encouragement to the formation of a native elite, which was absorbed into the territorial and federal administrative services, albeit not on a very large scale.
The British, on the other hand, in the 1920s and 1930s actively discourages the formation of a class of Europeanised Africans, particularly at the level of the central colonial administration.”
Under the indirect rule of the British Empire, the colonised populations were regarded as ‘indigenous’.
However, under the French regime of assimilation, colonised subjects were often considered to be French, provided they spoke the language and adhered to French cultural values.
This allowed several future heads of state in Francophone Africa to start their political careers in the French Parliament before independence.
Former Ivorian President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, for example, was a French parliamentarian before becoming the leader of an independent Côte d’Ivoire.
These crucial differences in styles of colonial rule also had an impact on the relationship between the post-colonial elites and the international community, and are quite visible inside the AU.
Except for Guinea, which refused to accept the conditions of independence dictated to it by France, most Francophone states were ‘granted’ conditional independence by their former colonial masters.
Political elites in Francophone countries maintained close relationships with France and Belgium through a range of agreements, such as continued military co-operation and the presence of French officials in Government structures.
Thus their relationship with the West was less hostile.
These newly independent states were mostly non-aligned, with a strong inclination towards the West.
In contrast, most Anglophone states created their own national identity in the struggle against their colonisers and this was led by national liberation movements.
As a consequence, their political behaviour on the international scene — in the then OAU and now the AU — is still shaped by this experience.
In addition, many Anglophone states in Southern Africa obtained independence much later than Francophone Africa, which also shapes a different experience vis-à-vis the West.
Meanwhile, the debate on the modalities of African unity also transcended the linguistic divide.
The Casablanca Group, which gathered states favouring a total overhaul of the divisions left over from the colonial era, was heterogeneous.
It included many Francophone countries (Mali and Guinea), as well as Morocco, Egypt, Libya and Algeria.
Here, as well, the picture is nuanced.
For example, Diallo Telli, the second OAU secretary-general from Guinea, was nominated by Kenya.
In 1978, the contest between William Eteki Mboumoua and Edem Kodjo — from Francophone Togo and Cameroon respectively — was based on their supposed ideological orientations.
The first was considered progressive while the latter was accused of being too close to Paris.
Kodjo won the race and served as secretary general from 1978 to 1983.
To this day, the perception remains among Anglophone states that Francophone states are ‘not really independent’, due to their strong institutional links to France.