ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines African (state) nationalism and Pan-Africanism, and discusses the nature of African nationalism, both in its function as programme for the political forces of the 1950s and as official state ideology after decolonization. It focuses on the doctrines of African socialism, state capitalism and Marxism-Leninism, either of which became part of state thinking in connection with nationalist ideology. The chapter shows that what exactly is Pan-Africanism and analyses in what way it influenced, during the 1950s, the governmental ideology of Africa’s emerging states. The nucleus of the OAU’s ideology consists of a combination of state nationalist ideology and several ideas and notions that find their origin in Pan-Africanism. It is also at the international level that African socialism, state capitalism and Marxism-Leninism assumed special distinctiveness. The history of nationalism in East Africa, which generally had a more radical tone than its West African counterpart, is illustrative.
