ABSTRACT
In 1948, Cheikh Anta Diop, a young Senegalese, proposed to a group of African students in Paris that the new intelligentsia should work toward an African renaissance. The basis of this renaissance, in Diop’s mind, would be a new construction of the sciences and social sciences disconnected from the theories and doctrines of white racial superiority that had led to enslavement and colonization. The African Union was born at the seminal assembly of African states, held in July 2002 in South Africa. At that meeting, the old Organization of African Unity was retired and a new, more dynamic organization was brought into existence along the lines of continental unity. Several African nations and their leaders emerged as principal promoters of aspects of the African Union. Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, had declared his country’s participation in the creation of the African Union.
