PAX AFRICANA
ADEKEYE ADEBAJO: Kenyan political thinker envisioned continent at peace
This month marks the third anniversary of the death of Kenyan political scientist Ali Mazrui. Equally significantly, this year also commemorates the golden jubilee of Mazrui’s concept of Pax Africana, developed in a classic 1967 study Towards a Pax Africana. Pax Africana argued that Africans needed to create peace on their own continent. Africa was encouraged to act as its own policeman, as well as contribute to policing other parts of the world. The related idea of "continental jurisdiction" was a sort of Monroe Doctrine urging outsiders to stay out of Africa and let Africans resolve their own conflicts. The Mazruian concept of "racial sovereignty" argued that intervention by African states in each other’s disputes was more legitimate than those of outsiders. The Kenyan noted that Pax Britannica was the very antithesis of Pax Africana, as it championed the pacification of "savage natives" and the idea that white races had to disarm darker races to rule over them. He thus regarded l...
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