According to Djibril Diop, a PH.D. at CERIUM, “Africa, the continent, young by its population, rich by its resources and its potentials, cannot continue to resemble an one-legged old man. (...) Africa must wake up”. It is this idea of Renaissance which impelled a long walk for the African countries, from the creation of the Organization of the African Union in 1963, later called African Union, to the desire of creating a Government of the African Union, which gave birth to the United States of Africa. Today, between the refusal of certain African countries to give up their sovereignty and the Pan-africanist ideal, dream and reality, the United States of Africa project still remains the major debate for the African Union between the federalists and the gradualists.

A strong, consolidated and prosperous Africa… Such was the dream of the Jamaican writer Marcus Garvey in 1924 and the fight of Pan-africanist intellectuals like William Edward Burghardt Of Wood, Patrice Lumumba, George Padmore, Jomo Kenyatta and especially Kwame Nkrumah. Since 1945, the dream and the fight have been concretized together under the name of the “United States of Africa” project.

Revitalized in 2000 in Lomé by Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, the President of Libya, the idea of the United States of Africa is finally set forth on the agenda of the 9th summit of the African Union in Accra from the 1st to 3rd of July 2007. A project that the President of the Commission of the African Union of the time, Alpha Oumar Konaré, described as a “battle” being “the only one which is able to bring answers to the thousand of problems encountered by the African populations”.

The realisation of the United States of Africa project would allow the creation of a new African Federal State, which would cover 30.065.000 km2 and assemble more than 800 million inhabitants. According to Gaddafi, “the democratic and multi-party model brought nothing else than chaos to Africa. However, the progression of the black continent towards a federal government brings a gleam of hope”.  A unified Africa which would speak with one voice would have indeed more weight and would be more powerful in its relations with the rest of the world.

In addition, by creating a joint African military force, a single African currency, and an African passport granting the freedom of movement in Africa to the citizens of any African country, the project of the United States of Africa can regulate the problem of “micro nationalism which is the wound of the African continent” as said by the Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. More than a political project, which would dote the continent with an operational executive, the United States of Africa expresses the desire of Africa's different peoples to build an African identity on the basis of common values.

In spite of the obvious advantages of the project, the majority of African leaders express however their reticence on this subject: whereas for the defenders of the project, the creation of a government and of African central institutions is the best way to help the continent resolve its internal conflicts without Western interference, to fight poverty and to face the challenges of globalisation, detractors of the initiative or those in favour of a “gradual” approach of integration regard the realisation of this type of project as premature and precipitated.

Even if the opinions diverge on the promptness of the United States of Africa's construction process of, what is certain is that this project constitutes a fundamental step for the development of Africa in the era of globalisation.

Finally, it is precisely in order to better analyse the main issues of the United States of Africa project that several fundamental questions such as Pan-africanism and the African Renaissance will be discussed during the conferences held during the FESMAN 2009.