If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical;  but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will...Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they certainly pay for all they get.  Frederick Douglas

 
Where are the Race Men of today ? As I look around it's hard to find such a man who places the welfare of his people before his own. Is it because of the ole mighty dollar that they have given up being a race man and sold out, so they won't have to have the burden of the race upon their shoulders. Maybe they have forgotten how to be men ! Race men and women where Prince Hall, Paul Cuffe, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglas, James "Holly" Johnson, Edward Blyden, Bishop Henry Mc Neil Turner, Harriet Tubman, Henry Sylvester Williams, Toussaint L Ouverture, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B Wells, Sojourner Truth, Queen Nzingha, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Hubert H. Harrison, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Franz Fanon, Booker T. Washington, Chieikh Anta Diop, Paul Robeson, Carlos Cooks, Sekou Toure',Julius Nyrere,/ Walter Rodney, Kwame Ture'. Malcolm X, Dr Clarke, Chancellor WIlliams Dr Ben, Sam Njoma, Martin Luther King, Elijah Muhamad, Amos Wilson,  Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe, Robert Nesta Marly, kudos to all the race men and women not mentioned. where are these type's of men and women today  ? Are you a Race Man or Woman ?

Few of them are still living, and are our elders and still fighting in their own way. A Race Man  is a Pan Africanist !!! What is a Pan Africanist? it is a set of ideas and ideologies containing social and cultural, poltical, economic material and spiritual aspects. "Pan" means all ..So I'm talking about all African descendants living in Africa and throughout the rest of the world. Pan Africanism is what is lacking from people who are running around talking about they're black leaders. That is the difference a Race Man would consider himself to be a Pan African leader no matter where he is in the world. He would also speak for the race all over the world, where we suffer in one part of the world we all suffer collectively, and a race man knows that.

A race man ALWAYS places the people's goodwill before his own. A race man may or may not die a rich man but will have the love of all the people and will have a lasting place in the hearts of the people. What makes a Pan Africanist? First and foremost they know that they're a African and recognize Africa as his or her home. I made the title of this page “What Time Is It?" for the simple fact we're running out of time and I placed a clock on the site for some of you to know what time it is. Time is running is running out to take our own destiny in our own hands. In the preceding pages I presented plans and ideas of people I felt would make you think and restore your faith in the race, if you needed it to be restored. The idea of this site is to first make us think GLOBALLY, secondly to put in place a course of action to organize, thirdly to give a sense of who you are ... "Man Know Thyself".. Most importantly I wanted you to take a look at yourself and ask what you can do to help.

We have allowed ourselves to become a reactionary people, when it comes to helping each other, some of us rather sit back and let others do what we all need to do. I'm sure that it is because of slavery that we're the way that we are today. Our enslavement was the first holocaust and it still is affecting us today. For those who feel that they have made it and say that slavery don't effect them today, thing again, go catch a cab  in your city and let the cab driver be white or get in a elevator with a white woman who clutches her purse. Even Oprah herself has been turned away from stores with all of her money. Our enslavement has a major effect upon us today and my question is, have we gone backwards ? In 1913 we owned 550,000 homes, owned 937,000 farms, operated 40,000 businesses,35,000 black teachers, accumulated $700,000,000 and more then 70% of our population were literate and that equates to 65% after slavery so-called ended.

So what happened? I'm going to tell you what happened, and that is we stopped looking at ourselves as Africans and wanted to be a American, Yet the biggest effect has been integration and the court case of Brown vs. The Board Education. You can't integrate with a people who don't have your best intentions at hand. Integration closed down a many black businesses and we believed that white folks ice was colder then ours so we purchased it from them. Also so many of our people wanted to sit next to a white person at the lunch counter. The Brown vs. the Board of Education also failed because so many black teachers lost their jobs and the schools are segregated more today, then they were then. Yet you have people running around celebrating that decision as yet it was a major victory.

You need to ask yourself if any of those doing the celebrating are Race Men or their children attend a segregated school? I'm going to tell you right now that there is a faction among us that are happy with our present situation in this country and will fight to keep things the way it is. While the masses are suffering and have nothing to eat,  or a roof over their heads. People we have to start caring for one another or we will be EXTERMINATED off this planet. Ask yourself who is aiding the people in Sudan, Chad, and the Congo and other places were the people are suffering. Look at Haiti,  in this hemisphere, and the people of Haiti are suffering. They're still paying the price of being the first country in this hemisphere to not allow slavery and gain their freedom by defeating the French and Napoleon. Also this government went into Haiti in 1915 and stole $500,000 from its treasury and left them broke and installed a puppet government of Papa Doc Duvalier and you ask why Haitian people are so destitute. Also Aids/HIV is not by any green monkey and no accident that it's in Africa and our communities.

They will eliminate governments and people who has the people's best intentions at hand, if you're for the people you must go and that’s way of assassination or by coup. Aristide was over thrown by a coup. Another  brother was over throw, but the people placed him back in power and that was Hugo Chavez the President of Venezuela, a Race Man. Hugo doesn't hide that he has African blood in his veins but embraces it and embraces the poor people of Venezuela. Which is why he's a despised man,  by this government. People we have got to come together, some way, some how, we just have to do it. So I'm making a call again, for you to enlist in this organization. We don't have to agree on everything, but we have more in common then all of our disagreements. And it's those commonalities that we have to align ourselves with each other. I’m going to introduce you to some of our great thinkers and ideas which I feel will be helpful to those who have not been exposed to these ideas and the people and hopefully it will open our eyes and minds. Hopefully you can now tell the difference between a Race Man and a man who say's he's for the race.  Enjoy!

     Kwame Nkrumah...We Must Unite Now or Perish !

I am happy to be here in Addis Ababa on this most historic occasion. I bring with me the hopes and fraternal greetings of the government and people of Ghana. Our objective is African union now. There is no time to waste. We must unite now or perish. I am confident that by our concerned effort and determination, we shall lay here the foundations for a continental Union of African States.

A whole continent has imposed a mandate upon us to lay the foundation of our union at this conference. It is our responsibility to execute this mandate by creating here and now, the formula upon which the requisite superstructure may be erected.

On this continent, it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonial controls and interference.
From the start, we have been threatened with frustration where rapid change is imperative and with instability where sustained effort and ordered rule are indispensable. No sporadic act or pious resolution can resolve our present problems. Nothing will be of avail, except the united act of a united Africa.
Unite or sink

We have already reached the stage where we must unite or sink into that condition which has made Latin America the unwilling and distressed prey of imperialism after one-and-a-half centuries of political independence. As a continent, we have emerged into independence in a different age, with imperialism grown stronger, more ruthless and experienced, and more dangerous in its international associations. Our economic advancement demands the end of colonialist and neo-colonialist domination in Africa.
But just as we understood that the shaping of our national destinies required of each of us our political independence and bent all our strength to its attainment, so we must recognize that our economic independence resides in our African union and requires the same concentration upon the political achievement. The unity of our continent, no less than our separate independence, will be delayed if, indeed we do not lose it, by hobnobbing with colonialism.

African unity, is above all, a political kingdom which can only be gained by political means. The social and economic development of Africa will come only within the political kingdom, not the other way round. Is it not unity alone that can weld us into an effective force, capable of creating our own progress and making our valuable contribution to world peace? Which independent African state, which of you here, will claim that its financial structure and banking institutions are fully harnessed to its national development? Which will claim that its material resources and human energies are available for its own aspirations? Which will disclaim a substantial measure of disappointment and disillusionment in its agricultural and urban development?

In independent Africa, we are already re-experiencing the instability and frustration which existed under colonial rule. We are fast learning that political independence is not enough to rid us of the consequences of colonial rule. The movement of the masses of the people of Africa for freedom from that kind of rule was not only a revolt against the conditions which it imposed. Our people supported us in our fight for independence because they believed that African governments could cure the ills of the past in a way which could never be accomplished under colonial rule.

If, therefore, now that we are independent we allow the same conditions to exist that existed in colonial days, all the resentment which overthrew colonialism will be mobilized against us. The resources are there. It is for us to marshal them in the active service of our people. Unless we do this by our concerned efforts, within the framework of our combined planning, we shall not progress at the tempo demanded by today events and the mood of our people. The symptoms of our troubles will grow, and the troubles themselves become chronic. It will then be too late even for pan-African unity to secure for us stability and tranquility in our labors for a continent of social justice and material well-being.

Our continent certainly exceeds all the others in potential hydro electric power, which some experts assess as 42% of the world’s total. What need is there for us to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water for the industrialized areas of the world? It is said, of course, that we have no capital, no industrial skill, no communications and no internal markets, and that we cannot even agree among ourselves how best to utilize our resources for our own social needs. Yet all stock exchanges in the world are pre-occupied with Africa’s gold, diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper and iron ore.

Our capital flows out in streams to irrigate the whole system of Western economy. Fifty-two per cent of the gold in Fort Knox at this moment, where the USA stores its bullion, is believed to have originated from our shores. Africa provides more than 60% of the world’s gold. A great deal of the uranium for nuclear power, of copper for electronics, of titanium for supersonic projectiles, of iron and steel for heavy industries, of other minerals and raw materials for higher industries — the basic economic might of the foreign powers come from our continent.

Experts have estimated that the Congo Basin alone can produce enough food crops to satisfy the requirements of nearly half the population of the whole world, and here we sit talking about regionalism, talking about gradualism, talking about step by step. Are you afraid to tackle the bull by the horn? For centuries, Africa has been the much cow of the Western world. Was it not our continent that helped the Western world to build up its accumulated wealth? We have the resources. It was colonialism in the first place that prevented us from accumulating the effective capital; but we ourselves have failed to make frill use of our power in independence to mobilize our resources for the most effective take-off into thorough-going economic and social development.

We have been too busy nursing our separate states to understand fully the basic need of our union, rooted in common purpose, common planning and common Endeavour. A union that ignores the fundamental necessities will be but a sham. It is only by uniting our productive capacity and the resultant production that we can amass capital. And once we start, the momentum will increase. With capital controlled by our own banks, harnessed to our own true industrial and agricultural development, we shall make our advance.
We shall accumulate machinery and establish steel works, iron foundries and factories; we shall link the various states of our continent with communications by land, sea and air. We shall cable from one place to another, phone from one place to the other and around the world with our hydroelectric power; we shall drain marshes and swamps, clear infested areas, feed the under-nourished, and rid our people of parasites and disease.

What Are The Games of Independence ?

It is within the possibility of science and technology to make even the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for agricultural and industrial developments. We shall harness radio, television, giant printing presses to lift our people from the dark recesses of illiteracy.
A decade ago, these would have been visionary words, the fantasies of an idle dreamer. But this is the age in which science has transcended the limits of the material world, and technology has invaded the silences of nature.
Time and space have been reduced to unimportant abstractions. Giant machines make roads, clear forests, dig dams, lay out aerodromes; monster trucks and planes distribute goods, huge laboratories manufacture drugs; complicated geological surveys are made; mighty power stations are built; colossal factories erected all at an incredible speed. The world is no longer moving through bush paths or on camels and donkeys.
We cannot afford to pace our needs, our development, our security; to the gait of camels and donkeys. We cannot afford not to cut down the overgrown bush of outmoded attitudes that obstruct our path to the modern open road of the widest and earlier achievement of economic independence and the raising up of the lives of our people to the highest level.

Even for other continents lacking the resources of Africa, this is the age that sees the end of human want. For us, it is a simple matter of grasping with certainty our heritage by using the political might of unity. All we need to do is to develop with our united strength the enormous resources of our continent.
‘What use to the farmer is education and mechanization, what use is even capital for development, unless we can ensure for him a fair price and a ready market? ‘What has the peasant, worker and farmer gained from political independence unless we can ensure for him a fair return for his labour and a higher standard of living?

Unless we can establish great industrial complexes in Africa, what have the urban worker, and those peasants on overcrowded land gained from political independence? If they are to remain unemployed or in unskilled occupation, what will avail them the better facilities for education, technical training, energy and ambition which independence enables us to provide?

There is hardly any African state without a frontier problem with its adjacent neighbors. It would be futile for me to enumerate them because they are already so familiar to us all. But let me suggest that this fatal relic of colonialism will drive us to war against one another as our unplanned and uncoordinated industrial development expands, just as happened in Europe?

Unless we succeed in arresting the danger through mutual understanding on fundamental issues and through African unity, which will render existing boundaries obsolete and superfluous, we shall have fought in vain for independence.
Only African unity can heal this festering sore of boundary disputes between our various states. The remedy for these ills is ready in our hands. It stares us in the face at every customs barrier, it shouts to us from every African heath. By creating a true political union of all the independent states of Africa, with executive powers for “Not one of us working singly and individually can successfully attain the fullest development.”
political direction, we can tackle hopefully every emergency and every complexity.
This is because we have emerged in the age of science and technology in which poverty, ignorance and disease are no longer the masters, but the retreating foes of mankind.
Above all, we have emerged at a time when a continental land mass like Africa with its population approaching 300 million are necessary to the economic capitalization and profitability of modern productive methods and techniques.

Certainly, in the circumstances, it will not be possible to give adequate assistance to sister states trying, against the most difficult conditions, to improve their economic and social structures. Only a united Africa functioning under a union government can forcefully mobilize the material and moral resources of our separate countries and apply them efficiently and energetically to bring a rapid change in the conditions of our people.

Unite we must. Without necessarily sacrificing our sovereignties, big or small, we can here and now forge a political union based on defense, foreign affairs and diplomacy; and a common citizenship, an African currency; an African monetary zone and an African central bank. We must unite in order to achieve the full liberation of our continent. We need a common defense system with African high command to ensure the stability and security of Africa.

We have been charged with this sacred task by our own people, and we cannot betray their trust by failing them. We will be mocking the hopes of our people if we show the slightest hesitation or delay in tackling realistically this question of African unity. We need unified economic planning for Africa. Until the economic power of Africa is in our hands, the masses can have no real concern and no real interest for safeguarding our security, for ensuring the stability of our regimes, and for bending their strength to the fulfillment of our ends.

With our united resources, energies and talents, we have the means, as soon as we show the will, to transform the economic structures of our individual states from poverty to that of wealth, from inequality to the satisfaction of popular needs. Only on a continental basis shall we be able to plan the proper utilization of all our resources for the full development of our continent.

How else will we retain our own capital for our development? How else will we establish an internal market for our own industries? By belonging to different economic zones, how will we break down the currency and trading barriers between African states, and how will the economically stronger amongst us be able to assist the weaker and less developed states?

It is important to remember that independence financing and independent development cannot take place without an independent currency A currency system that is backed by the resources of a foreign state is ipso facto subject to the trade and financial arrangements of the foreign country Because we have so many customs and currency barriers as a result of being subject to the different currency systems of foreign powers, this has served to widen the gap between us in Africa. How, for example, can related communities and families trade with, and support one another successfully, if they find themselves divided by national boundaries and currency restrictions? The only alternative open to them in these circumstances is to use smuggled currency and enrich national and international racketeers and crooks who prey upon our financial and economic difficulties.

    Common Currency And Common Citizenship

No independent African state today by itself has a chance to follow an independent course of economic development, and many of us who have tried to do this have been almost ruined or have had to return to the fold of the former colonial rulers. This position will not change unless we have a unified policy working at the continental level.

The first step towards our cohesive economy would be a unified monetary zone, with, initially, an agreed common parity for our currencies. To facilitate this arrangement, Ghana would change to a decimal system. When we find that the arrangement of a fixed common parity is working successfully, there would seem to be no reason for not instituting one common currency and a single bank of issue.

With a common currency from one common bank of issue, we should be able to stand erect on our own feet because such an arrangement would be fully backed by the combined national products of the states composing the union. After all, the purchasing power of money depends on productivity and the productive exploitation of the natural, human and physical resources of the nation.

THE HOUR OF DECISION IS NOW:

While we are assuring our stability by a common defense system, and our economy is being orientated beyond foreign control by a common currency, monetary zone and central bank of issue, we can investigate the resources of our continent. We can begin to ascertain whether in reality we are the richest, and not, as we have been taught to believe, the poorest among the continents.

We can determine whether we possess the largest potential in hydroelectric power, and whether we can harness it and other sources of energy to our industries. We can proceed to plan our industrialization on a continental scale, and to build up a common market for nearly 300 million people.

Common continental planning for the industrial and agricultural, development of Africa is a vital necessity. So many blessings flow from our unity; so many disasters must follow on our continued disunity. The hour of history which has brought us to this assembly is a revolutionary hour. It is the hour of decision.
The masses of the people of Africa are crying for unity. The people of Africa call for the breaking down of the boundaries that keep them apart. They demand an end to the border disputes between sister-African states disputes that arise out of the artificial barriers raised by colonialism. It was colonialism’s purpose that divided us. It was colonialism’s purpose that left us with our border irredentism that rejected our ethnic and cultural fusion.

Our people call for unity so that they may not lose the patrimony in the perpetual service of neo-colonialism. In their fervent push for unity, they understand that only its realization will give full meaning to their freedom and our African independence. It is this popular determination that must move us on a union of independent African states. In delay lies danger to our well-being, to our very existence as free states. It has been suggested that our approach to unity should be gradual, that it should go piecemeal. This point of view conceives of Africa as a static entity with “frozen” problems which can be eliminated one by one and when all have been cleared, then we can come together and say: “Now all is well, let us now unite.”

This view takes no account of the impact of external pressures. Nor does it take cognizance of the danger that delay can deepen our isolation and exclusiveness; that it can enlarge our differences and set us drifting further and further apart into the net of neo-colonialism, so that our union will become nothing but a fading hope, and the great design of Africa’s full redemption will be lost, perhaps, forever. The view is also expressed that our difficulties can be resolved simply by a greater collaboration through cooperative association in our inter-territorial relationships. This way of looking at our problems denies a proper conception of their inter-relationship and mutuality It denies faith in a future for African advancement in African independence. It betrays a sense of solution only in continued reliance upon external sources through bilateral agreements for economic and other forms of aid.

The fact is that although we have been cooperating and associating with one another in various fields of common endeavor even before colonial times, this has not given us the continental identity and the political and economic force which would help us to deal effectively with the complicated problems confronting us in Africa today. As far as foreign aid is concerned, a United Africa should be in a more favorable position to attract assistance from foreign sources. There is the far more compelling advantage which this arrangement offers, in that aid will come from anywhere to a United Africa because our bargaining power would become infinitely greater. We shall no longer be dependent upon aid from restricted sources. We shall have the world to choose from.

                We All Want A United Africa

What are we looking for in Africa? Are we looking for charters conceived in the light of the United Nations example? A type of United Nations Organisation whose decisions are framed on the basis of resolutions that in our experience have sometimes been ignored by member states? Where groupings are formed and pressures develop in accordance with the interest of the groups concerned?

Or is it intended that Africa should be turned into a loose organisation of states on the model of the Organisation of American States, in which the weaker states within it can be at the mercy of the stronger or more powerful ones politically or economically and all at the mercy of some powerful outside nation or group of nations? Is this the kind of association we want for ourselves in the United Africa we all speak of with such feeling and emotion?

We all want a united Africa, united not only in our concept of what unity connotes, but united in our common desire to move forward together in dealing with all the problems that can best be solved only on a continental basis. We meet here today not as Ghanaians, Guineans, Egyptians, Algerians, Moroccans, Malians, Liberians, Congolese or Nigerians, but as Africans. Africans united in our resolve to remain here until we have agreed on the basic principles of a new compact of unity among ourselves which guarantees for us and our future a new arrangement of continental government.

If we succeed in establishing a new set of principles as the basis of a new charter of statute for the establishment of a continental unity of Africa, and the creation of social and political progress for our people, then in my view, this conference should mark the end of our various groupings and regional blocs.
But if we fail and let this grand and historic opportunity slips by, then we shall give way to greater dissension and division among us for which the people of Africa will never forgive us. And the popular and progressive forces and movements within Africa will condemn us. I am sure, therefore, that we shall not fail them.
To this end, I propose for your consideration the following: As a first step, a declaration of principles uniting and binding us together and to which we must all faithfully and loyally adhere, and laying the foundations of unity should be set down.

As a second and urgent step for the realization of the unification of Africa, an All-Africa Committee of Foreign Ministers be set up now. This committee should establish on behalf of the heads of our governments, a permanent body of officials and experts to work out machinery for the union government of Africa.
This body of officials and experts should be made up of two of the best brains from each independent African state. The various charters of existing groupings and other relevant documents could also be submitted to the officials and experts.

We must also decide on a location where this body of officials and experts will work as the new headquarters or capital of our union government. Some central place in Africa might be the fairest suggestion, either at Banqui in the Central African Republic or Leopoldville in Congo. My colleagues may have other proposals.
The committee of foreign ministers, officials and experts should be empowered to establish:

1. A commission to frame a constitution for a Union Government of African States.

2. A commission to workout a continent-wide plan for a unified or common economic and industrial programme for Africa; this should include proposals for setting up:
• A common market for Africa
• An African currency
• An African monetary zone
• An African central bank
• A continental communication system
3. A commission to draw up details for a common foreign policy
and diplomacy
4. A commission to produce plans for a common system of defense.
5. A commission to make proposals for a common African
citizenship.
                                       AFRICA MUST UNITE

Julius Nyerere " Without Unity There Is No Future For Africa"

Forty years ago, the people of Ghana celebrated the raising of the flag of their independence for the first time. Throughout Africa people celebrated, in solidarity with Ghana but also for themselves, for the liberation of Africa

Ghana’s independence from colonial rule in 1957 was recognised for what it was: the beginning of the end of colonialism for the whole of Africa. For centuries, we had been oppressed and humiliated as Africans. We were hunted and enslaved as Africans, and we were colonised as Africans.

The humiliation of Africans became the glorification of others. So we felt our Africanness. We knew that we were one people, and that we had one destiny regardless of the artificial boundaries which colonialists had invented.

Since we were humiliated as Africans, we had to be liberated as Africans. So 40 years ago, we recognised independence as the first triumph in Africa’s struggle for freedom and dignity. It was the first success of our demand to be accorded the international respect which is accorded free peoples.

Ghana was the beginning, our first liberated zone. Thirty-seven years later — in 1994  we celebrated our final triumph when apartheid was crushed and Nelson Mandela was installed as the president of South Africa. Africa’s long struggle for freedom was over.

But Ghana was more than just the beginning. Ghana inspired and deliberately spearheaded the independence struggle of the rest of Africa. I was a student in Edinburgh University when Kwame Nkrumah was released from prison to be the Leader of Government Business in his first elected government 1951. The deportment of the Gold Coast students changed. The way they carried themselves,  the way they talked to us and others, the way they looked at the world at large, changed overnight. They even looked different. They were not arrogant, they were not overbearing, they were not aloof, but they were proud, already they felt and they exuded that quiet pride of self-confidence of freedom without which humanity is incomplete.
And so six years later, when the Gold Coast became independent, Kwame Nkrumah invited us — the leaders of the various liberation movements in Africa  to come and celebrate with Ghana. I was among the many invitees. Then Nkrumah made the famous declaration that Ghana’s independence was meaningless unless the whole of Africa was liberated from colonial rule.

Kwame Nkrumah went into action almost immediately. In the following year, he called the liberation movements to Ghana to discuss the common strategy for the liberation of the continent from colonialism.
In preparation for the African Peoples Conference, those of us in East and Central Africa met in Mwanza in Tanganyika to discuss our possible contribution to the forthcoming conference. That conference lit the liberation torch throughout colonial Africa.

Kwame Nkrumah was leader, but he was our leader too, for he was an African leader. People are not gods. Even the best have their faults, and the faults of the great can be very big. So Nkrumah had his faults. But he was great in a purely positive sense.

He was a visionary He thought big, but he thought big for Ghana and its people, and for Africa and its people. He had a great dream for Africa and its people. He had the wellbeing of our people at heart. He was no looter. He did not have a Swiss bank account, He died poor. Shakespeare wrote that “the evil that men do lives after them”, but “the good is oft interred with their bones”.

ATTEMPTS AT UNITY:

Another five years later, in May 1963, 32 independent African states met in Addis Ababa, founded the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and established the Liberation Committee of the new organisation, charging it with the duty of coordinating the liberation struggle in those parts of Africa still under colonial rule.
The following year, 1964, the OAU met in Cairo. The Cairo Summit is remembered mainly for the declaration of the heads of state of independent Africa to respect the borders inherited from colonialism.

The principle of non-interference in internal affairs of member states of the OAU had been enshrined in the  Charter itself. Respect for the borders inherited from colonialism come from the Cairo Declaration of 1964.
In 1965, the OAU met in Accra. That summit is not well remembered as the founding summit in 1963 or the Cairo Summit of 1964. The fact that Nkrumah did not last long as head of state of Ghana after that
summit may have contributed to the comparative obscurity of that important summit. But I want to suggest that the reason why we do not talk much about the summit is probably psychological: it was a failure. That failure still haunts us today.

The founding fathers of the OAU had set themselves two major objectives: the total liberation of our continent from colonialism and settler minorities, and the unity of Africa. The first objective was expressed through immediate establishment of the Liberation Committee by the founding summit [1963]. The second objective was expressed in the name of the organisation — the Organisation of African Unity.

“Of all the sins that Africa can commit, the sin of despair would be the most unforgivable.” 

"If we must die, let it not be like hogs, Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock of our cursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die...Though far outnumberred let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow ! Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack. Pressed to the wall, dying but fighting back ! Claude McKay 1919

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