No African should be a stranger in Africa

Here is a fact that should embarrass every one of us: it is often easier for a European or American passport holder to travel around Africa than it is for Africans from many of our own countries. The latest Africa Visa Openness Index, published by the African Development Bank and the African Union, finds that only 28 per cent of journeys between African countries are visa free, and that for about half of them an African must still obtain a visa before travelling. Aliko Dangote, the richest man on the continent, has lamented that he needs visas for some thirty-five African countries. On our own soil, we remain more open to our former colonisers than to one another. We have spoken of African unity for a century. It is time to speak of it differently, and Europe, of all places, shows us why it is possible. Consider what Europe did. Twenty-seven countries, some two dozen languages, and a century in which they slaughtered one another twice; France and Germany alone fought three wars in seventy years. Out of that graveyard they built a union with free movement, a common passport cover above each nation’s name, and a shared currency. No European nation was dissolved. The French remained French, the Poles remained Poles, and yet a Portuguese plumber may live and work in Warsaw as of right. If the continent that gave the world two World Wars could build that, then the claim that Africa is too diverse or too divided to unite is not analysis. It is defeatism. But look deeper, because the comparison hides something that makes Africa’s case even stronger. Europe’s states are, for the most part, natural nations: France is the state of the French, Denmark of the Danes. Europe’s union therefore had to persuade real and ancient peoples to lower borders that genuinely expressed who they were. Africa’s borders express nobody. They were...read more