Reclaiming Our Africanness in the Diasporized Context: The Challenge of Asserting a Critical African Personality

In the annals of African and Black peoples history, and particularly anti-colonial nationalist politics, Nkrumah remains in a unique position as a nationalist and anti-colonialist who pioneered a struggle for Independence for the first Black nation on the continent. Given the postcolonial challenges facing African peoples today, African intellectuals today have a responsibility to revisit some of his pioneering ideas as we seek to design our own futures. To revisit Nkrumah is more than about a ‘return to the source’ i.e., Sankofa’. It is also about to return to the source to listen, learn, and hear that is ‘Sankotie’ and Sankowhe’ (see Aikins 2010). This paper would borrow from the philosophy and ideas of Nkrumah as we rethink how African peoples can design their own futures in the area of schooling and education. I centre the possibilities of Pan-African spirituality as a base/sub structure on which rest the possibilities of community building. I focus on Pan-African spirituality as resistance to the disembodiment and dismemberment in Diasporic contexts. In so doing, I will also seek to draw connections of Afrocentricity and Pan-African struggles to highlight the challenge and promise of African agency