Origins
Cheikh Anta Diop wrote a series of essays as a student from 1946 to 1960, charting the development of Africa. The essays, which are seen as a form of blueprint, are collected in book form as "Towards the African Renaissance: Essays in Culture and Development, 1946-1960".
In 1994 in South Africa following the first democratic election after the end of apartheid, and was clarified with then-Deputy President Mbeki's famous "I am an African" speech in May 1996 following the adoption of a new constitution:
I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines Patient because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines. Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be.
In April 1997, Mbeki articulated the elements that comprise the African Renaissance: social cohesion, democracy, economic rebuilding and growth, and the establishment of Africa as a significant player in geo-political affairs.
In June 1997, an advisor to Mbeki, Vusi Maviembela, wrote that the African Renaissance was the "third moment" in post-colonial Africa, following decolonization and the outbreak of democracy across the continent during the early 1990s. Deputy President Mbeki himself melded the various reforms he had discussed to a tone of optimism under the rubric "African Renaissance" in a speech in August 1998
Read more about this topic: African Renaissance
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)