African Liberation: Unfinished Work and New Fronts

The 2026 Commemoration of African Liberation Day is the first Global African celebration after the reckoning of transatlantic enslavement as the gravest crime against humanity. In preparations for this celebration, we called for submissions that will address the various fronts in the collective struggle for liberation. The call was situated within the realities of the liberation struggle, past and present.

The struggle for the liberation of Global Africans has never ceased—from enslavement and colonialism to the present era of exploitative relations that underpin imperial control and enrichment. This long arc of resistance includes historic victories, most notably the defeat of Apartheid and the dismantling of formal settler colonial regimes across the continent, achievements won through collective sacrifice and international solidarity. Today, renewed expressions of resistance are evident: the expulsion of French military and political influence across the Sahel; the rejection of IMF and other externally imposed economic policies; and the mobilization of youth against imperially supported leadership from Togo to Morocco. These developments reflect a reassertion of Pan-African agency that external powers continue to maneuver to contain and redirect for geopolitical ends.

Although the struggle to overcome systemic underdevelopment continues, it unfolds within new and rapidly shifting terrains. Technological transformations, particularly in artificial intelligence, intersect with the aspirations and pressures facing African youth in an era often described as a demographic dividend. At the same time, emerging efforts to commodify and weaponize African biological data in the interests of finance capital raise urgent questions about sovereignty and exploitation in new domains. Parallel to these challenges, initiatives such as Ghana’s leadership at the United Nations signal incremental gains in advancing the global reckoning with chattel enslavement and the ongoing demand for reparative justice. In Europe, renewed legal and political scrutiny—such as proceedings involving charging Étienne Davignon in Belgium for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba—signals the growing pressure to confront historical and corporate complicity in colonial exploitation, even as many perpetrators continue to evade substantive accountability. Yet, the very actors who resist accountability continue to devise new mechanisms to control African economies and extract resources to stabilize their own crises. Étienne Davignon has joined his ancestors in the evolution of the accountability process, but progressive forces must demand the continuity of the moral and legal battles for accountability of the atrocities the deceased and the Belgian state benefited from. 

During the 25th Anniversary of France’s so-called Taubira law enacted on 21 May 2001 which recognised the transatlantic enslavement and colonial slavery as crimes against humanity, Macron called France to reckon with its enslavement past. The rhetoric failed to recognise the continuing colonial, and neocolonial crimes against African peoples, from the destruction of Libya to other efforts to sabotage African-led drive for dignity and socio-economic transformation.  As France continues to lose exploitative fields in Africa, is it slowly and painfully waking up to the futility of resisting its accountability for enslavement and continuing exploitation in Africa? Minimum courage is required of France to acknowledge what it has done against Africans, what it continues to do, apologies, compensation, pledge and structures to ensure such acts do not continue or recur, and return of Global African money from Haiti to Francafrique, and repatriation of African artefacts to aid the processes of healing and reparative justice.

In the context of an increasingly exposed imperial system—once framed as rules-based—the imperative for unity and collective struggle of African peoples is more urgent than ever. However, this necessity is undermined by the limitations of sections of the comprador class, the rise of xenophobia, and rhetorical rather than meaningful commitments to African solidarity.  The rising divisions in the Global African community present a new front that challenges the work towards liberation. Class and ideological division in the black community presents imperial forces with ammunition they hope to utilize to thwart efforts towards mobilization against the vestiges of past crimes and new dimensions of domination and control.

These contradictions threaten the foundations of shared struggle that historically enabled coordinated efforts to defeat racialized domination across the continent and the wider Global African world. The work of Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem offers a vital blueprint, rooted in the traditions of earlier liberation movements, for advancing contemporary struggles toward unity and emancipation.

We commemorate the 2026 African Liberation Day around these conversations. The articles in this special issue engage African liberation in its full historical and contemporary dimensions. They examine lessons from past struggles, identify unfinished tasks, analyze emerging fronts, and propose new strategies for mobilization and organization. 

These themes reflected the presentations, speeches, discussions, and intellectual outputs that emerged from the 2026 African Liberation Day Celebrations from Africa to North America, and from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom. The complementarity yet distinctness of the articles in this Issue, and the range of issues they present to the reader in this commemorative moment, required a split into two volumes.

From ongoing struggles from Haiti to Mauritius, to the various forms of liberation necessary (including spiritual, sexual, biological, and ideational), the special issue covers the inspiring and challenging past, present, and future of Global African liberation. The first volume of the special issue not only allows us to think about how liberation has always meant, not only the rejection of a world order that devalues human beings, but also the building of a new order with alternatives that value all humans. 

Zophia Edwards’ address reminds us that the invasion of Ethiopia about 100 years ago was not only challenged by Ethiopians but by Global Africans across the globe and especially in the Caribbean. She challenges us: where is the Pan African spirit when Cuba and Haiti are undergoing new forms of invasion? 

David Abdulah provides a much needed context about how the struggle for liberation was shaped the last hundred years, and by whom. The Haitian and Cuban revolutionary processes, and the West Indian revolutionaries those processes birthed were able to grasp early on how their struggles were inherently related to all of Global Africa, which ensured they laid a path capable of rivaling the dominant world order bereft of dignity for human beings. Abdulah reminds us today’s attempts to rewrite history, and justify the “monstrous denial of our humanity” is not new, and overcoming it necessitates standing with Cuba and Haiti in a moment of punitive imperial aggression. Edwards and Abdulah, much like the contributions by Horace Campbell and Mario Nisbett, elucidate on the task at hand for those committed to liberation. Campbell and Nisbett avoid simplistic generalizations and spell out what liberation must look like in the 21st century if we are to overcome colonialism, imperialism, militarism, and establish a new world.

Julialynne Walker’s contributions further sharpen the specifics in the tasks at hand. The author offers clarity about the components of reparative justice beyond the reductionist vision of reparations. From the United States to Ghana, liberatory care and women’s biological health and wellbeing are central to understanding reparations, as well as liberation. Walker demonstrates why reparations is not just for those “negatively impacted,” but also the “the ones doing the impacting,” because reparative justice is concerned with “how to make all humans whole”. Julialynne Walker brings this clarity to the conversation about reparations and reparative justice answering some of the questions about who, what, and how to repair. It will be evident in this issue that women must be considered not only in their past and present contributions to the liberation struggle but also supported with the necessary structures that will not deny them their lives in the reproductive processes needed for the existence and continuity of human life.

Beyond the conversations about women and womanhood, Willy Mutunga in part one of his submissions provides incisive analysis on the jurisprudential dimensions about spirituality and sexuality. The personal note and the constitutional developments around these questions ushers the reader into the legal challenges around questions of identity, ancestral duty, religion, and sexuality while most constitutions strive towards secularism and grants rights without discrimination except provided by law.  Mutunga not only challenges us about what is African spirituality and sexuality, but he provides evidence from the religions and precolonial histories we hold close to argue “that African values on sexuality and spirituality are in fundamental ways more humane than any of the imperialist ideological and political positions on both issues.”

The contributions by Charden Pouo Moutsouka and Mahder Serekberhan are reports of two events: the first on the “Geographies of Fascism and Authoritarianism in Global Africa” conference held at the University of Oxford, U.K. in April of 2026, and the second on the Africa Liberation Day 2026 celebration held in Syracuse, New York, by the Global Pan African Movement. Charden’s reflexion emphasizes Black Joy as a major instrument for resistance and the generation of alternative geographies that name and dismantle all forms of fascism and not only a post-victory expression. Charden and Mahder demonstrate how the mobilization and organization of critical thinkers and Global Africans can challenge the dominant order as it sets the stage for the alternative.

In the second volume, the reader will be provided with a unique perspective on Mauritius. While the struggle in the Pacific remains, the invisibilization of the African population in Mauritius, presents another front that requires Global African solidarity to ensure the representation and dignity of Africans in that Island nation. Tony Evenor highlights the disappointments, subjugation, structural oppression and the lack of representation that characterizes Afro-Mauritian life. The analysis is not that of a hopeless condition, but a recognition and call for grassroot education and mobilization alongside international alliance to form a solidaric front that secures the material conditions and social justice for the Creoles in Mauritius.

The second volume continues with sharp analysis of the theme of Global Pan-African Movement’s celebration of ALD, which is the connection between Haiti and US-led imperialism. Jemima Pierre’s remarks for the ALD deliver a punchant critique of how imperialism operates, how it deprives the Haitian people of sovereignty and the complicity of actors geographically close and far. The rest of the volume addresses various discussion points pertaining to liberation and Global Africa.

The Haitian and Cuban revolutions remain landmark inspiration for the continuing struggles across Africa. Tennyson Joseph’s reflection on the Barbados African Liberation celebration spotlights the contributions of these pathsetters to revolutionary battles in Global Africa and the required solidarity African peoples must demonstrate as imperial siege increases in the Caribbean and Latin America.

CARICOM’s Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) unequivocally rejects imperial attempts at turning the Caribbean into a war zone. They affirm that the Caribbean must remain a zone of peace. The Council of Foreign Affairs and International Relations of the Caribbean Community further draws attention to the adverse effects of the siege on Cuba on Caribbean peoples who are obtaining education in Cuba. The reader is brought into the reality that the embargo on Cuba and the siege on Venezuela have consequences for all peoples of Global Africa within and outside the Caribbean region due to our shared oppressions and the high potential for successful imperial techniques to be deployed to other parts of the African world.

Peter Bembir’s reflection on the African Liberation Day commemoration in Cape Coast brings the reader into the centrality of African knowledge, and the historical significance of Cape Coast town, the University of Cape Coast, and the Centre of African and International Studies in Ghana in the processes of Global African liberation and reparative justice for all peoples of Africa.

Furthermore, Eliud Kabamanya ushers the reader into the repositioning of France in its efforts to strengthen its stranglehold in the Pacific through Eastern Africa. Gatonye develops the need for Africa’s digital-savvy youth to refuse cosmetic democracy. Their energy of refusal demands structural transformation — but without accountable institutions, Pan-African consciousness alone cannot end postcolonial dependency. In addition, in this second volume, the reader is further equipped with contents on the ideological, political and theological battles around sexuality and spirituality. Willy Mutunga offers a depth of analysis that forces a rethink even for the most armed opponent of the full scale rights of other sexualities. 

We are carrying a statement from the SADC parliamentary Committee. The statement comes at the time when many governments in Africa do not care much about human rights and xenophobia is on resurgence in South Africa.

Across two volumes, these articles explore the complexities of Africa's unfinished struggles, celebrate victories won through resistance and solidarity, and consider the forms of mobilization and organization required to dismantle injustice, colonialism, and oppression and to deepen the struggle for liberation and reparative justice.