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The capacity to embrace diversity has always been part and parcel of
the African mindset.  Our cultures melt and spread into subcultures
which in turn generate aggregates.  In a bid to forge a common
cultural identity and evade cultural axphyxiation, Africans have the
onerous task of embracing their disparate subcultures.  The submersion
of our various civilizations into a collective Africanness by means of
mutual acceptance is one of the extraordinary ways in which Africans
can enter into symbiotic intercourse with kith and kin of different
extractions. This will be  a rewarding way of communioning with
members of the global village. Our  emotional experiences, our pains,
and our uncertainties, the strange curiosity of what is generally
perceived as our defects, should help us in our convivial strive for
a common identity.

One of the conditions for our collective survival as Africans  will be
our ability to  maintain a  conscious relationship with the world  in
which we live. We must  ensure that such a consciousness celebrates
and enriches rather than alienate us as a people.  We constitute an
integral part of the global community, and our Africanness should not
be used by others to place us in a pariah state. Our collective
diversity is part of an integrating process of world diversity. We
must acknowledge that each culture is never a finished product but
rather a rung in the continuum of cultural globalisation. Africans are
interested in relating rather than dominating, in exchanging rather
than exploiting.
Without denying the superficial differences that exist among our
peoples, we acknowledge that what unites us is vaster that what
separates us.  This is to say that the celebration of our diversality
should constitute a stage in the process toward an African federation
or the United States of Africa, the only way that will enable us to
stand united. Together we stand; separated we will fall. Our unity
will empower us to face up to the different hegemonic blocks that
share this planet.

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