African Music and Film Flows and Agenda 2063: towards “the Africa we want”

The African Union Agenda 2063 has a crucial element known as Aspiration 5 which seeks an Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, values and ethics. Towards this end, the Union has been promoting African arts and culture as ways of realizing “the Africa we want”. This article locates the Union’s interventions in the existing cultural production and circulation landscape pointing out that the landscape promotes a monolithism that is antithetical to the plurality and diversity of a total pan-African consciousness. We hint at the possible emergence of a domestic cultural imperialism in which cultures of particular subregions come to dominate and silence those of others. We suggest ways to promote arts and culture, specifically films and music, for the realization of “the Africa we want” while still preserving of the diversity of the African cultural landscape.

Keywords: cultural products, African film, African music, African cultural diversity,