AES AFRICANS FIND PAN-AFRICAN CONNECTIONS WITH CUBA, PT. 1

On 8 November, a delegation of 12 people from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger arrived in Havana, Cuba. For the next seven days, they would travel to multiple Cuban cities, meet with many Cuban revolutionaries, and visit a string of historical sites to learn from Cuba's socialist model, Cuba’s ability to survive the 64-year US blockade and the island nation’s relationship to Africa to help move the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) forward.

The delegation was organised by the Thomas Sankara Centre in Burkina Faso (@burkinabooks on Instagram), with participation from the Union of Nigerien Students (USN) based out of Niger and the Headquarters of the Revolution based out of Mali. @AmisturCuba and @ICAP_cuba hosted the delegation throughout the country.

In this video, you hear directly from some of the delegates. All three AES members—Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger—have had historically strong relationships with Cuba at one moment or another and continue to work with Cuba. Burkina Faso, in particular, had especially strong relations with Cuba during the 1983-87 popular and democratic Revolution led by Captain Thomas Sankara (1949-87). During Sankara's presidency, the national slogan of the country, ‘the homeland or death, we will succeed,’ came from one of Cuba's national slogans coined by Argentine doctor-turned-revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara. Burkina Faso also created Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) to serve as the most fundamental revolutionary organisation regrouping the grassroots of the country. These CDRs were inspired by a similar organisation with the same name in Cuba and which continue to exist to this day throughout the Caribbean nation.

Mali, too, had a close relationship with Cuba under Pan-Africanist independence leader and first President Modibo Keïta. Keïta welcomed Guevara in Bamako and Malian students and artists traveled to Cuba for training.

Despite this rich history of exchange, this delegation is the first time a group of Africans from the Sahel visited Cuba with the explicit purpose of learning about Cuban socialism and Cuban-African relations since the formation of the AES. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have charted a path of self-determination, sovereignty, anti-imperialism and economic development for their people. Cuba is a country that has been upholding and advancing its revolution since 1959. Furthermore, as the delegates learned during their trip to the island, the Cuban revolution is in many ways ontologically African in nature, as Cuba has an African national identity and a Pan-Africanist foreign policy.

For these reasons close relationships between the AES and Cuba are of utmost importance and exchanges of this kind may pave the way toward greater African emancipation.