Asignación de costos por centro de actividad

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Having colonized much of the continent, European powers began to put in place colonial state systems which would serve as the tool for the political domination, and the material exploitation of their African colonies.⁹⁵ The colonial state systems were operated based on the colonial policies adopted by the colonizing countries. Prominent among these policies of colonial administration was the “indirect rule” policy in British colonial Africa and the policy of

“assimilation” in French colonial Africa. The most extreme of them all was arguably the apartheid policy which came into force in South-Africa in 1948 following the coming into power of the National Party. Consequently the foregoing scenarios prompted a nucleus of Black leaders in the Diaspora towards the end of the 19^th century to form a movement known as Pan-Africanism.

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Thus, it was against this background that Henry Sylvester Williams then resident in London where he was working towards qualifying as a barrister took the initiative to convene the 1900 conference which was held in London. Henry Sylvester Williams was a Trinidadian son of immigrant parents from Barbados. Prior to the time of the conference he had met Africans who came for studying and visiting in the United Kingdom – and obtained first-hand information about the extreme racist attitude of the White population towards Blacks in South Africa based on the account given by a victim of racial discrimination and isolation. This later culminated into his forming the African Association.⁹⁷ After its emergence, the African Association unveiled plans to organize a Conference which would investigate and sensitize the largely uninformed public about the grave conditions of Blacks in the British colonized territories. In an attempt to advance this cause – its arrowhead Sylvester Williams met Benito Sylvain, a Haitian national domiciled in Paris for consultations on the planned conference. Sylvain had earlier on his part, met Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia with regards to the conference, thus they were able to come up with an agenda which articulated and later broadened the scope of issues which were to come up for discussion at the 1900 conference. Other issues such as the treatment of “native races” under European and American rule was later added to the conference agenda.⁹⁸

Against the rising tide of colonial domination the African Association was formally launched in England on 24 September 1897. As the Imperial nerve-centre and missionary interests Britain became the natural choice for an anti-colonial movement of this kind. The African Association’s objective at inception as Olisanwuche Esedebe noted was to “encourage a feeling of unity among men of African blood and protect their interests by circulating accurate information on matters affecting their rights and direct appeals to the metropolitan government.”⁹⁹ The leading figures of the (AA) were of the conviction that the time had come for the Black race to

97Marika Sherwood, African Conferences, 1900 -1953: What Did “African Mean? The Journal of Pan-African Studies, vol. 4, no. 10, January 2012, p. 2. www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol4no10/4.10 Pan-Pan-African.pdf.

98 Ibid.

99P, OlisanwucheEsedebe. The Growth of the African Movement 1893 -1927, Tarikh Vol. 6 No. 3, Pan-Africanism, Published for the Historical Society of Nigeria by (Longman Group Limited London) 1980. p. 19.

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speak loudest as an independent race on issues that directly infringed upon their rights, human dignity, and socio-political and economic well-being. Thus the founders believed this could be attained effectively through the instrumentality of Blacks - driven movement headquartered in London, the imperial capital. The founding members of the AA were: J. Otonba Payne, Dr.Mojola Agbebi, and D. Augustus Straker. Others include Sylvester Williams – (the convener of the conference) Rev. H. Mason Joseph, Moses da Rocha E.A Gibson etc.¹⁰⁰ In July 1900, the AA held its first conference in the city of London. The following was the agenda for the three days conference which had speakers from various British colonies.

• To secure civil and political rights for Africans and their descendants throughout the world;

• To encourage friendly relations between the Caucasian and African races;

• To encourage African people everywhere in educational, industrial and commercial enterprise;

• To approach Governments and influence legislation in the interests of the black races; and To ameliorate the condition of the oppressed Negro in all parts of the world.¹⁰¹

The above constituted the agenda of the July 1900 conference in London, which was attended by an array of Black leaders from Africa and the Diaspora. The conference which had Alexander Walters as chair was attended by 32 delegates from across the Black world, including W.E. B.

DuBois, Benito Sylvain, then a close aide to Emperor Menelik 11 of Ethiopia. Others included:

the Trinidadian medical practitioner John Alcindor, J.R. Archer, a prominent West Indian resident in Battersea district of London, and H. Sylvester Williams. The delegates from Africa at the conference included: F.R.S. Johnson, a Liberian, G. W. Gove, a Sierra Leonean Councillor, and J. Otonba from Lagos Nigeria. At the end of the conference, a statement entitled “To the

100 Ibid.

101Marika Sherwood, African Conferences, 1900 -1953: What Did “African Mean? The Journal of Pan-African Studies, vol. 4, no. 10, January 2012, p.. 2. www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol4no10/4.10 Pan-Pan-African.pdf.

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Nations of the World” was issued and circulated to territories in which persons of African descents lived. Other resolutions of the 1900 conference included a written petition directly sent to the British monarch Queen Victoria which protested and condemned in the strongest terms the large scale injustices suffered by Africans and peoples of African descents in the British colonial empire. The conference also resolved to establish a permanent Pan-African Association with a secretariat that would replace the African Association with offices at 61-62 Chancery Lane, London. The 1900 conference ended its proceedings with an election into the key posts of the organization. This led to the emergence of the organization’s officers for a fixed term of two years each.¹⁰² In conclusion, it is important to note that while the African Association did not succeed entirely in its attempt to halt the trend of injustices that bedevilled the Black peoples across the world, it did however give an appreciable showing by being the first Black – led organization to have cohesively challenged the excesses of European colonialism. This help laid the foundation upon which subsequent conferences of this kind drew their inspiration from. Thus the 1900 conference was a propelling force against the established order of colonial servitude, racism, and economic exploitation.