Art, Socialism and Solidarity at the International Congress of Africanists, 1962-1973

This article traces the debates and discussions regarding art and socialism at the first three International Congress of Africanists in Accra (1962), Dakar (1967) and Addis Ababa (1973). The Congress, founded against the backdrop of Cold War battles of influence, sought to establish African authority over the production of knowledge about the continent; art played a key role in asserting the continent's presence on the global stage. Over the first ten years of the conference, the significance of socialism shifted, from an African nationalist reclamation of the word to growing appetites for Marxist revolution, a shift revealed by the debates in Ghana, Senegal and Ethiopia, and one with a range of implications for the creation, circulation and histories of the continent's art.