Performing Global African Culture and Citizenship: Major Pan-African Cultural Festivals from Dakar 1966 to FESTAC 1977

Abstract

This article traces the ways in which the understanding and expression of global African culture and citizenship evolved across a series of major pan-African cultural festivals held between 1966 and 1977 in Dakar, Algiers and Lagos. It argues that these festivals were part of a general shift from political pan-Africanism to cultural pan-Africanism, and counterbalances the festivals’ grand, official, national narratives with the individual encounters fostered by the events.