Progressive movements across Africa and the diaspora gathered to honour the 80th anniversary of the landmark 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress, issuing a forceful declaration that the liberation struggle it ignited remains unfinished.
The Pan-African Progressive Front (PPF), together with allied movements and intellectual networks, convened the International Conference of Progressive Forces to mark the historic occasion. Activists, scholars, organisers and political actors from across the continent and its diaspora assembled to confront what delegates described as the enduring, unresolved tasks of African liberation.
The conference reaffirmed that the 1945 Manchester Congress was no mere symbolic milestone. Participants characterised it as a decisive turning point that accelerated anti-colonial struggles worldwide and laid the ideological foundations upon which African independence movements were built.
Deliberations centred on what delegates identified as the structural continuities between colonial domination and today's global inequalities. Key discussions addressed reparative justice, economic sovereignty, cultural restitution and the pressing need for Pan-African unity in the face of both external pressure and internal fragmentation.
Eight decades after Manchester, speakers stressed that Africa and its diaspora continue to bear the material consequences of slavery, colonial exploitation and neo-colonial control. The demand for reparations, delegates argued, has moved beyond moral appeal and must now be understood as a political and legal imperative rooted in historical accountability.
A central outcome of the gathering was a renewed commitment to building transnational alliances capable of driving progressive change. Organisers called for coordinated action among grassroots movements, policy institutions and political organisations to challenge the global systems that perpetuate inequality.
The conference also issued a call for the revitalisation of Pan-African thought as a living political project, urging that the spirit of 1945 be reinterpreted for a new generation facing different but interconnected forms of domination.
The full conference report — documenting the proceedings, key interventions and strategic recommendations — is now available. It is intended to serve as both a historical record and a working document for activists and policymakers advancing the Pan-African agenda.
Read the full report and add your voice to the movement. Click on this link (Conference Report 80th Anniversary of 1945 Manchester-International Conference of Progressive Forces) to access the complete conference document.