Africa’s path to development requires a unified Pan-African response to the twin forces of patriarchy and capitalism, Dr. Gamel Nasser Adam said on Tuesday, November 18, at the opening of the Fifth Pan-African Congress 80th anniversary conference.

Speaking on “Africa’s underdevelopment: from Colonialism to Neo-Colonialism,” Dr. Adam called on African progressive forces to protect experiments in economic and social justice and confront exploitation at its root.

“I would like to insist that how we frame our struggles around contestation of capital, of how capital uses patriarchy to exploit working people, not just working women, in Africa is critical for us coming up with viable alternatives for a truly pan-African future must connect with all working people,” he said.

Dr. Adam stressed that social reproduction must be central to Africa’s anti-imperialist struggle. “We want to confront commodification of our very existence as human beings. Because the only way patriarchy survives is by protecting the commodification of how we reproduce the human race,” he said.

The conference, organized by the Accra-based Pan-African Progressive Front (PPF), is set to conclude with the Accra Declaration, outlining strategies for reparations, anti-imperialist solidarity, and an agenda for African economic and social emancipation. “Because what qualifies us as Africans is not that we are born in Africa, but the Africanness in us. And with this Africanness, let us connect our issues with people of similar experiences, a subject of colonial rule in Asia, in Latin America, in the Caribbean,” Dr. Adam added.