To anyone’s knowledge has this ever been discussed by African nations in a serious way? I see Africa as a potential hotspot for world Peace in the not so distant future.
The African Union (successor to the Organization of African Unity) is a pan-African regional organization composed of African states and dedicated to, “greater unity, cohesion and solidarity between the African countries and African nations.” It’s not anything like a federal government – African nations remain individually sovereign. But it’s not just an empty debating society, peacekeeping troops have been deployed under the authority of the AU.
It looks like Gaddafi was trying to push for it:
There are various multi-state organizations in Africa, any of which could help to lead the way on it:
My sense would be that a full-Africa nation is pretty far off. Before that point (and based on the existing groups), you would be more likely to see a federation of the North African / Islamic countries, a Western African group, and a Central South-East group. Ethiopia and South Africa would probably sit it out as fairly well-established nations in their own right.
My feeling, as a South African, is that closer integration towards some kind of federation of SA, Namibia, Botswana, Eswatini and Lesotho might be possible. Those countries have close historical connections, similar legal systems, and in many cases common languages. Already there is a common customs union/free-trade area.
Which is not to say that there is any major movement currently towards federation, though work is being done on reducing border bureaucracy and things like that.
I don’t think a broader African federation is conceivable until there are better transport links and closer economic integration between the regions of Africa. Southern and Eastern African are relatively well-connected, but links between East and West Africa, and with North Africa, are quite tenuous. Even by air, often the easiest way to travel from one region to another goes via Paris, London or Dubai.
Good to know.
No. It makes exactly zero sense. Africa is huge. “Africa is bigger than China, India, the contiguous U.S. and most of Europe—combined !” And very diverse - my own single country has 11 official languages and many more unofficial ones.
Qaddafi wanted a united Africa for selfish reasons, but no-one really took him seriously.
What does this mean? African conflicts rarely have a global effect (kind of like South America in that way). It’s the European and Asian conflicts that do.
South-West Africa as well, nowadays.
Right, it’s three times the size and four times the population of the US, and we are in the middle of wanting to break our country up.
Certainly alliances and federations and such can and have been formed, but a federalized government over the whole continent? I don’t think that would be wise or wieldy.
Most of the problems in Africa were caused by people coming in and drawing arbitrary lines and saying, “You live together in this country now, and will now be able to impose laws on eachother, even though you are ethnically, culturally, and religiously completely seperate people.”
I fail to see how imposing such a policy on a larger scale would have beneficial results.
They probably need to decide on a new language.
French is common in many areas. Arabic is common in many areas. English and Dutch might be common in some areas.
Though, it might be best to construct a new language, so everyone gets shafted equally, no one has the advantage, and you’re not building in a reliance on some external power.
What about Swahili?
And to the OP, what’s a “hotspot of world peace”? A place where peace might break out suddenly?
Just increasing tension over competition for the resources
It seems what the OP means by “world peace”: Not that it would help bring about peace, but only that it’s situated within a wary tension of competing international interests where war isn’t currently being fought. Is that right?
There’s Afrihili. However, it privileges the Niger-Congo family. OK, the majority of Africans speak Niger-Congo languages. Afrihili was constructed by an Akan scholar from West Africa, based on Akan and Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa. That’s like Esperanto being a world language drawn almost entirely from Latin and English.
I thought that was Europe and Russia.
Same reason why Hindi hasn’t displaced English in India; it would privilege one ethnic group above others, meanwhile everyone dislikes the colonizers so using their language is neutral.
English language was systematically imposed on India (and China, and Singapore, and Thailand …) by the British. It was made the language of higher education.
This came right after the first war of Independence that Indians fought in 1857. The teaching of English was a “civilizing mission” by the British.
Thanks to my forefathers, that they were able to hold on to Indian languages and culture in face of British colonialism. India today has many languages with histories going back 1000s of years. Indian cultures have their own rich and ancient cuisines, music, clothing, jewelry, poetry, literature and languages. English is just one of the languages - and its importance in India is getting less and less every day.
The use of Hindi is growing back in India 
Hindi might not be the national language – but it is growing rapidly across India.
In the long run, India will have many languages side by side. English will surely be one, but other languages will also be learnt as needed. Hindi will surely gain more acceptance as shown in the link above.