In 2011, the influential weekly Economist published a cover titled Africa Rising highlighting the great potential the continent had for economic growth, sustainability, and peace and security.

A year later, Time magazine published a similar cover with the same title praising the continent’s promise to become the next global economic powerhouse, with a particular nod to sub-Saharan Africa.

But numerous challenges persist. Despite being independent for the latter half of the 20th century, the pangs of colonialism thinking remain entrenched in many African nations.

In this issue, we examine how a pan-African community of nations needs to be established on a foundation of indigenous education systems that have done away with colonial paradigms and instead moved closer to continental integration.

Pan-Africanism in this issue is rooted in the “intellectual foundation of a desire for unity of Africans in the diaspora, a regional push for African unity, a global movement intended to unite Africa and its people against European hegemony, and the general liberation of the people of Africa and those of African descent,” writes Stephen Okhonmina in the article Pursuing Unity: Pan-Africanism in Practice.

He and other leading academics, policy researchers and scholars hold that Pan-Africanism cannot be achieved without the political unity of Africa; the equality and racial unity of all Africans; and last, but not least, African cooperation.

For these four goals to be met, African institutions need to first revisit its knowledge creation enterprises.

Samuel M. Makinda and Angela Leahy argue that the African Union, established in 1963, is grounded in pan-Africanism, a form of knowledge that has reflected different visions of the people of African descent at various times since early in the 20th century.

Writing about knowledge in Africa, they draw on the works of earlier scholars who posit that “knowledge production is a social and political process that reflects the historical, cultural, and institutional milieu of its producers. Knowledge is constructed for a social, scientific or political purpose, and for a community of scholars or policy makers”.

In this issue of The Cairo Review, we examine the necessity for Africa to locally produce renewable energy and various other technologies—including medical tools, diagnostic chips, desalination tech, innovative hardware, and electronic products—that will realize the potential this continent has for deep-tech investment.

Our distinguished panel of contributors acknowledge that Africa has a trove of high quality raw material that can be converted to modern day applications, but the tech companies, and often the infrastructures, required to process these materials are noticeably absent. With a population of 1.4 billion people, the continent has a great local market that can justify the spending to establish new deep tech companies to compete on a global scale and bring Africa to the world. And when that happens, Africa will be well on its way to the rise predicted a decade ago.

Cairo Review Co-Managing Editors,

Karim Haggag

Firas Al-Atraqchi