Africa-Asia Relations: Forging Stronger Ties Building on Common Grounds of History, Economy and Culture

DOI

10.2991/icalc-18.2019.35How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Asia; Africa; Culture; Language; International Relations

Abstract

The collapse of the colonial system and independence struggles of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and other regions of the world led to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). At inception, NAM's actions were important in the decolonization process, leading to the attainment of independence by many countries. History reveals the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries has played a vital role in the preservation of world peace and security. The Bandung Asian-African Conference is seen by historians as the most immediate antecedent to the creation of Non-Aligned Movement. In its over 50 years of existence, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries brought together of a growing number of states and liberation movements which, in spite of their diversity ideologically, politically, economically and otherwise, have accepted its founding principles and primary objectives and shown their readiness to realize them. Historically, non-aligned countries have shown resilience to overcome their differences and found a common ground for actions leading to mutual cooperation and upholding of shared values. However, studies find that though Asia and Africa share a not-so-tenuous historical, cultural, and linguistic relation, interaction/cooperation between the two largest continents as compared to between these continents and other parts of the world, is very limited. This paper aims to highlight the relations: history, culture, economy- between Asia and Africa, focusing on Indonesia and Nigeria and how stronger ties can be forged building on these common grounds. I draw from my experiences and observations during my time in Indonesia while corroborating with secondary data. It was discovered that the bond between Indonesia and Africa is deeply rooted in the shared historic solidarity against colonialism. Conclusions include the fact that the first step towards strengthening African-Asian relations is for Asians to adopt a global, rather than an East-West dichotomous, approach to world culture. Asians must see Africa in a new light in their minds. To do this, they must not see relations between them and the rest of the world as one of East and West alone.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Silas Oghenemaro Emovwodo
PY  - 2019/02
DA  - 2019/02
TI  - Africa-Asia Relations: Forging Stronger Ties Building on Common Grounds of History, Economy and Culture
BT  - Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Arts, Language and Culture (ICALC 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 243
EP  - 252
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icalc-18.2019.35
DO  - 10.2991/icalc-18.2019.35
ID  - Emovwodo2019/02
ER  -