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Africa Day is frequently not given the sort of prominence it deserves and not many people think about what it does mean and what it should mean, regarding it as just another public holiday and often one of those holidays where most of the shops stay open.
This is a pity, because the day is not just important for historical reasons, but important for the future as the continent puts itself together economically to catch up with much of the rest of the world in terms of development and prosperity.
The Organisation for African Unity was founded exactly 60 years ago today, more than a lifetime ago for most Africans, in Addis Ababa, with 32 foundation members, almost all the countries north of Southern Africa.
Kenya, Malawi and Zambia were signed off by the British Empire within a year and the three British protectorates of Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini were granted independence soon afterwards and all joined the OAU promptly.
That just left the Portuguese territories, South Africa and Namibia and of course us, then white-ruled Rhodesia.
Part of the work of the new continental organisation was to help diplomatically and practically the liberation of the “white south”, but a major part of its founding principles and its initial work was to encourage what its first title was, to press for the unification of Africa.
Most of the continent had been colonised in the late 19th century, with some of the wars of conquest still in progress in the early 20th century, and most of it was freed from colonial control in the 1950s and early 1960s.
The colonial period was short in human terms, a human lifetime, but the changes were immense.
For a start boundaries has been often arbitrary, lines drawn on a map or using rivers and mountain ranges. These normally cut through communities and often through villages.
There were a few pre-colonial borders, but not many. Zimbabwe for instance had one precolonial border, its western border between the Khama and Ndebele political entities, although even that had a some dents and bulges imposed colonially. The other ones were all artificial slicing through communities.
At the same time the colonial period introduced several global languages on top of the local languages, usually the languages of the colonial power, and that often caused further splits, at least outside North Africa where Arabic could dominate.
It was quite possible for people speaking the same mother tongue to use different languages in school and work, and often to live under different legal traditions.
So the artificial borders, the linguistic borders, the legal borders, the commercial borders all tended to split Africa up, as a continent.
The OAU founders were practical as well as idealistic and one of the very first decisions, and one that has stuck, was to make the finding that the inherited colonial borders were to remain unless the two countries on each side decided to unite or decided to adjust the border. This meant that Africa has been almost entirely free of border wars, and considering the damage the three that have happened have caused we all need to appreciate the wisdom of those founders.
The Uganda-Tanzania War, the Libya-Chad War and the Ethiopia-Eritrea War were anomalies that the rest of Africa rushed to sort out. We cannot really imagine such wars breaking out every year. At the same time the OAU stopped the continued split and counter split of tiny communities breaking up countries and Africa turning into 1 000 tiny countries.
This generated a few civil wars, but largely without any outside support and so they eventually wound down. The couple of agreed national splits, between Sudan and South Sudan and between Ethiopia and Eritrea, rested on attempts to combine quite separate countries into a big block on the map without any thought.
But generally, even in the early days of the Organisation for African Unity which transformed to the Organisation of African Unity as it developed, the Pan-African idealism, which must never be underestimated as it is the guiding force and generates the thrust for a better Africa together, was implemented by practical idealists.
Very largely inter-state war did not happen; Africa managed to avoid getting involved in the Cold War, a remarkable achievement when look at the rest of the continents, civil wars were contained and the idealists, the diplomats and economists were able, within this framework to start building the Africa we all want.
By September 1999, we were able to move another step, to the African Union. This was to move from the prevention of disaster and the liberation of the continent to the practicalities of putting together the united Africa, a long-term haul, but now stressing the positive rather than the prevention of disaster.
Again we have come a long way, although perhaps we do not see this day by day or even year by year.
For example the political and democratic scene has created an Africa where Governments stay in power by winning elections through delivering, and opposition parties move into Government when they show they can do better.
The competition means that politics has become the business of doing better. The old days of military takeovers and strong-man governments have almost entirely gone, although three AU members are suspended because a handful of generals did not get the message.
At the same time regional co-operation has been growing fast. This even provides security to a large degree. Africa managed to stay out of the Cold War by sorting out its own problems, rather than inviting the major powers, and this continues.
Insurgencies by fanatics in north east Nigeria and now north-east Mozambique were sorted out, and are being sorted out, with help from the neighbours.
And with all this basic groundwork in place we are now moving into the realm of fast economic growth.
The Africa Continental Free Trade Area started with the idealistic declaration, but has already gone a long way beyond that as the nitty gritty of sorting out 55 sets of import and customs restrictions is being tackled in a very practical way.
Again this is being done, by our home-grown practical idealists, who have the vision and implement it practically, one step at a time with the bureaucrats entrenching each advance and making sure each bit works as we move to the next.
Our united Africa is still a long way away as a political entity, but as a working dream it is already much alive.
We already share so many of the same attitudes and concepts that an African from one country moving to another is not in an alien environment, but in fact in an environment very close to what they have at home, and they just have to learn new names and handle a new currency. But they know how their new neighbours and workmates think, largely like the people back home. And that is an achievement we must celebrate.
And it is this growing together that must animate Africa Day, plus the realisation that Africa moves ahead when we pull in the same direction and stagnates or falls back when we ignore each other.
Online Reporter