Kojo Opoku Aidoo was invited to speak at the Opening Plenary Conversation on Pan Africanism for the 21st Century by the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in Pretoria, South Africa. Basically, the conference was meant to celebrate our Africanness and work towards African integration and reflect on the 'journeys' so far, in order to map the road ahead. The main thrust of Kojo's argument was that a united Africa would be too big to fail. He therefore highlighted the significance of promoting African stories, African content, and African history all of which will enable Africans to affirm their identity in an increasingly globalizing world. Kojo pointed out the need to re-analyze “pan Africanism from below”, arguing that the strides of African political unification would accelerate if the subaltern classes were mobilized into action. He identified the stumbling blocks of Pan Africanism to be petty-nationalist, geo-political agendas, trade barriers, xenophobia, corruption, and neo-colonialism, and called for a concerted, continent-wide struggle against them. He teased out the ambiguities and antinomies of the pan-Africanism and cited examples from his HaB work on the borderlands.

Concluding, Kojo called on African leaders to muster courage to surrender aspects of the sovereign powers of the nation-state in furtherance of political unification. He cited the monumental work by Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, saying it must be our Bible, and guide all of us.