"The independent nations of Africa as they stand today were the artificial creations of the then European Colonial Powers in the 19th and the 20th centuries". For hundreds of years, the oral traditions, the written records of Africa's history and its recent archaeological remains showed clearly that hundreds of today's African ethnic nationalities were all autonomous, self-governing, politically unique, culturally diverse, socially different from one another, economically independent from each other and they practiced diverse religion faith and traditions for centuries until the adventure of the European powers into Africa.
The "Berlin Conference" organized by the then European powers of the 19th century, which is also known as the "Scramble for Africa" led to the entire partition of the hundreds of the ethnic nationalities and people groups of Africa into colonial created artificial boundaries of today known as the countries of Africa. "No single consideration was given by these European powers to the historical uniqueness, the diversities and the varied identities of the African tribal, ethnic or language groups".
"The European powers annexed the continent of Africa primarily for economic goals". The succeeded in their colonization through a political system known as "Divide and Rule". The same ethnic nationality, language and religion group were divided into nations under the control of different European powers, such as Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The beginning of the 20th century was the age of agitation for freedom or independence by the indigenous peoples of Africa from these European Lords and Masters. These agitations took many forms, such as protests, workers' strikes, demonstrations, formation of student organizations, establishment of political movements, political parties, trade unions and the indigenous African newspapers. By the middle of the 1950s into the 1960s, these struggles had yielded political results. "Many African nations became independent from these colonial powers, but were all internally divided along the ethnic, cultural and religion lines".
The new nations of Africa began to experience their worst continental leadership crisis ever seen or known in Africa. "Civil wars began amongst the different ethnic groups of these new nations, the military made adventures into power in many countries, political parties in power established one party governments in many African nations, succession attempts by many ethnic groups were made to break away from these new nations, communist ideologies came into many countries, some African leaders attempted to establish a state religion, ethnic cleansings and genocides took place in many African nations".
All these continued in Africa for the next few decades leading to lack of progress and national development in most African nations. "The continent was plagued with economic problems, political crises, religion riots, sectarian violents, social tensions, famines, brain-drain and the HIV-AIDS crises that ruined the families and the economies of many African nations".
Sudan was one of the countries created by these European powers and was substained by the European power through the political system of "Divide and Rule" during the colonization of the peoples of Sudan. "The historically distinct people groups of Sudan were forced to live together by the European power under one nation". The north of Sudan traditionally is Arabs and muslims, the south is Christians and animists.
"The nation of Sudan has not known any single era of peace and national development since independence from the European power in the 1960s". Sudan has experienced one of the worst civil wars in Africa. Millions of Sudanese have died over the last 30 years, and millions more have been displaced into other neighboring African countries as refugees. Sudan has one of the world's worst poverty and illeteracy rates.
The cries inside Sudan since independence are: "True Federalism", "Marginalization", "Succession into Independent Nations", "National Sovereign Conference", "Resource Control", "Rotational Presidency", "Regional Police", "Devolution of Powers" and "Self-Determination". The Sudanese Project, an experimental creation of the European powers had not worked on behalf of the ethnic nationalities that make up this great union. Today is the most important day to the Southern Sudanese people since independent. Voting had already taken place amongst the ethnic nationalities of the Southern Sudan to decide their future from the federation.
"If this referendum for independence that took place in Southern Sudan today is successful in all its ramifications, this singular event may signal a similar development in the nearest future in Nigeria in particular and in many other African nations in general that have similar political experience with Sudan". This is "the biggest challenge that faces Africa in the 21st century in countries that are seriously divided along ethnic, religion and cultural lines".
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