Nigeria, Dec. 17 -- I missed the Frantz Fanon Centenary Conference at the University of Jos, organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development and CODESRIA. This piece was timed for his centenary, and 64 years after his death. Fanon was born on 20th July 1925, and died on 6th December 1961, at just 36. His ideas are not old books - they live in Africa's ongoing fight for respect and freedom. My aim here is to view Fanon's contributions to Pan-Africanism through a journalist's lens.

I first saw Fanon's name in secondary school. His famous quote, "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it," was pasted on a classroom window. I memorised it without fully understanding it. Today, I am g...