The last time  Omanis set foot in East Africa,  African people were not celebrating: they were busy trying to evade capture and enslavement by Omani (Arab) slave hunters.

Oman and its Sultanate were synonymous with the history of the trade of Africans as a commodity, lucrative for many but tragic for all of Africa. Many Africans who survived the disease-and shark-infested Middle Passage across the Atlantic ended up as chattel property throughout the Americas and Europe. Black descendants continue to seek out clues to their origins scattered across continents, centuries, oceans and disparate cultures.

That Oman and The American British Academy (ABA) should celebrate African Unity Day is telling. According to scholar Elizabeth Heath, "For almost 100 years, Britain supported the sultan's rule and sanctioned the minority Arab population's economic dominance over Zanzibar's African and Asian (mostly Indian) inhabitants.”

The tide is turning. Relationships are being healed. Strategic alignments are being made. Years of crying over the evils of slavery will not extricate Africa from economic and political decadence. If Africa has to progress, she has to discover how to tap into globalization.

This issue examines a host of inward forces that sustain stagnation and servitude. They include inability to repackage, abhorring integration, counterproductive laws, marginalization of women, lopsided priorities and not embracing modern technology.

The entrepreneurial spirit that enabled Arabs to make vessels that braved the oceans, move from their country to Africa and trade with other groups is worthy of emulation.

As the African voice is heard in Muscat, Oman, all Africans hope it will be a moment of soul searching on why unity has been very evasive. It will be a moment of finding ways to harness Africa’s resilience towards productivity. The resilience Africa has shown against disease, drought and hunger mark the tenacity with which it marches to higher levels of development. Africa is a source of innovation, cloaking contemporary outlooks in traditions, which the world has still to experience. It is a source of talents-attested to in Oman by the presence of Africans in all walks of life.

As the Rwandese dance troupe, the Mutabaruka ballet, gives a traditional Rwandan performance in the event, all Africa says: No more policies that kill Africa!