User:Jeremytorres1151/Pan-Africanism/RQWill Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Jeremytorres1151


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * User:Jeremytorres1151/Pan-Africanism


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)

Evaluate the drafted changes
Hi Jeremy! My feedback on your article is below.

Lead
This draft seems to be missing a lead section that concisely and/or clearly describes the article's topic. In your final draft, I would make sure to include a few sentences that describe your topic and give an overview of the structure of the rest of the page.

Content
I am honestly unsure whether most of the content is really relevant to the political idea of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century. The main Wiki page for Pan-Africanism defines it as a belief that "African people, both on the continent and in the diaspora, share not merely a common history, but a common destiny." From the article's title, I would expect this article to deal mainly with how that political idea is expressed and affects political discourse and/or decision making in the 21st century. While the paragraphs about the Twitter hashtag, education company, and hip-hop are certainly related to the question of how other Africans relate to each other through social media, art, and education, I don't think they give the reader a good sense of the latest iterations of the Pan-African movement as a political idea or how they might be different from those of the mid-to-late twentieth century. For example, you don't connect the viral Twitter hashtag to any subsequent political consequences (I'm thinking here about those of Trump's tweets), I have no idea what "improved learning outcomes" means or how that indicates a stronger Pan-African sentiment, and I'm not sure where you're getting the evidence for your claim that younger Africans put decreasing value on international borders (I didn't find anything close to it in the source you're citing - cross border unity doesn't equate to less value on said borders) or how that fits into the newest iteration of Pan-Africanism.

That said, I think the African Arguments article has a good framework that I think might help you with organizing your thoughts and content. In the third paragraph of the section entitled "The Rise of Pan-Africanism Today," the article identifies several distinct features of the modern iteration of Pan-Africanism that I think would provide a good starting point for the rest of your article. I think that the section you already have written about the evolving patterns of language use is a good example of these features.

A couple of minor things: I would make sure to differentiate your section about Hip-Hop from the one on the current Pan-Africanism page. Additionally, I think that you should either elaborate on the effect of outside influence from the US, China, and others on Pan-Africanism or scrap the section entirely. Currently, you vaguely imply that they have some negative impact, but even searching the source you cite I'm not sure where you're getting that from or what you mean by it.

Tone and Balance
To me, the content added here seems weighted towards a pro-Pan-African viewpoint. There is no discussion of the longstanding critiques of pan-Africanism, only the challenges "that undermine the African Union's (AU) goal of continent wide solidarity," which itself seems to take an excessively negative stance towards opponents of the AU's agenda. Additionally, there is no line drawn between Pan-Africanism on the continent vs within the diaspora, which is an important distinction dealt with by the main Pan-Africanism article. Moreover, there are several claims as to the viability and popularity of Pan-Africanism that are left uncited. Examples include:


 * "Since the onset of the 21st century, the internet and other similar media have facilitated the growth of many core pan-African principles by strengthening the connections between people across the diaspora."
 * "Twitter is one of these places where people across the continent and diaspora have manufactured a collective African identity."
 * There are 1.2 billion people in Africa, not counting the African diaspora. Even if we assume all 60,000 tweets with the hashtag were from Africans, this does not by any means provide sufficient evidence that Africans have "manufactured a collective African identity." This is especially true given the relatively low and unequal rates of internet access across the continent.
 * "Increased globalization in the last few decades is contributing to a boom in the popularity of pan-African sentiments throughout Africa."
 * "The intersection between the digital media revolution and pan-Africanism has also had implications for the education sector. Pan-African organizations have used the internet and digital medial to produce educational content for both children and adults that seeks to encourage solidarity between all people of African descent."
 * Based on this press release and this mission statement it doesn't seem like Ubongo is pushing a Pan-Africanist narrative, although they could arguably be acting in a neo-Pan-Africanist manner.

These sentences seem to be written in the style of a conventional topic sentence, but at the moment the evidence provided later in the paragraph does not come close to supporting the sweeping claims that these excerpts are making.

Sources and References
As I mentioned above, multiple sections need additional sources to back up the claims that they are making, and in some cases do not accurately reflect the actual content of the sources cited. Moreover, given my point earlier about refocusing this page on the current iterations of Pan-Africanism, I think that a complete draft will need a fair few more sources than it currently has. Also, for all my focus on the African Arguments article, there's no listed author, the article doesn't seem to be peer reviewed, and it doesn't cite any sources, so I'm not sure of its value as a source for this article.

Organization
I think adding in some headings would both increase the readability of this article and aid you in the revision process. You're tackling a huge subject, breaking it down into bite-size chunks will help you and any future reader.

Notability
Your sources definitely establish the notability of this topic per Wikipedia guidelines. However, like I said earlier I think it needs section headings, and it also needs links to other Wikipedia articles (i.e. diaspora or Pan-Africanism).

Response to Peer Review
Thank you for your insightful comments! I agree with many of the suggestions you provided but also disagree with some. I definitely agree that the article could use some work with formatting/organization and perhaps there are certain generalized statements that could be better supported with more hard facts rather than individual case studies/examples. I also really appreciate how you point out some discrepancies that exist within my article and I will address those going forward. Something I disagree with is the idea that I have to address the critiques of Pan-Africanism. My goal of writing adding this section is to show the way that Pan-Africanism has manifested itself in the 21st century in an era of globalization. I will definitely look into some of the possible critiques of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century but I also do not think it should be a goal of mine to address these critiques considering I am mainly considering with its manifestations.