The history of African trade unionism is well over a century long. Egypt, South Africa, Lusophone Africa and West Africa are regions where trade unionism emerged almost simultaneously over a century ago.  In this context, “agency” refers to the actions and scopes of trade unions. There is a great deal of literature that explains how African trade union have been connected and directed by political forces. With some notable exceptions, much less is known about trade unions subjectivity and industrial action. Subjectivity in industrial action means trade unions’ efficacy of ineffectiveness in protecting workers’ rights and workers’ material conditions in the workplace, in the industrial sector, and in society.

There are various dimensions of trade unions’ agency such as local, national, international, sectorial, global etc. This paper deals with the international dimension. This is often referred to as “labour diplomacy” or “labour internationalism”. In other words, the labour movement began to organise crossing national borders and forming inter-trade unions organisation reflecting the national character of affiliated confederations. Today, the two major international, regional trade unions organisations in Africa are the African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) and the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU).

This paper tries to reconstruct a history of African trade union internationalism that can explain the existing division at the regional level between two above mention Pan-African organisations. What do these organisations bring to the trade union agency and industrial subjectivity? This history can perhaps shed a new light on the struggle of labour versus capital in Africa. If African working class unity is a goal to be achieved at a continental level in order to redress the imbalance of power in favour of capital – referred to as “super-exploitation” – then why is it not possible to create achieve unity?

The presentation is intended as a work in progress of a history project on African trade union internationalism. The research is not solely based on colonial or trade unions archives in Europe, but it also draws data from archival collections based in Africa. Such collections have been rescued and digitised by African trade unions in collaboration with the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in the Netherlands. The IISH has served for many decades as the repository of trade union history from all over the world.

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