Constructing ‘The Africa We Want’: A Linguistic Analysis of Identity, Agency and Participatory Communication in Agenda 2063

Abstract

This article examines how Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, the African Union’s fifty-year strategic framework, linguistically constructs continental identity, distributes agency, and positions readers as participants in collective action. Although Agenda 2063 has attracted substantial scholarly attention as a development and policy framework, little research has examined the communicative mechanisms through which it performs persuasive and mobilizational work. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics as the primary analytical framework, supplemented by Appraisal Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the study analyses a purposively stratified corpus of five rhetorically distinct sections of the document: the Foreword, the Executive Summary and Vision Statement, the Situational Analysis, the Goals and Strategies Framework, and the Communication Strategy. Analysis of pronoun reference, transitivity, modality, and evaluative language identifies three interconnected discursive movements: constructing a collective “we” through inclusive reference and relational processes; depicting a desirable future through densely positive evaluative and future-referring language; and distributing responsibility across differentiated human and institutional actors through graduated modality. The paper’s central contribution is identifying a communicative pattern, simultaneous symbolic collectivisation and distributed responsibility, through which “Africa” is constructed as a unified symbolic subject while practical agency is allocated to Member States, institutions, communities, and citizens. The analysis further shows that the document’s participatory rhetoric operates chiefly at the level of symbolic inclusion rather than substantive civic engagement. The study contributes to communication scholarship on supranational policy discourse, participatory development communication, and the linguistic construction of collective identity in institutional contexts. The analysis is text-internal and does not claim to establish actual audience effects.