Wodemaya Asks AU to Restore Sanniquellie’s OAU Square, Site of 1959 Unity Summit

Published: July 29, 2026

MONROVIA — Ghanaian travel documentarian Wodemaya has called on the African Union to rebuild OAU Square in Sanniquellie into a continental heritage site, saying the monument marking the 1959 summit where three African leaders first agreed on a framework for continental unity is in a condition he could not believe.

“My goodness, I can’t believe that this is how a place like that needs to look like. No, listen, I am calling on the African Union, something has to be done in this place, because there’s a monument that represents… It’s called OAU Square,” he said in a video recorded at the site. “Tag the African Union, because I want this place to be transformed into a place where the entire Africa will come and see, experience it.”

Wodemaya, who has been in Liberia for the country’s 179th Independence Day celebrations, visited the Nimba County capital last week.

“I found a city in Liberia which is so important to the people of Africa. As a guy who has traveled 39 different countries, this is my first time hearing such a story. And I can’t even believe it,” he said.

The site marks the First West African Summit Conference, held at Sanniquellie from July 15 to 19, 1959, between Liberian President William V.S. Tubman, Guinean President Ahmed Sékou Touré and Kwame Nkrumah, then prime minister of Ghana. The three signed a declaration of principles for what they called the Community of Independent African States, setting out terms on which independent African states might associate.

The Sanniquellie meeting was among the earliest high-level attempts to give continental unity an institutional shape, and it is cited by historians as a precursor to the Organization of African Unity, founded at Addis Ababa on May 25, 1963. The OAU was succeeded by the African Union, launched at Durban, South Africa, in 2002.

Residents who guided Wodemaya around the site told him the idea that became the OAU was born in Sanniquellie four years before the Addis Ababa founding.

He closed the video by asking his audience whether they knew the city’s place in that history.

“Did you know that the African Union that you and I know, this is the city that gave birth to African Union? … This place gave birth to the African Union. Just so you know, it’s called Sanniquellie City,” he said.