League of African Democratic Socialist Parties

Social democracy
Development Humanism Age of Enlightenment French Revolution Utopian socialism Labor unionism Revolutions of 1848 Marxism Orthodox Revisionist Ethical socialism Progressivism Reformism Gradualism Frankfurt Declaration Keynesianism Welfare capitalism Third Way Modern European socialism
Ideas Social justice Democracy economic representative Labor rights Mixed economy Welfare Trade unionism Fair trade Environmental protection Negative and positive rights Secularism Social corporatism Social market economy
Variants Bernsteinism Liberal socialism Nordic model Godesberg Third Way
People Attlee Awolowo Bernstein Betancourt Bhutto Brandt Branting Crosland Curtin Daszyński Debs Douglas Ecevit González Hilferding Jaurès Junmai Katayama Lassalle Layton Lévesque MacDonald Mandela Nader Nehru Batlle y Ordóñez Palme Plekhanov Savage Thomas Williams
Organizations Social democratic parties Socialist International International Union of Socialist Youth Party of European Socialists Progressive Alliance Young European Socialists (YES) International Trade Union Confederation

The League of African Democratic Socialist Parties, initially known as the Socialist Inter-African, is a union of social democratic political parties in the continent of Africa.It was set up to provide an international forum for moderate socialists in Africa, and proclaimed that "democratic socialism" was the only possible path to African development.^[1] It is affiliated to, but not a regional component of, the Socialist International.^[2]

The decision to set it up was taken at the 1976 Geneva meeting of the Socialist International by a group of African social democrats led by Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal.^[3] At the time vice-president of the SI, he was "entrusted" with the task of setting up a local organisation that would be free of accusations of any affiliation to Moscow.

The Socialist Inter-African held its inaugural meeting in Tunis on February 26–28, 1981. Eleven social-democratic parties from across the continent attended.^[4] Amongst the founding parties was the Sudanese Socialist Union of Gaafar Nimeiry.^[5] Senghor was unable to attract all the continent's socialists; prominent exceptions included Zimbabwe and Namibia. The Soviet press declared the union of "bourgeois" parties was dangerous and opportunistic, and that the Socialist Inter-African was "programmed in Western Europe and designed in Dakar and Tunis."^[6]

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