The All-Africa Peoples Conference was conceived by Ghana's Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, his advisor George Padmore, and others to continue the tradition of the Pan-African Congress, which had last met in 1945 in Manchester.

It represented the opinion that the end of European colonial rule was near, and in the words of the conference's Chairman the Kenyan Tom Mboya, that it was time for them to "scram from Africa.

Concerning the struggle in Algeria, full support was given to the recently proclaimed Provisional Republican Government (Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne—GPRA).

[5] Slogans displayed by Ghanaians holding signs during the Conference:[6] Wallerstein summarises by saying: "The impact of this and subsequent AAPC meetings on political awareness in Africa is difficult to measure, but nonetheless very real.

The AAPC brought many African nationalist leaders into contact for the first time with others who had already won independence for their countries or were in active and violent struggle for it.

[8] The Conference voiced considerable concern over neocolonialism—the tendency of the nominally freed states to actually remain subjugated to the imperialist powers because of economic dependency and other factors.

; Considering on the other hand, that the imperialists are aiming at the organisation of all these new institutions of domination with each African people taken separately, while they are themselves co-ordinating strictly their action in order to present a united front against the efforts of economic liberation on the part of Africa; The Conference Affirms the absolute necessity of turning the economy of the African countries to the profit of its peoples, and of acting with unity in the economic field, as in the political and cultural fields; Proposes therefore the creation by all the Independent African States, of common organisations for the conduct of finance and commerce, and of centres of social and economic research, for the purpose of studying the forms of technical assistance to Africa and of training the technicians whom Africa needs to ensure her economic development and her social progress; Proclaims finally the irrevocable character of the movement towards African independence, liberty and unity; ...[11] The Conference was particularly critical of the French government for taking measures to limit the sovereignty of its territories in North Africa that were being decolonised.

Wallerstein has described the make up of the AAPC around the time of the Third Congress: The AAPC had become the meeting ground of three groups: African nationalists in non-independent countries, whose revolutionary ardor was often tactical and hence temporary; leaders of the so-called revolutionary African states, whose militancy was often tempered by the exigencies of diplomacy and the reality of world economic pressures; African radical-nationalist opposition movements in independent states, which states were considered by these opposition movements as clients or "puppets" of the West.

This latter group (which included the UPC, the Sawaba of Niger led by Djibo Bakary, the Moroccan Union Nationale des Forces Populaires [UNFP] represented by Mehdi Ben Barka) was perhaps the most genuinely and the most persistently militant.

[15] The difference between the two groups was to prove fatal to the AAPC, as radical pronouncements by the Conference began to pose difficulties for its governmental members in their diplomatic relations with the more conservative African states.