The Sixth Pan-African Congress took place in Dar es Salaam in 1974. It was named alongside the 1972 UNESCO conference in the same city as an event where cultural problems were discussed. The congress therefore situated questions of African culture within the continuing political and institutional life of Pan-Africanism.

The congress emerged against a background of disagreement about how culture should relate to liberation. Négritude had presented African cultural identity as a force with political potential, while critics such as Ezekiel Mphahlele insisted that national culture should come first. Amílcar Cabral, from another revolutionary perspective, emphasized the creative use of retained cultural traditions in the struggle against foreign rule.

The Dar es Salaam congress formed part of a wider network of cultural institutions and events that included literary conferences and arts festivals in Dakar and Lagos. These gatherings reflected the effort of independent African states to give cultural Pan-Africanism an institutional existence while confronting the continuing dominance of European languages and foreign mass media.