The Plea – The Warning – The Wish
Voices from across the globe are raising their volume, speaking up about the realities of the world that we are in, as opposed to the imagined version of yesteryear. And the echoes that cascade outward, speak of visible deep cracks in the foundations that some had thought were solid; we are seeing an increase in competing blocs, weaponised interdependence, supply chains that are becoming points of pressure , finance becoming tools of leverage, and technology treated as though it we physical terrain. The alarm bells have sounded signaling the need for urgency, that the pace of change, economically, geopolitically, technologically, has overrun the institutions that were meant to keep things in check.
And so the question relevant to where we stand is not simply what is happening in the world,
rather, what does this world mean for Africa? And particularly given this moment in time when the continent is often seen as being at a cross road or at a window of opportunity, better able to choose its own destiny.
Let’s us circle back to just over a week ago, where Mark Carney, at the World Economic Forum Davos, spoke to the “middle powers” with a sober call urging the relevant players to end the illusionary assumptions of a post world war order that is fading daily in real time. He suggested that this old order can no longer be treated as reliable, and that in a world where the strongest are positioned to set the tempo and the terms, those in the middle must coordinate, diversify, and act together or be acted upon, or as Carney put it, be at the table or be on the menu. For some, such realism may be a hard pill to swallow, but the sentiments expressed deserve the audience take proper note.
However, let’s go back even further to almost fifty years ago, where Julius Nyerere, before Howard University, presented a realism that arguably goes much deeper than the present crisis. Nyerere did not merely warn that the system might become unstable; he argued that for the “poor” the system was structurally biased from the outset.
His claim was direct, asserting that the international economic order operates like an escalator that moves upward for the rich and downward for the poor. The diametric opposition of fortunes, invoking here the learnings of Walter Rodney, where the poor can work harder, sacrifice more, invest more, and still find themselves running uphill merely to stand still, given that the rules of trade, credit, shipping, pricing, and industrial access were not designed to reward their effort, to the contrary, they were designed to extract value from it.
Carney’s speech can be seen as a warning about a world that is becoming dangerous. Nyerere’s speech is more of an indictment of a world that has long been unequal, dangerous not only because it can break, but because it can continue, effortlessly quietly producing misery. One voice speaks from the centre of global governance, looking at a system cracking. The voice that proceeded it, narrates from the margins of that system, looking at a machine that has been grinding away for decades.
And here we arrive at an uncomfortable place, in that if Nyerere still sounds current today not withstanding the lapse of almost 5 decades, it is probably not because of his poetic acumen; rather, it is because the core structure he described remains recognizably fully intact. The indictment sheet extends.
And yes, Africa has changed. It is better connected, more urban, arguably more educated, and perhaps even more visible. It holds strategic resources, geography, votes, and a youthful population, which taken together and / or separately denote serious promise. The world at times does speak of Africa with a new intensity, references are made to its critical minerals, its potential to realise global food security, its migration flows, good bad and indifferent, issues on climate resilience, security partnerships, emerging markets, etc. But let us not confuse or even be fooled to think that attention equates with power.
A continent can be central to the world’s anxieties and still be peripheral to the world’s rule-making power base. A continent can be courted for what it has and still be constrained in what it can become. A continent can be praised as being “the future” and yet still be priced and labelled as “the risk.”
That is why Nyerere’s speech continues to resonate loudly reminding us that the world, cultivated by certain geopolitical tendencies, can become more multipolar without necessarily becoming more just. The cast of powers can diversify while the operating system of advantage remains stubbornly in place; or to be a little more proverbial, the snake may sheds its skin, yet the the fangs remain.
So what does this all mean in relation to the notion of Africa’s rise? Not the rise that is announced in conference halls, but the rise that becomes undeniable in factories, ports, farms, laboratories, schools, courts, studios, parliaments; the type of rise that changes how Africa negotiates, how the continent produces, and how Africa tells its own story. The answer is unlikely to be revealed in a single policy, or an impassioned speech. It is more about deliberate consistent design and execution. Intentionality.
It is now trite that Africa’s rise, from a socio-economic perspective, requires a shift from extraction to production, from raw export to value creation, from “market” to “maker.” It requires energy that keeps the lights on, logistics that lubricate the flow of commercial movement, skills that are relevant flexible and can scale and regional value chains that normalise what ought to be obvious, that is, to build in Africa for Africa, but also for global Africa given the expansive reality of the continent’s diaspora; and ultimately for the world.
Politically, we need coherence without pretending homogeneity. Africa is not one language, one culture, or one history. That said, the peoples of the continent form interwoven networks the length and breadth of its vast lands, and we are close enough, in our multi dimensional shared experiences to become one negotiating system. Project Africa can become a formalised integrated market, a platform of shared standards, interoperable infrastructure, and collective bargaining power, so that no single African country is left to negotiate alone with the so called economic giants, as if legal equality amounts to economic equality.
Turning to the issue of culture, Africa’s rise requires narrative sovereignty. If the lion doesn’t tell his story, the hunter will. The story a people tell about themselves inevitably goes some way to shaping what they build. If Africa internalises always being described as a problem to be solved, it will regurgitate the same self image and continue to receive solutions designed elsewhere. If Africa internalises the description it gives itself, as a collective civilisation, traveling along the path of regeneration, with the abilities of shaping the terms of modernity, perceived in its own image, the likelihood is that it will increasingly design for itself and refuse what diminishes it.
This is why the African Continental Free Trade Area matters and not simply as a trade instrument that will undergo refinement; but as a symbolic and psychological realignment. A statement that the continent intends to transact with itself at scale and intends to become a global market from within and without, in fact, and not merely in aspiration.
But a window of opportunity is not a guarantee, it is more of a test that asks critical questions about our appetite to make the necessary steps for the transition through the opening, or to ponder on whether we shall merely admire the open space from a distance and continue to dream of what could have been.
And this brings us to that burning issue that for many is too ambitious, or too political to pursue. The United States of Africa. Is it not time to bring this matter to the forefront once again from an African perspective? The one that counts. The answer is perhaps that it depends on what we mean.
If the United States of Africa is treated merely as symbolism, then we should not expect the project to get past first post; it will likely remain ceremonial, yet another slogan hovering in the ether while the machinery on the ground remains fully intact unchanged. However, if it is treated as a project, a strategy, such an approach can become the practical real life response to both Carney’s warning, Nyerere’s plea and the wish of many.
Alluding to Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of a united Africa, this was not some romantic vision for its own sake, it was about instilling unity as the pre-condition of sovereignty, addressing the then reality of a world order constructed in blocs. Nkrumah understood that fragmentation meant vulnerability, especially when external powers are able to deploy asymmetric type bargaining, targeting state by state individually, resulting in lob sided outcomes favouring, you know who.
That same unification strategy logic can be located within the AU’s Agenda 2063, in many ways an apologetic ode to Nkrumah himself, an acknowledgment that a continent able to integrate its markets, build its institutions, that has the ability to grow into a political community, capable of setting terms, pivots away from merely accepting them.
So let us make the idea somehow more concrete.
The United States of Africa, in practice, is federation by function built step by step.
(i) It is trade that genuinely flows, within borders that do not punish African commerce.
(ii) It is a continental payments and settlement system, meaning that African trade is not perpetually routed through external currencies and external strangulation.
(iii) It is shared infrastructure corridors, power pools, rail links, ports, fibre networks, designed as continental arteries, gravitating towards its centre and certainly not isolated national projects that often look outwards.
(iv) It is joint procurement and industrial strategy in key sectors, medicine, organic/regenerative fertilisers, energy equipment, digital infrastructure, so that scale becomes a realiaseable tool we can wield, not a disadvantage we suffer.
(v) It is coordinated positions on debt, capital, and global financial reform so that the cost of borrowing does not remain a permanent tax on African ambition.
(Vi) It is the weaving of common threads regarding data sovereignty, technology, innovation /disruption ensuring that the current and future waves of global transformation do not repeat the old order playbook – scramble, extraction, dependency.
(vii) And crucially, it is a democratic safeguard enthused with subsidiarity, so that collective unity, ubuntu/utu in orientation, strengthens citizens, peoples and communities, across borders, rather than merely concentrating power at the top.
None of the above requires abolishing nationhood, the goal is to build continental capability as an additional layer of strength that protects states and its peoples precisely because it is not a binary choice. It is a concentric, fractal logic: local, national, regional, continental flows moving upward, downward, and circularly. And if we take ubuntu/utu seriously as our orientation, then integration is not simply institutional; it is ethical. It is the politics of interdependence designed on our terms.
So within the context of this discussion , perhaps the real question is not whether Africa is “middle” or “poor” in global classifications. Rather, the real question is whether Africa will continue to live inside systems that were not designed to reward Africa’s effort.
Nyerere’s plea was equity, not charity. Carney’s warning is coordination, not complacency. And to these ends, Africa is reminded of the terrain it finds itself in and of its imperative to respond with calm intension; that is to say to integrate to gain leverage; industrialise to gain options; cultivate cultural sovereignty to gain meaning; build political coherence to ensure Africa’s future is authored from within.
We have a clear target: to actualise AfCFTA, to deepen unity, to end the logic of the scramble that persists in new forms. The remaining question is whether we will treat unity as an event or as a discipline. If we choose the latter, Africa’s rise will not be requested. It will be inevitable.
