Replacing Western imperialism with that of Moscow or Beijing is not liberation — it is a new bondage. True Pan-Africanism demands something far more ambitious.
By Oumarou Sanou
A new orthodoxy is spreading across the continent, seductive in its language, dangerous in its implications. To be accepted into the growing club of self-appointed Pan-Africanists today, it appears one needs only to do two things: express fierce hatred for the West, and then faithfully echo the talking points of Moscow or Beijing. The louder the anti-Western rhetoric, the purer the credentials. This is not Pan-Africanism. It is a different form of servitude dressed in Kente cloth.
Across social media and in certain political circles, an emerging disinformation architecture — both overt and covert — is actively marketing to African youths the idea that genuine African liberation means substituting Washington for Moscow, Brussels for Beijing, and Tel Aviv for Tehran. These are false choices. They represent not independence of thought, but the outsourcing of African destiny to a different set of foreign masters. Africa should be neither the East’s foothold nor the West’s backyard. It should be its own.
The Jailhouse of False Pan-Africanism
The Pan-Africanism being peddled today by certain military juntas and their ideological enablers is, at its core, a grand jail — one ruled by dictators who have traded democratic legitimacy for foreign patronage. When leaders in the Sahel claim to speak in the name of African sovereignty while their survival depends on Wagner Group mercenaries and Kremlin goodwill, the contradiction is breathtaking. Sovereignty of a country is impossible without sovereignty of its people — and that means rule of law, democratic governance, and the protection of individual rights. A regime that suppresses its own citizens while railing against foreign imperialism is not an emancipator. It is an oppressor with a better publicist.
There is another telling symptom of this counterfeit Pan-Africanism: the curious hierarchy of suffering it enforces. Across the continent, passionate debates rage about the conflict in the Middle East, with Africans taking heated sides over Gaza and Tel Aviv. Yet the carnage in Sudan, the horror in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the humanitarian catastrophe in Ethiopia — these receive a fraction of the same outrage. Why should the Russia-Ukraine war command more African attention than the conflicts consuming the Great Lakes or the Sahel? Pan-Africanism that ignores African suffering in favour of globally fashionable causes is not Pan-Africanism at all. It is geopolitical ventriloquism.
The Future Cannot Wait for Yesterday’s Arguments
We are living in the age of artificial intelligence, robotics, and commercial space exploration. SpaceX is planning crewed missions to Mars. The global economy is being reorganised by technologies that did not exist a generation ago. Against this backdrop, a handful of military dictators are attempting to justify their regimes by recycling the legitimate but exhausted combat of the 1950s and 1960s. The anti-colonial struggle was necessary and noble. But the world has moved on, and Africa cannot afford to remain imprisoned by historical resentments when the future is being built without it.
Consider the lesson of post-war Europe. France and Germany — nations that twice in a single century sent millions of each other’s sons to die — chose to build a common future rather than nurse their wounds. That decision birthed the most ambitious peace project in modern history and made both nations wealthier and more powerful than they had ever been through conflict. Africa’s intra-continental rivalries, its colonial-era borders, and its historical grievances are real. But focusing on past resentments is not a development strategy. It is an abdication of leadership.
What Real Pan-Africanism Demands
Authentic Pan-Africanism is not an ideology of grievance. It is a programme of action. It is not about which foreign power Africa genuflects before; it is about building a continent capable of meeting its people’s aspirations on its own terms. Half a century ago, South Korea and Singapore were poorer than many African countries. Today, they are among the world’s most dynamic economies. The difference was not the absence of foreign interference — both nations had plenty of that. The difference was the deliberate, coordinated, long-term investment in their people, their institutions, and their infrastructure.
Real Pan-Africanism means building world-class infrastructure that drives intra-African trade and regional integration. It means developing local industries beyond the export of raw materials — a transformation Benin has begun pursuing with quiet ambition, and one that the Dangote Oil Refinery represents at a continental scale. It means attracting international capital on Africa’s own terms, as Côte d’Ivoire has done with notable success. It means building financial and economic hubs that keep African wealth circulating within the continent — the Eko Atlantic project in Lagos, designed to compete with Dubai and serve as a gateway for the whole of West Africa, is precisely the kind of bold, practical vision that genuine Pan-Africanism should celebrate.
It means investing in education and building connected middle classes — linked by common interests, shared values, and mutual prosperity — in the same way European integration was underpinned not just by treaties between governments but by the entanglement of peoples. It means coordinating African nations to engage the world from a position of strength, balancing the influence of competing great powers rather than becoming the client of any one of them. Nigeria’s leadership in developing the Lekki Deep Sea Port is one example of how African infrastructure ambition can simultaneously reshape trade patterns and bolster continental confidence.
Africa’s Values, Africa’s Voice
Pan-Africanism must also defend what is distinctly African. This continent has values worth preserving and exporting: the centrality of family, the ethic of communal responsibility, and the dignity inherent in every human life. These are not primitive sentiments to be overcome on the road to modernity. They are civilisational assets. As parts of the Western world grapple with social fragmentation, declining birth rates, and the erosion of intergenerational bonds, Africa has something to offer the world — not as a supplicant, but as a contributor to global civilisation. Pan-Africanism, properly understood, is also a cultural mission.
None of this requires hostility to the international rules-based order. Pan-Africanism is not anti-Western; it is pro-African. When the international community insists that rules must be respected, African Pan-Africanists can and should agree — because a rules-based world is one in which a stronger Africa can compete and thrive. What Africa rightly resists is not engagement with the world, but subordination to it.
The measure of Pan-Africanism is not the fervour of its anti-Western sentiment. It is the quality of life it delivers to the man in Kano or Bamako, the woman in Kinshasa or Harare, the child in Kampala or Khartoum. It is a continent where every person can get a genuine chance at a better life, surrounded by family, governed by law, and empowered by education. That is the Pan-Africanism worth fighting for. Everything else is noise.
Oumarou Sanou is a social critic, Pan-African observer and researcher focusing on governance, security, and political transitions in the Sahel. He writes on geopolitics, regional stability, and African leadership dynamics. Contact: sanououmarou386@gmail.com