Challenges to the Creation of the Future Africans Wish to See

There are two stories/serious jokes I tell young people about the collective challenge that Africa, the continent and the diaspora, face: The truism that Africans do not own and rule Africa.

Story from Uganda

A Ugandan was convinced that the only way to develop Uganda was to bring the British back. He ran for office and campaigned furiously for what he called a noble idea. Only two Ugandans voted for him. Upon confronting his wife (who did not vote for him) to understand why this noble idea was rejected his wife told him: “You are an idiot. The British never left.”

Story from Mexico

The President called for a televised speech to all his fellow citizens. He had told his fellow citizens that his message would be short and that it will be about good news and bad news. With an anxious nation glued to TVs the President said he had good news and bad news. The good news was that all the country’s foreign debts had been forgiven with immediate effect. He then told his fellow citizens that with immediate effect they did not own the country and that they all, including himself, had 36 hours to leave Mexico. That was the bad news.

Africa’s aspirations are not abstract. They are about our lives and our deaths. They are fundamentally about our freedom from occupation, oppression, and exploitation by foreign interests. I believe we all know we were colonized, occupied, oppressed, brutalized, discriminated against, our lands stolen, our freedoms denied, our resources stolen, and exploited. None of us can argue that this situation has changed.

History records we resisted foreign occupation, exploitation, and oppression, and got our independence back. People may argue about the nature of independence but the act of independence after resisting exploitation, oppression, discrimination, and in some countries, by armed resistance, and for many decades, must be called a revolution. That is what C.L.R. James called the Ghanaian independence in 1957. We must accept that fact as we now discuss how we have continued to be occupied, exploited and oppressed. Our major aspiration should be to glorify our resistance to foreign domination, exploitation, and oppression, the revolution against it, and that we have not given up the resistance. For Kenyans it is the reality of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o prophecy that Mau Mau (The Land and Freedom Army) is Coming Back. If Mau Mau comes back, have we learned the lessons and limitations of that struggle?

What Africa, and its diaspora has to do

We must heed the solutions proposed by our intellectuals and political leaders after independence such as Nyerere, Nkrumah, Sankara, Gaddafi, Amilcar Cabral, Lumumba, and others. They all urged that Africa must unite and safeguard its lands, resources, and freedom. We must read our African (Africa and Global) intellectuals who have written about our struggles for independence and how we must resist recolonization. There are many women and men who I can name, but for now I will name a few: Nawal El Saddawi, Micere Mugo, Angela Davis, Winnie Mandela, Cheikh Anta Diop, Issa Shivji, Karim Hirji, Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Dan Nabudere, Yash Tandon, Horace Campbell, and others.

Africa needs, and urgently, an alternative political leadership. We should not be scared by history that records that whenever we had such leadership it was either killed or compromised. We need a leadership that is at a minimum anti-imperialist and anti-comprador. Compradors are the African leadership that has become the running dogs for foreign interests. We need a leadership that runs to its people’s protection when given orders by these foreign interests. Africa can only be liberated by its people. This fact is recorded by our history.

Africa must have a leadership that understands the world we live in. To understand the world or planet we live in requires a thorough grasp of who rules the planet and how they do it. After WWII America emerged as a major world power in terms of its military, finances, resources, its currency, and its domination. Samir Amin has written about the Imperialism of the Triad (US, Europe, and Japan) that is headed by the US. Militarily, we all know that NATO is a military arm of the American Empire. We know who calls the shots in the United Nations (UN) and in the UN Security Council. Scholars talk of a Unipolar world on this basis. The American empire is known for its historical brutality, its white supremacist policies, its domination, occupation, and exploitation. It is an Empire that has never allowed Mother Earth to cool because of its wars and bombings. One can trace this from the Bended Knee (1899-) to Chile, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and now Gaza. Countries in both Latin and South America, Asia, and Africa know this history very well.

We know that the Soviet Union grew as a global power after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and fought in WWII for its survival but the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989. The reasons for its collapse have been the subject of debate by revolutionaries of the world. And the ensuing debate has been whether the revolutionary potential of socialism collapsed as well in that process. This debate is rich and has not found a consensus but it continues. Alternative African leadership must engage this debate.

There were also the Chinese Revolution in 1949, the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the Vietnamese Revolution in 1975. We also remember the Bandung Conference of 1955 that gave birth to a non-aligned movement of African and Asian countries. The key nations in Bandung were China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Burma and Vietnam. We now have since 2009 BRICS, namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. In the last convening of BRICS in 2025, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iran, Indonesia, and Ethiopia attended. Except for Indonesia the rest had become members in 2024.

China’s pivotal position in the world, economically, socially, ideologically, and politically has also generated debates and questions critical to the state of the planet: Is China still in the orbit of neoliberalism? Is China socialist or social imperialist? Will China liberate Global South from Global North or will it occupy, oppress, and exploit Global South? Will there be another Berlin Conference on Africa that will include China? These debates continue and the Chinese scholars and revolutionaries are involved in them. African scholars such Horace Campbell and Kwesi Kwaa Prah, among others have been involved in these debates, too.

Will there be a World War III and will Africa survive such a war? Alternative African leadership must engage this question. In Kenya, it has been argued that the trade pact between Kenya and US is about a cyber war between China and the US. There is much writing about the current hot and cold wars that are happening in the world. Africa’s response as reflected in its reaction to South Africa’s petition to the International Court of Justice on the genocide in Gaza tells a lot about how compromised and dominated by foreign interests the African leadership is. We need to be clear that any WWIII will be about our land, resources, and freedom. Such war will either be about our recolonization or our freedom. 

There is no doubt the dream of Africa’s revolution is not dead. The youth of Africa must bring this dream to a reality. We have had too many nightmares caused by external forces. Our resistance must continue. The youth of Africa must shun the politics of division. They must build solidarities among themselves and others in the Global South. They must build solidarities with the youth of the Global North.

There will be no world revolution unless the people of the Global North and the Global South have the consciousness that they have the same enemy, the enemy of humanity.

People have asked me what kind of planet I wish to see. It is a planet that is just, free, peaceful, humane, healthy, non-militaristic, non-racist, non-eugenist, non-homophobic, gender just, non-sexist, non-patriarchal, non-nationalist, ecologically safe, equitable, sexually liberated, and prosperous. I have always added that such a planet has to historicize, interrogate, and problematize the lessons we learn from countries that have sought to build socialist societies, the lessons we can learn from such experiences, as we reach a consensus on which authentic pro-people socialist paradigm will ultimately liberate the planet. This is the intellectual, ideological, and political challenge of our times.

* Upon the request of the Kenyan Youth eager to know about the state of the planet, and Africa and Kenya in it, I delivered this speech in the Boardroom of Fairview Hotel in Nairobi, on 27 February 2024. 

Willy Mutunga was Chief Justice & President of the Supreme Court, Kenya, 2011-2016; and since 2021 he has been Adjunct Professor in Public Law, Kabarak University Law School in Nakuru, Kenya.