The Pacesetter Frontier Magazine

Tag: Africa

  • Dangote Plans Over $10bn Investment in Africa’s Power Sector

    Dangote Plans Over $10bn Investment in Africa’s Power Sector

    Precious Nwonu, Enugu

    President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has announced plans to invest more than $10bn in Africa’s power sector over the next three to four years as part of efforts to address the continent’s electricity shortage.

    Dangote disclosed this in an interview with Al Jazeera published on Monday, stressing that reliable electricity supply was essential to Africa’s economic and industrial development.

    According to the billionaire businessman, the planned investment is part of a broader strategy aimed at driving significant economic transformation across the continent.

    He said the group was considering redirecting funds from some business ventures, including a possible steel project, towards investments in electricity generation and related infrastructure.

    “We want to invest over $10 billion alone in power,” Dangote said.

    He expressed concern over the number of Africans still without access to electricity, saying more than 600 million people across the continent remain without power.

    Dangote described the situation as unacceptable and argued that expanding access to reliable electricity should be a major priority for African governments and businesses.

    “It is something that we Africans should not really allow. Over 600 million of our people to remain in darkness,” he said.

    The Dangote Group president also linked electricity supply to the ability of governments to promote economic growth and improve living standards.

    He argued that political leaders who deliver reliable electricity and other essential services would have less difficulty convincing voters of their performance during election periods.

    Dangote maintained that power remains a fundamental requirement for industrialisation, economic expansion and job creation.

    “Power is key. We will never, ever create growth without power,” he said.

    He added, “That’s why they say, power is growth.”

    The planned investment comes amid persistent electricity supply challenges across several African countries, where inadequate generation capacity and infrastructure continue to constrain industrial and economic activities.

  • Who Really Benefits From Africa’s War On Terror?

    Who Really Benefits From Africa’s War On Terror?

    By S.N.C Nwagu

    For years, Africa has fought terrorism with soldiers, budgets and foreign partnerships, and for years terrorism has survived them. Armies are deployed, emergency security budgets approved, foreign assistance received, counter-terrorism operations launched in succession. Yet from Nigeria’s northeast to the Sahel, from Somalia to parts of Central and East Africa, terrorist organisations keep demonstrating the same disturbing skill: they absorb military pressure, recruit new fighters and reinvent themselves.

    This is the question Africa has not sufficiently confronted: why does terrorism persist, and who benefits from its persistence?

    THE RELIGIOUS EXPLANATION—AND ITS LIMITS

    The conventional answer is religion. Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda affiliates and Islamic State-linked organisations invoke Islam and dress their violence in religious language. That is real, and no honest analysis pretends otherwise.

    But it is also incomplete. Millions of African Muslims reject terrorism outright. They live, trade and worship peacefully alongside Christians and adherents of African traditional religions across the continent. If religion alone produced terrorism, every country with a large Muslim population would experience it at comparable scale. None do.

    Religion supplies the ideological vocabulary of terrorism. Poverty, exclusion, weak governance, political grievance, criminal economies and the absence of state authority supply the soil it grows in. Collapsing that distinction is where Africa’s terrorism debate keeps going wrong.

    WHEN TERRORISM BECOMES AN ECONOMY

    A young person without work, education, security or hope is vulnerable to any organisation offering money, protection, identity and belonging. Poverty does not manufacture terrorists on its own, but it lowers the cost of recruiting them.

    And once an extremist organisation takes root, something more dangerous follows: terrorism becomes an economy in its own right. Fighters need financing, and they get it through kidnapping for ransom, extortion, illegal taxation, smuggling, illicit mining, trafficking and control of commercial routes. Where government authority is weak, armed groups do not merely disrupt the state — they become an alternative one, taxing communities and traders directly.

    A group may preach religion while running the books of a criminal enterprise. That is the part of the story Africa’s terrorism debate keeps skipping.

    THE BENEFICIARIES OF INSECURITY

    The question worth asking is not only what religion the terrorists profess. It is what political and economic conditions let them survive, what criminal networks sustain their operations — and, more uncomfortably, who gains when insecurity continues.

    Terrorist organisations gain obviously: money, recruits, territory, publicity, bargaining power. Criminal networks gain alongside them, since weapons trafficking, illegal mining and smuggling flourish precisely where government control is thin.

    There is a third beneficiary Africa is reluctant to name: corruption. Every prolonged security crisis demands enormous expenditure — weapons, equipment, surveillance systems, security contracts, emergency budgets, special interventions. Spending money to protect citizens is not the problem. The problem begins when weak accountability turns insecurity itself into an opportunity for private enrichment, and a war quietly becomes an industry. Once that happens, peace threatens the interests of everyone who has learned to profit from war.

    THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION

    Africa’s insecurity does not unfold in isolation. Foreign governments have legitimate security interests on the continent — and economic and geopolitical ones alongside them. Terrorism can justify military cooperation, intelligence partnerships, foreign bases and strategic engagement that might otherwise be harder to secure.

    None of this proves that foreign powers created African terrorist organisations; that claim would be simplistic and unearned. The more defensible argument is narrower: existing conflicts can be, and are, exploited by external actors for strategic advantage. External actors exploit local grievances. Local elites exploit foreign interests. Criminal organisations exploit instability. Terrorist organisations exploit poverty and weak governance. Everyone enters the same conflict carrying a different objective.

    NIGERIA’S BOKO HARAM: A CASE STUDY IN COMPLEXITY

    Nigeria’s experience with Boko Haram makes the point concrete. Its religious ideology is real, and its violence against civilians, schools, religious institutions and government targets cannot be waved away as mere economic grievance dressed up in scripture.

    But neither can the environment that let Boko Haram grow be ignored. Poverty, unemployment, poor governance, corruption and weak state presence built the vulnerabilities that extremism exploited. Military victory over its fighters was never going to be sufficient on its own — and it has not been.

    Africa can eliminate fighters and still leave behind the conditions that produce their replacements. It can destroy camps without destroying the criminal economy that finances them. It can raise military spending without strengthening the institutions that earn citizens’ trust. And it can keep describing every terrorist as a religious fanatic without asking why certain communities remain fertile ground for recruitment.

    BEYOND THE BATTLEFIELD

    The central African question is not whether terrorism is religious or economic. It is both, and neither explanation stands on its own. Religion supplies the ideology; political grievance, the motivation; economic deprivation, the vulnerability; weak governance, the opportunity; illicit markets, the financing; geopolitics, the amplification.

    This is why the fight against terrorism has to move beyond the battlefield. Africa needs security forces capable of defeating armed groups — and, just as urgently, governments capable of defeating the conditions that let those groups regenerate: employment, education, accountable government, effective justice, secure borders, transparent management of natural resources, and the disruption of terrorist financing.

    FOLLOW THE MONEY

    Above all, Africa must start following the money. When a terrorist organisation survives for years, somebody is financing it. When illegal mining continues under armed groups’ control, somebody is buying the minerals. When weapons cross borders repeatedly, somebody is supplying them. When ransom payments keep kidnapping networks in business, somebody is receiving the money. And when insecurity persists despite enormous security expenditure, somebody should be asking where that money has actually gone.

    The real question is bigger than terrorism itself: who benefits from Africa’s insecurity? Until the continent asks that question honestly — and insists on an answer — it may keep winning battles against terrorists while losing the larger war against the political and economic conditions that let terrorism survive.

    Terrorism speaks the language of religion. Its survival is sustained by economics, politics and power. That is where Africa’s next counter-terrorism conversation should begin.

  • AU Sets October 7 Launch for Africa’s New Credit Rating Agency

    AU Sets October 7 Launch for Africa’s New Credit Rating Agency

    Precious Nwonu, Enugu

     

    The African Union (AU) has officially announced that the African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) will be launched on October 7, 2026, in Port Louis, Mauritius, where the newly established institution is headquartered.

    The upcoming launch signifies a massive milestone in Africa’s ongoing campaign to fortify its financial independence and directly confront long-standing grievances regarding how the continent’s distinct economies are evaluated by dominant global credit rating firms.

    Making the formal announcement on Wednesday through its verified X account, the AU hailed AfCRA as a historic achievement for Africa’s financial autonomy.

    “For decades, skewed risk perceptions have forced African nations to pay an unfair ‘risk premium’ on global capital,” the AU stated. “The African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA), headquartered in Mauritius, is created to rewrite that narrative with context-driven credit opinions for sovereign and corporate entities.”

    In an institutional video paired with the social media announcement, the Union pointed out that African economies have historically been evaluated within a rigid global financial framework that frequently fails to accurately mirror the continent’s genuine economic realities, systemic resilience, and long-term growth potential.

    “AfCRA is our response. A bold assertion of African agency, financial sovereignty and institutional confidence,” the AU stated. “It is a powerful answer to the pessimism that too often defines perceptions of Africa.”

    The continental agency is strategically designed to offer an authentic alternative African perspective to the big three global rating conglomerates: Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Ratings, and S&P Global Ratings.

    This strategic rollout follows years of brewing frustration among African governments and monetary policymakers regarding how sovereign credit risks are evaluated and priced on the international stage.

    Nations such as Ghana and Zambia have previously argued that aggressive, repeated credit downgrades by foreign firms have directly driven up their borrowing costs and worsened their domestic debt crises.

    Furthermore, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) previously criticized Fitch Ratings over its downgrade of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), claiming that the negative assessment was rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of African financial institutions.

    Conversely, Fitch defended its methodology, asserting that its ratings strictly rely on globally consistent, uniform, and transparent criteria.

    Though AfCRA was initially slated to debut in September 2025, the rollout suffered delays. To rigorously protect its operational credibility and systemic independence, the agency will not be owned by African governments. Moving forward, the institution is anticipated to concentrate its analytical focus primarily on providing ratings for local-currency debt instruments.

    The AU concluded that the emergence of the agency serves as a clear demonstration of Africa’s capacity to construct its own self-sustaining institutions, control its own economic narrative, and exercise greater command over its economic destiny.

    The October 7 launch in Mauritius is poised to attract significant global attention as African nations collectively work to transform global perceptions of the continent’s creditworthiness and diminish the severe economic damage caused by what they view as unfair risk penalties in international capital markets.

     

  • The Sovereignty Century: Why Africa Must Build Its Own World Order

    The Sovereignty Century: Why Africa Must Build Its Own World Order

    By SNC Nwagu, FIICA, MNIIA

    For nearly eight decades, the international system has operated largely under an American-led order. From Bretton Woods and the United Nations to NATO, the dominance of the US dollar, Silicon Valley and an unrivalled naval reach, the United States has shaped global finance, security, technology and governance. Today, that order faces its most serious strategic test since the Cold War. The question for Africa is not whether American power will disappear—it will remain a dominant military, technological and economic force for years to come. The real question is whether Africa will continue as an arena for rival powers, or become a strategic actor capable of shaping its own destiny.

    The unipolar moment that followed the Soviet collapse is receding. Militarily, the United States still possesses unmatched capabilities. Yet the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, renewed instability in the Middle East and an expanding Indo-Pacific focus have exposed the rising costs and limits of sustaining global primacy on multiple fronts.

    Economically, the dollar remains the principal reserve currency, about 57 percent of global official reserves, according to the IMF early-2026 COFER data—but its share has ticked down as central banks diversify and emerging economies pursue alternative payment arrangements. BRICS+, after recent expansion, now accounts for a larger share of global GDP measured by purchasing power parity than the G7. Politically, middle powers such as India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Indonesia are exercising greater strategic autonomy and preferring interest-based partnerships over fixed alignments.

    These trends point not simply to multipolarity but to a multi-order world in which overlapping political, economic and security architectures coexist and compete.

    Three broad geopolitical groupings are emerging. The Atlantic System—led by the United States and including the EU, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and NATO allies—still dominates advanced technology, global finance and many multilateral institutions, even as internal disagreements over industrial policy, defence spending and China policy grow. The Eurasian System—centred on China and Russia—has deepened cooperation in infrastructure, energy, finance, technology and security, offering alternatives to Western arrangements. And a Strategic Middle made up of India, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, South Africa and Nigeria is asserting influence through strategic autonomy rather than permanent alignment.

    Unlike the Cold War, today’s competition is driven less by ideology and more by control of technology, supply chains, energy, critical minerals, digital infrastructure and economic resilience.

    This shifting landscape presents Africa with historic opportunities and grave risks. On the opportunity side, African states enjoy unprecedented bargaining power. China finances major infrastructure. The United States remains a key trade, investment and development partner. The EU is expanding industrial and climate partnerships. Gulf states, India, Türkiye and others are deepening commercial engagement. This plurality of partners gives African governments greater negotiating leverage than at any time since decolonisation.

    Financial diversification is another opportunity. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), backed by the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), can increase local currency settlement for intra-African trade. While the dollar will remain indispensable globally, greater use of African payment systems can lower transaction costs, conserve foreign exchange and bolster resilience.

    But the risks are real. Africa may become the principal theatre for intensified competition over critical minerals, digital infrastructure, maritime routes and political influence. Weak institutions could turn external rivalry into renewed dependency. Equally worrying is the persistent model of resource extraction without industrial transformation: exporting raw materials while importing high-value manufactured goods will keep African economies structurally subordinate.

    Africa’s appropriate response is neither isolation nor passive alignment. It is Active Non-Alignment: engage all major powers where interests align, attach to none permanently, and deliberately build internal capacity across strategic sectors. Yet doctrine without execution is empty rhetoric. Strategic autonomy must be translated into concrete policy across five pillars for 2035.

    1. Economic sovereignty as industrial policy. Governments should set measurable industrialisation targets for local processing of critical minerals, agro-processing and manufacturing. AfCFTA must be used to build regional value chains, underpinned by reliable energy, transport infrastructure and investment in productive capacity.

    2. Financial sovereignty through integration. Fast-track AfCFTA implementation and wider PAPSS adoption. Central banks should expand local currency settlement arrangements, strengthen regional financial institutions and diversify reserve management.

    3. Security sovereignty with institutional finance. The African Union and Regional Economic Communities should create sustainable, predictable funding for peace and security. The African Standby Force must become fully operational with interoperable capabilities and rapid deployment capacity.

    4. Digital and data sovereignty as strategic infrastructure. African governments should jointly invest in sovereign cloud infrastructure, regional data centres, semiconductor capabilities where feasible, cybersecurity and African AI research. Public data must be governed by robust African legal and regulatory frameworks.

    5. Diplomatic sovereignty through coordination. Africa should negotiate common positions on trade, climate, technology, finance and global governance while pressing for equitable representation, including permanent African seats on a reformed United Nations Security Council.

    The American-led order has contributed to trade, growth, public health cooperation and institutional stability, but it also reflected unequal power relationships in which African priorities were often secondary. The emerging order will not automatically be fairer; it will intensify competition for African markets, minerals, technology and influence. Africa’s response must therefore be deliberate, coordinated and institutionally grounded.

    The objective should not be to swap one external dominance for another. It is to build the institutional, economic, technological and security capacities that make strategic dependence optional rather than inevitable. The twenty-first century will favour regions that can produce, process, power, protect, innovate and govern themselves.

    If the twentieth century was the century of political independence, the twenty-first must be the century of strategic sovereignty. The flag was raised in the 1960s. The responsibility now is to build the capacity that gives it meaning. Our goal is to end hegemony for Africa. By 2035, Africa must be the fourth pole in a four-pole world: US, China, EU, Africa.

    Africa’s freedom is now or never.

  • Trump, House Negroes, and the Tragedy of African Leadership

    Trump, House Negroes, and the Tragedy of African Leadership

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    Two weeks ago, Joseph Boakai, the Octogenarian President of Liberia, stepped into the White House, the symbolic heart of American power, to meet Donald Trump who had literally summoned five African presidents from Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal to a landmark summit on trade, investment and security. It was supposed to be moments of diplomacy in which sovereigns usually stand together as equals, even if power asymmetry hung visibly in the air; and in which the business of bilateral relations is conducted with utmost civility and mutual respect. President Donald Trump forgot all of this, carrying himself with a certain abrasiveness that offends sensibilities and imperils the dignity of the state he represents, and turning the summit into a Q & A session. A job interview, to put it mildly. By displaying such abrasiveness, President Trump simply lent credence to George Mason’s enduring observation: “A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state”. When the conduct of its leader falls beneath the threshold of civility, a nation begins to mirror that coarseness, blurring the lines between the individual and the institutional. The office loses its aura, and the republic begins to speak in the crude accent of its commander-in-chief. But, what unfolded before television cameras was a scene more telling than any press release could muster. A scene that peeled back the layers of old colonial wounds, racism, ignorance, and above all, the enduring failure of African leadership.

    So, what really happened?

    This is what happened. During the USA-Liberia bilateral meeting, President Donald Trump caught sight of the cameras and turned toward the Liberian President and offered what he perhaps thought was a compliment. “Such good English. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?” he quipped, half in jest, fully in condescension. And how did the Liberian President respond? He nodded with the eagerness of a schoolboy desperate for approval. With the meekness of one unsure of his worth. With the servility of the “House Negro” Malcolm X once warned us about. “Yes Sir, from Liberia,” he said, bowing as though he stood in front of a master, not a counterpart or an equal. Even before the stage was set and the cameras began to roll, the youthful President of Senegal was also heard, almost breathlessly, begging President Trump to consider building one of his famed golf courses on Senegalese soil. It was a scene both painful and revealing: a sovereign leader reducing his office to the role of a supplicant in pursuit of the ephemeral. One could almost hear the echo of the colonial plea of yore. Moments like this confirm an unsettling truth that some countries do, indeed, have his kind: leaders who confuse servility for diplomacy, who mistake flattery for statecraft, and who forget that leadership is not about seeking favour, but about earning respect.

    There is, without doubt, more to be said about President Diomaye Faye. As a youthful politician who rode the cresting waves of youth agitation and popular discontent to ascend the Senegalese presidency, one would have hoped that his vision for investment would be shaped by both discernment and duty. His very mandate came from the restless streets and from young men and women demanding jobs, dignity, and a future. That he would, in a rare bilateral moment, use the occasion to plead for a golf course is not only disappointing but telling. Of all the investments he could have championed, including those that build factories, power tech hubs, fund vocational training, or stimulate agro-industrial growth, he chose leisure over labour, turf over tools. Golf is not the future the Senegalese youth marched for. It is difficult not to read his request as symbolic: an appeal not for sustainable development, but for prestige cloaked in links and fairways, sand traps and putting greens. A vision of Senegal where the young and unemployed citizens who imagined a different dawn would become caddies and buggy drivers under the blazing Sahelian sun, ferrying the clubs of foreign tourists is certainly not the vision the youths surrendered their lives for. But, a country that fought for change cannot be sustained by spectacle. Leadership, especially one born of youthful struggle, must rise above the temptation of ornamental investments. The real green Senegal needs isn’t manicured fairways, it’s fertile economic opportunity.

    Regardless, the Trump-Boakai moment captured everything that is wrong with African leadership in the 21st century. Everything that remains broken about post-colonial consciousness. And everything that still stinks in the corridors of foreign diplomacy.

    Here, I return to the question itself.

    “Such good English…”

    Trump’s statement, in its full ignorance, reveals something deeply rooted in the Western psyche. The inability, or refusal, to accept African sophistication unless it is filtered through European-American norms. English fluency becomes an achievement for an African, not a basic civic attribute. Like a dog that has learned to walk on two legs, the African is congratulated not for being intelligent or articulate; but for being surprisingly so. Here is the subtle bigotry that colonialism taught the West to internalise: that Africans are children of Babel, speaking in tongues and unfit for civil discourse, unless trained. The notion that any elegance, eloquence, or sophistication must be the result of exposure to Western values. Never innate. Never cultural. Never home-grown.

    Yet, even more galling than Trump’s remark was the Liberian President’s response. He should have been offended, or at least, diplomatically assertive. He should have reminded Trump that Liberia is an English-speaking country founded by freed African-American slaves. That its Constitution and institutions bear American fingerprints. That the flag of Liberia waves with a single white star against stripes drawn from the U.S. flag. That speaking English in Liberia is as natural as breathing.

    But, no. Boakai bowed. In that bow, he betrayed Africans. In that nod, he shrunk his office. He forgot the weight of the presidency. He forgot the millions of Liberians whose dignity he represents. And he forgot, most importantly, that African leaders must now speak not only as citizens of their nations, but as the voice of a continent long misrepresented and misunderstood. President Boakai became the embodiment of the “House Negro” Malcolm X described in his fiery speeches. Malcolm’s House Negro metaphor is what it is: the “House Negro” who lives in the master’s house. He eats the master’s leftovers. He wears the master’s clothes. And when the master falls sick, he asks, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” He loves the master more than he loves himself. That was the image that the Liberian President evoked with his reply. Not a partner. Not equal. Not a leader. But a grateful servant in the White Man’s house.

    This isn’t merely about one President and one moment. It is about a pattern. A chronic crisis of leadership in Africa. A ridiculous helplessness passed down through generations of post-independence elites who still bow to foreign powers. Our leaders seek validation, not partnership. They smile too quickly, nod too eagerly, and apologise when they should assert. They crave photo-ops with Western presidents more than they pursue meaningful outcomes for their people. The handshake becomes more valuable than trade deals. The state dinner more important than school funding. It is the politics of inferiority. Wrapped in Western suits, our leaders walk into foreign capitals unsure whether they belong. And because they do not believe in their own equality, neither do their hosts. The tragedy is that Liberia, of all countries, should have known better. Liberia’s founding is an anomaly in African history. Established by the American Colonisation Society in the 19th century for freed Black slaves, Liberia has always been tethered to the United States. Its capital, Monrovia, is named after a U.S. president. Its political and legal systems mirror those of the U.S. If any country should not be asked, “Where did you learn to speak English?”, it is Liberia.

    So, the ignorance of Trump was not only an insult, it was a statement of just how forgotten Africa remains in the imagination of the Western world. Even those countries with deep historical ties are reduced to caricature of the linguistically exotic. And unfortunately, too often, their leaders reinforce that caricature.

    How different things could be. What if the President had smiled and responded, “Mr. President, Liberia was founded by African-Americans. English is the language of our Constitution. Your nation helped shape our republic. So, I should be asking you, where did you learn to speak so beautifully?” That would have turned the moment into dignity. Into assertion. Into a quiet reminder that African nations are not guests in world affairs. They are equals.

    Instead, something else came to the limelight: the hollowness of diplomacy when it is not backed by self-respect. The collapse of historical memory. A leader who, in trying to please, diminished the office he holds. And Africans were thus reminded again that the worst of colonialism isn’t in the past. It lives on, in minds, in gestures, in words unspoken, and bows uncalled for. Africa doesn’t need leaders who seek to be liked. It needs leaders who know history. Leaders who speak with pride. Leaders who challenge ignorance with quiet firmness. Leaders who carry the continent on their shoulders when they step into global arenas.

    The time for doffing hats and nodding like the agama lizard is over. It is time for standing tall. For reclaiming the narratives. For teaching even the most powerful that African states are not curiosities. They are nations. With languages, with histories, with pride.

    If African Presidents forget that, then the shame isn’t Trump’s alone.

    It is ours, as Africans.

    Leaders like Boakai and Diomaye Faye represent Africa. And Africans must demand better from them.

  • Africa Is a Cemetery for Africans

    Africa Is a Cemetery for Africans

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    The phrase, “Africa is a cemetery for Africans,” falsely credited to Vladimir Putin, has long taken a meaning that goes beyond the dubiety of its source. But, whoever couched it and pushed it into the virtual space, acquiring its virality in the process, must have seen further than most of us. It isn’t just a phrase about the continent’s history of slavery, war, famine and the brutality of tyrannical rulers. It isn’t even just about the millions who die needlessly from hunger or curable diseases. It is, more sharply, a commentary on the kind of men who govern the continent. Men who live off their people and die in lands far away from them. Men who snatch the people’s hope, supplanting it with indignity, and burying their future.

    To call Africa a cemetery is to point fingers at the power-holders who turn statehouses into slaughterhouses. At men who transform democracy into dictatorship, and public trust into private holdings. It is to hold the mirror up to the likes of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who ruled the Central African Republic like a butcher, crowned himself emperor in a lavish ceremony modelled after Napoleon, then died quietly in exile. Or Paul Biya of Cameroon, who has ruled from Geneva’s five-star hotels longer than from his country’s capital in Yaoundé. Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Edgar Lungu of Zambia, and our own Umaru Yar’Adua and Muhammadu Buhari. These men, whose names merely make up one half of the cycle of rulers, ran their countries into the ground and found their final comforts abroad. And the other half of the cycle is squared by current rulers who not only have ruined what is left and are making weekly and monthly detours to foreign lands as medical tourists. President Tinubu are you there?

    It is a tragedy. A continent that raised these men must now bury them in soils they once betrayed. They left in luxury. They returned in caskets. In many ways, these rulers are a symbol of something far more enduring and sinister. They represent a political culture that rewards oppression and celebrates impunity. In their hands, power isn’t a tool for service, it is an instrument of self-preservation. Here, governance becomes nothing more than the extraction of value from the state to feed a narrow circle of cronies. The people? Forgotten. Their suffering? Just background noise to the wailing of sirens and the clinking of champagne glasses at state dinners.

    The facts have been consistently laid bare in the public space. Let’s recall a few here. African presidents are some of the most travelled in the world. Not for diplomatic shuttles; but for healthcare. They build no functioning hospitals at home, but they travel to London, Paris, Berlin and Dubai for treatment. They abandon their people in crowded and understaffed clinics, but they fly first-class overseas to seek the best medical attention money can buy. And when their bodies fail them, as all bodies must, they breathe their last far from the people they ruled. Far from the streets they never fixed. Far from the schools they underfunded. Far from the hospitals they refused to equip.

    What else can one call it but medical tourism, the grim betrayal dressed as privilege? The brutal irony lies in this: men who, in life, denied their citizens the dignity of basic healthcare, now claim in death the full embrace of global medical excellence. It is a perverse reward system, where rulers who left their nations gasping for breath are themselves intubated in sterile wards abroad. Since the days of Bokassa, Banda, and Nyerere, whose memories now live mostly in footnotes and faded eulogies, a new figure has emerged to personify this legacy of abandonment. Buhari. His memory stands today as the emblem of that cold, clinical disregard. He will forever remain the poster child of the paradox: a ruler absent from his people in sickness, yet ever-present in their sufferings. In his eight years in power, he spent over 200 days in London receiving medical treatment. No one knew the nature of his ailment. No one knew the cost. He never spoke of it. But the planes flew, and the presidential entourage never grew smaller. At home, doctors were going,  coming, and going on strikes – in that endless cycle of going. Patients were dying. Hospitals were gasping for life support. But the president was always in the UK, wrapped in the quiet of Harley Street clinics. When he eventually left office, he slipped out of the country again, reportedly for medical treatment. He died there. In a land not his.

    What kind of man does that? What kind of ruler spends more time receiving treatment abroad than fixing what’s broken at home?

    This is the paradox: they die abroad. But they are always buried here. They want our earth, but not our air. Our soil, but not our service. They want the glory of being mourned by the people they abandoned. State burials, public holidays, military salutes and obsequious rituals designed to lend dignity to the undignified. Even in death, they take from the people. But, come to think about it, which country buries its own betrayal with such fanfare? Nigeria. There’s a point to note just as well about a good number of these rulers who die nameless deaths in luxurious suites abroad. Their final breaths are heard not by the nurses in their own public hospitals, but by foreigners whose names their citizens will never know. Then, after death, the surreal drama begins: the flag-draped coffins, the sorrowful national broadcasts, the endless condolence registers. The body returns. But the damage remains.

    The story always morphs into a drama that repeats itself. Over and over. New rulers emerge, promising change. Promising health reforms. Promising to stay at home. But in time, the lure of the nanny-state; the state that pampers and provides for their every private need draws them in. They forget the people. They remember only their pleasures. Governance in Africa, to these men, is not duty. It is privilege. The State becomes the nursemaid. It feeds them, bathes them, tucks them into presidential suites, and sends their children abroad to elite schools. It handles their birthdays and bankrolls their funerals. Even in retirement, the State remains their slave.

    This is what all Africans must call out. This nannyhood. This warped conception of public office as a private inheritance. This sucking of the breast of the nation until it runs dry. There is no nobility in dying abroad, far from the people you led. No honour in returning as a cargo on a presidential jet. No dignity in a life that denied others theirs. Yet, how many more must we watch go this route? How many more African leaders will fail to understand that leadership is not about luxury? That power is not about self-protection?

    Africans know what good governance looks like. They see it in countries that invest in their people, in their institutions, in their futures. They see it in leaders who die among their people, not above them. But Africa has been denied this reality for too long. Too many of its rulers rule like monarchs and flee like fugitives. Their names decorate airport lounges and stadiums. But their legacies rot in the ruins they left behind.

    Africa needs a new kind of leadership. One that sees the presidency not as an escape, but as a service. One that understands that a hospital bed in Lagos is worth more than a thousand hospital visits to London. That education for all is better than scholarships for the few. That the real measure of leadership is not in miles travelled, but lives touched. Until then, the cemetery metaphor remains. And the burials will continue. Not just of bodies. But of dreams. Africa deserves more than being the final resting place for men who ruined it. Africa deserves leaders who will live for her, suffer for her, and if they must, die with it. Not in exile. Not in a foreign suite. But on the soil they swore to serve.

    That, perhaps, is how Africa must escape the cemetery.

  • Why Nigeria Is Always Economically Behind

    Why Nigeria Is Always Economically Behind

    By Dr. Samson Abanni

    Let me tell you a story from the long ago—around 1400—when the world’s most advanced technology wasn’t smartphones or artificial intelligence, but something far simpler: turning raw wool into finished cloth. This was the quantum science of its day.

    England was the world’s largest producer of raw wool, but not a single person in all of England had mastered transforming that wool into the fine textiles that commanded premium prices across Europe. Just like modern African countries that export cocoa beans, coffee, and crude oil, England was trapped as a raw material supplier while other nations captured the lion’s share of value.

    The English king decided enough was enough. He crafted an irresistible immigration package: tax breaks, free land, guaranteed markets, and citizenship to any skilled textile worker willing to relocate and teach their craft to English apprentices.

    The strategy worked. Skilled artisans from Flanders, Italy, and other textile centers packed their tools and headed to England. Within a generation, English workshops were humming, local workers had mastered the technology, and the domestic market was flourishing.
    Phase two was even more audacious. Once local production could meet domestic demand, they banned raw wool exports and prohibited imports of finished woolen goods. European competitors, suddenly cut off from their primary raw material source, found themselves forced to import expensive finished products from England—the very country they had previously supplied. This single strategic shift helped launch England toward economic dominance.

    I shared this hoping you would ask, why can’t we copy this playbook ?

    The answer isn’t corruption—though that certainly a good part—but something far more structural and sinister.

    THE TAX COLLECTION TRAP

    Poor countries struggle desperately to collect taxes. Our tax collection system is rudimentary, our property and citizens registration system is poor. Just imagine tax collectors going door-to-door in your neighborhood—we’d have more murders than revenue! This forces African governments to rely on the easiest taxes to collect: tariffs and excise duties at ports and airports. Unless the goods you’re importing are spiritual, you can’t avoid these taxes. Last year, half of our government revenue came from excise duties—that’s too high by global standards. Even if our personal income tax is lower we will get much more revenue from there , if we can just find a way to collect it from the millions in the informal sector.

    A small increase in tariffs could substantially boost government income while encouraging local production. But here’s the catch: one of the key conditions attached to IMF and World Bank loans is that borrowing countries cannot raise tariffs.

    Let’s use the Cocoa industry as a poster child.

    Last year, Nigeria made about N2 trillion from selling raw cocoa beans. But countries that export raw cocoa capture only 10% of the final value. The remaining 90% goes to those who add value — processing, manufacturing, branding, and marketing. If we processed our own cocoa, that N2 trillion could become N20 trillion or more.
    When you export raw cocoa to Europe, it enters duty-free. But if you dare to add even the smallest bit of value—grinding those beans into powder—Europe slaps a 7% tariff on your product. Process it further into chocolate? Forget it. This isn’t accidental; it’s designed to force producer countries to only sell raw materials.

    Meanwhile, Mars chocolate alone earned $50 billion in 2024. That’s more than the GDP of many African nations, built largely on cocoa beans purchased at artificially suppressed prices from African farmers.

    THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PRISON

    Try to make chocolate in Africa for export to Europe and you’ll discover a maze of “health and safety standards” designed more to exclude us, and the intellectual property needed for advanced manufacturing is locked away in Western patents.

    England mastered woolen goods by learning from Flemish artisans. They later “stole” printing technology from India and tea cultivation from China. The United States built its textile industry by stealing spinning tec from England. Taiwan’s semiconductor industry began with technology “acquired” from IBM.

    If we were free to tinker, a firm in Nigeria can try to modify OpeanAi models for example, and sell it here, so that the subscription I pay monthly to the US would stay here in our economy to create jobs. It’s through it that England mastered wollen goods, stole printing of colour tech from India and tea production from China.

    The US stole IP of cotton spinning tech from England. Taiwan stole ICs tech from IBM etc. In their days these were cutting edge tech. This was stopped when the World Trade Organization (WTO) was born. You cannot learn these very advanced stuffs without stealing some part, you just can’t. This is why China is still doing so today. Anybody who is anybody today stole this way, Japan inclusive.

    THE WTO PARADOX

    The WTO was supposedly created to encourage free trade and level the playing field between nations. In reality, its structure systematically favors already-developed economies. The rules only appear neutral on paper.

    Advanced goods that African countries import are priced astronomically high, allowing developed nations to exchange a few manufactured products for vast quantities of our raw materials, which are artificially priced low through market manipulation. Meanwhile, Western governments provide subsidies to their citizens, making these expensive goods affordable domestically while maintaining high export prices.

    When African governments want to borrow money to make the infrastructure investments necessary for development, IMF loans come with caps on the budget deficits countries can operate but the US can borrow as they like. This effectively prevents the kind of massive public investment that every developed nation used during their industrialization phase.

    THE GOLDEN WINDOW THAT CLOSED

    Our best chance was probably between 1960 and 1990 — a period in world history when any country with a well-intentioned government could realistically break free from underdevelopment, regardless of their starting point. Many economists argue this was because the economic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union made both superpowers generous with development aid and technical assistance as they competed for influence.

    Once the USSR collapsed and was dismantled, the world became fundamentally different. The incentive for the West to help other nations develop diminished. Countries that escaped poverty—Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan—all made their breakthroughs during this golden window.

    Meanwhile, we were exchanging military coups like playing cards, with leaders competing to see who could cart the most wealth abroad. And unfortunately, this mentality hasn’t fundamentally changed.

    THE PATH FORWARD

    The situation is more challenging now. But not impossible. It would require sacrifices and strategic thinking on a scale that we, as a people, have historically been reluctant to make.
    It would require governments willing to risk aid cuts and loan restrictions to protect domestic industries. It would require citizens willing to pay higher prices for locally-made goods during the transition period. It would require leaders who think in decades rather than election cycles.

    Most critically, it would require recognizing that the current global economic system isn’t a natural phenomenon—it’s carefully designed to perpetuate existing hierarchies.

    The question is whether we can find our own path in a much more constrained world, knowing that every step forward will be met with resistance from those who benefit from the current system.

    The technology that could transform Africa exists. The resources certainly exist. What’s missing is the collective will to pay the price of economic sovereignty—a price that, ironically, gets higher with each passing year of inaction.

    Abanni is a Medical Doctor and Member of the Board of Editors of Pacesetter Frontier Magazine.