It’s 2025, but Africans are still in chains — Why?

Moussa Ibrahim

The past few days have offered a brutal snapshot of Africa’s unresolved crisis.

In Burkina Faso, militants from Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), affiliated with Al-Qaeda, overran the Diapaga military base in the east, seizing most of the city and exposing the precarious state of security in the Sahel.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the M23 rebel armed group, which has been fighting the government since the beginning of the year, tightens its grip on Goma, leading to vulnerable political conditions in which stolen minerals are funnelled to foreign markets. In the diplomatic arena, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was treated with disrespect in the United States when President Donald Trump ambushed him with a crude, racist presentation about so-called “white genocide” using footage falsely attributed to South Africa. Kenya now fears economic chaos as the US threatens to revoke the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade deal, a reminder that many African economies are still at the mercy of external powers.

This is the continent’s daily reality.

Behind the headlines lie patterns of systemic violence, extraction and manipulation.

Be it Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al-Shabaab in Somalia or foreign security firms in Mozambique, the message is the same: Africa’s enemies are armed not only with bullets but also with contracts, media narratives and economic traps.

The “post-colonial” moment has long expired — what remains is a managed crisis, policed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and militarised by AFRICOM.

And yet, in the middle of this, we are told to celebrate. May 25 is Africa Day — the anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) (now the African Union) in 1963. Every year, flags are raised, speeches are delivered and African leaders sing songs of unity. But let us ask the uncomfortable question: What exactly are we celebrating?

When Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Julius Nyerere, Ahmed Sekou Toure and Haile Selassie came together to form the OAU, their aim was not to build bureaucracies.

It was to liberate the continent — militarily, economically, culturally and ideologically.

They envisioned a single army, a common currency, a unified foreign policy and a break from Western dependency.

Nkrumah famously said: “Africa must unite or perish.”

Today, we see more perishing than unity.

Sixty-two years later, Africa Day has been reduced to a symbolic spectacle — flags without force, drums without direction. We watch parades while our lands are auctioned. We hear Pan-African slogans while our central banks answer to Paris. We commemorate independence while 14 African countries still use a currency created by their former coloniser — the CFA franc, a tool of economic control whose name itself means ‘Financial Cooperation in Africa’ — but cooperation for whom?

Over 25 African countries are either in or near debt default. Collectively, the continent owes over US$650 billion to external creditors.

Nigeria spends substantial sums of its revenue servicing debt. Ghana, once called a rising star, is back at the IMF for the 17th time.

In Zambia, debt repayments have choked investment in hospitals and education.

This is not mismanagement — it is engineered subservience. The so-called development partners make billions while entire generations are sacrificed to the gods of fiscal discipline. Meanwhile, Africa’s material wealth continues to flow outwards. The DRC supplies more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, yet over 70 percent of its people live in poverty.

Our uranium powers Europe’s cities while Niger’s villages remain in darkness.

African agriculture — despite controlling 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land — is gutted by foreign subsidies and aid dependency. We import US$40 billion in food each year, while our farmers are criminalised or displaced by foreign agribusiness.

It is no exaggeration to say Africa is being starved by design. But exploitation today is not only economic — it is also digital.

Foreign companies dominate our telecom infrastructure, cloud storage and digital platforms. Our data is stored abroad, our elections influenced by foreign code, our children fed algorithmic colonialism on social media. AI tools are trained on African voices but controlled by Silicon Valley. The scramble for Africa 2.0 is here — and it’s happening on screens.Even our culture is colonised anew.

Our stories are funded by Western non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Our artistes are rewarded for repeating narratives of trauma, not defiance. From art galleries to film festivals, African creatives are often made to conform to donor expectations. Real revolutionary expression is defunded, censored or drowned in an ocean of meaningless “diversity” campaigns.

Cultural sovereignty requires more than visibility — it requires ownership. What makes this tragedy worse is that many of our own leaders are complicit. Elites who benefit from foreign contracts, imported goods and IMF handouts pose as nationalists while enabling neocolonialism. But Africa is not silent.

In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, new governments are challenging the old order. They have expelled French troops, broken from the CFA zone and are building a regional alliance rooted in sovereignty.

Western media calls them juntas. But to millions of Africans, they are a new hope.

These governments are not perfect — but they are confronting imperialism.

Their stand echoes that of Sankara, Nkrumah and Gaddafi.As Gaddafi’s last spokesperson, I saw what real African independence looked like. Free education, universal healthcare, interest-free housing and no IMF interference. Gaddafi’s dream of a gold-backed African currency and a continental defence force terrified the West — not because it was mad, but because it was achievable.

That is why Libya was destroyed.

The lesson is simple: When you challenge an empire, it fights back. But we must not retreat.

Africa must forge new alliances — not with masters, but with partners.

Cooperation with China, Russia, India and Brazil must be based on mutual respect and shared interest. We must demand technology transfers, co-ownership of infrastructure and the right to control our natural resources.

BRICS can be a platform of liberation — but only if Africa enters as a united, self-respecting bloc.Equally vital is a revolution of the mind.

Our educational systems still glorify colonisers and marginalise indigenous knowledge.

Our universities chase Western rankings while neglecting community development.

We need a new curriculum — one centred on African languages, philosophies, history and political economy. We must build schools that produce thinkers, builders and liberators — not bureaucrats. The African diaspora is another critical front. It contributes over US$50 billion annually in remittances, but its political power remains underused.

We need institutional pathways for diaspora participation — in investment, security and culture. From Sao Paulo to London, Atlanta to Kingston, the diaspora is not a spectator.

It is a co-creator of Africa’s destiny.

Let us also talk about the ecological front.

Africa is on the frontline of climate breakdown — but the solutions proposed often mask the same exploitation.

Green capitalism — carbon markets, climate finance and offset schemes — lets polluters profit while Africa pays the price.

We must fight for ecological justice rooted in land reform, water sovereignty and indigenous stewardship — not donor agendas.

This is the real meaning of Africa Day in 2025. Not celebration. Mobilisation. Not pageantry. Resistance. The African Union must rise from dormancy or be bypassed by movements and governments that are willing to fight. Cultural organisations must reject NGO dependency and build spaces for radical imagination. Our youth must refuse the logic of escape and rebuild this continent with dignity.

Moussa Ibrahim served as the spokesperson of the Libyan government and Libya’s minister of media in 2011. He works as an executive secretary of the African Legacy Foundation in Johannesburg, South Africa.