Africa Month shows that our continent is yet to benefit Africans
Image: Pascal George
REVERED Pan-Africanist revolutionary and former Burkinabe President Thomas Sankara once firmly stated: 'You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. It comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future.'
These sobering words have been significantly indisputable as we swiftly conclude the month of May, Africa Month, marked by Africa Day celebrations on May 25. This is the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union (AU).
At the 1963 formation of the OAU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the crème-de-la-creme of African leadership came out in throngs in order to advance continental solidarity, and eradicate Western imperialism. In fact, the OAU was formed upon the foundations of Pan-Africanism and self-determination, by leaders who epitomised those values wholeheartedly.
As such, this 2025 Africa Month has presented a momentous occasion to not only celebrate the 62nd anniversary of this revolutionary body but also to spotlight the grievous challenges that still plague contemporary Africa.
Novelist George Orwell once wrote: 'The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous… The object of war is not to destroy but to preserve a state of controlled desperation.'
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This echoes the state of conflicts that ravage contemporary African societies. Across the continent, wars have been proliferating rapidly since 2010. Today, we see headlines of the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan, Mozambique, and the Horn of Africa make the headlines, often overshadowed by Western media's spotlighting of other conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Meanwhile, the African continent is experiencing more conflicts than at any point since at least 1946.
In fleeting moments, we observe the painful horrors of war unfolding in the Congo, Sudan, and Mozambique emerge into the news cycles, but are quickly — and too often — drowned out by Euro-Western media's dominant, selective spotlighting of Ukraine and Gaza conflicts.
According to Statista, today, over 10 million of Sudan's near-50 million inhabitants are internally displaced, and nearly 1.8 million have fled to other countries. According to the UN Refugee Agency, the Eastern DRC has been absolutely devastated and distorted by war, with over 7.3 million people displaced within the country, and more than 86 000 forced to flee to neighbouring countries.
These wars are frighteningly only fragments of a much larger reality: Today, more than 35 non-international armed conflicts continue to wreak havoc across Africa — many of them underreported, and many more forgotten.
Rampant war, civil conflicts, widespread poverty and forced displacement are certainly the straw that broke the camel's back in the mountain of problems that modern Africans contend with. However, major conflicts are not random, nor senseless. They are often the result of decades of neglect, greed, and failed leadership.
They are born from fractured systems that deny people food, education, and dignity. They are fueled by poverty, corruption, and inequality. From dilapidated healthcare systems to mass unemployment to atrocious public service delivery, Africa is cracking under the weight of injustice, and these are the results. We must confront these roots, not just their violent consequences.
For far too long, African nations have haphazardly embraced foreign-imposed structures and systems to rule African people. For far too long, these systems have been chastised and criticised, with very little reform. This is what the AU must be taking the reins on.
African nations contend with a plethora of challenges. However, the biggest failure of bodies such as the AU is embracing structures that are designed to fail the many, while enriching the few. Contemporary African societies certainly reflect the harsh echoes of a long history of exploitation, instability, and neglect.
However, modern day leadership is not effectively or sustainably engaging Africans in shaping a better Africa. Many of Africa's leaders are oftentimes condemned not just for failing to lift people out of poverty, but for actively preserving the inequality and corruption that keep them in power.
However, wars and power struggles are not the only challenges faced by Africans or the AU. Outreach International stated that Africa has the highest rates of extreme poverty across the globe. Furthermore, a report by Compassion International revealed that 42 African nations, out of the 54 in the continent, live in severe poverty. This is an outrageous 78% of the continent.
Contrarily, Africa is the richest continent by far in minerals and resource wealth. According to the UN Environment Programme, not only does Africa hold a significant chunk of the global oil reserves, it also holds 40% of the world's gold and about 90% of its chromium and platinum — with a significant share of global mining reserves in cobalt, diamonds, uranium, and various other valuable minerals.
The contrast between Africa's wealth in mineral resources and its debilitating rates of poverty goes hand-in-hand. Our abundance has not translated into prosperity for the majority because our resources are exceedingly exploited, not only by foreign interests, but also by local elites who profit from backdoor deals, opaque contracts, and exclusionary systems.
While billions are made from gold, oil, and cobalt, too many Africans still lack clean water, electricity, and access to basic healthcare. This is not a natural misfortune; it is a manufactured injustice, upheld by corruption, substandard governance, and global complicity. These are the human rights and dignities that are supposed to be upheld not only by governments across Africa, but by the AU itself.
What's worse is the state of education across countless African nations. The crisis in Africa's education systems is not just about underfunded schools or overcrowded classrooms; it is rooted in a deeper, more insidious, imperialist legacy.
Much of our formal education remains trapped in a colonial framework, designed not to liberate but to condition. In fact, this largely Eurocentric framework has been the foundation of critique in post-colonial African societies. As the late Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o once powerfully stated, 'The domination of a people's language by the languages of the colonising nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonised.'
To this day, African children are taught to memorize foreign histories while their own are erased, to speak in tongues that deny them access to their cultural identity, and to chase validation through imported curricula that ignore local and lived realities.
Indigenous knowledge systems, rich in ecological wisdom, philosophy, communal ethics, and more, are sidelined or dismissed as inferior. This is not just a failure of the education system, it is its weaponisation. Any education system that alienates a child from their land, language, and lineage is not education, it is blatant indoctrination. It is the method employed by colonial rulers that seeks to literally erase the African identity, and discard African knowledge.
The AU needs to centre its gaze upon this challenge, as it is one of the most pivotal keys to continental transformation and empowerment. As revered Pan-Africanist and Black Consciousness pioneer Steve Bantu Biko once purposefully wrote: 'The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.'
The fact is that Africa would not be so rife with conflict and adversity if it were not something truly special. Africa's challenges are not rooted in its people, but in the persistent failure of systems built to serve the few, or outrightly serve foreign interests. However, these are the minerals and resources that build phones, computers, planes, factories, extensive infrastructure, complex structures, and various types of technologies. These resources are invaluable to the world, and they should be protected with the same ferocity.
Collaboration and cooperation is not difficult to achieve, and is certainly not restricted to African continental zones. African nations that have an abundance of critical exports such as oil, foods, medicines, must be working together with all other African nations in establishing trade relations.
African nations will go far if they bring serious focus to dependence on one another, above everybody else. The AU must be the driving force of this unification, identifying and connecting common economies and industries across the continent. The work of the AU is much more profound than they may realise.
The AU must diligently do the work of imparting the values of Pan-Africanism, unity and the upliftment of human rights. Whether it's evident or not, the spirits of Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Selassie, Leopold Senghor, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere, and the other prolific founding members of the OAU remain embedded in the souls of African nations. Esteemed Pan-African revolutionary and founder of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), Robert Sobukwe, strongly affirmed this truth when he said:'We are fighting for the noblest cause on earth… the liberation of mankind.'
This Africa Month, and everyday forth, may we remember the core of pan-Africanism: Africa is for Africans.
* Tswelopele Makoe is a gender and social justice activist and the editor at Global South Media Network. She is a researcher, columnist and an Andrew W Mellon scholar at the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice, UWC. The views expressed are her own.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media or IOL.
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