African independence: how Africa shapes the world (original) (raw)
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Africa at the Dawn of a New World
BRIQ, 2024
This study aims to shed light on the contemporary transformations in Africa’s struggle against the neocolonial system within their historical context. It particularly examines the dynamics behind the current shifts in governance in former French colonial African countries. The process of Africa’s colonization and its struggle for independence will be dissected into four sections: the colonial period, the process of political independence, the emergence of neo-colonial activities, and what can be referred to as the Second War of Independence for African nations. Certainly, colonialism stands as one of the darkest chapters in human history. With the rise of capitalism and its innate need to find new markets and resource-rich lands, the previously untapped wealth of the African continent was of strategic importance for colonial powers. In the 1880s, colonial conquests accelerated, and by the early 20th century, nearly all African territories were divided among the colonial powers of the era. The classical colonial period continued until after World War II, with Africa gaining political independence in the 1960s. However, Africa’s position on the world stage persisted within a new framework of exploitation through dependency agreements imposed by neocolonialist states. Resistance to this new form of colonialism that began in the 1960s was often met with occupations, military coups, and bloodshed. In the 21st century, the political and economic balance of forces has shifted against leading imperialist states like the United States and France. Eurasian countries, particularly China, respecting the independence and territorial integrity of nations and proposing a new framework of peaceful cooperation, have begun to exert increasing influence in Africa. This environment has brought the African forces striving for full independence back onto the world stage.
GLOBAL COLONIALITY AND THE CHALLENGES OF CREATING AFRICAN FUTURES
Can Africans create African futures within a modern world system structured by global coloniality? Global coloniality is a modern global power structure that has been in place since the dawn of Euro-North American-centric modernity. This modernity is genealogically and figuratively traceable to 1492 when Christopher Columbus claimed to have discovered a 'New World'. It commenced with enslavement of black people and culminated in global coloniality. Today global coloniality operates as an invisible power matrix that is shaping and sustaining asymmetrical power relations between the Global North and the Global South. Even the current global power transformations which have enabled the re-emergence of a Sinocentric economic power and de-Westernisation processes including the rise of South-South power blocs such as BRICS, do not mean that the modern world system has now undergone genuine decolonisation and deimperialisation to the extent of being amenable to the creation of other futures. Global coloniality continues to frustrate decolonial initiatives aimed at creating postcolonial futures free from coloniality. The article posits that global coloniality remains one of the most important modern power structures that constrain and limit African agency. To support this proposition, the article delves deeper into an analysis of the architecture and configuration of current asymmetrical global power structures; unmasks imperial/ colonial reason embedded in Euro-North American-centric epistemology as well as the problem of Eurocentrism; and unpacks the Cartesian notions of being and its relegation of African subjectivity to a perpetual Strategic Review for Southern Africa, Vol 36, No 2 Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni 182 state of becoming. Within this context, Africans have emerged as fighting subjects for a new world order that is decolonised, deimperialised, open to the emergence of new humanism and African futures.
Many African states south of the Sahara celebrated half a century of political independence around the year 2010. This paper, originally written in German as introduction to an edited topical volume (Bierschenk and Spies 2012), evaluates this 50-year period and presents perspectives on the future challenges facing these states. It summarizes the developments of the past 50 years in areas such as the economy, religion, cultural production and politics. As a result of various multi-layered processes of consolidation, differentiation and transformation, African societies today are significantly more complex and diverse than they were at the time of independence. Moreover, African actors are far more visible at global level today than they were 50 years ago. Nevertheless, the validity of 1960 as a milestone in the periodization of 20th century African history proves limited: the importance of formal independence pales into insignificance in the light of the continuing influence of the colonial period and the ‘African Spring’, that is the processes of liberalization and democratization that emerged in around 1990. The structures of the rentier economies established in the colonial period have remained astonishingly stable in most African countries to the present day. This stability contrasts conspicuously with the societal dynamics displayed by contemporary African societies and is increasingly at odds with the wide-ranging attempts of these societies to dissociate themselves from the definitions of development and political models defined by the Global North and their own elites. This striving for “discursive sovereignty” is particularly evident in many areas of cultural production.
Abbah Ezekiel Onucheojo , 2023
The subject of poverty, political instability, technological backwardness, religious extremist insecurity and debt burden, to mention but a few dominate current affairs Amon Africa nations. The continent of Africa had been relegated to the ground among the committee of nations because of the above events. In most cases, most Africa countries are tagged to be developing, some underdevelop and mostly in the international scene as the third world countries. These had led to arising questions bof why is Africa continent like this and this had resulted to why most schools in Africa studies Africa relationship with the wider world, most especially the period of 15th to 20th centuries. This paper stands to evaluate the concept of Africa and the wider world by answering the questions why do we study Africa and the wider world and how useful vis this knowledge to the contemporary African society. It is therefore pertinent the note that the histories are not study for stake of knowing the past but in order to answer arising questions in the contemporary age about the past. This paper will evaluate the reasons why we study Africa and the wider world and it's usefulness to the contemporary African society. This work adopted a quatitative secondary School sources.
Africa, center stage of a changing reality
Revista IDEES, 2021
The African continent is in the midst of multiple transformations. The global context marked by the overlapping of crises (democratic, social and ecological) has embraced Africa as the main stage for all these changes, presenting different accents and characteristics in each region. Similarly, many of the major impacts on the international scene, such as the rise of the Asian continent and China, now occupying the centre of worldwide geopolitics, cannot be explained without the central role of the African region. Therefore, it could be argued that Africa today hosts a reciprocity of dynamics. On the one hand, the continent is one of the main world arenas assembling intense multipolar competition for geopolitical and geoeconomic interests. On the other hand, with its own particular features, Africa is a sounding board of the global crises faced by the ensemble of societies. Taking into consideration these two mechanisms at work, the African continent can no longer be conceived as a peripheral region in the framework of international relations, despite being the trend that has recurrently permeated interpretations and discourses on Africa. In the same vein, we have an obligation to understand and reflect on the role of the African continent in the post-pandemic global scenario. To do so, it is crucial to eschew the clichés and narratives responsible for simplifying the reality of Africa, which is key to comprehending the big picture of modernity and globalization.