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Governance, Conflict and Critical Minerals: 7 Propositions for Africa’s Future

Three days in Accra (27-29 July 2026) kept circling back to a single triangle: governance, conflict and critical minerals, and how tightly the three are bound together. Where governance is transparent, accountable and inclusive, minerals become a foundation for peace and shared prosperity. Where it is weak or captured, the same minerals become a driver of exclusion, instability and, too often, war, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan to Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado. Our final plenary did not treat these as three separate conversations. It treated governance as the variable that decides which way the other two tip, and it converged on seven propositions built on that premise, concrete enough to act on Monday morning, ambitious enough to still matter in ten years.

1. Make Ownership Visible

Nothing else on this list matters if citizens cannot see who profits from what comes out of their soil. That starts with beneficial ownership registers that end opaque permitting and unmonitored contracts, and with legal and policy frameworks built specifically for the energy-transition era rather than retrofitted from decades-old mining codes. Human rights and environmental protection have to sit inside that foundation from the start, not arrive as an afterthought once the contracts are already signed. Transparency is not a compliance checkbox, it is the precondition for everything that follows, and it is where every other proposition on this list begins.

2. Turn Consultation into Ownership

Communities have been consulted for decades. What they have rarely been given is a stake, and exclusion, not scarcity, is what turns a mining region into a conflict zone. The room pointed to models that already exist and work: the Bafokeng arrangement in South Africa and comparable Australian examples, where community ownership and revenue equity are structural, not symbolic. That principle has to extend to the estimated 150,000 artisanal miners in Kenya alone, through formalization, licensing, skills, financing, safer practices, and to the communities left exposed to unregulated private security forces, a conflict driver raised pointedly in the Nigerian context. None of it holds without protecting the people who expose corruption when it happens: whistleblowers, journalists, and human rights defenders. Governance reform means nothing if the people doing the accountability work aren’t safe doing it.

3. Mandate Value Addition, Not Just Extraction

Africa’s oldest mineral trap is exporting raw material and importing the finished product. The fix has to be written into contracts themselves: local value addition mandated from extraction through processing, not left to goodwill or market forces. This is where the continent’s industrial future is actually decided, not in the mine, but in whether the processing, manufacturing and skills development happen here or somewhere else. Every proposition above depends on this one holding: ownership and community equity mean little if the value they’re entitled to share in keeps leaving the continent unprocessed.

4. Build Strong Continental Institutions

Rather than wait another twenty years for 55 countries to align, the AfCFTA‘s own timeline was raised, more than once, as a cautionary tale, the room pushed toward institutions with real financial and legal weight. A Pan-African Sovereign Wealth Fund to finance skills development, green industrial policy and compliance monitoring. A Pan-African Critical Minerals Council bringing mining chambers, chambers of commerce, central bank governors and technical experts to one table. A functional African Commodities Exchange, already operating across sixteen countries and linked to AfCFTA, proof this is not purely aspirational. And standardized templates for strategic partnership agreements, so no single government negotiates alone against far better-resourced global counterparts. These institutions are what turn Propositions 1 through 3 from national good intentions into continental practice.

5. Close the Enforcement Gap, Don’t Just Widen It

The single most important intervention from our closing session was also the most uncomfortable: new instruments without a supervision mandate just become paper. We already have mining codes. We already have an African Mining Vision, we already have a progressive Africa’s Green Mineral Strategy. The gap has never been imagination, it is enforcement, and the alignment between what continental frameworks promise and what national law actually delivers. That means evaluating and reviving what already exists before building new instruments on top of one we never finished implementing, and it means giving Open Society Foundations and partners, an evaluative role that multiple participants asked for directly: assess the real implementation gap and support a citizen-facing tracking dashboard so civil society can do the accountability work governments are unlikely to do on themselves. This proposition is the test the other six will ultimately be judged by, whether the dashboard tracking our own promises actually goes live.

6. Build the Tools, Not Just the Asks

We were rightly challenged to move beyond broad recommendations and develop practical instruments that policymakers, communities, and advocates can immediately use. These should include a model strategic partnership agreement and a standardized beneficial ownership registry template to operationalize Proposition 1. For Proposition 2, we need a community-level free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) standard that is legally enforceable, not merely an aspiration contained in an international document.

Our advocacy must also focus on a concrete and immediate opportunity: securing the ratification of the statute establishing the African Minerals Development Centre. This is an existing AU commitment awaiting sufficient ratifications and therefore represents an achievable near-term win, distinct from the longer-term institution-building agenda set out in Proposition 4. Strengthening the African Legal Support Facility at the African Development Bank should also be part of this effort, giving Member States the technical and legal capacity to negotiate mineral agreements collectively and from a position of strength, rather than in isolation.

7. Negotiate as One Africa

We are not negotiating in a vacuum. The United States, Russia, China, and now the EU through Global Gateway, are actively reshaping their national mining policies, in some cases, even constitutions. Much of that financing is debt, not grants, and several of our countries are already highly leveraged from oil and gas; ownership rhetoric has to be matched with honest debt-risk analysis, or we simply repeat the extractive cycle in a new form, with better branding. The only viable counterweight, raised again and again in the room, is unity: a common continental negotiating position, backed by a political and advocacy engagement strategy with the African Union and its Member States, and by engaging ECOSOCC, the AU’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council, to broaden this coalition well beyond the people who happened to be in Accra with us.

That coalition is where all seven propositions ultimately have to live, not as seven separate initiatives, but as one continental position on the same triangle we opened with: governance, conflict and critical minerals, and the conviction that the first can be made strong enough to defuse the second and make the third a genuine foundation for peace.

This is the work carried forward by the Open Society Foundations across our Democratic Futures, Transformative Peace and Resource Futures in Africa Programs, and by every government, institution and movement that sat in this room with us. Accra was the diagnosis and the design. These seven propositions are what we build next.

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Inside the Accra Strategic Gathering on Governance, Critical Minerals and Conflict in Africa

There is a particular kind of energy that fills a room when people stop asking whether a problem exists and start asking what to build instead. I felt that shift this week in Accra, where I have spent two days (27, 28 July 2026) with States actors, advisers to the Presidency of Ghana, continental  and regional institution representatives, civil society and religious leaders, lawyers, private sector actors, journalists, and young people, all of us grappling with one question: how does Africa make sure its critical mineral wealth becomes a foundation for peace, democracy and prosperity, rather than another chapter in the resource curse?

Why We Gathered

We are told Africa holds a third of the world’s known reserves of minerals cobalt, lithium, manganese, coltan, graphite, rare earths, that the global economy now needs to power the transition to clean energy, digital technology and advanced manufacturing. That is an extraordinary opportunity. It is also, as our President Binaifer Nowrojee reminded us in her opening remarks, a profound responsibility, because history has shown repeatedly that natural resource wealth does not automatically translate into human development, democratic progress or peace. Too often, the communities living closest to these resources carry the greatest social and environmental costs while seeing the fewest benefits.

That is the paradox this conference set out to confront. Convened under the banner of governance, critical minerals and conflict, and grounded in a simple but consequential proposition, that the relationship between minerals, peace and development is not predetermined, and that governance is the variable that decides which way it tips; the meeting brought together an unusually broad coalition. Not just the ministries and mining actors who typically populate this conversation, but artisanal miners, women’s networks, youth movements, researchers and peacebuilders who are already doing the work of reimagining the sector from the ground up.

A Governance Crisis Wearing a Resource Costume

If there was a single idea that ran through every session on Day One, it was this: mineral wealth does not create development on its own. Governance is what makes the difference.

Bishop Matthew Kukah’s keynote reframed the conversation from the outset, arguing that resources themselves carry no curse, it is how they are captured, manipulated and instrumentalized by political and external elites that turns opportunity into exploitation. Other speakers built on that provocation. Brian Kagoro described how mineral discoveries tend to concentrate political and economic power around ruling elites, weakening institutions and excluding citizens from decisions that shape their own futures. One phrase from the day’s discussions captured the mood better than any policy paper could: what Africa faces is less a resource curse than a governance crisis wearing a resource costume.

The human cost of that crisis was made vivid through case after case. Suliman Baldo described Sudan’s war as, in his words, a struggle over economic assets in which mining wealth concentrated within military structures helped turn instability into devastating conflict, what he called “Africa’s nightmare.” The Democratic Republic of Congo came up repeatedly as the starkest illustration of what happens when strategic mineral wealth meets weak institutions and armed actors. Across these examples, the lesson was consistent: where governance fails, minerals become drivers of insecurity rather than engines of development.

From Extraction to Transformation

A second thread ran through the day’s discussions: Africa’s long habit of exporting raw materials and importing the finished products made from them. The continent exports bauxite and imports aluminium; exports lithium and cobalt and imports battery components; exports copper and imports the electrical goods made with it. Jerry Ahadjie of the African Development Bank drew a sharp distinction between the old “corridor model” of mine-railway-port-export, and a transformational model in which infrastructure is built to support processing, manufacturing, skills development and community participation before minerals ever leave the continent. The African Development Bank’s new Critical Minerals Accelerator Facility, along with emerging investments in battery manufacturing and processing across Ghana, Morocco, Tanzania, South Africa and the DRC, were offered as early signs that this shift is possible.

Bright Simons pushed the room further, warning against what he called “zombie statistics”,  the often-repeated figures about Africa’s mineral endowment that circulate without rigorous grounding in local data, and that are frequently defined by what Washington, Beijing or Brussels consider “critical” rather than what actually serves African industrialization. His challenge was blunt: Africa cannot negotiate its own future while relying on data, definitions and narratives it does not own.

The Human Face of the Sector

Some of the most powerful interventions came from those who insisted the conversation stay grounded in people. Petronille Vaweka spoke about women in artisanal mining communities performing the most demanding labour, sometimes for as little as a dollar a day, while remaining largely absent from the negotiations and decisions that shape their working lives. Rachael Mwikali spoke to the growing role of young people, women and grassroots digital activists in demanding accountability from the ground up. Awa Baldé, drawing on international human rights frameworks, reminded us that consultation is not the same as genuine participation, and warned of growing threats against environmental defenders. The message that emerged, again and again: communities cannot keep bearing the costs of extraction while others capture the benefits.

Strategy Labs: Turning Diagnosis into Design

Day Two moved the conversation from analysis to design, through parallel Strategy Labs that asked participants to translate the previous day’s diagnosis into concrete recommendations.

I had the privilege of contributing to several of these conversations directly, one on livelihood security and local development, and another, which I helped report back to plenary, on industrialization, economic sovereignty and what we framed as “Transforming Africa’s Development: The Moment, Critical Mineral Industrialization and Economic Sovereignty.”

Screenshot

That lab surfaced a hard truth: Africa is not short of policy commitments. Frameworks like the African Mining Vision, Africa Green Mineral Strategy and the African Mining and Development Centre already exist. What is missing is the machinery to hold governments accountable to them, and the regional solidarity needed to negotiate contracts from a position of strength rather than country by country. We also flagged the disconnect between universities and industry, and between mining and manufacturing, as quiet but persistent obstacles to building real value chains on the continent. Our recommendations, a continental mechanism to monitor implementation of existing commitments, a coordinated African negotiating position backed by pooled legal capacity, stronger links between government, academia and industry, and a renewed push for local procurement and processing, echoed strongly with what other labs were hearing in parallel rooms on livelihoods, conflict prevention and regional cooperation.

Across all four labs, certain recommendations kept resurfacing regardless of which room they came from: publish mining contracts and make ownership traceable; invest in African-owned geological data; build community benefit-sharing frameworks with real teeth; support strategic litigation where communities have been denied redress; strengthen community-based conflict early-warning systems; and above all, anchor everything in an Accra Declaration backed by a genuine monitoring and evaluation mechanism, so that this conference produces a living commitment rather than another report that gathers dust.

A Conversation the World Could See: None of this would have carried the way it has without the work happening just outside the conference rooms. Ruth Omondi, our communication champion and her team of journalists made sure this gathering did not stay contained within Accra’s walls. Through a steady stream of interviews and media engagement, they carried these conversations on governance, on conflict, on the future of Africa’s mineral wealth, out to a much wider public than the delegates in the room. That visibility matters. A conference like this only becomes a turning point if the ideas it produces reach the people, governments and institutions who were not there to hear them firsthand, and Ruth’s team has made sure they have.

What Comes Next: As I write this, the conference is moving into its final day of synthesis, turning three days of rich, sometimes uncomfortable, always urgent conversation into a shared framework and a set of commitments that African governments, regional institutions and civil society can be held to. The line that has stayed with me from the Day One recap by my colleague Tem Mbuh is this: “history will not remember us for the resources beneath our soil. It will remember us for what we chose to build with them”.

That is the work now in front of all of us, and it is why Open Society Foundations came to Accra to help convene this conversation, and why we will stay engaged long after we leave Accra.

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Reparatory Justice for Slavery and Colonization: From Accra, A New Chapter Begins

The Next Steps Conference on Reparatory Justice in Accra from 17 to 19 June 2026 did not happen in a vacuum. It was convened as the direct follow-up to a landmark United Nations General Assembly Resolution – A/RES/80/250 – adopted on 25 March this year, in which 123 member states voted to declare the trafficking and chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity. That resolution, championed by Ghana and backed by African Union member states and the Caribbean community, was the first in the United Nations’ 80-year history dedicated exclusively to slavery and the slave trade. Three months later, Accra was where the world came to decide what to do next.

123  UN Members voted for the Resolution

80+  Countries Represented in Accra

18  Strategic Pillars of the Accra Commitments

3 Global Panels established

“Reparation is a legitimate demand. It is not about vengeance but justice. From Accra, we are sending a clear message that the time has come to restore, reform, and repent.”: H.E. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Reparation Is Not Only About the Past

There remains a persistent tendency to cast reparations as a debate about the past: the Accra Conference swiftly dismantled that narrative. Countries across Africa and the Caribbean carry sovereign debt burdens that economists trace directly to the economic structures imposed during slavery and colonial rule, centuries of extracted wealth, suppressed development, and deliberately undercapitalized economies. The same historical processes that enriched Western countries left our countries without the institutional foundations, the accumulated capital, and the human development that compound and grow across generations. When Ghana, Jamaica, or Senegal pays a higher risk premium on international borrowing than a European developed country, that is not a neutral market outcome. It is a legacy.

The same logic applies to climate change. Africa contributes the least to global greenhouse gas emissions and suffers the most from its consequences. The industrial wealth that produced those emissions was built, in significant part, on the labor of enslaved Africans and the resources of colonized African nations. The International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion on climate change has now clarified that breaches of climate obligations may themselves give rise to reparations. The circle is closing.

And then there is the less quantified but no less real dimension: the psychological and cultural wound. The systematic erasure of African history, the theft of cultural artifacts, the distortion of knowledge about who we were and what we built before colonization, these are ongoing acts of harm, not finished ones.

What Actually Happened in Those Three Days in Accra

The conference produced a 46-paragraph outcome document titled the Accra Next Steps Commitments,  structured around 18 strategic pillars. But what made this gathering different from previous declarations was that it also produced something rarer: immediate, concrete action.

  • The Netherlands pledged to return approximately 2,000 cataloged artifacts to Ghana, with Dutch officials making a symbolic presentation of the full catalog to President Mahama during the conference itself.
  • Germany announced its readiness to repatriate cultural artifacts from the Bono Traditional Area.
  • Denmark’s foreign minister offered a formal apology for Denmark’s role in the slave trade and committed to partnering with Ghana to preserve the slave forts along our coastline, including Osu Castle, built by Danish colonizers, as permanent sites of memory and truth-telling.
  • France’s President Macron, speaking virtually, committed to establishing a joint scientific commission to locate African artifacts currently held in French institutions.

These are not small gestures. The Netherlands’ commitment of 2,000 items would be among the largest single repatriations of African artifacts in history. Denmark’s apology,  formal, unambiguous, from a serving foreign minister at a multilateral conference,  is precisely the kind of acknowledgment that the Accra framework identifies as a foundational step towards reparatory justice.

Three new global institutional bodies were also established:

A High-Level Global Advisory Council on Reparatory Justice,

A Global Expert Panel on the Restitution of Cultural Heritage, and

A Global Legal Panel on Reparatory Justice.

These will build the evidentiary and institutional record that feeds directly into the UN General Assembly’s work in the coming years. The conference also agreed to convene annually, a commitment to sustaining momentum rather than allowing this to become another declaration that gathers dust.

The Architecture of a Global Framework

What strikes a careful reader of the Accra Commitments is how comprehensive and interconnected its vision is. This is not a narrow demand for a cheque. It is a reimagining of the relationship between history and the contemporary global order, structured across 18 interlocking pillars:

Truth & Apology: Full, formal, unconditional acknowledgment, with guarantees of non-repetition and the repeal of colonial-era legal codes.

Legal Justice: Strengthening international, regional and domestic pathways to accountability, redress and access to justice for generational victims.

Compensatory Reparations: Fair and adequate compensation grounded in international law – not charity, but a legal obligation that exists as a matter of international law.

Cultural Restitution: Return of looted artifacts, human remains, and archives to countries of origin. Preservation of slave forts and castles as permanent sites of memory.

Debt Relief & Financial Justice: Comprehensive reform of sovereign debt mechanisms, including cancellation where necessary, and reform of credit rating agencies that impose unjust risk premiums on the Global South.

Climate Justice: Reparatory justice that promotes climate resilience, connecting historical responsibility directly to the climate crisis and its repair.

Health Sovereignty: Addressing medical apartheid, multigenerational health trauma, and the historic exploitation of African bodies in scientific research and experimentation.

Diaspora & Right of Return: Strengthened pathways for citizenship, voluntary return and reintegration, reconnecting Africa with its global family across continents and generations.

Read together, these pillars add up to something important: a claim not just for redress, but for restructuring. The conference did not only ask for an apology. It demanded reform of the UN Security Council, of international financial institutions, of sovereign credit rating agencies, and of the global tax architecture. It called for a Global Reparations Fund. It placed reparatory justice in direct conversation with climate justice, gender justice, and the digital divide. This is a framework for a different world, not just a settlement for the old one.

Museum on the transatlantic enslavement: Among the most significant commitments unveiled in Accra is the decision to establish a modern museum on the transatlantic enslavement in Ghana. More than a memorial, the museum is envisioned as a living institution dedicated to preserving the memory of the millions who endured enslavement, honoring the resilience of their descendants, and advancing a process of truth-telling long overdue. It will also serve as a repository for thousands of looted African artefacts that are gradually being returned from museums and private collections around the world. In this sense, the museum will represent more than a cultural project; it will be a tangible expression of reparatory justice, reconnecting displaced heritage with its homeland and ensuring that future generations inherit not only the memory of historical injustice, but also the dignity of recovery and restoration.

The Honest Questions We Must Also Ask

The Accra conference closed with pledges, not yet with physical returns. The Dutch catalog was presented symbolically; no artifacts have yet made the journey home. Germany had a prior commitment to return items from Ghana’s Volta Region that had not yet been executed. France’s announcement of a scientific commission to locate artifacts is welcome, but it is a process,  not a result. And the UN General Assembly resolution itself is non-binding. It carries profound moral authority; it does not carry legal compulsion.

There is also the question of unity. The Accra Commitments speak movingly of ending fragmentation within the global reparations movement. But anyone who has followed this debate knows how difficult that is. Caribbean and African nations do not always agree on modalities and priorities. Diaspora communities in Europe and North America have their own perspectives that do not always align neatly with state-level advocacy. Building a genuinely common front across continents, generations, and political traditions is a generational project, not a three-day conference.

None of this diminishes what was achieved. But it is important to make this clear: Accra was a beginning, not an end. The measure of this conference will be what happens in the twelve months before the next one.

What This Means for the Next Generation

Here is what we should tell young Africans about this process, and it matters that we get this right, because they will inherit both the momentum and the responsibility.

For the first time in history, the international community has named what happened to African peoples as a legal category of harm, not just a moral stain. For the first time, the question of repair has moved from the margins of international diplomacy to its centre. For the first time, countries that enriched themselves through slavery are sitting in the same room, voluntarily, at their own initiative,  to discuss what they owe. That is new. It has never happened before at this scale.

The Accra Commitments also do something quietly radical: they insist that reparatory justice must include the meaningful participation of young people in the design, implementation, and monitoring of all processes. This is not decorative language. It is a recognition that reparatory justice is not a transaction to be settled between current generations and then filed away. It is,  as the document puts it, a multi-generational and inter-generational project. The next generation is not inheriting a solved problem. They are inheriting an ongoing negotiation with the power to shape it.

The African Union’s designation of 2026–2035 as the Decade of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent gives the agenda a ten-year institutional home. The UN’s Second International Decade for People of African Descent (2025–2034) runs alongside it. These overlapping frameworks mean that what was decided in Accra this week does not expire when the delegates go home. It has a calendar, an architecture, and a review mechanism.

A Continent That Led, Not Followed

It is worth stepping back to appreciate the geopolitical meaning of what Ghana did this week. At a moment when African nations are often portrayed in global media as recipients of aid, subjects of debt negotiations, or bystanders to decisions made elsewhere, Ghana convened the world on a matter of global justice, and the world came. Presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, representatives of the African Union and the Caribbean, legal scholars, and civil society leaders from every region. They came to Accra. They sat in the rooms Ghana prepared. They debated on the terms that President Mahama, the African Union Champion, set. And they adopted the Accra Next Steps Commitments.

What Comes Next

The path from Accra is clearer than it has ever been, even if it remains long. The three new global panels will begin building the legal and evidentiary record. The annual conference structure will sustain political accountability. The UN pathway will carry the Accra Commitments into the General Assembly and its subsidiary bodies. The African Union’s Decade of Action will keep reparatory justice at the heart of continental policymaking.

But the most important work will happen outside conference rooms. It will happen when African governments integrate reparatory justice into their national development strategies, not as an add-on but as a framework. It will happen when African universities lead the research that fills the knowledge gaps about our own history. It will happen when African civil society holds its own governments accountable for implementing the Accra Commitments, it will happen when young Africans in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Dakar, Bridgetown, London, New York, and São Paulo, etc., understand that they are not asking for sympathy. They are asserting a right. That is the real next step.

The time has come to restore, to remember, to reform.

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Standing Where Africa Was Divided: My Journey to the Berlin Conference Site!

Much of my work at the Open Society Foundations is driven by a fundamental belief: that people must have a voice in the decisions that shape their lives, their communities, and their futures. It is a belief deeply embedded in our mission to advance human rights, equity, and justice across the world. Yet as I walked toward Wilhelmstraße 77 on a clear Berlin afternoon, that principle became profoundly personal. Standing on the ground where others once decided the fate of an entire continent without the presence, consent, or participation of its people, I was reminded why the struggle for voice, dignity, and self-determination remains as urgent today as ever.

The Global Solutions Summit 2026 had wrapped up in Berlin, a city that carries the weight of history in its cobblestones. While most participants headed back to their hotels or to the airport, I pulled up an address from my phone: Wilhelmstraße 77: I searched and found it in Berlin’s digital archives the day before.

I needed to go there…before I leave.

Berlin is a city that does not hide from its past. Around every corner, a plaque. On every pavement, you see small brass memorial stones embedded into the ground, each bearing the name of a victim of Nazi persecution. The city has developed an almost sacred relationship with accountability, with memory, with the discipline of not forgetting.

I walked past Cora-Berliner-Straße, a street named after a Jewish economist born in 1890, murdered in 1942. A small plaque on the sign tells you who she was. Berlin insists you know…

Then, I turned onto Wilhelmstraße… This place was once the nerve center of German state power. The Reich Bismarck’s Chancellery stood here. Decisions that changed the world were made on this street.

At number 77, in 1884, 14 nations gathered around a table and divided my continent… No African was in the room.

The Berlin Conference: The Original Scramble

The building is gone now, damaged during the Second World War, later demolished. But I stood on that pavement, and I tried to feel it. The street today is unremarkable: apartment blocks, a few parked cars, coffee shops, but a historical marker shows a photograph: the grand courtyard, the ornate façade, the iron gates. Bismarck’s house of power.

In November 1884, German Chancelor von Bismarck convened what became known as the Berlin Conference here. Representatives came from fourteen nations: Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway, the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and of course, Germany.

Fourteen nations. Zero African.

Over the following three months, they drew lines across a continent they had never walked, through forests they had never entered, across rivers they had never crossed, dividing up kingdoms, splitting ethnic groups, separating families, all on paper, all with rulers and ink, all with the cold confidence of men who believed that the world was theirs to arrange as they pleased.

By the time the General Act of the Berlin Conference was signed in February 1885, the fate of an entire continent had been sealed. Within two decades, over 90% of Africa was under European colonial control.

Standing there, I felt something cold move through me.

2026: Standing at Another Crossroads

I had come to Berlin for the Global Solutions Summit. The conversations there were urgent and familiar: climate transition, green energy, critical minerals, technological infrastructure, the architecture of a new global economy.

And everywhere, behind the diplomatic language, financing frameworks, and partnership proposals, was Africa… because, and here is the extraordinary, irony of this historical moment: the resources the world desperately needs to power its energy transition, lithium, cobalt, manganese, graphite, rare earth elements, are disproportionately concentrated in Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo alone holds an estimated 70% of the world’s cobalt. Africa sits on roughly 30% of the world’s mineral reserves. The continent receives more solar radiation than anywhere else on Earth. Its arable land represents the largest untapped agricultural resource on the planet.

The world needs Africa. Profoundly. Urgently. Structurally, and the new scramble has already begun.

You can see it in the rush of bilateral deals, the flurry of state visits, the new embassies, the infrastructure loans with attached conditions, the mining concessions signed in presidential palaces far from the communities whose land sits above the ore. You can see it in the language, partnership, cooperation, mutual benefit, language that is not always wrong, but that requires Africans to read very carefully, because we have heard reassuring language before… We know how that story ended.

What the African Union Has Already Said

But here is what is different in 2026 from 1884. And it matters enormously: Africa is not silent. Africa is not unrepresented. Africa is not without strategy.

The African Union’s Green Minerals Strategy, the frameworks being developed by regional blocs, ECOWAS, SADC, the EAC etc. represent something historically new: a continent actively, collectively, and with legal sophistication, defining the terms on which its resources will be developed and shared. The AU’s Agenda 2063 explicitly envisions African ownership of African value chains. There is growing insistence, from Dakar to Nairobi to Lusaka, Harare, Kinshasa, Conakry… that Africa must move beyond exporting raw materials to building the processing capacity, the battery manufacturing, the clean energy infrastructure that transforms natural endowment into generational wealth. This is not the language of 1884. This is the language of agency.

The Lesson of Wilhelmstraße 77

What happened at that address in 1884/85 was possible because Africa had no seat at the table. The men in that room did not need to negotiate with Africans, did not need to hear from Africans, did not need to consider what Africans wanted, because Africans were not present to want anything, as far as those men were concerned.

That was the architecture of the crime: exclusion first, exploitation second. Which is why the question of representation, real representation, not decorative consultation, is not a procedural nicety. It is the entire ball game. When African heads of state arrive at global summits and sit in rooms where the future of green finance, of carbon markets, of technology transfer is being decided, their presence should not be symbolism. It should be the structural correction of a 140-year-old wrong.

When the African Union gained permanent membership in the G20, it was not a diplomatic courtesy. It was a necessary repair to a broken architecture. But presence is only the beginning. Presence without power is theater. What Wilhelmstraße 77 demands of us is that we go further.

A Determination Carved in Stone

I took my photographs. I stood there longer than I needed to. I thought about the chiefs who never knew their kingdoms had been distributed like party favors. I thought about the languages that were broken, the trade routes that were severed, the political institutions that were dismantled, the generations that grew up inside borders that made no cultural, geographic, or human sense.

And then, I thought about what we owe those people. Not just in grief but in action.

We owe them a generation of African leaders, economists, lawyers, scientists, and engineers who arrive at every table, every single table, with a strategy, with unity, and with the absolute, non-negotiable insistence that this time, the terms will be different.

We owe them an Africa that processes its own lithium and bauxite. That manufactures its own solar panels. That builds its own semiconductor industry. That trains its own AI researchers. That writes its own trade agreements…

We owe them an African private sector with the capital and confidence to compete, not just to host.

We owe them an African public that understands that the new scramble will not arrive wearing colonial uniforms. It will arrive in business class, speaking the language of sustainability, bearing feasibility studies and impact assessments. It will be harder to recognize. It must be recognized anyway.

This Time, We Are in the Room

The building at Wilhelmstraße 77 is gone. But the lesson it teaches is permanent: when you are excluded from the decisions about your future, someone else will make those decisions for you, and they will not make them in your interest.

Africa does not need charity. Africa needs and increasingly demands genuine partnership: the kind that transfers technology, not just depletes resources; that builds local capacity, not just local resentment; that respects African sovereignty as an absolute, not as a negotiating position to be gradually eroded.

The world is at an inflection point. The need for energy transition is real, the timeline is urgent, and the minerals beneath African soil are not optional to that project. That gives Africa leverage it has not had in over a century. The question is whether African leaders, institutions, and citizens will exercise that leverage with the discipline, the solidarity, and the strategic clarity that this moment demands. Ultimately, this is the challenge at the heart of our work on Resource Futures in Africa: ensuring that Africa’s vast resource wealth becomes a foundation for justice, shared prosperity, democratic accountability, and sustainable development rather than another chapter in a long history of extraction without transformation.

I left Wilhelmstraße walking tall.

Not because the wounds of 1884 are healed. They are not. Not because the scramble has ended. It has not. But because this time, we know the game. This time, we have institutions. This time, we have lawyers, economists, negotiators and strategies.

This time, we have each other.

This time, we are in the room.

And we are not leaving.

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“Free Visa” Is Not “Visa-Free”

The forgotten Free Movement Protocol, and the integration Africa owes its People

In recent months, some African governments have announced new “free visa” or “visa free” policies for African travelers. The headlines were enthusiastic. Social media celebrated another victory for Pan-Africanism. Governments presented the measures as evidence of progress toward continental integration. Yet beyond the applause lies an uncomfortable reality: a free visa is not the same as visa-free travel. Not even close. The distinction matters. It is not a technicality. It is not a matter of semantics. It is a question of how seriously Africa is prepared to embrace the free movement of its own people. It is the difference between a policy that changes the architecture of African mobility and one that simply discounts the cost of applying for the same old permission slip. More importantly: both fall short of what Africa already agreed to do in a treaty that the continent has adopted since 2018 and only 4 countries have ratified.

What Is a “Free Visa”?

A free visa means you still need to obtain a visa. You still apply. You still submit documents. You still wait for approval. A government officer still retains the power to deny you entry. The only thing removed is the monetary fee at one step in that process. The bureaucratic relationship between you and that border remains completely unchanged. You are an applicant seeking permission. The other African country is a gatekeeper deciding whether to grant it. The visa requirement, with all its paperwork, waiting time, uncertainty, and power asymmetry, is fully intact.

What Is “Visa-Free”?

Visa-free means no visa is required at all. You present your valid African passport at the port of entry and are admitted, subject to standard border checks, without any prior application, fee, embassy queue, or risk of pre-departure rejection. Your right to enter is treated as a given, not a privilege to be earned.

The difference is not just procedural. It is philosophical: A free visa says: “You may apply to come.” Visa-free says: “You are welcome.”

The case of Ghana

In April 2026, President John Mahama announced a new visa policy for Africans, set to take effect on May 25, 2026 (Africa Day), anchored in a newly introduced national e-Visa platform. The headlines again celebrated. But Ghana’s official was clear about what the policy does and does not do: “Not paying visa fees is not the same as automatic entry into Ghana. There shall be no automatic and unvetted entries.”

African travelers will still be required to submit applications and undergo screening through the new e-Visa system. What changes is the cost, not the controls. This is, by definition, a free visa policy, not a visa-free one. So, to go to Ghana with an African nation’s passport you must complete an e-Visa application online before departure. No fee will be charged. But you must apply, be vetted, and receive approval. Do not arrive without completing the e-Visa process. ECOWAS citizens can still travel to Ghana visa-free.

Given that Ghana hosts the AfCFTA Secretariat in Accra and positions itself as a champion of regional integration, one might have expected a more open and facilitative visa regime, similar to the models adopted by Rwanda and Kenya, which have significantly eased entry requirements for African travelers.

Some of the Countries That Have Done It Well…

As of 2025-2026, the following African countries have visa-free entry policy for all African passport holders:

  • Rwanda: Full visa-free. Any African enters by passport alone. No application, no fee, no prior approval.
  • Kenya: Full visa-free. Any African enters by passport alone. No application, no fee, no prior approval.
  • Benin: Eliminated visa requirements for all Africans.
  • Seychelles: First African country to offer visa-free access to all nationalities.
  • Togo: Visa-free entry for African citizens but online registration of travel required  
  • Congo: Visa-free policy announced on 25th May 2026, Africa Day but the policy is not yet published

The Forgotten Treaty: Africa’s Broken Promise to Itself

On January 29, 2018, the African Union Summit adopted two landmark agreements side by side:

They were adopted together. They were designed together. They are inseparable in logic: you cannot build a continental market if the people who make up that market cannot move freely within it but what happened next tells you everything about political will.

The AfCFTA gathered ratifications quickly. It entered into force in May 2019. Today, 54 of 55 AU member states have signed it. It is nearly operational.

The Free Movement Protocol has been ratified by only 4 countries: Mali, Niger, Rwanda, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The Protocol requires 15 ratifications to enter into force. It remains eleven short.

What the Protocol Actually Promises

The Protocol is not a vague declaration. Article 6(4) states plainly that a national of a Member State permitted to enter another State shall be allowed to move freely or stay for a maximum period of ninety (90) days, without a visa. This is Phase 1: the immediate promise. Phases 2 and 3 progressively add the right of residence and the right of establishment.

  • Phase 1: Right of Entry: Visa-free entry and stays of up to 90 days. Achievable now.
  • Phase 2: Right of Residence: The right to live and seek employment in another Member State.
  • Phase 3: Right of Establishment: The right to set up businesses in any Member State.

Phase 1 alone would be revolutionary. But it requires 15 ratifications to begin. The continent has been stuck at 4 for six years.

How Can You Trade If You Cannot Move?

Africa’s intra-continental trade stands at just 17% of total exports. Europe’s comparable figure is around 60%. The World Bank estimates AfCFTA could increase Africa’s total exports by nearly 29% by 2035 and lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty. But those projections assume the treaty’s logic is followed through, including the free movement that makes trade in services possible.

“As an investor, as someone who wants to make Africa great, I have to apply for 35 different visas on my passport.”: Aliko Dangote.

AfCFTA lowers tariffs on goods. But services trade, finance, technology, logistics, healthcare, education, are built by people who must move. The AfCFTA and the Free Movement Protocol are two wheels of the same vehicle. Africa has chosen to build one wheel and leave the other in the warehouse.

The “Security” Objection Does Not Excuse Inaction

The most common reason governments give for not ratifying the Protocol is security. It is not an illegitimate concern, but it is consistently overstated. Border security and visa requirements are not the same thing. Countries can maintain robust screening, biometric databases, advance passenger information systems, and cross-border security cooperation entirely independent of whether a visa is required in advance.

ECOWAS has operated a free movement protocol among 15 member states since 1979, without evidence that this has destabilized any member economy or compromised security in ways that outweigh the benefits.

The AU’s own Peace and Security Council acknowledged before the Protocol was even adopted that “the benefits of free movement of people, goods and services far outweigh the real and potential security and economic challenges.” If the Peace and Security Council can reach that conclusion, the political reluctance to ratify is not about security. It is about political will.

Stop the Distractions. Ratify the Protocol !

Individual countries announcing visa-free policies deserve credit. But these gestures should not substitute for, or distract from, the legal instrument that would make free movement a continent-wide right rather than a favor dispensed country by country.

11 more ratifications. That is all that stands between the current patchwork of bilateral goodwill and a legally enforceable continental right to enter, stay for up to 90 days, and ultimately live and work across Africa.

Every summit at which African leaders celebrate AfCFTA without accelerating ratification of the Free Movement Protocol is an exercise in deliberate incompleteness. The continent does not lack analysis. It does not lack consensus. It does not lack the legal instrument. It lacks eleven ratifications.

The Africa We Want Already Exists on Paper, We need to make it happen in real life.

The Africa we want, where any African can travel to any African country with nothing more than their passport, stay, build relationships, trade, study, and eventually live and work without bureaucratic obstruction is not a dream. It is a treaty, adopted in Addis on January 29, 2018.

The distinction between “free visa” and “visa-free” is important. The distinction between “visa-free by individual policy” and “visa-free by continental law” is even more important.

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My 7 Takeaways from the IMF/World Bank Spring Gathering 2026

As my flight leaves Washington and turns towards Dakar, I find myself thinking about the strange contrast that defined last week’s Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group where thousands of participants from around the world: finance ministers, central bank governors, heads of international organizations, development banks, private sector leaders, civil society, think tanks and the media converged.

The world is changing faster than the institutions built to govern it. Wars, debt, inflation, climate shocks, shrinking aid budgets and the scramble for critical minerals are colliding at the same time. For countries in the Global South, and especially for Africa, this is no longer simply a difficult moment. It is a turning point that we cannot afford to miss.

What follows are my 7 main takeaways from a week of meetings, conversations and strategy sessions in Washington DC.

1. The old global model is under unprecedented serious pressure

The 2026 Spring Meetings took place in a world absorbed by renewed instability. The conflict in the Middle East has pushed up oil and fertilizer prices. Global growth projections were revised downward. Developing countries arrived in Washington carrying the burden of successive crises: the pandemic, inflation, debt distress, food insecurity, climate disasters, and now a new energy shock. The message from many countries of the Global Majority was clear: “we are exhausted by living through one global crisis after another, while the international financial system continues to respond too slowly and too cautiously”.

For Africa, the numbers are particularly alarming. The continent is expected to grow by around 4.3 percent this year, faster than many other regions. But ordinary citizens don’t feel it that way in their everyday life. More than twenty African countries remain in or near debt distress. Public debt across the continent exceeds $1.1 trillion. Debt servicing is absorbing an ever-larger share of public revenues, while rising fuel and fertilizer prices are placing new pressure on already stretched budgets. So, the current system is not delivering for people!

2. Africa can no longer come to these meetings simply to ask for help

Perhaps the most important shift I have been observing was psychological: For too long, African delegations have come to the IMF and World Bank meetings primarily to seek support, plead for relief, or react to agendas shaped elsewhere. That mood is changing.

Across the meetings and interactions, I sensed a growing determination among African leaders, diplomats, civil society actors and thinkers that the continent must come to these gathering with a strategy of its own. The continent cannot continue to define itself only through its vulnerabilities, debt, poverty, conflict or climate shocks. Africa must increasingly define itself through its assets, its leverage and its vision, but most importantly start making concrete steps to govern domestic resources differently and to form synergy to act in solidarity because Africa has leverage. The continent sits at the center of the new global economy: critical minerals, energy transition, food systems, strategic shipping routes and the world’s youngest population. Africa must prepare to negotiate from a position of strength.

3. Critical minerals: an Opportunity and a Great Test for Africa

Much of my own week in Washington was spent contributing to convene and shape conversations around critical minerals.

Together with colleagues from the Open Society Foundations and partners at the ONE Campaign we hosted a high-level strategic dialogue that brought together more than forty participants: African ambassadors, government officials, representatives of the African Union, private sector actors, think tanks and civil society. The central reality is unavoidable: the global economy is being reorganized around batteries, semiconductors, electric vehicles, renewable energy and digital technologies. All of these depend on minerals that Africa possesses in abundance.

Africa holds roughly 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves, including large shares of cobalt, graphite, manganese, platinum and rare earths but the still export raw materials and import finished products. We continue to bear the environmental and social costs of extraction while others capture jobs, technology and wealth. My strongest takeaway is this: Africa must stop negotiating country by country. No individual state, however rich in minerals, can negotiate effectively against major powers and multinational corporations acting in a coordinated way. Africa needs a common continental position, anchored in the African Union’s Green Minerals Strategy and the still highly relevant African Mining Vision.

That should mean:

  • no export of raw minerals without a pathway toward local processing and value addition.
  • stronger regional cooperation around mineral corridors, infrastructure and industrial zones.
  • common tax, royalty and local content standards.
  • transparency and accountability in contracts.
  • and a firm insistence that the green transition must not become another chapter in Africa’s long history of extraction without development.

4. Debt and critical minerals are two sides of the same story

One of the strongest themes that emerged during the week was that critical minerals are not simply a mining issue. They are directly linked to debt, industrial policy, jobs, energy access and Africa’s place in global governance. A country that is desperate for foreign exchange because of debt has less power to negotiate a fair mineral contract. A government forced to spend a large share of its revenues servicing debt has less capacity to invest in roads, electricity, education, skills and processing industries. This is why debt reform and critical mineral diplomacy must be discussed together.

With a public debt now exceeding $1.1 trillion and an  annual external debt service approaching $90 billion, the continent receives only a small share of global climate finance, and more than half of that arrives in the form of more debt. Africa cannot industrialize, process its minerals, or compete in the global economy if it remains trapped in a cycle of debt and extraction. The fight for mineral sovereignty is therefore inseparable from the fight for debt justice.

5. The African Union has a bigger role to play than ever before

One of the most important conversations of the week was a strategic meeting we held with the Commissioner of the African Union responsible for Economic Development, Trade, Industry and Minerals. The discussion confirmed something that is becoming increasingly obvious: Africa can no longer rely only on individual governments to represent the continent’s interests in global economic discussions. We need stronger continental diplomacy. This is particularly important now that the African Union has a permanent seat in the G20. That is a historic achievement. But being in the room is not the same as shaping the outcome. It is time to turn presence into power.

6. Charity Starts from Home: Africa must take responsibility for its own development

It is easy, and often justified, to focus on what is wrong with the international system. African countries borrow at far higher interest rates than countries elsewhere. Climate finance is insufficient. Global institutions remain unequal. International rules continue to favor those who already hold power. But one of my strongest convictions coming out of Washington is that Africa must also be honest about its own responsibilities. No outside actor, whether the IMF, the World Bank, China, Europe, the Gulf states or the United States, will build Africa for Africans.

African governments must improve transparency and accountability, especially on debt and public finance. They must tackle corruption and illicit financial flows. They must invest more seriously in regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area. They must strengthen their capacity to negotiate contracts, design industrial policies and implement long-term strategies. Above all, we should stop behaving as if development can be outsourced. Development will come only if African countries make deliberate choices: to cooperate rather than compete against one another; to process and manufacture rather than merely extract; to invest in institutions, skills and technology; and to speak with greater unity in international forums.

7. Moving Forward…

As I leave Washington, tired but hopeful, I carry with me the memory of many conversations: in formal meetings, in the corridors, over hurried coffees and in late-night strategy sessions with colleagues and friends. Africa’s future will not be secured simply by attracting more aid or more loans. It will depend on changing the terms of engagement with the rest of the world. We must move from being a source of raw materials to becoming a center of production.

The continent must build refineries, battery industries, transport corridors, digital infrastructure, universities and technical institutes. It must create a new generation of negotiators, engineers, economists and public servants capable of shaping the future rather than merely reacting to it.

That will not happen overnight, but it can happen if we start implementing all those beautiful, well-thought-out policies and frameworks we have already adopted.

Looking ahead to the next chapters, from the G20 process to the next African Union Ministerial debates, from critical minerals diplomacy to the AfDB Annual Meetings later this year, I am convinced that Africa now faces a more demanding test than simple resilience.

The years ahead will require the continent to preserve macroeconomic credibility, maintain social legitimacy and build states and institutions capable not only of making promises, but of delivering results. Countries that succeed will not simply weather the turbulence of this new era; they will emerge stronger, more sovereign and more influential within it. Those that fail risk remaining trapped in the familiar cycle of crisis, adjustment and missed opportunity.

That, perhaps, is the deepest lesson of the 2026 Spring Meetings.

Prosperity in the years ahead will depend less on rhetoric and more on something far more difficult: a more serious state, a more disciplined policy framework, stronger regional cooperation and a much greater capacity to turn strategy into outcomes. In the end, that combination will matter far more than any slogan.

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At the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings, Africa Must Show Up Strategically

I am in Washington, D.C. this week alongside my OSF colleagues and partners to participate in the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group.

Twice a year, this gathering brings together finance ministers, central bank governors, development institutions, and civil society. It is often described as technical, but these meetings are among the few global spaces where the rules of the international financial system are debated, and, in many ways, shaped.

What happens here determines how countries borrow, how they respond to crises, and whether governments can invest in their people. It influences whether schools are built, hospitals are funded, and jobs are created. In short: what is negotiated in Washington travels directly into everyday life across the Global South.

A World of Shocks and a System Under Stress

This year’s Spring Meetings are taking place under a unifying concern: how to manage volatility and strengthen resilience in a world of compounding shocks.

In her curtain raiser, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva described a global economy hit by a “large, global, and asymmetric supply shock”, a reminder that instability is no longer episodic, but structural.

The scale of disruption is significant:

  • Global oil supply was reduced by around 13%, with natural gaz flows down by 20%
  • Energy prices surged, with oil jumping from $72 to $120 per barrel at its peak
  • Up to 45 million more people risk falling into food insecurity, bringing the global total above 360 million

These shocks are transmitted through higher inflation, tighter financial conditions, and disrupted supply chains, affecting countries unevenly, depending on their exposure and policy space. The message from the IMF is clear: growth will slow, uncertainty will persist, and policy space will tighten.

Africa at the Intersection of Vulnerability and Opportunity

For Africa, these global dynamics are not abstract, they are immediate and constraining.

  • Public debt across the continent stands at roughly $1.1 trillion
  • More than 20 countries are in or near debt distress
  • Debt servicing absorbs around 15% of government revenues
  • Borrowing costs remain close to 10%, far higher than in advanced economies

At the same time:

  • Over 80% of countries globally are net oil importers, placing many African economies among the most exposed to energy shocks
  • Climate finance remains deeply insufficient, with Africa receiving only about 3% of global flows, much of it as debt

Yet Africa is not only vulnerable, it is central to the future of the global economy.

The continent holds critical minerals essential to the energy transition, represents a rapidly growing share of the global population, and is emerging as a key frontier for industrialization and innovation. This dual reality, high vulnerability and high strategic relevance, defines Africa’s position today.

Why These Meetings Matter More Than Ever

Institutions like the IMF and the World Bank Group shape global economic outcomes. They influence:

  • How debt crises are resolved, …or prolonged
  • The terms and conditions of financing
  • The fiscal space available to governments
  • The global response to development and climate challenges

At a time when the IMF itself projects a downgrade in global growth even under optimistic scenarios, these decisions carry even greater weight.

Africa Must Show Up Differently

In this context, showing up is not enough. Africa must show up strategically. This means engaging not only in formal sessions, but also in shaping the conversations that define outcomes.

Throughout the week, we are contributing to discussions on:

  • The future of multilateralism and industrial policy in a shifting geopolitical landscape
  • Managing volatility and rethinking capital flows in a fragmented global economy
  • Strengthening the voice of borrower countries in global financial governance

These are critical spaces where ideas evolve and coalitions form.

Critical Minerals: From Resource Wealth to Strategic Power

One of the most important conversations this week, and one I am directly engaged in is around critical mineral diplomacy.

Africa holds a significant share of the minerals that power the global energy transition, cobalt, lithium, manganese, and more. Yet historically, the continent has captured only a fraction of the value generated from its resources. To address this, we are convening a closed-door Policy Dialogue on Critical Mineral Diplomacy with African delegations on the margins of the Spring Meetings. This is not just another side event.

It is a strategic space to:

  • Align African positions ahead of global negotiations
  • Share insights on evolving partners’ industrial and supply chain strategies
  • Strengthening negotiating capacity to secure better deals
  • Advance a collective vision for value addition, industrialization, and sovereignty over resources

In a multipolar world, minerals are no longer just commodities, they are instruments of geopolitical leverage. The question is whether Africa will use them as such.

What Must Change

There will be no shortage of declarations this week. But the IMF’s message is unequivocal: the world has a fiscal space problem, and policy choices are becoming more constrained. In this context, incremental change will not suffice.

Three shifts are essential:

  • From slow and fragmented debt restructuring to predictable and fair solutions
  • From expensive capital to affordable, development-oriented financing
  • From fragmented national positions to coordinated African agency

A Moment for Agency

The global economy is being reshaped in real time. Energy systems are shifting. Financial conditions are tightening. Geopolitics is redefining trade and investment. Moments like this determine who sets the rules, and who lives with them.

Africa has resources, the demographic weight and the strategic relevance. What remains is coordinated action.

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Redefining Africa’s Economic Future: Insights from The Ministerial Meeting in Tangier

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in the 2026 Session of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (COM2026) in Tangier, Morocco. Convened under the theme “Growth through innovation: harnessing data and frontier technologies for the economic transformation of Africa,” the conference brought together ministers, central bank governors, African Union leadership, and key development partners at a moment of profound global uncertainty.

Why COM Matters More Than Ever

The Conference of African Ministers of Finance is not just another high-level meeting. It is one of the few spaces where Africa’s economic direction is collectively debated, negotiated, and articulated.

It is where:

  • Narratives around resources, financing, and sovereignty take shape
  • Policy priorities are aligned across countries
  • The continent begins to speak, however imperfectly, with a more unified voice

For those of us working on economic justice, development finance, and governance, showing up in these spaces is not optional. It is essential.

A Clear Shift in Africa’s Economic Thinking

The adopted Ministerial Statement confirms what many of us have been sensing: Africa’s policy conversation is shifting, both in tone and ambition.

First, there is a strong embrace of innovation and technology-driven growth. From digital finance to artificial intelligence, the conversation is no longer about catching up, but about how to leap forward.

Second, there is a growing emphasis on digital and data sovereignty. Control over data, infrastructure, and digital ecosystems is increasingly seen as central to economic independence, not just efficiency.

Third and perhaps most importantly, there is renewed urgency around reforming the global financial architecture. African policymakers are increasingly vocal about the mismatch between global financial rules and the continent’s development needs.

From Extraction to Strategy: The Critical Minerals Moment

One of the most significant shifts is in how Africa is thinking about its natural resources, particularly critical minerals. For decades, the continent has exported raw materials with limited local value creation. That model is now being openly challenged.

Across discussions in Tangier, there was a clear and consistent message:
Africa must move from extraction to value addition, from supply to strategy.

This means:

  • Building regional value chains under the African Continental Free Trade Area
  • Investing in beneficiation and industrialization
  • Using Africa’s resource endowment as negotiating power in a competitive global landscape

The political appetite for this shift is real. But ambition alone will not deliver results.

The Financing Question: The Constraint That Shapes Everything

If there was one issue that cut across every discussion, it was financing.

There is broad consensus that Africa’s transformation, whether in industrialization, digitalization, or climate transition, will not happen without:

  • Expanded fiscal space
  • Better management of debt vulnerabilities
  • Greater transparency and efficiency in public spending
  • Access to innovative and affordable financing mechanisms

In other words, the question is not just what Africa wants to do, but how it will finance it.

A Moment of Political Opportunity, And Risk

One of the most encouraging signal from Tangier was the rising political appetite for a more coordinated African voice.

There is increasing recognition that Africa’s leverage lies in:

  • Its demographic weight
  • Its resource endowment
  • Its market potential

But turning this potential into real influence will require:

  • Stronger coordination among African states
  • Enhanced negotiation capacity
  • Strategic use of platforms and partnerships

This is where the gap remains, and where the opportunity lies.

Corridor Diplomacy

Beyond the plenary sessions, some of the most important work happened in the corridors.

I had the opportunity to engage with several government delegations, including a direct exchange with H.E. Ndaba Gaolathe, Vice President of Botswana as well as delegations from Zambia, Ghana, Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau.

With the Vice President of Botswana, H.E. Ndaba Gaolathe.

These conversations reinforced a shared reality: Countries are increasingly aware of the stakes, but are looking for tools, partnerships, and platforms to act more effectively.

I also engaged with the African Legal Support Facility, a key but often under-recognized actor. Their work, supporting African governments in negotiating contracts and managing debt, is critical, because ultimately, strategy is only as strong as the capacity to negotiate it.

From Tangier to Washington DC and Beyond

The conversations in Tangier do not end there. They are already shaping the next phase of engagement:

  • The WB/IMF Spring Meetings in Washington DC, where we will convene a dialogue on Critical Mineral Diplomacy
  • The AfDB Annual Meetings in Brazzaville, where financing and implementation will take center stage

These are not isolated events. They are part of a continuum.

Conclusion

What Tangier made clear to me is that Africa is at an inflection point. The continent has the resources, the ideas, and increasingly the political will. But the outcome will depend on something more difficult to build: Coordination. Capacity. Strategy.

Africa’s future will not be determined only by what it has, but by how it chooses to organize its power in a changing world, and on that journey, the role of institutions, partnerships, and convening spaces will matter more than ever.

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Why Africa and Latin America Must Shape the Next Chapter of Global Cooperation

My Reflections Ahead of the First Africa-CELAC Forum

As I arrive in Bogota, Colombia to participate in the first High-Level Forum between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the African Union, the atmosphere is charged with both urgency and possibilities. This gathering to be held from 18th -21st March 2026 is not simply another diplomatic event on an already crowded global calendar. It is a strategic moment, one that could help redefine how Global South organizes itself to navigate an increasingly fragmented international order.

For decades, Africa and Latin America have engaged the world largely through parallel struggles: debt crises, commodity dependence, structural inequalities, democratic pressures, and climate vulnerability. Today, these shared realities are converging into a common political consciousness, and into a growing recognition that cooperation across the Global South is no longer optional. It is becoming a geopolitical necessity.

A Historic Convergence of Regions

Together, Africa (54 states) and Latin America and the Caribbean (33 states) represent nearly half of United Nations membership, close to 2 billion people, and a combined economic output approaching 10 trillion dollars. If structured and sustained, this inter-regional alignment could become one of the most consequential political and economic coalitions of the 21st century.

The Bogota Forum reflects an emerging understanding across both regions that the rules governing global finance, trade, climate action, and technological transformation are being renegotiated, often without sufficient representation from those most affected. This moment offers an opportunity to shift from fragmented national advocacy toward coordinated regional bargaining power.

As highlighted in the Forum’s preparatory discussions, ambition is not symbolic diplomacy but institutionalized cooperation mechanisms capable of shaping development outcomes and influencing global governance reforms.

Stopping Commodity Dependence to Embrace Economic Transformation

One of the most compelling imperatives for Africa-Latin America cooperation lies in economic transformation. Both regions remain heavily dependent on the export of raw materials, from critical minerals and agricultural commodities to fossil fuels. This structural pattern has constrained industrialization, limited job creation, and exposed economies to volatile global price cycles.

A coordinated approach to value-chain development, including industrial policy alignment, regional investment platforms, and knowledge exchange, could help shift this trajectory.

Latin America’s experience in sectors such as renewable energy and bioeconomy innovation offers lessons for African industrial strategies. At the same time, Africa’s demographic dynamism and expanding continental market under the African Continental Free Trade Area present new opportunities for South-South production partnerships.

By acting together, both regions can move from being price-takers in global markets to becoming rule-shapers in emerging sectors such as green minerals, climate technologies, and digital public infrastructure.

Debt, Climate Finance, and the Politics of Global Rules

Another central pillar of the Bogota dialogue is the urgent need to reform global development finance. Many African and Latin American countries now spend more on debt servicing than on health or education. Climate shocks are compounding fiscal vulnerabilities, even as climate finance flows remain insufficient and unevenly distributed.

In this context, Africa-CELAC cooperation can strengthen collective advocacy for reforms in multilateral development banks, fairer sovereign debt restructuring mechanisms, and expanded access to concessional climate finance. Joint diplomatic positioning could also help accelerate innovations such as regional credit rating agencies, local currency financing instruments, and blended finance platforms designed around development priorities rather than external conditionalities.

If successful, such collaboration would not only unlock resources but also rebalance the power dynamics that shape global economic decision-making.

Reparative Justice and Historical Accountability

Perhaps one of the most transformative dimensions of Africa-Latin America engagement lies in the growing movement for reparative justice. Both regions carry the enduring legacies of colonial extraction, slavery, racial hierarchies, and unequal integration into the global economy. These historical injustices continue to shape present-day development trajectories.

Coordinated diplomatic efforts, including support for initiatives emerging from African Union member states to advance reparations discussions at the United Nations, could elevate the issue from moral aspiration to policy agenda.

Beyond financial compensation, reparative justice must be understood as encompassing technology transfer, fair trade systems, institutional reform, and the restoration of cultural and intellectual agency.

In Bogota, cultural diplomacy and people-centered engagement are playing an important role in grounding these discussions in lived experience rather than abstract geopolitical rhetoric.

People as the Bridge Between Regions

While governments drive formal cooperation frameworks, citizens and their formations and networks remain essential for sustaining momentum beyond summit declarations. Youth movements, research institutions, diaspora organizations, and community leaders are uniquely positioned to translate political commitments into social innovation and policy accountability.

Such engagements will be critical to building durable coalitions capable of navigating future crises, whether related to democratic governance, migration, food security, or digital transformation.

A Forward-Looking Agenda for Global South Cooperation

Looking ahead, the real test of the Bogota Forum will not be the eloquence of its final declaration but the strength of its follow-through. Institutionalizing Africa-CELAC cooperation will require:

  • Establishing permanent inter-regional coordination mechanisms and regular ministerial dialogues.
  • Developing joint investment platforms focused on industrialization, climate resilience, and technology partnerships.
  • Aligning diplomatic strategies in multilateral negotiations on debt, trade, and global governance reform.
  • Strengthening cultural and academic exchanges to deepen mutual understanding and shared identity across the Global South.

If these steps are pursued with ambition and political will, the partnership between Africa and Latin America could become a cornerstone of a more balanced and inclusive global order.

Bogota as a Starting Point, Not an Endpoint

Standing in Bogota at this crucial moment, one senses that history is quietly shifting. The world is entering an era marked by geopolitical competition, institutional uncertainty, and contested norms. In such a context, solidarity among regions that share common developmental challenges, and common aspirations, becomes both a strategic necessity and a moral imperative.

Africa and Latin America have the potential not only to cooperate but to co-create new pathways for prosperity, justice, peace and democratic resilience. The choices made here this week could help determine whether the Global South remains a collection of fragmented voices or emerges as a coherent force capable of shaping the future of global cooperation.

The journey has begun. The responsibility now is to ensure that Bogota becomes remembered not as a symbolic encounter, but as the moment when two regions decided to act together, with purpose, confidence, and a shared vision for a fairer world.

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Confronting Instability in Africa, Rebuilding Agency in a Fractured World.

Why Africa Must Rethink Its Peace Architecture Now ?

Africa’s security landscape is changing faster than the frameworks and institutions designed to manage it.  From the Sahel to the Horn and the Great Lakes, conflicts are becoming more interconnected, driven by governance deficits, geopolitical competition, and transnational threats that traditional responses struggle to address.

In this piece published by Amani Africa, I reflect on why the continent must rethink its peace and security architecture and how the upcoming AU Extraordinary Summit could become a turning point for rebuilding continental agency.

Take a read here: https://amaniafrica-et.org/confronting-instability-in-africa-rebuilding-agency-in-a-fractured-world-why-africa-must-re-think-its-peace-architecture-now/