By Emmanuel Elegbenosa Aitanu
For years, Africa has been called a continent of “Untapped Potential.” Potential doesn’t build roads. Potential doesn’t feed people. Potential hasn’t made Africa the global powerhouse it is meant to be. Despite having over 60% of the world’s usable arable land left untilled and miles upon miles of the earth’s strategic mineral deposits, Africa remains economically splintered and disproportionately susceptible to outside forces. Open any magazine or newspaper, and you’ll see our sad continent for what it has become. If you’re like me – someone who farms its land, invests in its communities and intellectually treasures its political ideologies- it isn’t just something you see — It’s personal. I’m a farmer. I’m a real estate investor. I’m a student of the political ideology of Kwame Nkrumah. My life goal? To live long enough to see a united Africa. How do we do this? We don’t bother with overseas aid. We don’t preach outdated policies that sound nice alone someone’s talking stump. True Pan- Africanism. Down with meaningless post-colonial speaking cords and UP WITH an aggressive, actionable plan for African Politico-Economic and Social integration. True African Unity will have the whole continent acting in “ONE ACCORD.” One Accord will mean open borders. One Accord will mean a unified currency. One Accord will mean adopting a single language slowly but surely. It’s time we had a plan to stop being played like chess pieces.
Too often, conversation around Pan-Africanism is limited to vague rhetoric about African Unity. Why will Africa work together? What are the benefits? Instead of asking why, we should demand how.
The Flaw of Bordered Thinking & The Nkrumaist Ideology
The Africa we live in today is one sketched out by Imperial Europe at the 1884 Berlin Conference. The map they drew was made up of straight lines intentionally cut across a geographic body without regard for the people in it. Today, over 60 years post-independence, we fiercely protect these borders at all costs to our own development. By limiting our borders and allowing ourselves to be separated into dozens of economically weakened micro-states, we intentionally prevent ourselves from being able to compete globally. As someone who studies Kwame Nkrumah, the father of Ghanaian and African independence, regularly. I am taught to live by his immortal mantra “Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation”. Kwame knew that as divided African states rich in resources, we would always be subjected to neocolonial aggression if left small and vulnerable. He once stated that “Africa must unite or perish”; Africa would continue to be subjected to external forces of oppression if we stayed small and nonviable. Those forces exist today. Our natural resources are bought from us for cents on the dollar. Then shipped to Europe and Asia to be processed and sold back to us at markup. We get bullied in climate negotiations. Outtraded by nations whose banks and corporations have more resources than our entire governments. Cut deals that leave us on the losing end of debt payment terms. Pan-Africanism, in its truest sense, is the pragmatic understanding that no African nation can make it through the 21st century alone. By dissolving our artificial colonial borders, we can truly begin the process of reclaiming Africa’s sovereignty.
The Core Pillars of True Pan-African Integration
If Africa is going to shift from an economically fragmented powerhouse into a geopolitical unicorn, we must aggressively integrate around three core pillars.
- A Single Currency and Unified Economic Bloc.
Operating in foreign currencies for trade between African countries doesn’t just suck the wealth out of our economies—it ensures it. Imagine importing and exporting from Nigeria to Kenya without the latencies of currency exchange, appreciating/depreciating values, or transaction fees. Keeping all that money in African circulation by introducing a single pan-African currency(e.g., “Eco”-Africa’s proposed currency for West Africa). Not only that, think of the bargaining power we could provide ourselves. Africa is home to 30% of the world’s mineral reserves. What if we negotiated who got access to our cobalt, lithium, and copper? As individual vulnerable countries or as one UNITED economic bloc? Regional integration gives us the power to dictate the terms of our natural resources. Keeping the industrial value addition on African soil. Keeping the money in Africa. Creating tens of millions of jobs manufacturing those resources for our African youth.
- Radical Open Borders & Infrastructure Connectivity.
If you’re African, you know it currently takes less paperwork to travel from Paris to Pretoria than from Kigali to Kampala. The visa restrictions stopping free trade and movement between Africans are a decades-old problem that must be solved. In recent years, the African Union(AU) has made efforts to ensure open borders by introducing the AU Passport, which allows for visa-free travel between African countries. However, adoption has been slow; many countries have refused to accept it or provide visa-on-arrival access for African travellers. Open Borders across Africa could create a boom in tourism, open up opportunities for cross-border trade, and free movement of labour, which has been critical for integration in other regions. But we can’t open our borders without infrastructure to support it. African countries must come together to co-invest in megaprojects that span our borders: completing continental highways, building high-speed rail to connect industry to ports, finishing the electrical grid. Imagine if we unlocked the full potential of the Inga dams in the DRC to provide power to sub-Saharan Africa. By pooling funds to build literal bridges between our countries, we can empower regional economic blocs like ECOWAS, EAC and SADC to enforce continental integration rather than simply encouraging it.
- A Common Language & Intellectual Exchange.
I am proud of our African culture. I am proud of our history. I am proud that we come from a continent that speaks over 2,000+ languages. Integrating Africa won’t happen fully until we reduce the language barrier left by English, French, and Portuguese. By having a common African lingua franca, we can better exchange ideas and open access to education on a continent-wide scale. The African Union’s adoption of Swahili as an official working language of the AU in 2022 is a great start towards integration. However, we must continue the continent-wide integration of this language into our schools and systems. But we can take it a step further. Our universities should partner with one another to allow students and scholars to study at schools across the continent. Making it easier for homegrown solutions to African problems to emerge.
The Economic Urgency: Beyond the Rhetoric
Farmers have always had a front-row seat to Africa’s systemic inefficiencies. As a farmer operating at the intersection of agriculture and real estate in West Africa, I see how a lack of integration limits us. It often costs more in time and money to ship produce to my neighbouring African country than to send it to Europe. Because borders make moving goods between countries slow and unpredictable due to inconsistent customs regulations and arbitrary checkpoints. The African Continental Free Trade Area(AfCFTA) was created to solve this exact problem by creating a single market for goods and services for Africa’s 1.3 BILLION people spread across 54 countries.
Studies from the World Bank estimate that full implementation of the AfCFTA has the potential to lift 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty and increase our continent’s income by $450 billion by 2035. What stands in our way?
The Integration Gap
While intra- African trade currently sits at 15-18% compared to over 60% in Europe and 50% in Asia, we have a long way to go. “We have to integrate our markets to create the scale necessary for industrialisation,” says Wamkele Mene, the Secretary-General of the AfCFTA Secretariat. AfCFTA is a great start, but trade agreements aren’t enough without full political and structural commitment to integrating the 3 pillars above.
Conclusion: Let Africa Rise!
Africa will make up 25% of the world’s population by 2050. We have the youngest working class in the world. Our demographic bonus can only take us to one of two places: The engine for the most significant boom in global history or fuel for a burning house of domestic chaos. Pan-Africanism is the ONLY vehicle that can transport us to the former. Pan-Africanism is NOT about your next-door neighbour donating to the motherland. Pan-Africanism is not optional; we MUST unite, or we will not survive with dignity. I will not live on a continent that moves past phrases like “A united Africa”. LET’S LIVE IT! Let’s build it through the crops we plant, the land we invest in, and the ideology we manifest. We have been frantically pulled apart for far too long. The alternative is unacceptable. Our population of youth is growing, and our entrepreneurs need bigger markets than their local country. Now is the time. LET’S RISE UP IN ONE ACCORD. Tearing down the century-old borders dividing Africa is not only possible, but it’s also necessary, and we can do it in our lifetime.
The world is changing, and we must change with it. Supporting a united Africa is going from being a 1950’s ideology to a 2000’s necessity. I’m Emmanuel Elegbenosa Aitanu, a farmer, real estate investor, and student of the Kwame Nkrumah School of Thought from Nigeria. To me, a Borderless Africa with one currency and one language transition from being a romantic idea NO LONGER CAN BE. We either unite as Africans in “ONE ACCORD” or remain “PAWNS” of the world powers.
Emmanuel Elegbenosa Aitanu serves as the CEO of EEA & GOA Investment Ltd, where he plays a pivotal role in steering the company’s strategic direction across diverse investment sectors, including cryptocurrency, real estate, and agricultural ventures.
