Rise of aggressive imperialism and new scramble for Africa threatens sovereignty – Prof Karikari

Africa’s editors have been called upon to be mindful of the emerging developments in global geopolitics, especially aggressive imperialism and a new scramble for the continent that are threats to Africa’s independence and sovereignty.

Speaking Monday February 23, 2026 at the opening of the first Africa Editors Congress in Nairobi, Kenya, Prof Kwame Karikari, of the Wisconsin University and founder of the Media Foundation for West Africa called on African editors to reflect on three critical issues he believes are confronting and confounding the continent at the moment.

Prof Karikari noted that the rise of aggressive imperialism and the threats to Africa’s independence and sovereignty, the destabilizing conflicts and their threats to peace and development, and, the steady recession in democratic governance and gains, should be of concern to editors.

“As we entered 2026, rapid events have shown clearly that, the international order we took for granted has turned out to be an illusion. Before our very eyes, the post-1945 multilateral system of institutions, treaties and universal rules of civilized engagements are collapsing. They are fast giving way to an international order of chaos and disorder governed by brute force and disdain for the weak and principles of civilized values,” he said.

Rubio’s speech regretted the end of colonialism. He urged Europe to shed off any sentiment of ‘guilt and shame’ over its colonial past but instead to join the US in reclaiming a a dominant ‘place in the world.

According to Prof Karikari, this is an existential challenge for Africa and media and media leaders must pay very keen and critical attention.

“In the evolving disorder of brigandage and might-is-right, Africa lies the most vulnerable,” he warned.

He drew attention to the recent Munich Security Conference last week, where the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the United State’s new foreign policy which amounts to a call for a revival, indeed reinstatement, of US-led Western old-style imperialism.

“Rubio’s speech regretted the end of colonialism. He urged Europe to shed off any sentiment of ‘guilt and shame’ over its colonial past but instead to join the US in reclaiming a a dominant ‘place in the world’,” he said.

Prof Karikari indicated that the racist motivations and intents of a Western imperialist power have never been so blatantly spelled out in several decades, citing one commentator who described it as a “veiled call for a return to imperial dominance, a nostalgia for the era when our lands were carved up and our peoples subjugated.”

According to Prof Karikari, in response to Rubio’s ominous forebodings, Sir Sam Jonah, the Ghanaian mining business magnate, sent a letter to the African Union alerting African leaders about the dangers these imperialist agendas pose to Africa.

In his letter, Sam Jonah, warned: “Make no mistake: these are not idle musings. They are a stark reminder that in the eyes of some global powers, Africa’s independence is a historical inconvenience, and our resources remain ripe for extraction,” he said.

“…Rubio’s speech”, Sam Jonah’s letter to the AU continued, “underscores a harsh truth: the end of formal colonialism did not end the exploitation. Neocolonialism persists through economic dependencies, debt traps, and geopolitical maneuvering. We must heed this moment to unite, look inward, and pursue our continent’s agenda with unashamed selfishness,” he added.

Prof Karikari warned that imperialism, in whatever form or guise, is a stage of capitalism. And its expansionist tendencies, letting blood, mass murder and misery along its paths, are nothing more or less than the search for and control of economic resources, he added.

‘Whichever way you look, Africa will necessarily be at the centre of the revived aggressive imperialist contestation that is looming so ominously. Because, Africa’s vast natural resources and wealth have always been the source of attraction to outsiders and of our subjugation by them throughout our godforsaken history,” he said.

He further stated that even before Rubio formally pronounced America’s revitalized policy of aggressive imperialism, Africa’s resources had become the reason for a renewed “scramble” for control.

“Our continent is at the epi-centre of the 21^st century scramble for resources by forces ranging from former colonial powers, older imperialist powers and nearly all the emerging or newly industrializing powers: from the West, North and East. Our continent has become, once again, the hunting ground for predators in a world where civilized rules threaten to make no sense anymore. Are we in for a new kind of colonization; or is it an intensification, or an aggressive form, of what Kwame Nkrumah described as neo-colonialism?,” He said.

This emerging new global condition becomes, as expressed in political economic theory, the principal contradiction of our time. It must be at the top of the priority concerns of any serious African Editor to monitor its manifestations and to mount concerted education of the peoples about it, he said.

He said aside the frightening global development, Africa is already bleeding from several seeming intractable conflicts creating horrendous humanitarian crises. He cited the conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, and The DRC.

Stating that The DRC is a veritable example of the curse of natural wealth. Its history of independence started with gruesome murder and it has been bleeding ever since. If there is an example of a so-called “failed state”, that is the DRC. So much so that, sadly, in English the acronyms of the name, DRC, may easily translate into the “Devastated Republic of Conflicts”. Sudan and the DRC, these two sites of endless conflicts are like viruses that threaten to infect the stability of the entire central regions of Africa with wars and mass annihilation.

On Jihadism, barbaric extremism, he said elsewhere, in the Sahelian belt across West and upper central Africa, marauding messengers of death and terror, espousing false ideologies manufactured from the Arab world, threaten peace, progress and life across the Sahel and in all of West Africa.

“Faced with these serious existential realities, Africa lies prostrate, vulnerable and defenceless. Leaders of the 54 states that constitute the African Union remain completely supine and helpless. They are happy with being chieftains of “micro-sovereign” states, uninterested in coming together for any meaningful collective action to protect the interests of the African people,” he said.

The African Union, whose headquarters is a donation by a foreign power, China, is dependent on foreign donors for 70%-80% of its budget. Its independence has been so compromised that, its founding mandate has been rendered empty, if not useless, he said, further expressing concerns about the regional economic blocs which he said have become lame and ineffectual.

“What used to be a more dynamic ECOWAS confronts serious challenges of continued existence. The disarray of these institutions of African collective action gives a clearer picture of the continent’s vulnerability in the face of a global order that brooks no respect for civilized rules and humane relations,” he said.

By Emmanuel K Dogbevi, in Nairobi, Kenya

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