A world recession induced by pandemic and war, a consequent boom in energy prices and a cost-of- living crisis with rising inflation especially of food prices, is threatening to reverse the progress that many African economies made during the ‘commodity super-cycle’ of the 2000s and the first part of the 2010s. Indeed, there are strong echoes of the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s, itself induced by a twelvefold increase in the price of oil and in Africa, by famine and war. In both cases, these appearances of crisis disguise the fundamental contradiction of capitalism – the relentless pressure to increase profits facing the limits of realisation as consumption is squeezed and the state is restricted in its powers of intervention, even in limiting the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on its already impoverished population.

While much attention has been focused on the oligarchs of Russia and Ukraine, these plutocrats as they should be called, exist all over the world. Their increasing influence is evident everywhere. They acquire their wealth by hoarding the economic rent they receive from highly valued products and paying as low wages as they can get away with to largely non-unionised labour. They then secure that wealth and economic power from any government intervention by first, capturing political parties, and not only of the right, but also the self-styled left, and then play a crucial role in funding their election campaigns. Then after those parties win elections the government is captured and liberal democracies or countries moving towards such democracy morph into shades of oligarchy or even autocracy, as we observe most obviously in countries such as India, Hungary, Turkey and in Africa, Uganda.

Once again, the chief beneficiary of this war-induced recession is US imperialism and its dominant financial-security complex (if not oligarchy) based on oil, gas and arms. Not only has the US been able to benefit as an oil producer from the increase in the oil price, but also from the increased demand for its liquid petroleum gas (LPG) as Europe reduces its demand for Russian gas following that country’s further invasion of Ukraine. The potential axis of Brussels-Moscow-Beijing, which would have been a serious threat to US global interests has been averted. The US has been able to reassert its hegemony over Europe through its mobilisation of economic and military support for Ukraine and has also underlined its hegemony in the Far East with its clear assertion of its support for Taiwan’s independence, reaffirming its strategy of, and belief in, a unipolar world.

For the countries of Africa, the last decade has seen a large increase in sovereign debt in the wake of the extremely low interest rates that followed the financial crisis of the late 2000s. The encouragement of African economies’ entry into global capital markets mainly through issuing Eurobonds, was regarded as something to be celebrated as part of the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative. Not that capital markets treated African economies in the same way as those of the Global North. Instead, they placed a premium on interest rates reflecting what they saw as the greater risk in lending to African countries. Borrowing on global capital markets when interest rates were low seemed a good way to finance development or even restructure existing debt. However, the downturn in the world economy both before and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic together with the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war has now placed some 22 countries in the position of actual or potential ‘debt distress’ and needing, or likely to need, IMF and World Bank support. Such initiatives as the G20’s Debt Service Suspension and the Common Framework for Debt Treatment have relieved very little of the pressure on the debtor countries.

African countries’ debt now averages over 60% of GDP and in the case of Mozambique 100%, ratios not high in comparison with some countries of the Global North but servicing this debt diverts resources away from investment in productive activity as increasingly borrowing is directed to repayment of previous bond issues. In the case of Mozambique, Zambia and Ghana, ‘debt distress’ has led to default on some of their debts and attempts to restructure them including negotiating deals where effectively a large part of the debt is written off as the lenders take the proverbial ‘haircuts’. In Ghana, these problems of integration into global financial markets have led to bank failures putting even more pressure on weak financial systems. Ethiopia’s war with Tigray has had devastating effects on its economy and increased its level of debt distress resulting in a rescheduling of its debt to China (a third of its total external debt) and so reducing the risk of default. In North Africa, Egypt and Tunisia have been racking up huge external debts and have now agreed new credit arrangements with the IMF.

China has become a major lender to Africa, mainly for infrastructural investments and now holds 12% of Africa’s debt, and for several countries in Africa is its biggest creditor. Debate around the motivations for Chinese lending abound, with some observers seeing China luring key African states in debt-traps while others see China being drawn into a trap of its own as the risk of default heightens. Perhaps because of this risk, the last two years has seen China sharply scaling down its lending to Africa. Unlike its willingness to reschedule Ethiopia’s debt, and that of some other African countries, China is now delaying a rescheduling of Zambian debt arguing that the multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and IMF should also take haircuts as well. This is of no help to Zambia which needs support from all its creditors. The IMF’s agreement to grant an Extended Credit Facility of $1.3 billion in August 2022 is contingent on Zambia effecting its ‘home grown’ adjustment strategy which involves restructuring and rescheduling China’s external debt as well as the other usual ‘adjustments’ in the IMF’s playbook, to which we return later.

How far repayment of current external debt by African economies is feasible will depend on its foreign exchange earnings. These are still for much of Africa, some 60 years after the end of colonial rule, highly dependent on the export of primary products. The latest data tells us that these products, predominantly fuels and minerals, comprise 77% of Africa’s export income. Some countries are more dependent on primary product exports than others and in some cases their export income is dominated by just one product, as in the case of copper in Zambia which produces 70% of its export income, Botswana, heavily dependent on its exports of diamonds and Angola and Nigeria, almost completely dependent on oil. Recent discoveries of new sources of gold, oil and gas has led to export concentration in an increasing number of countries.

Such dependence and concentration leaves countries vulnerable to swings in commodity prices which can affect both the capacity to import and the management of windfall gains in export income. However, research carried out to examine the effects of commodity prices on economic growth in African economies has suggested that there is no clear positive relationship which may have to do with the volatility in commodity spot prices not being reflected as sharply in actual export earnings. Commodity prices are normally set by long-term trading contracts incorporating expectations about the future, so the prices at which commodities are actually traded do not fluctuate as wildly as spot prices such that the effect on economic growth will be more muted. Where a country exports more than one commodity, all prices may not always move in the same direction.

Diversifying out of dependence on primary commodity exports was always a policy objective of post-colonial governments in Africa and elsewhere. While there has been considerable growth in industrial and service activity, primary commodity production has also grown as global corporates with active support from African governments have sought to diversify their sources of high-value commodities. The ’commodity super-cycle’ of the 2000s petered out in the course of the 2010s and especially during the pandemic-induced decline in global growth, but now there is talk of a new super-cycle as economies recover and demand especially for precious metals increases. The Ukraine war’s effect on oil prices has strengthened primary commodity prices but this will not offset the large increases in debt interest payments following the tightening of money supply generally in the wake of the rapid rise in inflation resulting from the steep increase in energy and cereal prices triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war.

A return to structural adjustment

The combination of rising indebtedness and a slowdown in global growth, if not another world recession has seen the return of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). These sets of policies spawned from the 1980s neoliberal revolution succeeded in halting the transformation of African economies from producers and exporters of primary products to industrialized manufacturing economies despite the less than perfect implementation of their industrialisation strategies. Now once again, indebted countries seeking assistance from the  international financial institutions (IFIs) are to be subject to a set of economic policies intended to restore domestic and external balances to some degree of equilibrium (see suggested further reading below for more background to the first phase of SAPs).

Current SAPs, whether ‘homegrown’ or not, involve government budget restraint, increasing efficiency in tax collection, abolishing many price subsidies, improving the management of public enterprises, and facilitating greater private sector investment. The major plank of previous SAPs – devaluation – is no longer a requirement where, as in most cases, foreign exchange markets are liberalized and currency values find their own level dependent on market assessment based on the trade and payments balance and its anticipated movement. However, in the case of Egypt, there is a specific requirement to liberalise the exchange rate. Paradoxically, exchange rates tend to appreciate when an IMF support package is agreed and financial inflows increase, which is the opposite of what is theoretically required to increase exports, but that seems to matter less than the fact that a country’s economic policy is being supervised by the IMF and gives greater confidence to potential foreign investors even if the trade balance goes even more in the red.

The most noticeable difference with the SAPs of the 1980 is the requirement that governments protect the vulnerable. Here is the IMF Mission Chief for Ghana announcing the agreement with the Ghana government for an extended credit facility of $3 billion over three years:

Key reforms aim to ensure the sustainability of public finances while protecting the vulnerable. The fiscal strategy relies on frontloaded measures to increase domestic resource mobilization and streamline expenditure. In addition, the authorities have committed to strengthening social safety nets, including reinforcing the existing targeted cash-transfer program for vulnerable households and improving the coverage and efficiency of social spending. (IMF, 2022)

Help for ‘vulnerable households’ is also a key requirement for the Egyptian loan package. With the benefit of hindsight, the IMF and the World Bank recognise the political difficulties for governments in pursuing an austerity agenda which leaves more and more people living below what passes for the poverty line. The solution to avoiding bread riots and other manifestations of public discontent is to target ‘vulnerable households’ with cash transfers so that they can eat. But it is not to support government investment in economic activities that will generate employment and structurally transform African economies, support which is badly needed to build the economic and social infrastructure that will generate growth in other sectors and the linkages develop.

However, as has been pointed out many times before in ROAPE the activities of the IFIs are not about growth and development, let alone protecting the vulnerable, but about control of global south economies by the global north and the hegemon-in-chief, the US which lest we forget appoints the head of the World Bank, while Europe chooses the head of the IMF.

An alternative strategy and politics

While the IFIs return to making policy in some African countries, there is also pressure on them to finance a green agenda for the Global South in the face of the climate emergency. Where such financial transfers from the IFIs to support green policies or compensate countries for the losses from following these policies take place this will offer the IFIs yet another opportunity to exert their leverage on policymaking in general. Dressed up as getting countries to ‘take ownership’ of policies which have been imposed on them, yet again we will see that African countries, and indeed all countries of the global south, will come under the tighter control of global capitalism.

There have always been alternatives open to African governments. The ‘introverted’ strategy advocated by Samir Amin has been much maligned and misrepresented as autarky but, like Clive Thomas’s strategy of seeking the convergence of domestic resources with domestic needs, offers countries a way out of what appears to be their enduring entrapment in a global financial system that works for the global financial corporates that dominate it. This system ensures uneven development with some countries or regions of countries developing faster than others. But it does offer opportunities for rapid development through a relatively coherent industrial and agricultural policy. The alternatives calling for a domestic oriented industrial strategy argue for taking more distance from this system, but still exporting wherever possible to earn the foreign exchange needed to import capital goods while prioritising domestic production for the needs of the majority. This is surely a better way forward than being trapped into permanent debt and cajoled to ‘own’ policies made in Washington DC.

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This article was first published by ROAPE.

All Kenyans have a right to access information held by the state as provided for in Article 35 of the constitution. Access varies depending on the sensitivity of the information requested, but the state has an obligation to publish certain information about its activities, and all citizens are entitled to request information from public entities.

The information held by the state is the basis of all legitimate (and legal) transactions in Kenya as this information is obtained and held in accordance with the laws of the land. The nature of the information that the public requests from government entities also varies. At the individual level, members of the public are more concerned and ordinarily seek information concerning ownership of different types of assets and property. This information is necessary when conducting economic transactions between individuals as well as with institutional and organizational entities.

In addition to the provision relating to accessing information held by the state, Article 6 of the constitution also mandates the government to ensure reasonable access to its services in all parts of the country.

One of the ways in which the Kenyan government has ensured that the information held by the state is available to all citizens, and that services are reasonably accessible as provided for in the constitution, is by digitizing government records and automating government services. In this regard, a notable success of the last ten years is the government’s e-Citizen portal that was launched in 2014 by the ICT Authority of Kenya. On e-Citizen, Kenyans can create an account using their ID card number, and additional personal information is populated on an online form using data from the Integrated Population Registration Service. Upon registration, a user can apply for various government services including applying for a passport from the Immigration Department, applying to enter a civil partnership through the Office of the Attorney General, or to obtain a birth or death certificate through the Civil Registration Department.

Government ministries and agencies have also developed platforms that are linked to e-Citizen, and in December 2022 the government gazetted e-Citizen as the official government digital payments platform. In February 2023, the Kenya Ports Authority announced that it had moved its cargo handling services to the e-Citizen portal. Kenyans can (for now) remain confident in the current administration’s efforts to continue the work of digitizing government records and automating government services that begun under the Jubilee administration.

Digitized Transport Information Management

Another government online platform that has made information and services more accessible to citizens in the last ten years is the National Transport and Safety Authority’s Transport Information Management System (NTSA TIMS).

The NTSA TIMS portal was launched in 2016, and since then motor vehicle transactions have benefitted from the incidental improvement in accessibility of information, and in efficiency. Kenyans pay a small fee to access information on vehicle ownership by conducting a search using a vehicle’s registration number, information that is necessary when buying a car. The system is also linked to e-Citizen, Kenya’s main online portal for government services.

Beyond the efficiency and improved accessibility that are a result of having an online system, a key value that Kenyans draw from the NTSA TIMS portal is that of the reliability of the records. Because of the NTSA TIMS portal, the chances of an individual buying a stolen car have substantially reduced as anyone can verify the ownership of the vehicle at any point. The records on the platform also include the ownership history of each vehicle. If at some point a bank or insurance company or a transport and logistics company was the owner of the vehicle, this information will be available as part of the results of conducting a search. Where the vehicle is owned by more than one person, a user can also see the co-ownership details.

This information introduces an extra layer of transparency that informs the negotiations for purchasing a vehicle, and consequently reduces the chances of a buyer being taken advantage of. Once a buyer sees an insurance company among the previous owners of the vehicle, it may mean that at some point the vehicle was in an accident and was written off, the client reimbursed, and the car restored for resale thereafter (it may also mean that the car was part of the insurance company’s fleet). While this does not mean that the vehicle is not fit for purchase, the buyer may, however, get a fair price that takes into consideration that the vehicle has been involved in an accident before. Additionally, knowledge of the number of past owners helps in making sound judgement about the purchase; a vehicle with less than two previous owners is more attractive than one with five previous owners.

ArdhiSasa Digitizing land and property

Based on the fairly reliable functionality of the NTSA TIMS platform, and the success of e-Citizen, Kenyans were justifiably enthusiastic when the Ministry of Lands began digitizing land records in 2018, and later unveiled the ArdhiSasa platform in April 2021. ArdhiSasa is the equivalent of the NTSA TIMS portal, holding records for property (land), including sectional properties (apartments). The ArdhiSasa online portal allows citizens to access land information held by the government and the processes undertaken by the Lands Ministry. The portal was developed jointly by the Ministry of Lands and the National Land Commission (NLC), and key partners in government. Users of the platform can conduct land searches, apply for replacement of title deeds, transfer property, apply for a subdivision, and apply for a change of user. Users can also apply for approval of development plans, property valuation, and for repeat surveys.

Kenyans were justifiably enthusiastic when the Ministry of Lands began digitizing land records in 2018.

The digitization process commenced with the records in the Nairobi and Central Lands Registries. The Mombasa County Government has also expressed its intentions to digitize land records and records of other properties in the county with the aim of improving efficiency in collecting land rates, and mitigating incidences of land fraud. The county government held talks with the Ministry of Lands in March 2023 to discuss how the two entities can collaborate in the digitization and updating of land titles. While the digitization of land records is a national government function to be undertaken by the Ministry of Lands as the custodian of these records, the deliberate effort by the county government to initiate this process for Mombasa is the kind of political goodwill that this process requires. Moreover, county governments collect land rates from property owners and a digital record of all properties in the county will enhance this function.

Previously, the Ministry of Lands has stated that cases of double titling are among the factors that have slowed down the process of digitization. In January 2023, the Lands Ministry reported that the digitization of land records is still on course, and that over a 100,000 properties have been uploaded to the platform—about a third of the 250,000 registered parcels and 70,000 sectional units that account for all land records within Nairobi. Ultimately, the process of scanning manual records to upload them to the digital database while inputting additional information for each entry to populate the database is a human resource-intensive activity. Undertaking this task while trying to verify the accuracy of the records to ensure ministry officers are not uploading falsified records adds another layer of difficulty. Continuous investment in the form of budgetary allocation from the National Treasury remains crucial to populating the ArdhiSasa database with all land and property records across the country. The ministry’s commitment to involving stakeholders (including the Law Society of Kenya, the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya, the Kenya Bankers Association, and others) in the process of improving the platform is also a welcomed show of goodwill.

Kenya has in the past grappled with various challenges that have reduced the public’s trust in how the state manages and administers land and land information, and this national land information management system (ArdhiSasa) couldn’t have been timelier. One of the challenges was that of illegal and irregular allocation of public land that resulted in conversion of lands held by public institutions (including forest lands) to private property to the benefit of a few individuals. The 2004 Report on the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Land, commonly referred to as the Ndung’u Land Report, lists “poor and chaotic record keeping system” in the Ministry of Lands registries among the factors that enabled grabbing of public lands by wealthy and politically connected individuals. The report notes that this state of record-keeping at land registries made it hard for Kenyans to trace and keep track of the history of transactions relating to particular titles, and was in some instances the condition that enabled the falsification and withholding of land records so as to conceal illegal allocations of land. The report recommends computerization and digitization of all land records (including facts relating to the history of each parcel of land), and that all land records should be made available for inspection by the public.

Another challenge in land administration and management in the past was land fraud that often took the form of double titling. Land fraud had at some point in our history become so rampant that it warranted the establishment of a Land Fraud Unit under the Investigations Branch of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).

The banking sector, property and real estate

In recent years, another outcome of the increasing land fraud cases has been the reluctance of banks to accept title deeds as collateral when clients apply for loans. Lenders end up having to undertake a lot of due diligence, including having bank officers undertake land searches as the institutions fear other professionals in the sector may be compromised. Banks have also complained about Ministry land records not being up to date. The greater inconvenience for the lending institutions, however, comes when borrowers default on loans and banks seek to initiate clauses that allow for repossession of property that was used as collateral only to realize that they cannot recoup their money.

Banks play a vital role in financing the acquisition and development of property and the reliability of property records can either enhance or diminish this role. The banking sector would benefit greatly from a fully functional ArdhiSasa portal that would reduce the human and financial resources spent in conducting due diligence (that is sometimes not sufficient), and ensure transparency in property transactions, similar to the transparency and efficiency Kenyans and financial institutions enjoy from the NTSA TIMS portal.

The banking sector would benefit greatly from a fully functional ArdhiSasa portal that would reduce the human and financial resources spent in conducting due diligence.

Additionally, by improving the efficiency of land and property transactions in Kenya, these assets will become more liquid, and individuals will be more willing to trade with the property they hold. This could unlock more funds from the banking system, funds that will be injected into the economy and contribute to the government’s economic recovery agenda.  As more Kenyans trust the ArdhiSasa system, they will be more willing to buy and sell land and property, thereby driving the growth of our real estate market.

Global financial institutions and development partners (the IMF, the World Bank, the European Union, etc.) will also feel more assured when funding land-intensive development projects if the process of land acquisition is more transparent, and if project implementers can ascertain beyond all doubt the persons and communities that will be affected by the projects and therefore follow due process in compensation. Moreover, collating information on land and property ownership and making it accessible to the public on one platform will be crucial in ensuring that communities procedurally give their free, prior and informed consent before commencement of these projects.

The national government and all county governments also stand to benefit from the digitization of all land and property records in the country through improved revenue collection. A digital record of all properties will significantly improve the efficiency with which land rates are paid to county governments and land rents are paid to the national government. The government’s plan for the next financial year has included proposals in law to step up revenue collection to service the country’s debt, and in this regard it cannot overlook the role of ArdhiSasa.

With the knowledge that a functioning ArdhiSasa system can eliminate cases of land fraud while improving accessibility to land information and efficiency in land transactions, it is important that the Lands Ministry—and the top government leadership—make this the priority for the next five years. Only then can we maximize the potential of our financial services and property sectors, and spur investments on land and property.

Two recent controversies have revived the debate over how North and sub-Saharan Africans view themselves and each other. Early in February this year, Tunisian President Kais Saied made racist remarks during a meeting with the National Security Council. He mobilized the far-right ideology of “great replacement” to order the expulsion of undocumented black migrants in Tunisia.

Saied claimed that immigration was a plot aimed at changing his country’s demographic composition. He further alerted his country that “the undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country with no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations.”

The president’s racist comments have triggered a wave of violence and abuse that is directed against thousands of black Africans who reside, study and work in Tunisia (black Tunisian citizens comprise 10 percent of the country’s population). Many accused Saied of perpetuating negative stereotypes, and of stigmatizing an already vulnerable population. At the same time, his regime and supporters defended his statements as being taken out of context. They defended them as reflecting a concern for the safety and well-being of migrants.

The controversy brought attention again to the lingering issues of the discriminatory treatment of black Africans in Tunisia and the Arab world. It also highlighted the uneasy debate over the Arab slave trade. A common reaction among many Tunisians after Saied’s racist attack was to dismiss the Arabs’ involvement in the enslavement of black Africans as a minor event that needs to be historicized as typical of its time.

The Arab slave trade, which refers to slavery in the Arab world, was however a defining stage in the enslavement of black Africans. Black Africans were transported and sold in markets throughout the Arab world. Over a thousand years, from the 7th to the 20th century, a significant number of black people in East Africa and the Horn of Africa were enslaved.

The legacy of the Arab slave trade has had a lasting impact on sub-Saharan Africa. This includes the displacement of populations, the loss of cultural heritage, and the perpetuation of social inequalities. It has left an indelible imprint on the soul of Africa. It has created a lingering rift between North and sub-Saharan Africans. And the Sahara has since turned into a space of violence and solitude.

This bifurcation has now reached the point where Africans have stopped communicating. And when they attempt to discuss their rift, it is only to weaponize symbolic violence and “own the other side.” A negative vocabulary of indifference, zero-sum thinking, and complex social arrangements takes center stage in the double illusion of African solitudes.

On the one hand, there are Africa’s ideals of solidarity and brotherhood that shaped anticolonial struggle and the brief post-independence progress. On the other hand, there is the revival of the muted social domination of North Africans, over the seemingly second-class status of black Africans. This sharp contrast produced the continent’s spatial and ideological split and divided it into two solitudes.

These solitudes were brought into view in a new absurd episode over Cleopatra’s ethnicity and appearance in an upcoming Netflix show. The four-part docudrama casts a mixed-race woman, Adele James, to play the titular character. Excessive reactions ensued: much of the Egyptian regime and online discourse lashed out at the “falsification of Egyptian history.” They lashed out against a blatant “Blackwashing” of a light-skinned Queen with Hellenic features.

Against the backlash, the show’s producers pushed back against the criticism. They insisted that they “intentionally decided to depict her of mixed ethnicity to reflect theories about Cleopatra’s possible Egyptian ancestry and the multicultural nature of ancient Egypt.”

The polemic has since sparked hostile debates about race and representation among Egyptians and black Africans online. Perhaps what best reflects the bleak African solitudes is seeing the dispute over Cleopatra’s racial identity played out depressingly on Piers Morgan’s talk show. A dreadful 10-minute showdown between the famous Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef and the African-American journalist Ernest Owens centered on rehearsing the same claims of cultural vandalism, identity erasure, and Afrocentrism.

The Egyptians and black Africans see ancient Egypt as a symbol of excellence and an evidence of a rich cultural legacy that should be honored and protected. Several groups promoted the framing of the ancient Pharaoh civilization as a black civilization.

This includes the pan-African movement, which was to unite people of African descent worldwide and celebrate the contributions of ancient Egyptians to various fields. This included  mathematics, medicine, and architecture. These were to become evidence of black civilizations’ intellectual and cultural prowess.

The two quarreling groups of “North Africans as white” and “black Africans as Afrocentrists” do not completely dismiss the notions that they are “comrades-in-struggle” or “brothers in the same continent.” Yet, these notions are celebrated or muted within a complex process of prestige negotiation.

Prestige as a concept becomes a performative experience that stages and values  social and cultural identity. More than an issue of national identity, Egyptology, or race science, the pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism becomes a powerful status signifier that negotiates individual and group prestige.

This emphasis on excellence and exceptionalism as central conditions of perceived prestige is closely linked to the state of the middle class in Africa and the diaspora. The middle class is facing  a debilitating recognition. It recognizes its incapacity to propose a total program of social change under neocolonialism. So it  finds refuge in the empty-yet-powerful discourse of precolonial excellence. Weaponizing exceptionalism becomes an effortless tactic to mobilize Africans around another meaningless myth. As such, it seeks to accumulate further signs of prestige whenever and wherever it finds it.

Since the modern African middle class sees itself as a global class, it develops the vocabulary of “prestige-speak.”It  updates this vocabulary with references to distinctive characteristics of excellence and exceptionalism. The obsession over prestige transcends the limits of national identity. This is because the African global middle class is always anxious to preserve its social and cultural capital in a zero-sum competition with the middle class in the global north.

The Cleopatra controversy has less to do with the importance of accuracy in historical interpretation. It has more to do with the divisive politics of African representation in black American cultural production. The Netflix eight-episode docudrama executive produced by Jada Pinkett-Smith is the latest addition. It adds to a growing media production and discourse library that excessively romanticizes precolonial black Africa as prosperous and noble.

The global African middle class’s pursuit of prestige deepens racial tensions and debilitates the possibility of a genuine and meaningful coming together of Africans in Africa and the diaspora. What’s worse, it reduces the once-revolutionary vocabulary of decolonization, combative present, re-indigenization, dismantling, etc., to a “prestige-speak.” Prestige speak is the phenomenon of the age of hot takes and excessive online presence.

The recurrent controversies around racial identity and precolonial heritage that plague the coming together of Africans on both sides of the Sahara speak to the disenchanting condition of a continent that lost its way. We are only left with a deep sense of two Africas’ solitude that continues to alienate us profoundly.

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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.