Africa Asserts Right To Voice

In the wake of a series of military takeovers in Africa in the last four years, the world is jolted to mull over the trend in a new light. Some lamentations over the power-grab got drowned by lusty sounds of support from different parts of the continent. Mali, Chad, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon witnessed military takeovers since 2020 and after. It is a chain reaction triggered by decades of overlordship, imposed chiefly by former colonists that could not reconcile to their “losses”, and they reinvented ways of profiteering from impoverished lands, which they colonised and exploited for generations. After independence, some families ruled for decades. For instance, Ali Bongo Ondimba regime in Gabon was a puppet at the hands of France and other foreign overlords who paid it to monopolise the country’s natural resources. Foreign “investors” ferreted out three-fourths of the profits while the rest was shared by the ruling clique and the state coffers.