The call for African unity is as old as the post-independence era. From Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of a continental government to the African Union’s Agenda 2063, the refrain has been consistent: Africans must stand together against external exploitation, neo-colonial meddling, and a global order that still treats the continent as a source of raw materials and cheap labour. It is a stirring message, and not without truth.
Yet there is a problem. The same leaders who invoke Pan-African solidarity at summits in Addis Ababa often return home to preside over weak institutions, corrupt patronage networks, and the deliberate politicisation of ethnic, regional, or nativist identities. When violence erupts—whether as xenophobic attacks in South Africa, communal militias in Nigeria, or election-related bloodshed in Kenya—the reflexive explanation is often an external “agenda to turn Africans against themselves.” Colonial divide-and-rule is invoked. Western NGOs or foreign intelligence services are whispered about. A grand conspiracy is implied.
This narrative is comforting. It is also dangerously hollow. The hard truth is that Africa’s unity rhetoric will remain empty rhetoric until its leaders and citizens confront a more uncomfortable reality: domestic incompetence, not foreign plotting, is the primary driver of intra-African conflict and fragmentation. Fixating on shadowy external agendas has become a convenient way to let corrupt and failing governments off the hook.
South African case: Afrophobia as governance failure
Consider South Africa. Over the past two decades, the country has witnessed repeated waves of violence against fellow Black Africans from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Mozambique, and Somalia. The attacks are not xenophobic in the literal sense — they target other Africans almost exclusively, a phenomenon more accurately termed Afrophobia. In townships and informal settlements, migrants are accused of “taking jobs,” undercutting spaza shop owners, and straining public services.
What explains this violence? A casual observer might point to “ancient tribal hatreds” or a foreign-sponsored plot to destabilise the Rainbow Nation. But the evidence points elsewhere. South Africa has one of the world’s highest Gini coefficients. Youth unemployment routinely exceeds 40 percent. Electricity blackouts (Eskom’s load-shedding), failing water infrastructure, and crime are daily realities. Years of state capture, cadre deployment, and corruption and more have hollowed out the state’s capacity to deliver security, permits, and justice.
In this vacuum of competence, migrants become an easy scapegoat. Political entrepreneurs from the African National Congress (ANC) to opposition parties like ActionSA and the Patriotic Alliance have exploited anti-immigrant sentiment during election cycles. Vigilante groups like Operation Dudula mobilise openly. Government responses have been inconsistent at best — denial, slow policing, and near-total immunity for attackers.
Crucially, the root causes are domestic. South Africa’s borders are porous because the state refuses to enforce them competently. Informal settlements fester because land reform and housing policies are dysfunctional. Young people are jobless because economic policy has failed to generate inclusive growth. Blaming an external “agenda to turn Africans against themselves” distracts from this catalogue of self-inflicted wounds. It allows leaders to avoid the unglamorous work of building merit-based civil services, independent anti-corruption bodies, and responsive local governance.
Colonial legacy is not an eternal alibi
To be clear, colonialism did real damage. European powers drew arbitrary borders at the Berlin Conference (1884–85), splitting ethnic groups across multiple countries and forcing rival communities into shared colonies. Belgium’s administration in Rwanda deliberately hardened Tutsi and Hutu identities, with catastrophic consequences. Britain’s indirect rule in Nigeria created the template for ethnicised politics.
But independence for most African states is now sixty years old. At some point, a historical explanation becomes an alibi. The key question is why some post-colonial states have built relatively stable, inclusive institutions while others have descended into predatory patronage. Botswana, a landlocked country with overlapping Tswana ethnicities and diamond wealth, achieved sustained growth, lower corruption, and stronger governance than its neighbour South Africa — despite inheriting less industrial infrastructure. The difference is not colonial legacy; it is post-independence choices around rule of law, fiscal discipline, and elite accountability.
The uncomfortable conclusion is that Africans are not uniquely prone to self-sabotage. Humans everywhere default to in-group favouritism under conditions of scarcity and weak rule of law — whether in the Balkans, the Middle East, or contemporary Western identity politics. The difference is that strong institutions (independent judiciaries, transparent resource management, professional civil services) restrain those impulses. Weak or captured institutions amplify them. When African states fail to build those institutions, they produce violence. No external agenda is required.
How “external agenda” narrative enables failure
The appeal of the external-agenda narrative is easy to understand. It absolves domestic actors. A president who has looted the treasury, packed the courts with loyalists, and used ethnic slurs during campaigns can simply declare that “neocolonial forces” are trying to divide the nation. A general who seizes power in a coup can blame Western sanctions for his own economic mismanagement. A South African politician who has done nothing to fix Eskom or police brutality can point to a vague “plot” when Johannesburg burns.
This is not to deny that external interference exists. French economic and military influence in Francophone Africa (Françafrique) has been deeply meddlesome. Russian Wagner Group operations prop up favoured regimes in exchange for mineral rights. Western aid conditionalities have at times been counterproductive. But these interventions nearly always exploit existing domestic cleavages — they rarely invent them from scratch. A state with strong institutions, a functioning judiciary, and a national identity that transcends ethnicity is far less vulnerable to manipulation.
Moreover, the external-agenda frame conveniently ignores the most obvious form of “turning Africans against themselves”: the deliberate politicisation of ethnicity by African elites for electoral gain. In Kenya, politicians mobilise along Kikuyu or Luo lines every five years. In Nigeria, zoning arrangements, tribal and religious rhetoric are campaign tools. In South Africa, Zulu nationalism has been weaponised. These are not plots hatched in London or Washington. They are the daily reality of domestic political strategy in weak institutional settings.
Unity requires competence, not slogans
Pan-Africanism is not wrong. Economic integration via the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), infrastructure corridors that connect neighbours, and shared resistance to unfair global trade rules are all worthwhile goals. But unity without domestic competence is a house built on sand. A country that cannot secure its own borders, deliver reliable electricity, or prevent its police from standing by during pogroms against fellow Africans has no business lecturing others about solidarity.
The path forward is not romantic. It requires:
- Strong institutions over strongmen: Independent judiciaries, merit-based civil services, and transparent natural resource management to reduce the payoff of ethnic patronage.
- Leadership that delivers measurable results: When citizens see jobs, security, and functioning schools, the appeal of scapegoating migrants or rival ethnic groups collapses.
- Civic education that builds shared identity while respecting diversity, rather than weaponising difference for votes.
Africa’s divisions are real, and they are painful. But they are overwhelmingly self-inflicted through poor governance, elite greed, and the refusal to hold leaders accountable. External agendas exist, but they are parasites on weakness, not its cause. Until African nations build domestic competence — clean, capable, and just states — the rhetoric of unity will remain precisely that: rhetoric. And the victims will continue to be the most vulnerable, from the streets of Soweto to the savannahs of the Sahel.
GODSWILL ERONDU
Godswill Erondu, a Pan-African cultural renaissance advocate and founder, Brisk Legacy Group, is the promoter of Africa Workplace Leadership Summit, and a leadership consultant who works with organisations – public and private – to transform their leadership and culture for superior performance and increased profit. He can be contacted at godswillerondu@gmail.com
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