When we trying to analyze the evils of the African continent, it is essential not to forget to address the ideologies with which Africa has aligned itself in order to emerge in the geopolitical chessboard. In the 1960s, African nations gained independence, but not de facto. Being independent does not only mean having control over one’s own territorial primacy. We must be able to apply a unique paradigm from the perspective of geopolitical pluriversalism.

It was Africa’s fundamental problem, of having rooted itself in exogenous ideologies conceived by others, for others, and therefore which are not in line with the realities of the African continent. After colonization, several African nations adopted modern ideologies derived from the Age of Enlightenment: liberalism (both socially and economically), communism, micro-nationalism, liberal democracy, social democracy, capitalism, etc.

At the time, the world was divided into two bipolar blocks: in the East the Soviet communist block and in the West the western capitalist block. In this context of the cold war, the African neo-nations were forced to choose a very precise position in order to be recognized and supported in the face of the new emerging evil, namely Western neo-colonialism. It cannot be denied that the Soviet Union under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev gave great support to anti-colonialist liberation movements in Africa, but it was done from a purely ideological point of view, because the ingredients of Marxism-Leninism had to be disseminated throughout in the African continent.

Respectable Pan-African personalities such as Ahmed Sékou Touré (first president of Guinea), Kwame Nkrumah (first president of Ghana) or Mathie Kérékou (first president of the People’s Republic of Benin) have opted for this way. However, not all African leaders accepted Marxism-Leninism, as they felt that it was too limited a thought for the needs and realities of Africans, with a few ecceptions of ideas wich are the essence of pan-African humanism, such as solidarity, anti-capitalism, popular sovereignty and anti-imperialism. The rejection of the eternal class struggle and the acceptance of religion as an integral part of traditional African societies was the main point of separation between African socialism and Soviet Marxism.

It is this epistemic dynamic that has led some African leaders to establish an endogenous African socialism. Among these we can cite Julius Nyerere (first president of Tanzania) who theorized in the book “Ujamaa: Essays on socialism”, a model of socialism without Marxism and without capitalism. His conception of Ujamaa had to be based on communitarianism, because he considered that African societies were communal/communitary, and not communist, without however, that the principles of equality, solidarity, sharing and fraternity were obliterated.

” The African is not ‘communist’ in his thinking; he is, if I may coin an expression, ‘communitary’. ” – Julius Kambarage Nyerere

For Nyerere, the eternal class struggle in Africa made no sense, because man could not be divided into groups (in this case into classes), but socialism had to put being at the center of the community and the village. This reflection will in no way erase its visceral anti-capitalist dynamic. For him, the people should oppose international capitalism and not oppose their peers in societies where classes have never existed (unlike Europe). There have been, historically, traditional castes which harmonized city or village life, which practiced social cohesion in an equitable manner, but there has never been any subordination of one specific group under another.

A parallel thought can be found in the book “Consciencism” writed by Kwame Nkrumah. The latter had its Marxist-Leninist phase, but it did not accept its full principles. For him too, religion was part of the life of the African. Personalities such as Nyerere, Nkrumah and other Pan-African contemporaries had therefore tried to take an alternative path to the ideological patterns emerging from the Western and Soviet world. Socialism in its various African variants worked as long as there was no lack of support from Soviet power at the time. African leaders saw in the latter a fundamental ally in opposition to the Western capitalist and imperialist bloc. But when the USSR began to ”limp” politically speaking, to implement more liberalizations and more openness towards the Atlanticist bloc (a fact which led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991), African nations have become ideological orphans and abandoned to their fate.

In 1945, the nationalism in chauvinist and imperialist drift which characterized the West, was defeated against the liberal axis. Since then, the ideological-political diatribe had become bipolar between the latest ideologies of the modern world, namely liberalism against communism / socialism. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the decomposition of the USSR gave way to the last totalitarian ideology of liberalism. The latter has now established itself in all political and economic sectors, both on the left and on the right. There is a right which has abandoned its social, sovereignist, anti-imperialist path to drown in economic neoliberalism and align itself with an Atlanticist model.

While on the one hand there is a left which has abandoned its struggle against Financial Capital, the struggle for workers, anti-imperialist resistance, popular sovereignty and has drowned in social / cultural neoliberalism (promotion of the LGBT agenda, gender ideology, the extremization of bourgeois feminism, the defense of a world without borders, without Identity, without God and without Tradition, etc.). Neoliberalism has taken root everywhere and has become an imprint for structures of all political stripes. All ideologies and all causes can be defended, but one cannot oppose liberalism. Indeed, the post-modern Western communist movements (which we differentiate here from theoretical and scientific marxism) are very opposed to economic neoliberalism, but they have integrated the thought of globalized social and cultural neoliberalism.

Such is the situation of the modern and present West. In this context of post-bipolarism, Africa found itself lost, without ideological singularity and it integrated neoliberalism into its paradigm of civilization. Social democracy (reformist socialism with moderate liberalism) quickly imposed itself in opposition to a liberalism also installed in Africa, replacing micro-nationalisms and revolutionary socialisms. With the respective social-democratic and liberal political parties, little in harmony with the realities of the peoples, the elites do not understand that it is necessary to make an epistemological break with the ideologies which have slowed down the advance of the African continent.

Regarding the extra-African context, Alexander Dugin (Russian intellectual very influential among the Eurasian movement), understood that the three modern ideologies already mentioned (liberalism, communism, nationalism) are obsolete and cannot respond to the realities of our time (as he describes it exhaustively in his book ”The Fourth Political Theory ”) and therefore, we should turn to a fourth path that harmonizes the Primordial Tradition, the blocs of civilization (Panafrica, Eurasia, a South American united state, etc.), multipolarism and sovereignty.

This concept is in full harmony with the Pan-Africanism that we Africans defend and that our fathers (Marcus Garvey, Cheikh Anta Diop, Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, Mu’ammar Gadhafi, among others) defended. This fourth way, which is therefore neither liberal, nor communist, nor nationalist, responds to our African needs and realities. Kemi Seba (figurehead of African resistance in the 21st century and president-founder of the NGO Urgences Panafricanistes that I lead in Italy) alludes to it in his book ”L’Afrique libre ou la mort”, a book that among others received the positive preface from Dugin (https://www.geopolitica.ru/fr/article/kemi-seba-espoir-africain-dun-monde-multipolaire). We need a political philosophy without individualism, competition, materialism, racism, chauvinism, imperialism, colonialism and which can focus instead on Muntu (Man) in Ubuntu (Collectivity), Alodo (solidarity in the fongbe language ), identity, federalism with a view to the creation of a sovereign block of civilization, Primordial Tradition in its divine sense (not to be confused with custom which is a creation of Man as it is taught by the perennialist school) whatever our religious sphere, put the African woman at the center of everything, because she is the engine and the matrix, as well as the pillar of our lives. These concepts can be summed up under the name of ‘Afrocracy’. Why Afrocracy? Because it is in these cited realities that lies the fate of our true power. Economic, political but also ideological decolonization is an urgent factor for a new African renaissance.