African geopolitics is experiencing a decisive change: the transition from an economy of assistance to an economy of power. Africa is no longer a development laboratory but a space for experimenting with new sovereignties, where competition between great powers, regional diplomacy and the assertion of new economic actors are articulated. Since the end of the Cold War, the structures of dependence inherited from colonialism have been eroding under the effect of multipolar globalization. The emergence of Asian actors, the Gulf and Turkey is reconfiguring the African landscape and revealing the limits of Western domination.
The routes of capital and raw materials form a dense network where economic flows reflect strategies of influence: Africa is no longer a periphery, it is an interface between new powers and historic financial centers. This recomposition also reflects a conceptual evolution of development. The models imposed by the World Bank and the IMF are giving way to a pragmatic approach, centered on the strategic value of resources and the negotiating capacity of African states. The rise of regional banks, the diversification of partnerships and special economic zones illustrate this reappropriation. The Sino-African model, infrastructure versus resources, served as a trigger, pushing the West to rethink its instruments of influence.
Relative independence
The proclaimed autonomy remains partial: financial dependence persists, value chains remain largely exogenous and the political vulnerability of certain regimes limits the lasting anchoring of economic sovereignty. There “recomposed sovereignty” is not a completed state, but a process of balancing between external constraints and internal desires. In this context, a new grammar of African development is required, where security, sustainability and political legitimacy become inseparable.
A continent which ceases to be the object of international policies to become… the subject
Several lines of force emerge: securing critical resources – Congolese cobalt, Zimbabwean lithium and other strategic minerals –, increasing power or recognition of the role of the eight regional economic communities (RECs), like the SADC (Southern African Development Community) or even ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States); ad hoc coalitions, such as the G5-Sahel and the emergence of innovative sub-regional initiatives, like the Moroccan Façade Atlantique 2030 initiative, which aim to combine collective security and economic development, and finally, the reaffirmation of an autonomous African economic diplomacy, embodied by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a lever of commercial sovereignty in the face of external powers.
Thus, development ceases to be a technical policy to become an instrument of power. By combining natural resources, human capital and economic diplomacy, African states are redefining their insertion into the world order and developing a model no longer “for” Africa, but “from” Africa. This is the most decisive change of the coming decade: a continent which ceases to be the object of international policies to become the subject. The geopolitics of African development is no longer thought of through the prism of dependence or charity, but as a strategic field where economic sovereignty measures political power. Africa is no longer just at the crossroads of the world: it is now redrawing its trajectories…
* Julien Briot-Hadarteacher in geopolitics at the Higher Institute of Management.
Emmanuel Dupuypresident of the Foresight and Security Institute in Europe.
