Governance and Regional Autonomy in Africa: Issues and Challenges, By Lt Gen (Rtd) Abdulrahman B. Dambazau

The continent has the highest growth rate in the world, with Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, and Kenya standing out as digital hubs. However, Africa is experiencing a mix of progress, such as progress in the tech startup ecosystem, and developmental challenges, as depicted in all global development indices.

Africa is still an ongoing project in the Global South. The combination of its balkanization following the 1884 Berlin conference, its later subjugation under colonial rule, followed by neo-colonial experiences, has continued to make the continent vulnerable to conflicts and poor governance. Africa’s level of conflict is the highest in the world, according to the Global Terrorism Index, and high conflict means more spending on security and less on development. The increased meddlesomeness of foreign powers in the affairs of Africa means that the continent’s principle of “African solution to Africa’s problems” is not working.

The discussion here focuses on Governance and Regional Autonomy, in which I examine how strengthening local governance and embracing regional autonomy empowers African nations to address challenges independently. The key issues in focus are national sovereignty, local governance, regional autonomy, and pan-African unity, which I will analyze accordingly. However, it should be noted that while strengthening local governance will enable development at the grassroots level, a peoplecentric approach to governance is necessary. Likewise, Africa as a region in the global context is still under the exploitation and control of the more advanced global powers, thus far from being autonomous in conducting its affairs, a situation that results in slow progress towards the integration and unity of the continent.

Key Issues and Challenges

1. National sovereignty in Africa.

The word sovereignty is said to be derived from the Latin word superanus, indicating the state’s capacity to act independently of external interference (Akinyetun, 2013). National sovereignty is one of the issues that this conference identifies in relation to the capacity of African nations to independently address their challenges. Africa’s sovereignty precedes the sovereignty of individual states within it. The dependence of African countries on external support for basic economic and political matters constitutes an impediment to their sovereignty. I discuss issues that impede the sovereignty of African nations, such as dependence on foreign technology, digital sovereignty, foreign aid, debt profile, colonial legacy, extreme poverty, and resource control.

8. Dependence on foreign technology. How  can Africa attain sovereignty when it is completely dependent on foreign technology? The best example that I can provide is the African richness of natural resources. Africa hosts approximately 30% of the world’s mineral resources, including 50% gold, 12% oil, and 8% gas reserves. In addition, Africa produces 80% of the world’s platinum and two-thirds of its cobalt (mostly from DRC, which is also Africa’s largest industrial diamond producer). Africa is endowed with vast quantities of both fossil and renewable energy resources with frequent and substantial new findings on oil and gas. The continent is home to five of the top 30 oil-producing countries in the world, accounting for 8.5% of the world output, yet Africa’s share of global crude oil refining is only 2%. In a 2009 supplement report on oil and gas, the African Development Bank indicated that most oil and natural gas reserves in Africa have grown by 25% and 100%, respectively, in the last 20 years. Approximately 92% of the continent’s proven natural gas reserves are in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, and Nigeria. However, the exploration, drilling, mining, and processing of these resources into real wealth are handled by industries outside the continent, making it heavily dependent on turning these assets into real wealth.

In Nigeria alone, there are close to 30 International Oil Companies (IOCs) exploring, extracting, producing, and selling globally. It is almost certain that because these IOCs determine and control every inch of the processes, the country is not in position to account for the quantity of resources moved by these companies. This situation is compounded by the introduction of new technological innovations in carrying out businesses. For example, new technological innovations have been introduced in Africa’s oil and gas industry, such as the 4D seismic for precise exploration in Nigeria and Angola, AI-assisted drilling in Namibia, and drones for inspection and surveillance in Senegal and Mozambique.

2008. Digital Sovereignty. Most of Africa’s strength lies in these natural resources; without them, it would be impossible for developed nations to retain their global positions. The current advantage Africa holds as the fastest growing in tech start-ups could be used to enhance the opportunity for the digitalisation of mining on the continent, for example, a situation that would be a pivotal force in reshaping Africa’s mining industry to be less dependent. Emerging technologies, such as AI and robotics, can enhance productivity in mining operations with less foreign dependence. In short, Africa requires digital sovereignty, a term coined by Pierre Bellanger in 2008. He defines it in his book entitled La Souveraineté Numérique as the “control of our present destiny…guided by the use of technology and computer works.” Digital sovereignty involves achieving technological independence from foreign suppliers and the ability to assert control over data and digital assets (Autolitano, 2023).

Tyler Veriske (2023) shared Bellanger’s views on this, and according to him, there are two possible explanations for this. First, Africa has a potential influence on global technology owing to its population growth. The continent is home to the world’s fastest-growing population, and it is projected that by 2050, Africa’s population will be approximately 2.5 billion, with about 60% of it young. Africa is a huge digital market with a high demand for broader Internet access and improved data infrastructure. The 2019 forecast by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) indicated that by this year (2025), Africa’s digital economy would reach a valuation of $180 billion, contributing to approximately 7.2% of the continent’s GDP. Second, there is the possibility of foreign actors controlling and capturing nation-states through increased surveillance and control. This is a major concern over the digital sovereignty of Africa and, by extension, the national sovereignty of African countries because digital sovereignty extends beyond the geographic confines of sovereign states.

Accordingly, while foreign digital investments could provide answers to Africa’s lag in the digital revolution, they are also symbolic of deteriorating digital trade imbalances and the rising surveillance and control of African states and civil liberties. According to Kwet (2019), this intrusion impedes not only Africa’s digital sovereignty but also undermines the capacity of African countries to protect and defend their territorial integrity and citizenry, a situation that could threaten national security. Not less than 90% of the revenue and profits in the African market are collectively controlled by a small number of foreign tech conglomerates, showing huge disparities and inequities in the global digital landscape, in which Big Tech corporations harvest and exploit Africa’s data with very limited returns for the continent (Blakely, 2021).

59. Africa and Foreign Aid. Africa is the world’s largest recipient of foreign aid with $59.7 billion received in 2023, representing 26.8% of the global total. There are different types of foreign aid that come into the continent, including bilateral aid (government-to-government), multilateral aid (donations through international organizations), humanitarian or emergency aid, and aid in supporting development projects. These aids come in the form of grants, loans, donations, emergency relief, military training and equipment, food, and foreign direct investment (FDI). These aids have both negative and positive effects. Food aid, for example, not only limits the food production capacity of local farmers but is also a way of disposing excess food from the donor country and boosting the productivity of its farmers. Foreign aid is a means of soft power and strategic tool for influencing peddling.  

• Foreign military aid to Africa. Foreign aid to Africa enhances the trade of defence industries, whereby weapons and equipment are sold to African countries as if they were a favour. Except for South Africa, most African countries do not have the ability to produce basic military weapons or equipment. Not only are weapons and equipment expensively sold to African nations, but there is also perpetual dependence on spare parts, making technology transfer impossible. Foreign military aid usually comes with training packages or capacity-building programs through which foreign military personnel are deployed to African countries, sometimes leading to the establishment of foreign military bases. Such military training influences the military doctrine and the concepts of operations of most African countries.

Analysing the growing foreign military presence in Africa, Andrews AttaAsamoah (2025) observes that the continent is host to foreign military operations and bases, largely due to bilateral agreements between African Union (AU) member states and foreign powers. There are not less than 13 foreign countries with a known military presence in Africa, and the US and France have the highest number of troops, with the US having 34 known outposts across the north, west, and the Horn of Africa. In 1996 the US developed the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), to train battalion size units for peace operations. In fact, Operation FOCUS RELIEF was a specific ACRI program for special training of African peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone. The ACRI program was later renamed the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) in 2004. Until recently when Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire terminated their defence agreements with France that had existed for decades, France maintained about 10,000 troops in these countries. Djibouti in the Horn of Africa is the epicentre of foreign military bases and is said to contain 11 foreign military bases because of its strategic location in the Middle East and Asia. It is a business for Djibouti at the expense of sovereignty, because it generates more than $300 million annually from foreign military presence on its soil.

By virtue of Nigeria’s colonial ties with Britain, the British Military Advisory Training Team (BMATT) has existed in Nigeria since the 1970s. Like the British, there has been a US-Nigeria military partnership for more than five decades. For example, the US Department of State provides allocations for International Military Education and Training (IMET) and the African Military Education Program (AMEP). The State Department records show that Nigeria was allocated $5 million from 2019-2023 for IMET and $500,000 since 2016 to support instructor and curriculum development for Nigeria’s military institutions.  Also, between 2016-2020, $1.8 million for Foreign Military Financing program to support maritime security, military professionalism, and counterterrorism efforts, and $8 million worth of training, equipment, and advisory support between 2016-2023. We must note that the requirements for the logistics requirements for foreign trainers are included in these funds obligated to Nigeria. To reciprocate this “financial aid,” Nigeria also committed $590 million in active government-to-government sales under Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system, from which 12 A-29 Super Tucano aircraft worth $497 million were purchased. Furthermore, in August 2024, Nigeria paid 12 AH-1Z Attack Helicopters worth $997 million. To protect US interests, for every piece of equipment procured, there are conditions attached for its use, such as limitations in terms of where, when, and how it could be used. Again, due to a lack of technology, Africa perpetually depends on these vendor countries for spare parts, routine maintenance, and major checks or repairs of the equipment purchased.

Foreign military aid to Africa, including the deployment of foreign troops and establishment of bases, has caused considerable damage to the African Union’s efforts to operationalize African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), particularly the establishment of the African Standby Force, an issue that will be discussed later in this paper. The deployment of French troops in Mali under the codename “Operation Barkhane” in 2014, with spread in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad, was only a proof that the AU concept of a standby force to intervene against security threats of member-states was not operational. Russia’s Wagner group, a private military company, has now replaced French troops after their expulsion with Mali’s military government. Likewise, the US has been conducting operations in Somalia for approximately three decades. The African Standby Force has been unable to take up since 2002, when the idea was first muted, and the US has established an African command, the AFRICOM, to protect its strategic interests in Africa. Except for Egypt, which falls within the US Central Command, AFRICOM covers the remaining 53 African countries. AFRICOM conducts several military exercises in Africa, including an annual exercise codenamed “African Lion.”

• Food aid to Africa. Africa is still fed by the rest of the world, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), even though the world has grown richer and food aid has declined from 20% of all development aid in the 1960s to less than 5% in 2005. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, 14%–35% of world food aid goes to Africa. For example, although East Africa accounts for only 4% of the world’s population, it consumes 20% of the world’s food aid. The consequences of long-term food handouts include dependency, corruption, and farmers’ disincentives. These consequences are obvious in Africa, since the continent can no longer feed itself, and its share of world agricultural trade is much less than it was a few decades ago. As a consequence of this dependency, crops originating from Africa, especially as cash crops during the colonial era, have now been taken over by countries outside Africa. For example, the amount of coffee that came from Ethiopia now sees Vietnam growing more than all the countries of Africa combined; palm oil, which was originally exported from West Africa to industries in Europe, has Indonesia as a major exporter and Nigeria as a major importer (Perry,2008).
• Implications of foreign aid. African countries must understand that there is no free lunch in relations among nations. Therefore, for every aid package received, the interests of the donor countries are attached, impeding the achievement of national sovereignty. African countries are highly dependent on these aids; whenever they are reduced or stopped, it becomes extremely difficult to survive, even though most of them are usually not spent for the purposes they are provided for. These aids are often weaponized against countries that show signs of maintaining their sovereignty, especially where the interests of the big powers are involved.

Trump’s second-term administration recently shut down a key element of traditional US engagement with Africa, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), because “it is not winning concrete achievements for Americans,” according to Joshua Meservey, a Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute. According to him, not only that the US development assistance has failed to bring about widespread development on the continent, “it has brought little influence as African governments often vote alongside US rivals against Washington key issues at the UN.” It is the case of “he who pays the piper dictates the tune.” He gives an example of South Africa that openly aligns with Hamas and Russia despite being the largest beneficiaries of the US Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program, and that Zimbabwe derides the US government despite the billions of dollars in aid packages for decades. Foreign aid to African countries is accompanied by reciprocal conditions, meaning that a nation that receives foreign aid may have to downplay its national interests to meet certain conditions, such as the support for key US interests or objectives, while casting votes to protect issues that materially affect America’s well-being, even where such actions could hurt the interests of Africans.

• The effects of foreign aid on governance. As governance is a key factor at this conference, I highlight the extent to which foreign aid brings about bad governance due to corruption that accompanies aid packages. Writing on “Corruption and the ugly underbelly of developmental aid,” Michael Schmidt describes what he terms as the “foreign aid industry” as the “third field where corrupt practices flourish in Africa.” The other two fields are government and the state, and corporations and financial markets. According to him, disbursement of developmental aid to African governments and CSOs constitute an “industry” due to the massive sums of money and huge number of employees. This assertion is supported by Alex

Perry, a former TIME magazine bureau chief for Africa, who concludes that the international aid industry amounts to a global trade worth $14 billion, employing about 600,000 people. Likewise, a 2013 study of 53 African countries conducted by Simplice Asongu and Mohammed Jelall (2013), concludes that “aid channelled through government’s consumption expenditure increases corruption.”

 

Recently, during a congressional sub-committee meeting on delivering government efficiency titled ‘The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud’,” US Congressman Scott Perry alleged that the USAID provides financial support to terrorist organizations, including Nigeria’s Boko Haram. Earlier, while responding to allegations by Amnesty

International of Human Rights abuses during military operations, Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff equally points fingers at the activities of humanitarian or aid organizations.

Africa’s debt profiles. I begin with the continent profile. According to UN Trade & Development, Africa’s debt, both continentally and nationally, has continued to rise, and that “while debt serves a critical function for development, the rate at which debt is rising has constrained growth and limited many African countries’ ability to cope with future crises or invest for development.” In fact, the 2024 research report of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) “State of Play of Debt Burden in Africa 2024: Debt Dynamics and Mounting Vulnerability” shows that the Big Four of Africa’s tech startup ecosystem is also among the Big Ten countries in which Africa’s external debt is highly concentrated, with about 67% of the continent’s total external debt stock. Egypt (14.5%), South Africa (14.3%), Nigeria (8.4%), and Kenya (3.7%). Africa’s public debt in 2022 reached USD 1.8 trillion, an increase of 183% since 2010, and approximately four times higher than its GDP growth rate in dollar terms. Every dollar Africa spends on debt servicing is one dollar less available for development spending, and interest payments in Africa have increased by about 132%, while the average for developing countries is about 64%, a situation that is to the detriment of spending on education, healthcare, and investment.

1. Colonial Legacy. The period from November 15, 1884, to February 26, 1885, was a defining one for Africa, when the General Act of Berlin was signed as an agreement regulating European colonization and trade in the continent. Known as the Berlin Conference for the Scramble for Africa, it was a conference that resulted in the dismembering of the continent when artificial borders were created to indiscriminately share Africa among European colonizers. Africa has a complex history characterized by colonization, exploitation, and post-independence struggles for selfgovernance. The colonial legacy has left Africa divided, exploited, and still dependent.

Examining “Colonial Rule and Its Political Legacies in Africa,” Amanda Robinson (2019), identifies the legacies of long-term political effects in which the Europeans determined the number, size, and shape of African states through the partition of the continent; influence on the nature of ethnic boundaries; and shaping the nature of post-colonial state-society relations. The divide-and-rule colonial strategy led to ethnic divisions and rivalries that persisted today.

1. Resource control. Africa is home to natural resources, including 65% of the world’s arable land and 10% of the planet’s internal renewable freshwater. The population is also a natural resource, and the current population is about 1.5 billion (approximately 19% of the world’s human population) and mostly young. The continent holds 30% of the world’s solid mineral reserves, including 40% gold, 90% chromium and platinum, 8% natural gas, and 12% oil. The question is: who really controls Africa’s natural resources constituting land, people, oil and gas, and rare earth minerals? European colonialism in Africa was about controlling the continent’s natural resources, and many of the inequalities experienced today are reflected in the unequal access to the continent’s natural resources. Even after the socalled independence of African countries, all resources are still controlled by more advanced countries. To be able to control resources, African nations must have the capability to not only locate and access them but also process them. It is an irony that while Nigeria is the 15^th largest oil producer in the world and the leading producer in Africa, the country imports petroleum products, including refined oil because it does not possess the capability to refine oil. All four government-owned refineries are dysfunctional. The face-saver is now a privately owned Dangote refinery.

(1) Resource curse. Aside from the challenges of resource control, Africa has been battling resource curses. A resource curse is defined as a situation in which a country with an export-driven natural resources sector generates large revenues for the government but paradoxically leads to economic stagnation and political instability. This inverse association between development and natural resource abundance results in waste, corruption, debt overhang, deterioration, poor public services, wars, and other forms of conflict. As a result of the resource curse, resource-rich countries grow slower than resource-scarce countries, especially where these resources are linked to political instability and violence through a complex web of social, economic, and political relationships. Examining the relationship between natural resources and conflict, Policy Brief No. 74 of March 2012, published by Africa Institute of South Africa, indicates that “more than two-thirds of the countries in Africa are fragile and characterised by a combination of weak governance infrastructure, little or no service delivery, protracted unrest and political violence, questions about regime legitimacy, inter-communal strife, food insecurity, economic despair, disputed border conflicts and targeted attacks.” The brief concludes that natural resources play a significant role in triggering and sustaining conflicts.

Violence has been linked to oil discoveries and exploration in the Niger Delta in Nigeria and, more recently, in the northwestern part of the country where gold was found in abundance. There was a similar issue in Sierra Leone, where diamonds were found in abundance as well as in the DRC. The movie “Blood Diamonds” directed by Edward Zwick, provides a true account of how diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance conflicts, which profit warlords and diamond companies around the world, at the expense of the lives of the innocent and vulnerable citizens of Sierra Leone during the 1991202 civil war. Africa has a paradox of poverty and protracted social violence amid great wealth from natural resources. A paper published in Resource Policy, Volume December 74, 2021, examined the influence of natural resources on conflict over the 2010-2019 period in 54 African countries. Empirical findings show that indicators of natural resources have a significant positive effect on violence in Africa.

Similarly, in its Policy Brief of 11^th September 2023, the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) examines the “three frontlines in Africa’s resource conflicts.” First, similar to the experience of the oil and gas industry, the current focus on renewable energy, along with the tech industry’s demand for precious minerals, also results in casualties and conflicts, which are part of the impact of the global green transition. The extraction of tech industry minerals and associated land appropriation leads to conflicts such as those associated with oil and gas. Second, the growing demand for nature conservation has increased the potential for conflict over the control of essential resources, including land. Third, drylands, which were previously undesired, are gaining traction and becoming new battlegrounds for control with increased militarized conflict over access or usage as sites for renewable energy initiatives, such as windmills. I hasten to add the fourth frontline of Africa’s resource conflicts, that is, the intractable herder-farmer conflict over the control and use of land and water resources because of the impact of climate change, a situation that leads to land degradation and water scarcity through desertification, erosion, and floods.

Local governance in Africa.

There is no common template for governance in Africa covering 54 countries. Each country has a peculiar structure influenced by the colonial legacy, cultural nuances, or direct replication of imported foreign-style governance. In recent times, there has been a proliferation of coups across a band of sub-Saharan Africa, specifically involving Francophone countries; therefore, military regimes have again been added to the current styles of governance in Africa.

Governance is not so much about the structure or style, but more about leadership, and this is where the major challenge is in Africa. Yes, there is a leadership deficit in almost all African countries, which is one of the major factors for poor governance on the continent. The evidence is not far-fetched if one compares the performances of other continents in governance indices around the world. Take the annual UN development index, for example, about 90% of countries that are lowest in development are mostly from Africa since the beginning of the UN Development Report in 1994. According to the 2022 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, 411 million people in Africa still lack basic drinking water services, of which 319 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, indicating that water scarcity affects one-third of the continent’s population. The report also indicates that more than half of Africa’s population (711 million) lack access to basic sanitation, and that the situation is worsening with population growth and urbanization.

Likewise, the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), which defines governance as “the provision of political, social, economic, and environmental goods that a citizen has the right to expect from their state, and that a state has the responsibility to deliver to its citizens,” is said to constitute the most comprehensive dataset measuring African governance. The IIAG measures the overall governance landscape of Africa under four categories: security and rule of law, participation, rights and inclusion, foundation for economic opportunity, and human development. These categories are further subdivided into 16 categories, with each sub-category composed of indicators ranging from four to seven. There are 96 indicators in total, and the overall performance of the 54 African countries has been below average since the inception of IIGA. There are concerns that we must focus on and interrogate.

By virtue of its position as the most populous and largest multiparty democracy in Africa, Nigeria deserves to be a case study of local governance. It is a complex multi-religious nation of over 250 ethnic groups, with a federal system of government based on a three-tier arrangement: a federal government, thirty-six states, a federal capital territory, and 774 local government areas (LGAs). There are 8,806 wards created within these 774 LGAs, and each ward has multiple settlements, hamlets, or villages for election purposes. Local government councils are supposed to be the third tier of the government in Nigeria, but they are not. They have been constitutionally subsumed under the authority and power of state governments, mainly resulting from the operation of joint accounts controlled by state governments. For example, federal and state governments make laws, and local governments rely on laws enacted by states. Furthermore, in most cases since 1999, local government chairmen have been appointed and controlled by the governors of their respective states, even as there is a provision for elections of the chairmen.

Almost all the local governments in Nigeria have not held elections for more than a decade, and governors simply appoint or select their cronies as chairmen. In terms of development, there are rarely any local governments out of the 774 in Nigeria that have achieved the minimum required infrastructural development. Fewer have access to roads, pipe-borne water supply, primary healthcare facilities, primary and secondary schools, etc. Even local governments located within urban areas rely on boreholes for water supply, and generators or solar panels for electricity. Funds collected by states from the federal government on behalf of local governments are often diverted and misappropriated by governors. In May 2024, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice filed a lawsuit against state governors who violated the constitution, which provided that local governments had access to federal revenue and contributed to healthcare, education, sanitation, agriculture, and other services. Even with the Supreme Court judgement in favour of the federal government, the states are yet to comply with it.

As a result of the emasculation of local governments and the unhealthy interference of their autonomy by the states, there is a total absence of development of the benefits of the grassroots of society. This is why people are crying loud for the devolution of power to decentralise it, to promote rapid development by preventing its excessive concentration at the centre. It is estimated that approximately 70% of Nigeria’s population is rural, with 72% of this rural population experiencing multidimensional poverty. This means that this category of poor population experiences high deprivation in healthcare, sanitation, food security, housing, and education at the local government level.

Corruption is high in local government administration, and this is encouraged by state governments through the illegal sharing of funds meant for the development of the third tier in the federal structure. Local governance in Nigeria lacks accountability and transparency, and there is a near total absence of a state security apparatus, particularly in rural areas. It is obvious that most Nigeria’s rural communities are vulnerable to attacks by terrorists, bandits, and insurgents operating in the NE, NW, and NC to the extent that they control and subject such communities to pay illegal taxes to them in return for protection. At the roots of violent extremist groups, terrorists, insurgents, bandits, militants, separatists, secessionists, and other violent criminals are the deplorable socio-economic conditions of the grassroots in rural areas exposed to extreme poverty, illiteracy, hunger, unemployment, and the lack of basic needs for survival and well-being. Poor development in local government areas is a major reason for rapid ruralurban migration in Nigeria.

3. Regional autonomy in Africa.  

Why is this an issue in Africa? Autonomy from who and for what? Could autonomy exist without sovereignty? If the idea of regional autonomy is in relation to Africa’s position in global geopolitics, being a continent in the less technological and developing global south, which has gone through colonial exploitation and is still under the dominance of developed powers, then it means Africa must control its own destiny. Even after the so-called independence in the 1960s, the British, for example, still held on to their former colonies in the name of Commonwealth. Likewise, until recently, when a few former French West African colonies bolted away, all Francophone African countries belonged to the International Organization of La Francophone. However, within the continent itself, there has been agitation for regional autonomy, which has become one of the most pressing issues, especially at the national level.

The whole argument about regional autonomy in Africa has colonial roots, whereby arbitrary borders are established, resulting in multiple ethnic groups coexisting within a single nation, which often leads to tensions and conflicts when groups perceive themselves to be marginalized or disenfranchised. The idea of regional autonomy has contributed to exacerbating tensions, especially in situations where groups seek greater control over their own affairs. There are a significant number of such groups all over Africa, including Morocco’s Western Sahara, the Casamance in Senegal, Azawad, Southwest Cameroon, Southeast Nigeria, Somaliland, Tigray, South Sudan, and Darfur. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda was a result of such ethnic tensions, and Rwanda’s neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, being ravaged by civil war, is similarly experiencing it.

1960. Nigeria as a case study. Let me use Nigeria as a case study of the struggle for regional autonomy within an AU member state. The reasons are clear: Nigeria has the largest population in Africa, and by implication, the largest democracy, at least since 1999; it is the most diverse with over 250 ethnic groups; it is rich in oil and gas, earth minerals, arable land, and population, yet looking at the UN Human Development Index over the years, and it has consistently remained among the lowest in human development in the world, with about 60% of its population experiencing multidimensional poverty, and it has been in struggle for unity since independence in 1960.

 

• Perspectives on regional autonomy in Nigeria. Nigerians have been loud about regional autonomy. Some dismissed the 1914 colonial amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates that eventually became what is known as Nigeria today. While some believe in the indivisibility of the country and that its unity is non-negotiable, others call for restructuring the country, true federalism, resource control, new constitution, self-determination, indigene-settler issues, ethnic or religious separatism, secession, and dismemberment. To achieve these objectives, proponents of regional autonomy call for the convocation of what they refer to as “sovereign national conference” or “conference of ethnic nationalities,” even while others point to the functions of the National Assembly with elected members representing the people as the best platform to protect the interests of all Nigerians. There is a north-south divide in the general perception of regional autonomy; while most southerners push for separation, northerners emphasize unity, with the general belief that northerners are parasites because the oil that Nigeria depends on for its revenue comes from the south, mostly in the Niger Delta. The north, on the other hand, argues that 79% of Nigeria’s land mass is in the north and 65% of the population. It also argues that the North feeds the nation because of its arable land and the quantity of food it produces for the country. However, with the discovery of significant oil and gas in the Kolmani River, located between Bauchi and Gombe states, and the huge deposits of solid minerals, including rare earth minerals, there are voices now coming up in the north in support of separation, emphasizing regional autonomy.

 

• Four original autonomous regions. Prior to the 1966 military coup in Nigeria, the country was divided into four autonomous regions: northern, western, midwestern, and eastern. It was ethnic tensions that led to the Nigerian civil war in the aftermath of the 1966 coup that resulted in the killing of political and military leaders who were mainly from the north. The coup was planned and executed by military officers of Igbo extraction from the eastern region, and the fact that politicians and military officers from the eastern region were spared was interpreted as an Igbo coup. Furthermore, the General Aguiyi Ironsi government, which came after the coup, discarded the regional arrangement to create a unitary system by decree, and this formed the belief that the decree was meant to create an opportunity for Igbos to dominate the civil service. The violent northern response to the Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu’s coup of 1966 and subsequent countercoup in the same year led to a secessionist declaration of the Republic of Biafra in 1967.

 

• Secession and Separatism. More than five decades after the end of the Nigerian civil war, secessionist agitation has been exacerbated since 1999 with the formation of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a violent secessionist group proscribed by the Federal Government of Nigeria as a terrorist group in 2017, under the country’s Terrorism Act. Boko Haram is not only a violent extremist group, but it also maintains a separatist agenda by trying to carve out a territory out of Nigeria to be governed under the shari’a law. The Yoruba Nation, another ethnic extremist group with a separatist agenda in southwest Nigeria, has also emerged. For the Yoruba Nation militants, agitation is certainly not a consequence of perceived marginalization because the Yoruba ethnic group dominates Nigeria’s economic and financial sectors, the media, banking industry, legal profession, oil and gas sector, civil service, medical and allied health profession, ICT, and the education sector. It is purely an issue of ethnic irredentism as the basis for seeking to establish the Oduduwa Republic out of the present Nigeria. Unlike the Igbos, Yoruba had had the opportunity to occupy the presidency under the present democratic governance from 1999, first by Olusegun Obasanjo, who spent eight years as president, and now Bola Tinubu, who is in the first term of four years, in addition to the fact that Professor Yemi Osinbajo was Vice President for eight years.

 

• Emergence of regional and sociocultural groups. As part of the agitation for regional autonomy, various regional and sociocultural groups have emerged in Nigeria. In the north, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) were regional groups formed to protect the interests of northern Nigeria. In the north, there is a group called the Middle Belt Forum that attempts to carve a middle belt region out of the north itself, like the carving out of the Midwest region out of the old Western region in the first republic. I will discuss this group in more detail. In the southwest, we have the Afenifere and Odua People’s Congress, which are based on the Yoruba ethnicity, and more recently, the Yoruba Nation, seeking separation from what constitutes Nigeria today. In the south south, there is the South South Forum, while in the southeast, there is the Ohanaeze, an association of Igbo ethnicity. Still within the south south, there are ethnic groupings such as the Ijaw National Congress and the Urhobo Progress Union, that tilted towards the emancipation of “ethnic nationalities.” More recently, a hybrid Southern (Afenifere, Ohanaeze, and Ijaw) and Middle Belt Forum in pursuit of regional autonomy. Indeed, this group is pushing for a national conference on ethnic nationality. At the subnational level, northern and southern governors have created regional forums to protect regional interests.

 

• Ethnic and religious tensions. Religious tensions have arisen due to Africa’s regional autonomy. Most of the Sahel region and North Africa are dominated by Islamic culture and tradition due to the influence of the Islamic religion, while most of the sub-Saharan and southern Africa are predominantly Christian culture, which is also a result of the influence of Christian missionaries, especially during the colonial period. While the two dominant religions in Nigeria are struggling to expand their areas of influence, communal conflicts such as intractable herders-farmers, which are resource-based, take the colour and texture of religion and/or ethnicity, especially in areas where each side is dominated by a particular religion.

 

The Boko Haram insurgency is a separatist movement of religious extremists aimed at establishing a Muslim state or caliphate to be governed by the Shari’ a law. It has been terrorizing the population of northeast Nigeria but has spread to other parts of the country. The group evolved within an area with the strongest Islamic influence, historically known as the Kanem-Borno empire, dating back to the tenth century. Even though this terrorist group continued to ravage communities, killed thousands of citizens in that region, and displaced millions from their communities, some Christian clergy, particularly Catholic bishops, have added to the religious tensions by falsely accusing the rest of the country of Christian persecution because of the activities of the insurgents and bandits. They presented the matter to the US Congress, within the period the same US Congress accused the US Agency for International Development (USAID) of using the US taxpayer money to finance terrorist groups, including Boko Haram. It is a well-known fact that the victims of these dastardly violent acts have been over 80% of Muslims, going by the population of Muslims in the affected areas.

 

• Ethnic and religious profiling. The violent activities of bandits in northwest Nigeria have also raised ethnic and religious tensions. Although the root of the emergence of banditry is resource control, specifically land and water resources, between herders and farmers, it has assumed ethnic and religious dimensions, mainly because the majority of those involved in kidnapping and banditry are of Fulani ethnicity, who are traditionally herders. While the Fulani are not involved in the struggle for regional autonomy, those involved in violent criminal activities have exacerbated indigent-settler and ethno-religious conflicts, resulting in violent targeted attacks against northerners residing in the southeast and southwest. Even in the north, there have been reports of the lynching of innocent Fulani in the markets of

Zamfara state by vigilante groups, as well as in the plateau state. In August 2021, for example, 23 people returning from the Islamic festival in Bauchi were ambushed in a plateau state and burned alive inside the bus where they were traveling as revenge for alleged Fulani herdsmen attacks in some communities in the state. A more recent revenge killings occurred in March 2025 in Uromi, Edo state, against innocent northern hunters traveling to spend the Eid holiday in the north is a case in point. About 20 of them alleged to be kidnappers were brutally macheted and burnt alive in the broad daylight, while the truck conveying them was destroyed because they were suspected to be herders involved in kidnapping in the area. There is no doubt that bandits and kidnappers terrorize communities and treat their victims in a violent and merciless manner, but the victims cut across all ethnic and religious groups in Nigeria, including Fulani, who live in the same forests. Criminals wipe out villages in Zamfara, Kaduna, and Katsina states, 99% of which are Hausa and Fulani Muslims, and abduct their women to turn them into sex slaves. While those who are found guilty of committing acts of terrorism, banditry, or kidnapping should face the maximum punishment, there is no justification attacking or harming innocent persons simply because they are of the same ethnicity and/or religion as the criminals.

The Fulani herders are stateless and live in forests that cross the length and breadth of Nigeria and across borders, leveraging the 1998 ECOWAS protocol on the movement of transhumance, which Nigeria is a signatory. The forests have been left ungoverned without roads, housing, clean water, electricity, and most importantly, security provision. The inhabitants, mostly Fulani, do not enjoy healthcare and education facilities, and neither are they privileged to benefit from skills acquisition, although they pay taxes on each head of cattle. They adopt a nomadic lifestyle; therefore, they do not own land and have no ambition to own land other than its seasonal use for rearing livestock, but they rent from local landlords for the temporary occupation of land. The lack of governance in Fulani communities has exposed their growing youth population to drug abuse, illiteracy, and unemployment, with the latter being exacerbated by cattle rustling.

Most kidnapping incidents, especially in the northern part of the country, are carried out by them, including attacks on rural communities, especially in Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Kaduna, Kebbi, and Sokoto states.  In southern Kaduna, religious dimensions have been added, whereby communities linked the situation to religious persecution. However, at the root of this security challenge is the struggle between herders and farmers over the use and control of land and water resources. Other ethnic militias are also involved in kidnapping and banditry in Nigeria. The best example is the Full Fire and Chain militia in Benue State, whose leader and warlord, Terwase Akwaza, known as Gana, was killed by the military in 2020.

 

Elite land grabs, deforestation, population growth, urbanization, and land degradation due to climate change have created intense conflicts over the use and control of land and water resources. The attitude of herders destroying farmlands and sometimes engaging in violence along their paths of movement has caused frustration to farmers, and some state governments in Nigeria enacted anti-open grazing laws to restrict herders’ movements. Some of the states created local vigilante to enforce the laws, such as the Benue state, which established a Livestock Guard, and the Southwest, which established a vigilante outfit known as Amotekun, to arrest cattle and suspects violating the laws.

 

• Agitation for Middle Belt region. There have been pressures, mostly from northern Christian minority ethnic groups, to recognize what they refer to as the Middle Belt region. There are six recognized geopolitical zones in Nigeria, but the agitators are struggling to create an identity using a platform known as the Middle Belt Forum to separate from what the southern media refers to as the core north, whose population is predominantly Muslim and ethnic Hausa, Fulani, and Kanuri. There are more than 200 ethnic minorities in the north. The states covered by the imaginary middle belt are Kwara, Kebbi, Niger, Kogi, Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, Kaduna, Taraba, Adamawa, Gombe, Yobe, Borno, Bauchi, and the Federal Capital Territory. The geographic positions of the majority of these states are far from what could be considered middle in Nigeria’s geopolitical context. However, the whole idea is to gather all Christians in the north to form the Middle Belt region, although only the Plateau and Benue are Christian majority states. Behind this agitation for regional autonomy is the perception of exclusion and the lack of opportunities for northern Christian minorities to participate in the political affairs of the north. Most of the agitation emanates from Plateau, Benue, and Southern Kaduna states, and coincidentally, these are the states that experience the highest ethnoreligious, indigene-settler, and herder-farmer conflicts in Nigeria.

 

• Agitation for State Police. A part of the debate on regional autonomy in Nigeria is the creation of state police. The debate intensified because of the perception that the Nigerian Police is too centralized to effectively and efficiently cater to the security and protection of lives and property at the subnational level. This is why most states established security outfits like the Amotekun mentioned earlier, the hisbah in most northern states, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), Ebube Agu in the southeast, and Yan Sakai in Zamfara. There is also a political angle for the agitation of state police, the most popular of which is that the southwest part of the country, which agitates more than any other geopolitical zone, wants it to be part of its separatist agenda for regional autonomy.

 

In addition to being highly centralized, the Nigerian police force is overwhelmed and it is in no position to tackle the level of insecurity in the country for several reasons. First, although manpower strength is below the global minimum, its current strength of approximately 400,000 is being misused by giving preference to the protection of people who can afford to pay for it. Second, with a population of over 200 million people and a land size of 923,768 sq km, physical law enforcement coverage would not be possible, especially with the manpower deficit, except where the police employ digital tech devices to monitor activities, and even in this case, it must have the capability of swift response to emergencies. Third, Nigeria’s security challenges are not conventional criminal activities; they involve the activities of violent non-state actors using military-grade weapons to carry out attacks. Police are neither trained nor equipped to tackle such internal security threats. Fourth, the Nigerian police no longer have the trust and confidence of the people, as they seem to focus on regime security, as well as being accused of corruption and brutality, the reason behind the #EndSARS youth demonstration a few years ago.

 

4. Pan-African unity.

Attempts at pan-Africanism or pan-African unity began with the likes of Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), and later Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972). The OAU member states stood together in unity to safeguard the interests of the continent, especially with respect to the lingering colonialism of some of the countries that were not yet independent. The organization played a pivotal role in eradicating colonialism and white minority rule in Africa in the 1960s. The setting up of the African Development Bank in 1963 and the 1981 deployment of the OAU Pan-African peacekeeping force in Chad during the Chadian Civil War were also marks of efforts towards pan-African unity.

 

There is no period in the history of Africa that requires unity than presently, especially with the constant realization that if the continent does not unite to free itself from the burden of development, it will continue to be owned and controlled by world powers, as if the Berlin Conference of 1884, which indiscriminately broke Africa into pieces and shared among European countries, has been reconvened. Another race for sharing what remains of Africa in the 21^st century has already begun, but this time mainly between the US, Russia, and China, which manifests itself across spheres of influence such as trade, investment, infrastructure development, military operations, and development aid, alongside scrambling for Africa’s natural resources.  

 

2002. Pan-African unity targets. Various platforms have been designed to encourage pan-African unity since the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963, which was later transformed into the African Union (AU) on July 9, 2002. The vision of the AU was the pursuit of “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in global arena.” The latest efforts are reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and African Union Agenda 2063. According to the 2024 Africa Sustainable Development (SDG) Report, of the 51 targets of the SDGs scrutinized, Africa is progressing only on three, regressing on eight, and stagnating on the remaining forty. The African Union Agenda 2063 has entered its first year of the Second Ten Year Implementation Plan (2024-2033) with the main focus to ensure that every AU member-state attains at least middle-income status; that Africa is more integrated and connected; public institutions are more responsive; Africa resolves conflicts peacefully; African cultural values are explicit and promoted; African citizens are more empowered and more productive; and that Africa is a strong and influential player. These are the seven “Moonshots.” The most prominent Pan-African unity Flagship Projects for Agenda 2063 include the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), African passport and free movement, silencing the gun by 2020, single African air-transport market, pan-African e-network, African virtual and euniversity, cybersecurity, and integrated high-speed train network.

 

One of the most important targets of the AU Agenda 2063 is “Silencing the Guns in Africa.” This flagship initiative aspires to end all wars, conflicts, and gender-based violence, and to prevent genocide. The initiative is meant to address the structural root causes and drivers of conflict to achieve sustainable development. How can Africa silence the guns when more than half of its population is under severe threats of extreme and multidimensional poverty; when there are over 40 million unregistered and unmarked small arms and light weapons in the hands of non-state actors; when climate change has ravaged the continent resulting in land and environmental degradation, leading to intractable herder-farmer conflicts; when governance is poor, corruption is high, and there is rising economic inequality; when most of the continent’s criminal justice systems are corrupt and inefficient, while the traditional methods of settling disputes have broken down; and the meddling of foreign powers in African affairs, while protecting their political and economic interests? According to the UNDP, a peaceful African continent is still possible using a developmental approach. At the 14^th Extraordinary Session of the AU on Silencing the Guns in Africa, held on December 6, 2020, in Johannesburg, the UNDP stressed the importance and interconnectedness of consolidating peace, preventing violent extremism, building social cohesion, fostering democracy, and enhancing economic development.

 

2023. Obstacles to Pan-African unity. The most recent threat against pan-Africa unity manifested itself among the ECOWAS member-states when Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger withdrew their membership and formed the Alliance des États du Sahel (Alliance of Sahel States) following ECOWAS threat to intervene militarily to restore civilian rule after a coup in early 2023. Global politics have split Africa into sub-Saharan Africa, belonging to black Africa, and the North African region, which is seen as part of the Arab world.

Even countries like Somalia, Sudan, and Djibouti, which are linguistically Arab, tend to see themselves as belonging to the Middle East rather than Africa. Likewise, Africa has been divided along the history of colonial influence, along the line of official languages, and attachment to former colonial masters. We often hear Francophone and Anglophone countries, especially in Western, Eastern, and Central Africa. These divisions are often reflected in the politics of elective positions in the AU and other regional bodies on the continent, thereby impeding unity.

 

Conflicts, socioeconomic threats of extreme poverty and unemployment, and poor job opportunities and/or conditions of service in most African countries have resulted in forceful migration, known as brain drain, of skilled African workers into Western countries, thereby taking a toll on developed human capital. Within African countries, there are challenges of xenophobia and religious intolerance, corruption and weak governance, and diverse cultural and political rivalries that disunite African people.

 

1. African Regional Security. There are three levels of security of a continent that are also applicable to Africa: continental, regional, and national. At the continental level, the AU Constitutive Act of July 11, 2000, established 17 institutions to address Africa’s security and development. The bodies dedicated to peace and security are placed under a framework known as African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). There is a 15member Peace and Security Council (PSC) in the APSA, which can approve armed intervention in cases of gross human rights violations and unconstitutional changes of government, based on the December 26, 2004, protocol that established it.

 

• African Standby Force. The African standby force (ASF), a rapid reaction force, is one of the organs that supports the PSC. Article 13 of the protocol establishing the PSC, refers to it as a force “composed of standby multidisciplinary contingents, with civilian and military components in their countries of origin and ready for deployment at appropriate notice.” The ASF is structured into five regional forces anchored on five regional brigades, following the geographical division of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs): ECCAS, ECOWAS, SADC, IGAD, and UMA. Aside from the deployment of peacekeeping forces in places such as Somalia and Sudan, which is a different concept from the ASF, the AU has so far not succeeded in establishing the force since the decision was made in 2003.

 

Nigeria has always prepared a standby brigade as part of the ECOWAS brigade. However, recent internal security challenges that necessitated the commitment of troops for various internal operations have led to the depletion of manpower in such arrangements. This proves the extent to which a country’s internal security challenges can override its participation and contribute to regional security challenges. For the same reason, Nigeria drew down its troop contribution to UN peacekeeping operations, where it was once the second largest troop-contributing country (TCC) in the world.

 

• Insecurity in Sahel and Lake Chad regions. The combination of Africa’s Sahel and the Lake Chad regions currently represent the epicentre of insecurity in Africa. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), this epicentre is facing a “severe, longstanding crisis driven by conflict, insecurity, climate change, economic deprivation, and other chronic vulnerabilities. The Sahel is said to account for 67% of all civilian fatalities in Africa by 2024. Peter Maurer, President of ICRC said that “in the face of pressures of conflict, climate change, and environmental degradation, communities in the Sahel and Lake Chad region now walk on a tight rope of survival.” The Sahel spans the area from Senegal to Eritrea, situated between the Sahara in the north and the African tropics in the south, while the Lake Chad region is a vast area of freshwater located in the middle of sand dunes, which covers the territories of four West African countries: Nigeria, Cameroon, Nigér, and Chad. While the population of the Lake Chad Basin has increased from 17 million in 2005 to the current 40 million, the surface area of the lake has shrunk from 25,000 sq. km in the 1960s to 4,800 sq km in 2014 as a result of climate change, leading to loss of livelihood for the vast majority of the population that survive on farming, fishing, irrigation, herding of cattle, and access to fresh water. Likewise, the UN estimated that 80% of Sahel’s farmland is degraded, while the space available for pastoralists in the Sahel region is shrinking. Intractable herderfarmer conflicts in these regions are overdepleting land and water resources. The crisis in the Lake Chad Region is rooted in decades of neglect, a lack of rural development, and the impact of climate change.

 

• Activities of non-state actors. In its December 2023 report, the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) indicated that more than 40 million small arms on the African continent are being held by non-state actors, including private individuals, registered businesses such as private companies, and non-state armed groups. The report quoted the 2019 report of the AU Commission on Small Arms Survey that almost 80% of these arms are unregistered and unmarked; therefore, they are difficult to trace for investigation and prosecution purposes. It also notes that approximately 11 million arms are in West Africa. The US invasion of Libya in 2011, which led to the death of Qaddafi and the subsequent collapse of the Libyan state, which engulfed in crisis, exacerbated arms proliferation and the rise and increase of armed and violent non-state actors in West Africa. The activities of these armed groups have led to the death of thousands of civilians and the displacement of millions of Africans from their communities.

 

• Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF). The most successful African multinational force so far was the Nigerian-led ECOWAS Monitoring

Group (ECOMOG), which was established in 1990, following the crisis in Liberia and later in Sierra Leone. The current arrangement of the MNJTF came as a response to insurgency and terrorism in the Lake Chad region. The force is divided into sectors among the four members of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC); with Sector 1 for Cameroon, Sector 2 for Chad, Sector 3 for Nigeria, and Sector 4 for Nigér. Recently, Nigér pulled out of its sector after it was suspended by the ECOWAS, and Nigeria announced sanctions against the country because of the military takeover of the government. The difference between ECOMOG and MNJTF is that, while the former was an intervention force because of the civil war in Liberia, and subsequently in Sierra Leone, the latter involved counterterrorism and counterinsurgency (CTCOIN) operations against non-state actors engaged in violent religious extremism with a separatist agenda. Although Nigeria led and provided the bulk of the finances of the ECOMOG operations, the British International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT) highjacked the post-conflict peacebuilding processes to carry out security sector reforms, specifically with the mission to reform the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), by providing basic and specialised training in addition “to instilling professional military culture.” Even after IMATT ended its mission in 2013, it was replaced by the International Security Advisory Team (ISAT) to demonstrate that the British still had a grip on its former colony.

 

• Human security in Africa. The idea of human security goes back to the 1994 UN Human Development Report, which concentrated on a peoplecentred approach to national security, away from the traditional concept of military security. This report expanded the definition of security by considering societal, economic, and environmental considerations. The report proposed that human security entails freedom from fear and want, and the freedom to live with dignity, comprising seven key security elements: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political. Let us examine the average African rating on these key security elements, although there are differences in the performances of individual countries.

 

An apparent contradiction is that, while Africa is projected to be the second fastest-growing region globally by 2025, the African Development Bank projects an annual growth rate of 4.3%, up from 3.7% in 2024. Africa is one of the most impoverished continents in the world. Reducing poverty and fostering job-creating economic growth remain critical priorities, because 464 million people live in extreme poverty. In 2024, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 16% of the world’s population, but 67% of the people living in extreme poverty, which is approximately two-thirds of the world’s extreme poverty population (World Bank Group). According to Alex Vines, a Research Director in Chatham House, “persistent poverty, scarce economic opportunities, the effects of climate change, and weak governance, compounded by rising living costs, are fuelling widespread frustration.” This conflicting picture of Africa’s economic growth as the second fastestgrowing region and as the continent with the highest growth rate in the tech startup ecosystem in the world, as well as about a third of its population experiencing extreme poverty and a heavy debt burden, depicts limitations to the extent to which African countries can enjoy national sovereignty.  

 

Conclusion

 

Africa’s journey towards effective governance and regional autonomy is fraught with challenges, yet it holds immense potential for progress. The continent’s rich natural resources, burgeoning tech ecosystem, and diverse cultural heritage provide a strong foundation for growth. However, to achieve true sovereignty and regional autonomy, Africa must address its dependence on foreign technology, aid, and military support. Strengthening local governance, embracing digital sovereignty, and fostering pan-African unity are crucial steps towards overcoming these challenges. By managing its diversity and pursuing unity and integration, Africa can chart a path towards sustainable development and a brighter future for its people.

 

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Governance and Regional Autonomy in Africa: Issues and

Challenges

 

By

 

Lt Gen (Rtd) Abdulrahman B. Dambazau PhD CFR

Professor of Criminology & Security Studies

Pro-Chancellor, Capital City University Kano, Nigeria