The New Dark Age

Prince Kapone 

Weaponized Statesman Series | Kwame Nkrumah at Addis Ababa, 1963

Only African unity—political, economic, and military—can overthrow the neocolonial regime. Nkrumah saw the future. The question is whether we’re ready to fight for it.

Unite or Perish: The Mandate of a Revolutionary Moment

“No sporadic act nor pious resolution can resolve our present problems. Nothing will be of avail, except the united act of a united Africa.”

These were not the polite words of a diplomat looking for applause. They were the demand of a revolutionary at war with both fragmentation and delay. In Addis Ababa in 1963, Kwame Nkrumah spoke with urgency because he understood the danger. A great contradiction had emerged: a continent formally decolonized but still economically enchained, politically balkanized, and militarily vulnerable.

Only five years earlier, there had been just eight independent African states. By 1963, that number had grown to thirty-two. “The increase in our number in this short space of time is open testimony to the indomitable and irresistible surge of our peoples for independence,” Nkrumah observed. But he warned that this independence was “only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.”

From within the imperial core, we must recognize the clarity of Nkrumah’s diagnosis. He saw that empire had not disappeared—it had adapted. The same powers that once ruled through governors now ruled through debt, currency control, military bases, and comprador elites. “The imperialists have not withdrawn from our affairs,” he declared. “There are times, as in the Congo, when their interference is manifest. But generally it is covered up under the clothing of many agencies.”

Nkrumah did not name the enemy in vague terms. He named its instruments and its alliances: “When Portugal violates Senegal’s border, when Verwoerd allocates one-seventh of South Africa’s budget to military and police, when France builds as part of her defence policy an interventionist force that can intervene, more especially in French-speaking Africa… it is all part of a carefully calculated pattern working towards a single end: the continued enslavement of our still dependent brothers and an onslaught upon the independence of our sovereign African States.”

He called for a revolutionary counter-offensive:

“We must unite or sink into that condition which has made Latin America the unwilling and distressed prey of imperialism after one and a half centuries of political independence.”

This was not alarmism—it was realism. It remains so. The same mechanisms of disunity that fractured Latin America after its formal independence were being primed for deployment across Africa: economic coercion, external manipulation of borders, internal factionalism, and elite capture.

Nkrumah insisted that African freedom could not survive in isolation.

“Our economic advancement demands the end of colonialist and neo-colonialist domination in Africa.” That would require not sentiment, but structure. Not vague Pan-Africanism, but a Union Government. “It is our responsibility to execute this mandate by creating here and now the formula upon which the requisite superstructure may be erected.”

To those of us trained within the institutions of empire—where reform is offered as a salve and delay as pragmatism—Nkrumah’s words still cut through. He refused to appease. He refused to temporize.

“To fall behind the unprecedented momentum of actions and events in our time will be to court failure and our own undoing.”

In his own time, most did not listen. But the contradictions he named have outlived the leaders who ignored them. The African state system, as structured by colonial cartography, has largely failed to deliver sovereignty, economic justice, or continental coordination. The IMF and World Bank now exercise a disciplinary power far beyond what any colonial governor could. AFRICOM and foreign militaries occupy terrain once held by independence fighters.

Yet Nkrumah’s challenge remains.

“Do we have any other weapon against this design but our unity?”

That question still stands. From our position, the task is not to answer it on Africa’s behalf. It is to undermine the systems of power that profit from the continent’s division.

In that hall in Addis Ababa, most of the assembled leaders applauded the idea of unity but balked at its price. Nkrumah stood almost alone, insisting that the time for debate was over.

“A whole continent has imposed a mandate upon us to lay the foundation of our Union at this Conference.”

That mandate has not expired.

The Political Kingdom First: Power Before Prosperity

“African Unity is, above all, a political kingdom which can only be gained by political means.”

With this sentence, Nkrumah struck at the heart of the colonial logic embedded in post-independence development policy. He refused the idea that African countries could be economically liberated through donor programs, export growth, or regional cooperation while remaining politically fragmented and militarily weak.

From our standpoint in the imperial core, it is imperative to understand what this meant. Nkrumah was not opposing development—he was demanding that it be rooted in sovereignty, not subordination. “The social and economic development of Africa,” he argued, “will come only within the political kingdom, not the other way around.”

His warning was stark:

“The unity of our continent, no less than our separate independence, will be delayed if, indeed, we do not lose it, by hobnobbing with colonialism.”

In other words, the appearance of independence would mean nothing if the substance of control remained external.

Nkrumah named the system plainly.

“On this continent it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle… unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.”

What followed was not a rhetorical detour, but a forensic indictment of Africa’s place in the global division of labor. “From the Congo alone, Western firms exported copper, rubber, cotton, and other goods to the value of 2,773 billion dollars in the ten years between 1945 and 1955,” he explained. “And from South Africa, Western gold mining companies have drawn a profit, in the four years, between 1947 to 1951, of 814 billion dollars.”

And that was only the beginning. “Our continent certainly exceeds all the others in potential hydroelectric power, which some experts assess as 42 percent of the world’s total.” He added, “Africa provides more than 60 percent of the world’s gold.”

What, then, was missing? Not resources. Not labor. Not strategic geography. What Africa lacked, Nkrumah argued, was unity—and therefore, the ability to control its own destiny. “Yet all the stock exchanges in the world are preoccupied with Africa’s gold, diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper and iron ores. Our capital flows out in streams to irrigate the whole system of Western economy.”

He named the contradiction with the clarity of a revolutionary economist: “It is said, of course, that we have no capital, no industrial skill, no communications and no internal markets… Yet all the stock exchanges in the world are preoccupied with Africa’s gold.”

His solution was not modest. It was continental in scale.

“It is only by uniting our productive capacity and the resultant production that we can amass capital.” Once united, he argued, Africa could build “steel works, iron foundries and factories,” could “link the various States of our continent with communications,” and could “astound the world with our hydroelectric power.”

He did not stop at theory. He projected a vision of transformation:

“We shall drain marshes and swamps, clear infested areas, feed the under-nourished, and rid our people of parasites and disease… We shall harness the radio, television, giant printing presses to lift our people from the dark recesses of illiteracy.”

Today, many of those promises remain unrealized—not because they were fantastical, but because unity was abandoned. The material conditions were present. But the political will, fractured by national borders and elite self-interest, collapsed under imperial pressure.

Nkrumah did not mistake technology for liberation. He saw it as a tool to be wielded. “The world is no longer moving through bush paths or on camels and donkeys,” he said. “We cannot afford to pace our needs, our development, our security to the gait of camels and donkeys.”

This wasn’t romantic futurism—it was sober analysis. “Unless we do this by our concerted efforts, within the framework of our combined planning, we shall not progress at the tempo demanded by today’s events and the mood of our people.”

From the belly of empire, it’s easy to treat this kind of speech as a historical artifact. But Nkrumah’s argument remains unresolved. As long as African labor enriches foreign banks and African minerals fuel global supply chains while the continent itself remains dependent, his demand echoes: political unity is the precondition of economic sovereignty.

Leadership as Risk: The Burden of Revolutionary Commitment

“We must therefore not leave this place until we have set up effective machinery for achieving African Unity.”

This was not a polite suggestion. It was a final call. Nkrumah understood that unity required more than slogans—it required structure, planning, and institutional power. In front of his peers, he laid out a detailed proposal to launch the Union Government of Africa—not someday, not after more consultations, but now.

He began with a demand for political commitment: “A Declaration of Principles uniting and binding us together and to which we must all faithfully and loyally adhere, and laying the foundations of unity should be set down.” Alongside it, he proposed “a formal declaration that all the Independent African States here and now agree to the establishment of a Union of African States.”

To implement that vision, he called for immediate action: “An All-Africa Committee of Foreign Ministers be set up now, and that before we rise from this Conference a day should be fixed for them to meet.” This committee would establish “a permanent body of officials and experts to work out a machinery for the Union Government of Africa.” Each state would contribute “two of the brains” of their nation.

From there, Nkrumah outlined five commissions:

• “A Commission to frame a Constitution for a Union Government of African States;”
• “A Commission to work out a continent-wide plan for a unified or common economic and industrial programme for Africa,” including:
  • “A Common Market for Africa;”
  • “An African currency;”
  • “African Monetary Zone;”
  • “African Central Bank;”
  • “Continental Communications System.”
• “A Commission to draw up details for a Common Foreign Policy and Diplomacy;”
• “A Commission to produce plans for a Common System of Defence;”
• “A Commission to make proposals for Common African Citizenship.”

These bodies would report to the Committee of Foreign Ministers, who would in turn submit final recommendations to a praesidium of African heads of state. That praesidium would adopt a Constitution and launch the Union Government.

Nkrumah even raised the logistical question of where to locate the Union’s headquarters, proposing “some central place in Africa… either at Bangui in the Central African Republic or Leopoldville in Congo.”

This was not utopianism. It was a complete governing schema, rooted in the material needs of African liberation. From the standpoint of those of us raised in the liberal bureaucracies of empire, it bears repeating: Nkrumah wasn’t offering abstract ideals—he was offering a functional alternative to neocolonial administration.

And he was clear about the stakes. “Unless we establish African Unity now, we who are sitting here today shall tomorrow be the victims and martyrs of neo-colonialism.” The future had already arrived. In the Congo, Patrice Lumumba had been assassinated with Western backing. French forces were entrenching in West Africa. Portugal and South Africa were arming to the teeth.

Nkrumah also addressed internal contradictions. He knew that borders would become flashpoints. “There is hardly any African State without frontier problem with its adjacent neighbours.” Without unity, he warned, “this fatal relic of colonialism will drive us to war against one another as our unplanned and uncoordinated industrial development expands, just as happened in Europe.”

What was the remedy? “Only African Unity can heal this festering sore of boundary disputes between our various States.” Not diplomacy alone—but a continental government that could make such boundaries obsolete.

As revolutionaries based in the Global North, we must draw a distinction here. Nkrumah was not calling for “integration” in the model of the European Union, or elite cooperation through foreign-funded NGOs. He was calling for a political weapon—an African state, built to coordinate industrialization, defend against imperial aggression, and liberate the whole continent.

He knew some would hesitate. But he made it clear:

“We will be mocking the hopes of our people if we show the slightest hesitation or delay by tackling realistically this question of African Unity.”

That delay came. And it was deadly. The institutions were never built. The commissions were never launched. Nkrumah was overthrown in a Western-backed coup just three years later. But his challenge remains. If unity is delayed again—now, in an age of AI-managed austerity, foreign military logistics hubs, and climate shock—then the consequences will be even more catastrophic.

Nkrumah modeled something we rarely see from heads of state: revolutionary surrender. Not to empire—but to the people of Africa. He was willing to give up Ghana’s sovereignty in service of a continental project. That is what leadership looks like when it is accountable to history.

The Future Still Commands Us

“I am not the only one to perceive the possibilities and the potentialities of the African continent,” Nkrumah said near the close of his address. But he was nearly alone in demanding that the political structures match the magnitude of that vision. His was not a dream of states developing separately at their own pace. It was a wager on history—that the material wealth of Africa could never be truly liberated without political unification.

The facts remain unchanged. “Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment.”

He was not interested in slogans. He called out the politics of delay, of pageantry, of appeasement. “Some leaders have suggested that we proceed cautiously to establish African Unity. Others believe that we must make haste. I am for hasty action.” And he warned: “We have been charged with a great task, not to be delayed or postponed. We must unite now or perish.”

The final lines of his speech stand as one of the clearest revolutionary calls in modern political history. “We must now unite or perish. I am confident that by our concerted effort and determination, we shall lay the foundations of a Continental Union of African States.”

From where we stand today—on a planet scorched by imperialism, governed by algorithms of exploitation, and patrolled by the same militaries that toppled Nkrumah—the lesson could not be clearer.

African Unity was not a utopian fantasy. It was a survival plan. It still is.

It was not Nkrumah who failed. It was the system that isolated him. It was the world order that refused to let Africa stand as a sovereign bloc. And it was the cowardice of elites—foreign and domestic—who feared what African socialism could mean for the rest of the world: a different kind of future.

We do not write this as Africans. We write as defectors of the settler-imperial core, accountable to its crimes. We do not speak for Africa—but we listen to those who do. And we work to sever the cables, seize the nodes, and sabotage the very system that still depends on African disunity to function.

When Nkrumah left the hall in Addis Ababa, he was applauded. But he was not heeded. The applause was easy. The plan was hard. That plan still waits.

“The hour of history which has brought us to this Assembly,” he warned, “is a revolutionary hour. It is the hour of decision.” That hour has not passed. It has only grown louder.