Can Africa be sovereign within borders that are not its own?

We are accustomed to hearing our leaders proclaim that their country is a sovereign state, most often to claim their exclusive right to determine their nation's direction. It is, indeed, legitimate for these leaders to assert their state's sovereignty to denounce any external interference in their governance choices.

Yet, if "sovereignty is the supreme, absolute, and independent power held by a state over its territory and population, allowing it to enforce its laws without external interference," then any proclamation of sovereignty should conform to this demanding definition.

This leads us to wonder: can an African country truly claim to be a sovereign state?

The majority of African states gained independence in the 1960s—with the notable exception of Ethiopia, which is said to have never been colonized. However, this formal independence does not automatically confer sovereign status. Evidence of this is the turning point of the 1990s, when multiparty politics was imposed as the new political ecosystem, in which African countries were to henceforth govern themselves, to enter the era of "democracy"—a model that Gaddafi's Libya did not adopt, nor did monarchies such as Eswatini or Morocco.

This synchronized movement toward political pluralism in Africa was a correction applied by the West, to the management of its former colonies, thus offsetting the imperfections born of the conceded independences. It was "the wave" referred to by Nelson Mandela, which had to be seized to enter negotiations with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Before 1960, our states were not independent; they had the status of colonies, or "overseas territories" to be more precise. These were conquered territories that, for administrative purposes, were named "colonies." In French colonies in West Africa, for example, the AOF (French West Africa) grouped eight colonies under a single central government. During this period, these territories fully belonged to the colonial power—France or Great Britain for its possessions—which alone decided their mode of governance.

It was within the context of managing these colonies, marked by imperial rivalries, local emancipation movements, and geopolitical considerations, that these territories were demarcated and prepared to become states. But these new colonial states remained under the tutelage of the metropole, to whom they belonged by right of conquest—a status it intended to maintain at all costs. Hence the wars of independence: indigenous peoples wanted to regain their freedom, and the right to administer their lands, after the emergence of a national or tribal consciousness.

Often unable to achieve decisive military victory, the emancipation of these colonies was crowned by the negotiated granting of independence, frequently accompanied by trusteeships or pacts—commonly called "colonial pacts"—that determined the management mode of these new states. Thus, the colonial power remained the de facto authority and ultimate owner of these territories.

Under these conditions, can we legitimately claim citizenship of a state whose existence, borders, and foundations are the work of the former conqueror, and simultaneously proclaim absolute sovereignty? 

I am an Ivorian citizen because France decided so. 

President Félix Houphouët-Boigny (first president of Côte d'Ivoire) emphasized this in an exchange with Sékou Touré (first president of Guinea Conakry): "We are not yet nations, our states have just been created; rising against France is not the right approach." Sékou Touré retorted: "I prefer freedom in poverty to wealth in slavery." A few years after the 1960 independences, Guinea sank economically, and Houphouët-Boigny observed: "A man who is hungry is not a free man." Guinea, in fact, was never able to fully enforce its laws without interference, being marked by chronic political instability to this day.

A sovereign state enjoys inviolable territorial integrity, the seal of its absolute power. Yet, this supreme power over their resources and territory is not held by any African state, as evidenced by recurrent accusations of African resource plunder by external powers.

This sovereignty can therefore only be fully proclaimed on the condition of nullifying the provisions inherited from the colonial period that established and conditioned the very existence of our states. Ultimately, pride in being Ivorian can appear, to some extent, as an allegiance to France, which established the foundations of this state—Côte d'Ivoire being, in many ways, a state of French conception, with French as its national language.

The sovereignty we might claim should stem from a racial consciousness – since the Black people possess a continent – thereby rendering colonial borders obsolete. This was the fundamental idea of Pan-Africanism, which never came to fruition.

The fact that we live in states – territorial demarcations – of which we are not the architects should prevent us from proclaiming any form of sovereignty.

The Jewish people, for example, had developed this consciousness before the establishment of their modern state, which granted them a strong sovereignty over their territory and considerable influence in the world.

Conversely, Pan-Africanism failed, partly because it attempted to claim ownership of what did not structurally belong to it.

The Mali Empire existed long before colonization, but what can be said of Upper Volta, which became Burkina Faso under Thomas Sankara, or Rhodesia, transformed into Zimbabwe? These entities were born from colonial partition.

The land must first be conquered – in the political, cultural, and symbolic sense – before ownership can be claimed.

Then, a certificate of ownership must be established – meaning historical, institutional, and popular legitimacy – to finally proclaim sovereignty over the territory that has fallen to us.

Without this dual process, any proclamation of sovereignty remains wishful thinking within a framework inherited from the colonial order.

Yusuf Monhaté