Sierra Leone’s President, Julius Maada Bio speaking at the 80th UNGA
By Alpha Amadu Jalloh
“The United Nations is not a utopia. It is a work in progress.” – Kofi Annan
The United Nations was established in 1945 as the supposed guardian of international peace, security, and development. It presented itself as a beacon of justice, an organization where all nations could come together in dialogue to address the pressing challenges of humanity. Yet, nearly eight decades later, Africa, the continent with the richest natural endowment on the planet, remains on its knees, impoverished, marginalized, and dictated to. This paradox cannot be ignored. The bitter truth is that the United Nations, far from liberating Africa, has become a new form of colonialism, one draped in noble language but designed to perpetuate control and dependency.
It is time, therefore, for Africa to seriously consider whether its continued membership in this global body serves its interests. For if the United Nations is the theater of global governance, then Africa is cast only in the role of the perpetual victim, forever dependent on aid, charity, and outside dictates. That is not equality. That is subjugation masquerading as partnership.
“The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.” Dag Hammarskjöld
The greatest insult to Africa’s membership in the United Nations is the Security Council. Here lies the real power of the UN, where wars are declared just, sanctions are imposed, interventions are approved, and vetoes are cast. Who sits at the top table? The United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia, the so-called Permanent Five. These powers alone wield veto rights, effectively holding the destiny of the world in their hands.
And where is Africa? A continent of 54 sovereign states, representing more than a quarter of the UN’s membership, has no permanent seat. Decisions that affect Africa’s future, military interventions, peacekeeping operations, economic sanctions, are made without Africa’s equal participation. At best, African states are temporary members, rotated like pawns on a chessboard, allowed to sit at the table only when the big powers permit.
“For nearly eight decades, Africa has waited for equality in the United Nations. That equality has never come, and it never will.” Alpha Amadu Jalloh
How can Africa continue to belong to a system that preaches equality yet denies it so blatantly? What kind of justice is it that the continent most affected by UN resolutions is the one most excluded from their making?
The UN’s obsession with Africa is glaring. From peacekeeping missions in Congo, Mali, and South Sudan to resolutions on food security, governance, and human rights, Africa is the laboratory for the UN’s experiments. Yet these resolutions are rarely about empowering Africa. Instead, they are designed to control Africa’s path, to dictate policies and priorities, and to ensure dependency.
“The truth is that much of this aid never even reaches Africans. Aid is not a gift, it is a business.” Alpha Amadu Jalloh
Consider how these resolutions play out: endless calls for “good governance,” “human rights monitoring,” and “electoral reforms,” as if African societies cannot determine their own political systems without the guidance of New York or Geneva. When African leaders defy these prescriptions, they are sanctioned, isolated, or toppled with tacit international blessing. When they comply, they are rewarded with donor pledges and photo opportunities. Either way, the sovereignty of Africa is trampled.
Perhaps the most painful irony of Africa’s membership in the UN is the contrast between its wealth and its poverty. The continent possesses more than 30 percent of the world’s natural resources, oil, gas, gold, diamonds, cobalt, rare earth minerals, yet remains the poorest continent on earth. Why?
Because the global system designed and protected by the UN ensures it. Western and Eastern powers alike exploit Africa’s resources under the watchful eye of the UN, dressing it up as “foreign investment” or “development assistance.” International financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, themselves products of the UN system, lend money with conditions that keep Africa chained to debt, forced to liberalize markets and abandon protection for local industries.
This is not development. This is structural exploitation, enforced through the deceptive legitimacy of the United Nations.
Nowhere is Africa’s victimization more obvious than in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other so-called instruments of global justice. Who fills the dock of the ICC? African leaders, African rebels, African generals. Who does not? Leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China, the very powers that commit atrocities across the globe, remain untouchable.
“Africa does not need permission to rise; it only needs freedom from those who pretend to help while keeping it in chains.” Amadou Ampaté Bah
The United States, for example, is not even a member of the ICC. Yet it lectures Africa about justice while carrying out illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond. Britain and France, both complicit in Libya’s destruction, sit as moral arbiters. Russia rains bombs in Ukraine. Israel reduces Gaza to rubble. But where are their indictments?
Instead, the courts fix their gaze on Sudan, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Africa becomes the showcase for international justice, paraded as though its people are the only ones capable of war crimes. But who manufactures the weapons that fuel Africa’s wars? The very same powers, America, Britain, France, Russia, China. They profit from the chaos, then step into the judge’s chair, absolving themselves while criminalizing Africans.
Look at Sudan today. The war rages on, millions displaced, yet the global spotlight barely flickers. But when war erupts in Ukraine or rockets fly in Gaza, the international media mobilizes instantly. Africa’s wars are invisible because Africans are not considered human enough to merit outrage.
This is the duplicity of the UN and its associated institutions: they ignite conflicts by arming factions, then position themselves as peacemakers, as judges, as saviors. Meanwhile, Africa remains trapped as the permanent accused, while the true culprits, the arms producers and war profiteers, remain immune.
The colonial masters of old spoke of “civilizing” Africa. Today, the UN speaks of “human rights,” “gender equality,” “food security,” and “economic independence.” The language has changed, but the message is the same: Africa is incapable of defining its own destiny, and therefore needs outside help.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou
Take food security, for example. Agencies like the World Food Programme swoop in with food aid, celebrated in media campaigns as lifesaving interventions. Yet, what they truly do is cultivate dependency. By giving handouts, they discourage farming, reduce incentives for local production, and make African nations reliant on imported grains. Africans who once fed themselves now wait for the UN’s rations.
Or look at the IMF and World Bank, which claim to promote economic independence. In reality, their loans come with strings that strip Africa of economic sovereignty. Countries are forced to devalue currencies, cut social services, and open up to foreign corporations, all in the name of “structural adjustment.” The result? Decades of stagnation, debt traps, and a continent whose wealth is siphoned abroad.
Human rights and gender equality are equally weaponized. No African denies the value of dignity and equality. But when these issues are used as political tools to impose foreign cultural values and undermine traditional institutions, they cease to be empowering and become instruments of manipulation.
Every year, the UN parades Africa as the recipient of its benevolence. Billions in aid are pledged. Agencies like UNICEF and UNFPA flood the continent with projects. Yet what has truly changed? Malaria still kills thousands. Hunger still stalks millions. Wars and coups still devastate nations.
The truth is that much of this aid never even reaches Africans. It is swallowed by administrative costs, expatriate salaries, and consultant fees. The aid that does arrive is often tied to foreign contractors and policies that undermine local capacities. Aid is not a gift, it is a business. And Africa is its captive customer.
The cracks are now showing. The UN has failed to prevent wars in Ukraine and Gaza. It has failed to address climate change with urgency. It has failed to reform its own structures. For Africa, the lesson is clear: this is not an institution built for justice, but one built to preserve the dominance of a few powerful states.
Why then should Africa remain? Why should 54 nations continue to lend legitimacy to a body that treats them as children, incapable of self-determination? Why should Africa’s resources, votes, and moral weight be used to sustain an institution that keeps the continent poor, dependent, and voiceless?
Leaving the United Nations may sound radical. But was it not also radical when African nations demanded independence from colonial rule? Membership in an unjust system is complicity in that system. Africa must begin to imagine a future beyond the UN, a future of continental solidarity through the African Union, regional alliances, and South-South cooperation.
Imagine an Africa that trades with itself, feeds itself, educates itself, and secures itself. Imagine an Africa that decides its own policies, free from the veto of five foreign powers. Imagine an Africa that is not a pawn in global geopolitics but a player in its own right.
That future is possible. But only if Africa has the courage to confront the truth: the United Nations is not our salvation. It is our prison. And the key to freedom lies in our own hands.
For nearly eight decades, Africa has waited for equality in the United Nations. That equality has never come, and it never will. The structures of the UN are not designed to liberate Africa, they are designed to control it. With its deceptive resolutions, exploitative agencies, selective justice, and patronizing rhetoric, the UN has become the face of modern colonialism.
It is time for Africa to leave the United Nations. Not in anger, but in clarity. Not in haste, but in resolve. For only outside the shadows of dependency can Africa truly stand in the sunlight of freedom.
