By Isaac Christopher Lubogo
1. When Giants Wrestle
Today, the two titans of our age—the United States and China—are not fighting with guns, not with nuclear bombs, but with algorithms. AI is their weapon, their shield, their ideology, and their economy. Whoever controls it controls the world’s narratives, its markets, and even its wars.
And while the titans fight, we—Africans—are seated on the veranda, watching like it is a boxing match, cheering for one corner, ignorant that both corners are already writing the future terms of our subjugation.
2. America’s Chaos, China’s Order
The U.S. thrives in chaos: OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic—each burning billions, each running faster than the other. Out of this disorder, new gods are born. China thrives in order: central command, civil-military fusion, national policy that decrees AI supremacy by 2030. Both models—chaos and order—are converging on one destiny: global domination.
And what of us? We debate potholes. We fight over tribal seats. We spend parliamentary hours deciding who insulted whom, while the train of the 21st century departs.
3. The Stargates Are Opening
In Silicon Valley, new labs—what I call “stargates”—emerge daily. Debt-free, fearless, they crack open new worlds of innovation. In Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai, billion-dollar incubators engineer revolutions in robotics, biotech, and defense AI.
Africa? Our stargates are not laboratories but betting shops. Instead of coding labs, we have gambling dens. Instead of GPUs, our youth waste their electricity on TikTok dances.
4. The Folly of the Overeducated African
What is worse is not ignorance but arrogance. Some of our so-called “overeducated” Africans, sitting in European cafes or in African universities funded by outdated syllabi, scoff at AI. They dismiss it as hype, irrelevant to “African realities.” These are the same minds that dismissed the industrial revolution, electricity, the internet, and now they lead us into yet another century of dependence.
It is not colonialism that keeps Africa backward anymore—it is denial dressed in academic gowns, cowardice baptized as “pragmatism,” and laziness disguised as “contextualization.”
5. The Price of Cowardice
Let us be blunt: a nation without AI is a nation without a future. We will not just be poor; we will be digitally enslaved. Our data will feed foreign models. Our children will consume foreign algorithms. Our economies will be dictated by companies whose CEOs cannot even pronounce Kampala, Lagos, or Lusaka.
The price of cowardice is not neutral. It is extinction from relevance.
6. Africa’s Betrayal of Her Youth
We boast of having the youngest population in the world. What hypocrisy! For what good is a young population with old leaders and dead ideas? What good is a youthful demographic if we use it only as voting machines, not coding machines? If we cannot turn this youth bulge into a digital army, then we have betrayed them before they even begin to live.
7. Stargates or Graves
History is merciless. The steam engine passed us—we became raw material colonies. The industrial revolution passed us—we became labor colonies. The digital revolution passed us—we became consumers of imported apps. And now the AI revolution is here. If we miss this one, it is not just another delay; it is the sealing of our graves as civilizations.
The stargates of tomorrow are open. The Americans and Chinese are already walking through. Africans? We are busy sleepwalking into irrelevance.
Conclusion: The Final Call
We must stop deceiving ourselves. AI is not luxury—it is oxygen. Nations without it will not just lag; they will suffocate. The question before Africa is simple: will we open our stargates, or will we continue building digital graves with our own hands?
For once, let us choose to live.
