Today (26 March 2026) marks the one year anniversary of Niger’s National Reconstruction, a process designed to forge a pathway towards greater sovereignty and self-determination. ‘Sovereignty’ is becoming the buzzword on many African’s lips these days, reminiscent of discourse happening in the continent in the mid part of the 20th Century, spearheaded by the likes of Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Amílcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau / Cape Verde), Frantz Fanon (Martinique / Algeria) and many others. Decolonisation began in the 50s, so many of them were members of the first cohort to try to lead Africa to stability and freedom post-colonisation. My grandfather, Okolie Animba, was one of the many in Nigeria, investing in education and using it as a path to repair a (new) nation of people completely bled dry by British colonisation. My grandfather edited several books, including The Nigerian Education System In Crisis (1995) and Student Unionism In Democracy (2003) as an associate in the department of Science and Technology of Enugu State University. To give a little understanding on who my grandfather was, I will share a breakdown of our surname:
Ani / Ànì = earth, land, or the ground in Igbo
Mba / Ḿbà = people, nation, community, or land of a people in Igbo usage.
So a tentative reading of Animba could be something like:
land of the people
the people’s land
community of the land
As someone who has not had the privilege of returning to my father’s homeland, it provides solace to still know where I am from referring to my name alone, and understanding my connection to a bold man who passed when I was young, and so all I am left with are his books and his name. And speaking of names, my parent’s gave me the first name Alexandria, referring to a city in Egypt founded by Alexander the Great in approximately 331BC, which housed one of the greatest libraries and educational centres in history. Many believe it to have just been a library, but in fact it was the epicentre of human development in Classical Antiquity. Scholars travelled from around the world to visit the centre, including Eratosthenes who calculated the Earth’s circumference with remarkable accuracy using shadow measurements; Aristarchus of Samos argued that the Earth moves around the Sun (heliocentrism - which was significant at the time because Ptolemy convinced the world that the Sun orbits the Earth - geocentrism); and Erasistratus distinguished sensory and motor nerves and pushed forward ideas about how the body functions (as people were able to operate on human bodies in Alexandria, unlike in Ancient Greece where it was forbidden, holding Europe back in their research on human anatomy). On my mum’s side, their surname is Cheeseman, who were traders making cheese, approximately in the Middle Ages, coming from knights that migrated over with William the Conquerer from 1066, from France to Britain.
My intention for this text is to not just give you an etymology of my name, although I think it’s nice as a caveat, for you as a reader to know who you are talking to (like how in Game of Thrones they would say people’s names and the House they are from, which provided context when they would travel), especially when I am going to be talking about global history and politics. Understanding your name can tell you who you are, and what you are connected to and how you are connected to the Earth/land — it’s a very important thing to understand as it can provide meaning which may have been lost through time.
Alas, my grandfather was part of the solidarity movement post-colonisation, to re-build Nigeria after centuries of imperial turmoil. Many countries, unfortunately excluding Nigeria, have reignited this mission to ensure sovereignty of their nations. Burkina Faso, following in the footsteps of Thomas Sankara who was murdered by the French, have now expelled French powers from its land, and other countries like Niger and Mali have followed suit. Today I even saw Zimbabwe rejected a US health deal, stating that ‘Africans are not guinea pigs’ — so it is clear that the tide is turning. We have, indeed, been here before, but something feels different now. Just like how empire learns our tricks to gain strength to better fight us, we are starting to do the same. The people of Burkina Faso know that their leader, Ibrahim Traore, is under threat by the West, as since his time in power from September 2022, he has faced a number of assassination attempts.
What tells me that people are learning from the past, is that the Burkinabe people have created a brigade called The Citizen’s Night Watch, and it’s purpose is to protect Traore from a coup to overthrow his government. The West see him as a threat as his sole intention is national sovereignty, thus kicking them out of the equation meaning they can no longer profit from their resources— so they have conducted a smear campaign to discredit all that he is doing in the country, laying the foundations for the justification of their attempts to remove him from power, dead or alive. This is where critical thinking is really important, and we must interrogate the sources of the information that we are consuming. Chances are, the people of Burkina Faso, and sources from inside the country are going to have more credibility than perhaps someone like the BBC or CNN. The British Broadcasting Company is obviously not going to advocate for a leader of an African country fighting tooth and nail to cut ties with Western powers, so let’s keep up.
Many Africans are following the actions of their Sahelian brothers and sisters, which gives me hope. I watched a speech given by the president of Niger, Abdourahamane Tiani, this morning and he listed the ways Niger are trying to achieve sovereignty. I will summarise below:
No foreign military bases in the country, leaving defence in the hands of Nigerien people.
Contracts with mines with the intention of the exploration and exploitation of natural resources will be published in official newspapers, including revenue breakdowns of the companies.
Nationalisation of uranium, and they will maintain management of the resource inside the country.
What’s interesting is that Tiani played a key role in the 2023 coup d’état by detaining President Mohamed Bazoum. One might argue that he is a dictator as the government were not democratically chosen. But, ironically, publishing contracts with mines in newspapers, accessible to the average common person to see and understand, is much more democratic than how things are done here in ‘democratic’ Britain. The average person is kept in the dark about many business decisions happening here, meaning we have no say in our economy. That doesn’t seem all that democratic, compared to how the Africans are doing it. Moreover, in Burkina Faso there is a Children’s Parliament and a wider set of national, regional, provincial, and local consultation structures. The country report to the UN says children’s views are recognised in law, and that the Children’s Parliament participates as a statutory member in consultations at local and national levels on policies and programmes relating to children’s rights.1 With children being arguably the most marginalised group globally, in Burkina Faso they have formal channels to speak into policy, especially on children’s rights issues.
At the end of the speech by Tiani, he mentioned that the Nigerien people stand with those effected by bombing in the Middle-East. Coincidently, or perhaps not, this week the Iranian government released a short film which read “[o]ne vengeance for all”, showing groups of people around the world who are oppressed by Western imperialism. It showed people from Vietnam, to the Japanese of Hiroshima, to Yemen, to Palestine, and the children of Epstein’s Island all looking to the sky. The point of the video is to act as a visual aid that reminds the people of the world that there is one common perpetrator constantly at the scene of the crime, and that Iran’s efforts are in the name of justice for oppressed people everywhere.
Telfar, a New York based fashion brand, have been sharing several videos also like this. The slogan from their first video, posted last week, read ‘one people one enemy’. The video was advertising that 100% of their profits made on Eid would go towards charities supporting genocide and global oppression, focusing on Sudan and Palestine2. Another coincidence happened, and I was in Paris at the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand on the day that I saw this Telfar video, and later I got researching the Third Cinema movement (Third Cinema is a Latin American film movement formed in the 1960s which critiques neocolonialism). The further down the research rabbit hole I got, I came across OSPAAAL (Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America). Their motto was “This great humanity has said: enough! And has started to move forward”. The OSPAAAL was founded in Havana in January 1966, after the Tricontinental Conference, a meeting of over 500 delegates and 200 observers from over 82 countries. They seem to be one of the first organisations that speaks directly to global unity of those subjected to British and American imperialism, and their legacy still lives on. Today in Cuba people are without water and gas due to American sanctions, so really very little has change since the organisations conception.
Though, I have to admit, the more I delve into history I realise that global oppression inflicted by the West is a relatively recent phenomenon, meaning it can be reversed. Zooming out looking at the history of humans, Africa, Asia and the Americas spent more time outside of Western control than they have under it. And to put it into perspective, during the Middle Ages we saw The Great Pueblo, the Mayans and the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica and North America; the Kanem-Borno Empire, the Mali Empire and the Benin Empire in Western and Central Africa; the Tang Dynasty and Mongol Empire in East Asia; and the Islamic Golden Age in Western Asia. Meanwhile, Europe was going through what was considered ‘The Dark Ages’.
China, Central Asia, Persia, and the eastern Mediterranean were connected via the Silk Road, and a direct channel went from the Eastern Mediterranean down into Africa, and via corridors through the Sahara to reach the rest of the continent. The Silk Road benefited the regions in many ways:
Created wealth through trade — Regions along the Silk Road made money by selling goods, charging taxes, and hosting traders.
Helped cities grow — Trading towns and oasis cities became busy centres of business, storage, transport, and culture.
Spread ideas and knowledge — Religions, science, languages, and new ways of thinking moved across regions, not just goods.
Encouraged cultural exchange — Art, architecture, food, clothing, and customs mixed across regions and created new shared cultures.
Made some regions more powerful — States and empires that controlled key routes could gain revenue, influence, and strategic importance.
It shows that we have always been connected, since we developed the ability to trade across continents. And I believe that if this strength and unity existed once, it still remains.
Unfortunately for Europe, the common people were living under the Feudal System, and many were serfs (poor agricultural labourers, tied to the land they worked on). Writers like John E. Martin make claims that the system was the prerequisite for modern day capitalism, which we see today in Britain3. That link is very plausible, and I would even go as far to say that people in England have been under oppression since Julius Caesar stepped foot on the island in 55BCE.
Before they arrived, various tribes populated England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, all having their own dialects, cultures, faith systems and societies. Specifically, the Celts were a large group of people spanning from Gaul (modern day Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, northern Italy, parts of the Netherlands and western Germany) to the British Isles, and had complex societies that included a class of a highly respected, educated elite—spanning roles as priests, judges, teachers, and political advisors. They were seen as the most threatening enemy to Caesar and the Romans. And in 58CE Caesar invades Gaul, defeating them by 50CE; and 10 years later Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus attacked Anglesey, which was seen as a major centre of Druidic power. Boudicca’s revolt in 60-61CE disrupted Paulinus’ attack, causing him to pull back, but by circa 78CE they secure Anglesey under Agricola. From that point onwards, the Romans continued to kill many of the other tribes living across Britain (not called Britain at the time, I must add), and continued on their conquest to expand the Empire.
In romanising Britain, in part it meant the sterilisation of its diverse cultures, dialects, religions and ancient wisdoms. Britain was home to some powerful groups of people who were connected to the land. Empire destroyed that, thus bringing in Catholicism shortly after. Some argue, that the introduction of Christianity in Britain and Ireland was not the reason for erasure of culture and identity, as religious groups like the Druids embraced some of the teachings, as they could identify with aspects. Though, it was the Papacy and the strict Roman custom that meant that they had to choose Catholicism or death. The Romans also helped normalise private land ownership by treating it as something that could be legally controlled by individuals and elites. Roman law recognised strong private property rights, and in Britain the Romans built villa estates that worked for the benefit of landowners.4 This created a model of large estates controlled from above, where power came from owning land and controlling the people working it. In late antiquity, large landowners also tightened control over labourers on their estates.5
After 1066, the Normans turned this into a feudal system in England by giving land to nobles in return for loyalty and service to the king. William distributed estates to his followers (members of the church and the elites), creating a land-based hierarchy. Under feudalism, lords owned manors and serfs worked the land, so land ownership became the basis of wealth, power, and social control. Fast forward to the early Modern Period, commoners still had no power and were heavily taxed — and policies and laws were in place to benefit the rich and to keep the ordinary person poor and powerless. Nothing has changed today, we have a House of Lords, a Monarchy and a Church that was worth £11.1 billion at the end of 2024.6
The ordinary people of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland must be included in our fight. Unfortunately, the British Empire’s propaganda machine made us believe that we the children of Empire are separate from those that reside within it. But Empire never served the ordinary folk of Britain, instead it made them work and kept all the riches for themselves, while people lived in squalor and died from disease. Today we are seeing the rise of the Far Right in Britain, with hostilities increasing exponentially as Farage creeps closer to 10 Downing Street. In 1905, the Aliens Act was introduced, in the latter years of the British Empire as it was falling. It ensured the British could still travel across the colonies, without the people from the colonies entering Britain7, and it demonised the colonial subjects.
In 1914-1918, WW1 broke out, which increased nationalism, suspicion of outsiders, and pressure on jobs and housing. Hostilities rose exponentially post-war in 1919, and in the 30s Britain enters the Great Depression. This saw mass unemployment and poverty hit many working-class areas. In this climate, fascists blamed migrants and minorities for national decline. in 1932 Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists, capitalising off of the current climate across Britain. Mosley used economic anger and turned it into organised racism and anti-migrant politics. After the British Nationality Act passed in 1948 (the year WW2 finished), Britain gave citizens of the UK and colonies the right to live and work in the UK, and HMT Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury on 22 June 1948. Migrants were invited to help rebuild Britain after the war, and the British people saw this as an even greater threat to jobs and resources, as Mosley had normalised a scarcity mindset, by fear mongering a people that were vulnerable and therefore susceptible to propaganda (I’m thinking of Iago from Othello).
Unfortunately, the combination of continued bad conditions for poor people in Britain, propaganda and poor education, the white working class have believed the lie that the migrant is the enemy. All the while, we share the same enemy, and it is those whose pockets and bellies are full while our children starve and live in the cold. Many are poor today in Britain from Thatcher’s decision to deindustrialise Britain. If we also consider the role of the media system here in Britain, with individuals like Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, a member of Israeli intelligence, owning the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) and Macmillan Inc. (American book publishing company), among other publishing companies8; I don’t blame the poor for hating us. Except, I hope that they eventually learn that we are not the ones holding the power. And the children only came running back to their colonial masters after they had stripped their homes and left them to burn, otherwise we wouldn’t be here on this small, wet, relatively baron island.
To move forward, it is crucial that we constantly remember that all oppression today can be traced back to European and American Empires. In-house fighting amongst the common people has hindered our progress. Many have believed the lies that Empire have told us, only to distract us from their scent, and so far it has worked. We can acknowledge the racism and anti-blackness that occurs amongst the common people within many groups globally. Many believe that anti-Blackness and the exploitation of Central and South-East Asian people in the Arab world give them reason to withhold support for Arab liberation. Or Liberals have helped spread the lies that women are disproportionately oppressed in the Arab World in comparison to in the West, which, based on a paper from the United Nations General Assembly, is not true9. In fact, early Islamic law (Sharia Law) gave women recognised rights in marriage, divorce, inheritance, and property10. Meanwhile, many use Sharia Law to argue against the support of Muslims, usually because they have not in fact read it. I see Liberals as the guard dogs of Western Imperialism, and they have carried out a lot of Empire’s dirty work over the past century by way of soft power methods of pushing ideologies through arts and culture and academia. Many continue to demonise the white working class, thus removing them from conversations around liberation. I saw an example of this published by Migration Films this week11.
The more we disenfranchise them, the more angry they will feel towards us. In my previous article I wrote about how there is no time for nuance in the face of crisis. The world is in global crisis. And so let’s band together, considering we share the same oppressor, and leave discussions for later. We must dispose of the imperial black-white matrix, and remember first that we are all human beings that have more in common than not. And the term ‘Brown’ has only separated us further, because at least in the 20th Century when we were out on the picket lines altogether, all children from the colonies, we were at least united under one term, ‘Black’.
I need to be clear, I do not believe that we all have to be best of friends. If we look back through human history groups have always fought. As long as there has been something to fight for, we have partaken in war. We fight over land, assets and religion, to protect the ones we love and our home. That fact has not changed since we first created settlements thousands of years ago. The empires thriving across Africa, West Asia, the Americas and East Asia fought one another, even conquered one another. Though, nothing compares to the scale of violence that has been inflicted by Europe and America in the last few centuries. They’ve definitely been trying to get their own back since their cringe phase in the Middle Ages (not to mention the Crusades…a conversation for another day). But I think they’ve had their fun. Long live the global resistance.
https://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=LOmbqwly%2BpaOmgnZl6JXVOC3jz3wKI3bzVtEkJZ01inKmbo3M9W%2F39OG3UjEWWZJBiBzNa%2Fa63c4sq2m%2FVfo9w%3D%3D
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-349-08378-7
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Roman-law/The-law-of-property-and-possession
https://www.britannica.com/topic/manorialism
https://www.churchofengland.org/about/leadership-and-governance/church-commissioners
https://onedrive.live.com/?redeem=aHR0cHM6Ly8xZHJ2Lm1zL2IvYy9jOTU0NjYzYjI0Zjg1ZWYxL0lRQzByRFJUY1pKclI3dzd3WHotTDlDR0FVWTc3NTRvQkotUVBTR05TU1FYazRZ&cid=C954663B24F85EF1&id=C954663B24F85EF1%21s5334acb49271476bbc3bc17cfe2fd086&parId=C954663B24F85EF1%21sb3f2af65f6804b2eb76f5e69c2ef97ad&o=OneUp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g25/031/31/pdf/g2503131.pdf?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGn6xHehhbDl7SZslf29yfip33IJHtdMboo8tJOqXt_MHrOCyv7cCjnbi7r7uU_aem_GyLey9iLJ4L5LUl_8s0FqA
https://www.britannica.com/topic/sharia