Mahama Warns Africa Risks Losing Sovereignty To Foreign Powers

President John Dramani Mahama has warned at the Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, that foreign powers are seeking strategic influence and access to the continent’s natural resources, cautioning that Africa risks losing control of its political and security future if leaders fail to act collectively.

The admonition, delivered before an assembly of continental statesmen and security experts, situates competition over resources, weak governance and external interference as interlocking drivers of instability, where rival external interests exploit institutional fragility to secure leverage over strategic minerals and trade corridors.

According to the Presidency, Mahama declared, “Let me be clear: Africa is not an empty chessboard for foreign powers to play their games. We are not spectators. But unless we consciously decide to take up the pen and write our own script, someone else will write it for us, and we will not like how the story ends,” he said, framing sovereignty as an active choice rather than inherited privilege.

That resolute posture draws upon a sobering cartography of contemporary conflict, encompassing the devastating war in Sudan and the protracted violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, both intimately linked to contestation over gold and strategic minerals including coltan and cobalt, alongside governance failures in Somalia, the marginalisation of youth in Mozambique’s gas-rich Cabo Delgado region, and the deepening schism between ECOWAS and the Alliance of Sahel States.

Beyond conventional warfare, the President identified the proliferation of commercial drones in the hands of armed groups and non-state actors as a transformative and deadly vector, rendering battlefields more lethal and civilian populations more exposed, thereby compounding the urgency for collective regulatory and security responses.

In his concluding exhortation, Mahama urged African leaders to strengthen cooperation and reclaim sovereign authority over the continent’s resources and security priorities, warning that failure to forge a unified agenda would consign the continent’s future to be increasingly shaped by external interests inimical to its development aspirations.

Source: #presidency
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Author: Korkor Anumu

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