Behind the Slogan “Africa Forward”: Hiding the Struggle Over Substitution Within Colonialism!
(Translated)
Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 600 - 20/05/2026
By: Ustadh Saeed Fadl*

The Kenyan capital, Nairobi, witnessed the convening of the Africa Forward 2026 Summit this May, co-sponsored by French President Emmanuel Macron and his Kenyan counterpart, William Ruto. Under the guise of this glittering slogan, and with the notable participation of some thirty African and international leaders and officials, including the presidents of Egypt and Chad, new chapters in the saga of international control over the continent were being written. This gathering, held in an Anglophone environment, does not represent a genuine shift towards independence, but instead embodies a blatant process of replacement and substitution.

Desperate French attempts to preserve its waning influence are intertwined with America’s systematic drive to erode this influence and replace old colonialism with its “soft” colonialism. This summit saw Paris expelled from West Africa through the front door, only to infiltrate through the back windows of East Africa. True liberation, therefore, hinges on the people’s awareness of the necessity to expel both the expeller, the US, and the expelled, France, and to overthrow the agent regimes that enabled them.

The historic collapse of the traditional French colonialist order in West and Central Africa, particularly in the Sahel and the Sahel region, represented a profound shock to Paris. Under the weight of overwhelming popular anger, Paris found itself compelled to evacuate its military bases and withdraw its diplomats. However, the French political elite, driven by a logic of preemptive action and the strategy that offense is the best form of defense, did not succumb to this humiliating expulsion. Instead, it hastened to seek a new foothold outside its traditional sphere of influence. This rush towards the Anglophone world, and the pursuit of new strategic and economic alliances with “stable and promising” nations, was a clear attempt to circumvent defeat and reproduce influence through modern investment, digital, and environmental initiatives. These initiatives, however, conceal the same old ambitions for colonialism, control, and the manipulation of political decision-making.

Conversely, this French retreat did not occur in a vacuum. Instead, it was propelled and seized upon by American power, which moved decisively to fill the void and pursue a policy of systematically eroding influence. America is not acting in Africa as a loyal ally of its European partners, but as a strategic alternative seeking absolute hegemony, exploiting the weakness of the French administration and the sensitivity of African populations to their history of direct colonialism. America presents itself to African elites as a capable partner in areas such as counterterrorism, digital development, and loans, but in essence, it practices a form of soft colonialism, using modern capitalist tools to maintain the continent under Atlantic dominance and protect it from competing Chinese and Russian expansion.

This international scramble, this functional exchange between the expeller and the expelled, confronts African peoples with a stark historical truth: betting on replacing one colonialist with another is a losing proposition, and will only prolong dependency and legitimize the plundering of resources. True liberation and absolute independence cannot be achieved by merely changing faces in Western capitals. Instead, they begin within the continent itself, with a popular awareness of the necessity to wage the true battle to end colonialism in all its forms and guises—military, economic, and cultural. This awareness necessarily requires understanding the nature of the subservient ruling regimes that enable colonialism and act as collaborating guardians of its interests in exchange for remaining in power. Overthrowing these mercenary regimes and dismantling their capitalist foundations is the first and essential step toward liberation.

In this geopolitical and intellectual context, the continent’s civilizational identity emerges as a decisive factor that cannot be overlooked or ignored in the struggle for liberation. Demographic and social realities indicate that Muslims constitute the largest and most vital segment of the African population, exceeding half the total population, and their influence extends from the northern coasts to the depths of the west, east, and center. This immense human power, with its distinct intellectual, doctrinal, and historical heritage that rejects subjugation and dependency, represents the solid rock upon which the projects of colonialism and capitalist exploitation can shatter. Rallying around the comprehensive and ideological Islamic civilizational alternative, which offers a holistic political and economic alternative outside the framework of the international order, is the true and certain guarantee for saving Africa and extricating it from the vortex of international conflicts.

The project of the Ummah based on Shariah rulings, advocated by Hizb ut Tahrir (حزب التحرير Party of Liberation) — the Khilafah Rashidah (Rightly Guided Caliphate) on the Method of the Prophethood — offers a radical civilizational vision that overturns the global capitalist order. This vision begins with ending colonialist and economic dependence on international institutions, including economic ones, starting with abandoning colonialist paper currencies like the franc, euro, and dollar, and returning to the gold and silver standard to end inflation and artificial exploitation. This project also entails reclaiming the Ummah’s vast wealth of oil, gas, minerals, and uranium, restoring it as public property managed for the benefit of all the continent's inhabitants, while preventing transnational corporations from controlling it. Furthermore, it involves abolishing riba (interest) and unjust taxes, and building heavy and military industries that break free from dependence on the West and provide the necessary conditions for agricultural and industrial self-sufficiency.

The obstacles that are trying to prevent this great project from seeing the light, represented by the walls of the subservient ruling regimes and the international colonialist order, can only be broken by an aware popular uprising that rallies around a sincere intellectual leadership, and support from the sincere among the powerful and influential people in the armies and the active elites for the benefit of the great ideology of Islam, to declare it with a resounding cry that cuts off the root of the expeller, the US, and the expelled, France, together, and ends decades of guardianship and subservience, and returns to what it was under the ruling governance of Islam, where it enjoyed security, safety, economic prosperity, and independent political leadership, so that the African continent can regain its rightful place, driven by its awareness of the reasons for the true revival (نهضة nahdah) built on the firm belief of Islam and its recovered wealth and capabilities, far from the crime and greed of Paris and London and the enslavement of Washington.

* Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Egypt