True African History

African nations proudly hoisted their new flags at independence, but decades later many Africans still ask: Are we truly free? In city streets and village markets from Nairobi to Lagos, people sense an uncomfortable reality – their countries move and speak with the symbols of sovereignty, yet powerful external forces pull the strings. This paradox is at the heart of what I provocatively call the “zombie-vassal” state. Like a zombie, the state staggers on post-independence, nominally alive with constitutions and elections, yet it remains possessed by outside interests. Its own citizens often feel like bystanders in a drama where former colonial powers, multinational corporations, international organisations, and complicit local elites call the shots. The result is a tragic illusion of independence: national flags and anthems abound, but genuine self-determination is scarce.

I am going to introduce and explore the concept of the zombie-vassal state in Africa – defining its characteristics, laying out its pillars of control, and surveying how it persists in contemporary Africa. I will show you why understanding “zombie-vassalage” is essential to grasping Africa’s continuing struggles and why this concept, however unsettling, is key to sparking deeper inquiry into the continent’s quest for genuine sovereignty.

Defining the “Zombie-Vassal” State

A “zombie-vassal” state refers to a country that is theoretically independent – with a government, territory and flag – but whose economic and political life is effectively directed from outside. Kwame Nkrumah famously described this condition as the essence of neo-colonialism: a state that “has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty” while “its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.” In such a state, the forms of independence exist (elections, national laws, membership in the UN), but the substance of power lies elsewhere. Foreign governments (often the former colonial rulers or new global powers), international financial institutions, or global corporations set the policy agenda, usually in collaboration with a narrow domestic elite that benefits from the arrangement. Meanwhile, the broad populace experiences exploitation and neglect – they see wealth extracted from their soil and labour with little improvement in their daily lives.

In the case of Africa, this zombie-like condition’s foundations were laid during the colonial period, when imperial powers carved up Africa and engineered its economies and societies to serve foreign needs. Colonial regimes built export railways from mines and plantations to ports, not to local markets. They nurtured authoritarian local intermediaries and suppressive administrative structures to keep control. When independence swept the continent in the mid-20th century, the departing powers often left behind economic structures, political ties and legal agreements that continued their influence by other means. The new flags and anthems masked a deep continuity: Africa remained a vassal in the global system, supplying raw materials and cheap labour while remaining dependent on foreign capital and know-how. Over the decades, this dynamic evolved but did not disappear – it merely took on new forms. Today’s “zombie-vassal” state may host foreign military advisers instead of colonial troops, sign loan agreements instead of conceding territory, and hold elections instead of direct rule, but the power imbalance and foreign domination persists. In effect, these states feign sovereignty on the world stage, yet behind the scenes their policy options are constrained by external forces and internal collusion. To understand how this works in practice, we can break down the architecture of zombie-vassalage into four reinforcing pillars.

The Four Pillars of Vassalage

1. Economic Dependency - monocrop economies and perpetual debt

Most African zombie-vassal states remain heavily dependent on foreign economic inputs and markets, a legacy of colonial economies designed for extraction. Their role in the world economy is often to export raw commodities – crude oil, minerals, cash crops – and import higher-value finished goods. This structural dependency means local economies can be strangled if foreign demand or aid falters. For example, almost all of Africa’s vast mineral output is still shipped out unprocessed, so the potential value-add and jobs are realized abroad, not at home. For instance, Africa exports most of its crude oil and natural gas, often only to buy back expensive refined fuels. The human cost of this arrangement is stark: despite the continent’s energy wealth, roughly 600 million Africans (53% of the population) have no access to electricity, a poignant marker of how ordinary people are left underserved. Meanwhile, many governments cannot fund basic services without external help – foreign aid contributes nearly half of government revenue in many if not most African countries. Dependency also comes in the form of onerous debt. Decades of loans (whether from Cold War patrons, the IMF and World Bank, or newer creditors like China) have led to debt traps where nations must borrow just to repay old debts, often under lender conditions. As of 2023, 22 African countries are in or at high risk of debt distress, their sovereign debt having ballooned fivefold since 2000. Servicing these debts siphons public funds that could have built schools or hospitals, perpetuating underdevelopment. In sum, the economic pillar of vassalage keeps African states reliant on external finance and markets, with limited control over their own wealth – the lifeblood of the nation flows outward more than inward, just as designed by the old imperial order.

2. Political Control - foreign interference and elite collusion

The political institutions of zombie-vassal states, though ostensibly sovereign, often answer to influences from abroad or to domestic elites aligned with those interests. Foreign interference in African governance has been a consistent theme from the Cold War to the present. During the decolonisation era, leaders who resisted external control – from Patrice Lumumba in the Congo to Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso – met swift retribution, often with foreign orchestration or support. France, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union all treated Africa as a chessboard, backing coups and dictators who would safeguard their interests. France in particular adopted an interventionist post-colonial policy, conducting on average nearly one military intervention in Africa per year from 1960 through the mid-1990s. By one count, France intervened militarily over 30 times in its former African colonies in the first decades after independence – a stark reminder that local political sovereignty was often more fiction than fact. Even in recent years, foreign political meddling persists in subtler forms: funding preferred candidates, crafting election strategies, or exerting diplomatic pressure to shape policies. Crucially, such external control usually operates with the complicity of local elites. As scholar John Iliffe noted, colonial powers often ruled by empowering a small local class – chiefs or bureaucrats – and today’s neocolonial powers do the same with politically connected elites. These elites circulate between government and international organisations or corporate boards, profiting from contracts, aid funds, or resource deals brokered with foreign partners. They act as intermediaries, ensuring that local laws and contracts favour external interests while they receive a share of the spoils. In Mozambique’s resource-rich Cabo Delgado province, for instance, analysts observe that multinational corporations exploiting gas and minerals operate only thanks to collaboration from in-country elites, mirroring the old pattern where local chiefs once sold out their people. The outcome is a hollowed-out democracy: elections occur, parliaments sit, but the real policy latitude is constrained by what external patrons and their local clients will allow. The average citizen finds that voting out one set of leaders changes little, as the new rulers often answer to the same overseas masters or economic imperatives. This erosion of genuine self-governance through foreign influence and elite collusion forms the second pillar of the zombie-vassal state.

3. Social Dysfunction - abandoned citizens and brain drain

One telling symptom of zombie-vassalage is the failure of the state to deliver basic public goods to its population. Because national resources are diverted abroad or captured by a narrow elite, investments in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and social welfare are grossly insufficient. Many African states remain unable to provide consistent electricity, clean water, quality schooling, or medical care to large portions of their people. The statistics are sobering: more than half of Africans lack access to modern energy, and over 50% do not have access to essential health services. Public hospitals frequently run out of medicines and other supplies; schools operate in overcrowded rooms with scant materials. This chronic under-provision feeds disillusionment and instability. It also fuels a “brain drain” – the exodus of skilled African professionals to better-run societies abroad. Each year, an estimated 70,000 skilled professionals leave Africa in search of better prospects. Doctors, nurses, engineers, and academics trained in Africa often find themselves working in Europe or North America, where salaries are higher and facilities functional. For example, in Nigeria one doctor serves multiple thousands of patients, far below the physician density in developed countries, because so many Nigerian doctors have emigrated. The loss of talent creates a vicious cycle: with fewer skilled workers and intellectuals, domestic institutions weaken further, encouraging even more people to leave. Meanwhile, those left behind cope with failing services – a daily reminder that independence has not translated into broad improvement of life. Social outcomes in many African countries remain as dire as under colonial rule, if not worse in some areas, despite sovereign governments ostensibly at the helm. This dysfunction is not due to an inherent lack of resources or knowledge – Africa is rich in both – but rather due to the choices made under vassalage: the state’s priorities skew toward serving external interests over public welfare. Thus, a zombie-vassal state displays the tragic cliche of fancy ministerial offices complete with large luxury cars in the capital city, while rural clinics have no nurses and university graduates sell vegetables by the roadside. The so-called social contract frays as citizens lose faith in a state that seems absent or unresponsive, except when canvassing for votes, extracting taxes or suppressing dissent. This pillar of social breakdown both results from and reinforces the other pillars, as a population kept in desperation is less able to challenge the status quo of exploitation.

4. Compromised Sovereignty: foreign boots and binding treaties

Finally, zombie-vassal states exhibit compromised national sovereignty – the ultimate mark of vassalage. Even as they wave their own flags, these countries tolerate levels of foreign control over their territory and policymaking that belie true independence. In some cases, this is literally visible in the form of foreign military presence. Across Africa, numerous countries host foreign military bases, troops, or “advisers” on their soil. The Horn of Africa, for instance, has become an epicentre of great-power competition: by 2019 at least 13 foreign countries had a military presence in Africa, including the US, France, Britain, China, Russia, and others. Tiny Djibouti alone hosts eight foreign military bases, earning it the nickname “the world’s militarised crossroads”. Foreign soldiers operating from African territory – ostensibly for training missions, counter-terrorism or peacekeeping – underscore a reality that external powers still consider parts of Africa their strategic hinterland. These arrangements are usually backed by defence pacts or status-of-forces agreements that give foreign militaries free rein and legal immunities, something no truly sovereign nation readily permits. Likewise, on the economic front, many African governments have signed restrictive agreements that limit their sovereign choices. One glaring example is the monetary straightjacket inherited from colonialism: almost all West and Central African countries that had been colonised by France still use the CFA franc, a currency formerly tied to the French franc (now the euro), which until recently required depositing 50% of their foreign reserves in the French Treasury. This arrangement, born of 1960s-era accords with France, constrained these countries’ monetary sovereignty for decades, effectively outsourcing crucial economic decisions to Paris. Similarly, in the era of globalisation, African states often find themselves bound by the conditions of international lenders and trade deals. Structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF/World Bank in the 1980s–90s forced many governments to cut social spending, privatise state industries, and open markets on terms that benefited foreign investors. These policies, written into loan agreements, overrode domestic policy preferences – a form of de facto rule-making from afar. Even today, a financially stressed government must heed the dictates of creditors or risk economic collapse. In short, the sovereignty of the zombie-vassal state is severely circumscribed. Key decisions on security, currency, and development strategy might be effectively made in Washington, Beijing, Brussels, or corporate boardrooms, rather than by the citizens of the nation. The country may have a seat at the United Nations, but at home its freedom of action is chained by treaties and dependencies that are the modern equivalent of vassal oaths.

Colonial Roots and Contemporary Persistence

The phenomena of zombie-vassalage in Africa today are deeply rooted in the continent’s colonial history. During the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, European empires conquered and reshaped African societies in ways that would maximise extraction. Colonial powers established mono-industries (groundnuts in Senegal, copper in Zambia, cocoa in Ghana, etc.), built infrastructure solely to get those products out, and discouraged local manufacturing that might compete with European goods. They governed through authoritarian centralized administrations, often keeping traditional elites (chiefs or kings) as junior partners to help control the population. Perhaps most consequentially, colonial regimes had no interest in developing broad-based prosperity or strong institutions of self-rule – in fact, they feared it. When the wind of change brought independence in the 1950s–60s, new African nations inherited fragile institutions, primary-product economies, and international links that favored the former metropoles. The departing powers crafted defence agreements and economic pacts to preserve their influence: for example, at independence France bound many of its ex-colonies to exclusive military cooperation deals and preferential access for French companies in mining and utilities. These deals meant that, flag independence notwithstanding, the old master’s hand was still on the tiller.

In the ensuing decades, global geopolitical and economic forces further entrenched vassalage in new guises. The Cold War saw the US and USSR treat African states as proxies, sending aid or arms conditioned on political loyalty. Western powers and the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF/World Bank) promoted a model of “development” that often translated to open markets for Western goods and investors, indebtedness, and austerity measures – effectively limiting sovereignty in economic policy. When some African leaders attempted nationalist, self-reliant paths, they were isolated or removed. On the other side, local strongmen learned that playing the vassal (declaring anti-communist credentials, or later, pro-investment climates) secured them external patronage to stay in power. Through the 1980s and 90s, Structural Adjustment Programs tied loan relief to neoliberal reforms that pruned back the state – education budgets shrank, state firms sold off – often worsening social outcomes. By design or not, these policies kept many African nations dependent on foreign capital and imports, their economies too weak to break free.

Fast-forward to today, and the faces of zombie-vassalage are varied but ubiquitous. In one country, it may appear as a foreign mining giant controlling the nation’s biggest export while the locals see little benefit. In another, it is a permanent “peacekeeping” force that has essentially become a parallel authority. Elsewhere, it is the endless cycle of borrowing from international lenders, each round of debt leaving the state more beholden to creditor demands. Perhaps most insidiously, it is visible in the mindset of the ruling class – ministers and technocrats whose first instinct is to seek a foreign consultant’s advice or a donor’s approval rather than consult their own people’s needs. The term “zombie-vassal” captures the eerie continuity of these patterns. In contemporary African life, ordinary citizens still confront realities that echo colonial extraction and control. A farmer in Cameroon might still sell cotton at prices set by a global commodity exchange, earning a pittance. A student in Malawi competes for a rare scholarship funded by an NGO because the public university is under-resourced. A nurse in Ghana contemplates emigrating to the UK, aware that her hospital has more broken equipment than functioning tools. These personal stories reflect structural problems: economies geared to serve others, governments that cannot fully govern, social systems starved of investment, and sovereignty compromised at every turn.

There has probably always been a certain amount of awareness among African populations and some leaders of the need to exorcise these ghosts of vassalage. Indeed some countries show signs of pushing back on exploitative arrangements: Tanzania renegotiated mining contracts to get a fairer share of profits, and a wave of public protest in several Francophone nations has demanded the removal of French troops and an end to the CFA franc arrangement. These are signs of an awakening, a challenge to zombie-vassal status. Even so, the path to undoing decades (if not centuries) of entrenched external control is arduous. The four pillars of vassalage – economic, political, social, and sovereign – reinforce each other like the legs of a heavy table. To remove one pillar (say, by canceling odious debts or ousting foreign troops) requires also addressing the others (building a resilient economy, empowering citizens, uniting regional efforts). It is a profound struggle for African countries to truly reclaim their autonomy in the face of powerful interests accustomed to extracting value with minimal accountability.

In conclusion, the concept of the “zombie-vassal” state offers a critical lens through which to view Africa’s present condition. It strips away the polite fiction that all post-colonial states enjoy genuine independence, and directs attention to the mechanisms of control and dependency that survive like undead relics of empire. I have outlined what those mechanisms are and how they manifest in everyday African realities – from empty treasuries and foreign advisors in presidential palaces, to doctors leaving en masse and foreign soldiers setting up camp on local soil. I invite you to explore further: to ask how these conditions came to be, why they persist, and what can be done to transform these zombie states into truly independent nations responsive to their people. The stakes could not be higher – Africa’s future development and dignity depend on breaking the bonds of vassalage and finally consummating the promise of independence with real power in the hands of Africans themselves.

In the very near future, I hope to delve deeper into each pillar and case studies across the continent, tracing the long shadow of the past and the burgeoning efforts to turn a new page. My hope is that by understanding the zombie-vassal we can start to understand how to destroy it and usher in an era of authentic sovereignty and self-driven progress in Africa.

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