The challenges facing most African countries are not only multiple but equally crucial: the appetite of major powers and multinationals for strategic raw materials on African soil, the challenges of climate change and the green transition, an increasingly educated but still unemployed youth, desires for sovereignty and Pan-African renaissance. These situations require states and citizens to make choices, to decide on the path forward, constantly. However, decision-making is becoming increasingly difficult. Many political and economic leaders, as well as civil society actors, seem to be struck by a form of paralysis. How can we explain this paradox?
We must get to the heart of the problem to answer this. We must identify the forces that hinder our ability to decide, and therefore to act. We must seek to answer some fundamental questions: Why is it so difficult to decide? What does a good decision truly require of us? And above all, can we separate a good decision from a good result?
Why Deciding Is Difficult
To decide is to choose; to decide is also to renounce. In any case, decisions do not occur in a vacuum. Today, particularly due to the development of information and communication technologies, social networks, and artificial intelligence, decision-making is confronted with all kinds of personal, external, social, cultural, political, historical influences, etc. This is what makes deciding increasingly difficult.
More specifically, this difficulty in deciding is the product of a double assault, both external and internal. The state and the individual are thus the target of systemic forces that undermine their sovereignty and weaken their capacity to act at the source.
A double extraction
The sovereignty of the African state is constantly being tested. It is destabilized, exploited, and weakened. A country like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) perfectly illustrates this deliberate process. Drawing on the work of American economist Edward S. Herman, who defined the failed state as “a state that, after being crushed militarily or rendered unmanageable through economic destabilization and the resulting chaos, has almost permanently lost the capacity (or right) to rebuild itself and meet the legitimate expectations of its citizens,” Congolese political analyst Jean-Pierre Mbelu, in his book “La Fabrique d’un Etat raté” (The Making of a Failed State), explains how the DRC is the result of a process that deliberately weakens governance and social cohesion. And this is done in order to fragment the country to better plunder the vast resources of its soil and subsoil (Coltan, Copper, Cobalt, Lithium, Gold, etc.).
The book “Cobalt Red” by British author Siddharth Kara lifts the veil on this reality. Millions of people, including children, work in conditions close to slavery to provide cobalt to the global technology industry. This system of domination is well-oiled. Neocolonialism first exercises indirect influence through financial and economic means. The CFA franc, managed by France, is a concrete illustration. The wealth of the countries that use it flows to the metropole. Neoliberal policies, promoted by the IMF and the World Bank, impose austerity and privatization, favoring large corporations at the expense of the common good.
Today, however, domination seems to be undergoing a mutation. It has become techno-feudalism, according to Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis. In his book “The New Serfs of the Economy,” the former Greek Minister of Economy explains that we have moved out of traditional capitalism, where profit came from production. And we have entered a new system where GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) and BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi) act as new feudal lords whose power and strength rest on the “algorithmic rent” they extract from behavioral data.
Ultimately, the African state is threatened by a double extraction: material (raw materials) and dematerialized (data). This is how the capacity to make sovereign decisions is hindered.
The battle for minds and narratives
Beyond the structural forces that undermine state sovereignty, the decision-making crisis is also fueled by an internal fragmentation of the social and psychic space.
Decision-making is a collective act that presupposes the ability to agree on a common reality. However, this capacity is eroded by a new form of power that South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han has called “psychopolitics.” In brief, psychopolitics is a system of social control based on the imposition of norms and narratives that force individuals to conform to behavioral models. That is to say, the individual is dissolved into a managed population, and their spontaneous speech is increasingly replaced by mechanical, robotic language that serves the established order.
This profound alienation manifests, or translates, into a moral and ethical corruption of political and social actors. It is also accompanied by a rejection of traditional governance models that valued community deliberation and collective responsibility.
This has serious consequences because the loss of the dignity to think and the abandonment of traditional values make public debates superficial. The public space, which should be a place of dialogue and deliberation, is too often transformed into a spectacle.
In Europeanized contexts, not to say Westernized ones, which facilitate imposture and falsehood, politics is no longer the art of changing the world as it exists, but of affecting the way it is perceived. Narration, or “storytelling,” then becomes a tool for formatting minds, replacing truth with staged fiction. Tricks and lies assert themselves as operational methods that divide the population and justify external interventions. All of this undermines the capacity of individuals and collectives to agree on a common reality, which makes any coherent and sovereign decision-making virtually impossible.
From this perspective, the decision-making crisis in Africa turns out to be a direct consequence of the disconnection between “the political” (the definition of “we” and living together) and “politics” (power games and the quest for efficiency). The state, undermined by predatory forces, can no longer serve as a framework for collective action, while the psyche of the individual, colonized by narratives and norms, can no longer be the engine of free and collective action. We must therefore free ourselves from this double vice.
What a (good) decision requires and implies
If the diagnosis of the decision-making crisis reveals a hostile environment and a fragmented consciousness, the solution can only be found in an approach of refoundation and reinvention. A good decision requires ethical and cultural preconditions and implies the construction of new governance models. It is a bet on the future that begins with an inner restoration.
An Insurrection of Consciousness
A good decision does not emerge from nothing. It is the fruit of a liberated consciousness. Before “doing,” one must first “be.” The first step is to equip oneself with an internal compass: the “dignity to think,” to borrow the title of French psychoanalyst Roland Gori’s book. This dignity is an act of resistance against dominant discourses. It consists of refusing voluntary servitude and making thought a “creative gesture.” To allow the individual to become the subject of their own life again.
This approach finds an echo in Frantz Fanon. The psychiatrist he was showed the psychological alienation generated by the colonial system. The decolonization of the mind is a psychological struggle. For him, true de-alienation is accomplished only with an abrupt awareness of economic and social realities. It is the struggle to “rid the colonized of their inferiority complex.”
Decision-making cannot take place in amnesia. It requires a reappropriation of history. Burkinabè historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo waged this battle to refute the myth of an Africa “without history.” He insisted on the scientific value of oral traditions. His goal was for Africa to “rebuild” and “reconstitute its identity” to build its future. Cheikh Anta Diop posited the Egyptian origin of Black civilization, offering “cultural unity.” This reappropriation is a political act that allows liberation from the cultural poison skillfully inoculated by colonial discourse.
The Power to Act Together
Once the mind is liberated, governance must be reinvented. We must free ourselves from imported models for endogenous development. A “good decision” is anchored in the political field, that is, the sphere of principles and “living together.” A decision is good if it serves the common good, shared values, and fundamental principles.
Jean-Pierre Mbelu’s concept of “tradicracy” invites us to move in this direction. Tradicracy is a synthesis of traditional African principles (shared speech, decentralization) with modern democratic ideals. This model reverses the hierarchical pyramid by placing power at the level of the people. It is inspired by the “palabre,” a space of “shared speech” where consensus prevails over domination. This model opposes “top-down solutions” imposed from outside. Thus, a good decision is one that emerges from a participatory and inclusive process.
The refoundation and reinvention of Africa that we want cannot happen without its vital forces: youth and women, in particular. Youth, educated but unemployed, is supposed to be the relay for the future. Women are the “most effective levers” for positive transformation. They are the heart of the local economy.
The involvement of these actors is crucial. It allows for the construction of commons and citizen counterpowers, which represent an alternative to extractive models and dominant technological monopolies. A good decision is therefore one that strengthens the autonomy and capacities of citizens and supports the emergence of citizen counterweights. What might seem “old” (the palabre, Pan-Africanism) is actually the most modern and resilient solution to the complexity of contemporary challenges.
The good decision as an act of dignity
Modern public management is obsessed with performance. This logic of efficiency is a trap that ignores human complexity. It reduces the value of an action to calculations and metrics that do not account for reality. In this culture of numbers and performance, politics can only be transformed into spectacle.
This is why a good decision must be disconnected from the obsession with good results. It must be judged not by its immediate economic impacts, but by its capacity to strengthen the political, dignity, and shared freedom. A good decision is an action that is not measured by its performance, but by its capacity to refuse enslavement and defend autonomy. In this sense, it is an act of dignity.
From this perspective, the good result of such a decision cannot be limited to performance figures or efficiency indicators. The good result becomes a process that makes experiences a resource rather than a burden. In other words, the good result is the ought-to-be that transcends mere having.
Separating the good decision from the good result is a moral imperative. The merit of a decision is not measured by its immediate economic impacts, but by its capacity to strengthen the principles of living together. The failure of “top-down” solutions and the domination of “storytelling” are symptoms of politics disconnected from the political.
Ultimately, the good decision is an end in itself, because it creates social bonds and strengthens the public space.
For an informed decision
To overcome these obstacles, African leaders must embrace an ethical and holistic approach to decision-making.
To decide with awareness, consequence, and collective intelligence, one must embrace an ethical and holistic approach to decision-making, which would rest on three pillars. First, one must be able to free oneself from an alienated consciousness. This is why I constantly refer to the insurrection of consciousness: because questioning established narratives and reclaiming our intellectual autonomy requires this insurrection of consciousness. Next, we must dismantle the structures of domination that govern our realities and refound our relationships on endogenous models based on unity, solidarity, and participation, to prevent the concentration of power and ensure a more equitable distribution of responsibilities. Today, we must also build sovereignty that is not only political but also psychic and digital. Finally, we must work toward Pan-Africanism of the peoples. Kwame Nkrumah said it: Africa must unite. This is often taken as a slogan, but it is imperative, a strategic necessity to reverse unbalanced power relations.
For all these reasons, facing the paradoxes of an Africa that is rich but hindered and impoverished, decision-making must be considered a political art requiring profound ethics, historical consciousness, and collective commitment. Whether we are ordinary citizens or political or economic decision-makers, we must reject pretenses and cultivate critical thinking. It is at this price that Africa will not only free itself from its dependencies and “capitalist sorcery,” but also reinvent its own future. It is time to decide with boldness and lucidity.
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By Esimba Ifonge