During this interview, Kako Nubukpo – Full Professor in Economic at the University of Lomé (Togo), Former WAEMU Commissioner in charge of Agriculture, Water Resources and Environment, former Minister of Long-term Strategy and Public policy evaluation of Togo and currently at IFAD, addresses with Sofia Scialoja, Phd candidate at Scuola Normale Superiore, some of the main issues raised in his third book L’Afrique et le reste du monde – De la dépendance à la souveraineté (“Africa and the rest of the world – From dependency to sovereignty”) (Odile Jacob, 2024). During the conversation, Nubukpo and Scialoja investigated the question of post-coloniality and the main differences between Francophone and non-Francophone African countries’ political debates. Likewise, we question the different ways of understanding Pan-Africanism, and the “ecological protectionism” proposed by Nabukpo in his book.
Here, we are publishing the first part of the interview.

In Francophone Africa, post-coloniality is very present in the public debate... What is the difference between Francophone countries and other African countries on this subject?

The difference is linked to the type of colonization. For a very long time, French colonization opted for the doctrine of assimilation. Whereas British colonization opted for the doctrine of responsibility. In the doctrine of assimilation, the final stage for the colonized is to become French. This is something that structured even the colonial system, in terms of the legitimacy of endogenous institutions. I am an Ewe (ethnic group, ndr) from southern Togo. There are also Ewe in Benin and Ghana, and you can see the difference straight away: the structuring of Ewe power in Ghana has not been affected. As a result, indirect government, which was the case in the British colonies, had less impact on the traditional governance structures, without disrupting the endogenous social hierarchies.

The other consequence was that the French system remained very present, whereas in the British colonies, trade took precedence over colonial administration. Obviously, we can't say that British colonization was “better,” but the fact that it did not interfere too much in the internal social order made it easier for African societies to develop after independence. In other words, the idea of autonomy and sovereignty is more embodied in Anglophone Africans than in Francophones. In the logic of Francophone assimilation, the Francophone leaders were almost all former French MPs: Félix Houpouet-Boigny (first President of Ivory Coast), Léopold Sédar Senghor (first President of Senegal), Lamine Gueye (mayor of Saint-Louis and President of the National Assembly, Senegal), Hamau Diori (first President of Niger) … So in what Boigny called Françafrique, assimilation was something ideal.

Assimilation of the French state model?

Yes, and a very strong relationship with France that should endure, so France never really left. The debate on monetary sovereignty is an example.

Similarly, we've always considered our development in terms of a ‘benchmark’, which would be the development of the Western world. This also goes back to the doctrine of assimilation. It is something that has had enormous repercussions for all Africans. An ‘evolved’ African is one who behaves like a white person... It's a form of extraversion.

I use the term ‘extraversion’ in a different way: as indicating a conscious strategy for obtaining resources (funds, deals) indiscriminately. Instead, you mean ‘extraversion’ as an outwards-looking attitude ...

The way in which I've used it is correlated to its definition as proposed by development economics: the principle that what others do is preferable to what you do yourself. Economic extraversion means exporting raw materials and importing finished products.

Wishing to be like a white man means wishing to be sure of having the resources to dominate at home. For example, graduating abroad, in France or the UK, would give me sufficiently strong symbolic capital to become a minister in my country. That's what I call intellectual extraversion, but fundamentally, it goes back to the Marxist notion of alienation. Alienation – namely, the conviction of being inferior to white people – was indeed the case in colonial times; now, we see this same mechanism being instrumentalized by Africans to dominate in their own societies. Thus, an extroverted system is a system which finds its own source of legitimacy outside... In this sense, I'm arguing for the recognition of Africa's endogenous richness and for the rehabilitation of people who haven't studied in the West.

Regarding the purely intellectual debate on post-coloniality, what are the conceptual differences between the Francophone and Anglophone worlds?

In the Anglophone world, the issue of slavery has had a huge influence on research, leading also to subaltern studies. It's about the place of black people in American society and southern countries in the world, for example with Chakrabarty... There's a strong question of identity that drives the debate in the Anglo-Saxon world. The Francophone debate tends to focus on the Françafrique relationship. In my opinion, it was Frantz Fanon who made the greatest link between the two worlds, without having done so on purpose. His training as a psychiatrist brought him back to the debate between black and white, particularly with his book ‘Black Skin, White Masks’, which is very meaningful for black Americans. In ‘Damned of the Earth’, however, he returns to the Françafrique question – through the prism of the Algerian revolution. So, the colonial question and the legitimization of violence as a means of throwing off the shackles of colonization. This concept has also been used a great deal in the Portuguese-speaking revolutions, with Amilcar Cabral (in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde), or the anti-apartheid movement... Fanon was familiar with them too.

What about the debate on Pan-Africanism? In your book, you talk about the “Pan-Africanism of withdrawal”(“Panafricanisme de répli”)[1]: Would, that be the kind of rhetoric carried by people like Kémi Séba[2]?

Absolutely. In other words, all those who, instead of thinking about the Africa of tomorrow, are constantly harping on about France.

Kémi Séba's Pan-Africanism exhibits a strong anti-Françafrique rhetoric, but then, at a conceptual level, it presents a rather racial matrix, which comes under Pan-Negrism – defending a unity and belonging linked to the fact of being black, instead of a geographical belonging (the African continent). This Pan-Negrism goes back to the very first exponents of Pan-Africanism, like Aimé Césaire…

Exactly. In other words, Kémi Séba's Pan-Africanism is effectively the one of the diasporas, with very little territorialization. I saw this in his criticism of the CFA franc: you can see that people like Kémi Séba and Nathalie Yamb[3] have very broad views, such as “free Africa or death”. Whereas all the movements that are more territorialized, such as the “Il y a en a marre” movement in Senegal or the “Balais citoyen” in Burkina Faso, focus more on criticism against the African governance, the lack of democracy, the corruption… Similarly, when you look at anti-CFA movements such as “Tournous la page”, a civil society coalition, their discourse is less radical than that of Kémi Séba. Séba is basically in another fight, that of his own recognition in his land of adoption – the African countries. He, for example, was born in France and doesn't speak a single African language...

But here you're back to an individual psychological analysis?

No. There's a movement driven by the diasporas, which has the characteristics I've just described. It's not very territorialized and often uses the issues they bring into the debate – such as defense agreements, currency, and the question of coups d'état – to settle internal political problems in Europe. What interests them is denouncing the French attitude. It's not a psychological analysis, more a micro-sociological one. It's about the place of the diaspora in host societies.

In addition to the Pan-Africanism promoted by the civil society, there is the Pan-Africanism promoted by institutions such as the African Union...

I don't believe in that kind of Pan-Africanism at all. As far as I'm concerned, it's all top-down and very superficial. I'm very sensitive to the idea of legitimacy, and illegitimate politicians and states cannot gather to create legitimacy.

Are you saying this as a supporter of democracy? In a way, it might sound like a Westernist stance…

Yes, wrongly so. That's why, in the book, I return to traditional African forms of governance. For example, take the Manden Charter[4]: it's thought to be the first Charter for democracy and respect for human rights, at least in Africa. And that's why I fundamentally believe that democracy is not tied to one continent, like Europe.

Let's go back to the civil society Pan-Africanism: what is your position?

The type of Pan-Africanism we were talking about corresponds to a first phase of the “third way” that I defend. In other words, the rejection of domination is legitimate. So, I partly share the protest of Kémi Séba and Nathalie Yamb. But for me, it's not because we're contesting something that we're building something else. We differ here: I don't see what they're proposing.

What are you proposing?

A “third way” around the question of the commons. And we're already moving in that direction to some extent, with the mobilization of traditional forms of governance by leaders and populations to address a certain number of issues at the grassroots level. For example, in the Sahel, the management of conflicts linked to transhumance, where we can see that customary law is the most appropriate way of resolving issues relating to the collection of resources by nomadic populations when they pass through the fields of sedentary populations. It's the same mechanism if we take the example of dialogue between traditional chiefs and jihadist movements.

I rely on Elinor Ostrom's concept of property rights in the commons[5]. On the other hand, what the Bretton Woods institutions are proposing with individual land titles impoverishes the richness of the law and is often ill-suited to local populations: hence the unprecedented land conflicts we see in all African countries. So, the important thing is to recognize legal plurality.

A Senegalese lawyer told me that it would be possible to decolonize knowledge in several disciplines. However, the law, as it stands in Francophone Africa, is purely colonial, which poses a problem...

Absolutely. That's why I'm calling for this complexity of the law, which we can't do without if we want to build an alternative. What do the commons bring? This idea of the capacity of grassroots societies to organize themselves and manage their societies in a reasonable way is something that I find deeply rooted in African philosophies. My approach is pragmatic: let's go and see what's happening on the ground, let's trust in this grassroots capacity to produce solutions, and let's look at how we can scale up some of these solutions. So, a “third way”, different from the “second way”, would be the multilateral system we've been in for forty years.

How do you reconcile your proposal with the global context?

It's my protectionism, which I call ecological, that allows me to return to a form of social state. The fundamental question is how we produce and what we do with the surplus linked to production. The objective is a balanced globalization and how we fit into that. What I call protectionism is that period during which we build up the balance of power that will allow us to be part of globalization in the future. And that's what the Asians have done: hence the concept of neomercantilism. The Asians are not neo-liberal: they protect themselves on the import side and are very aggressive on the exports, and with the gains in market share they finance their long-term productive transformation. This is something particularly urgent in Africa, where there is extraordinary predation on natural resources, with a risk for the whole planet – the Congo Forest is an example. Hence the need to add ecology to protectionism.

[1] The “Panafricanism of withdraw” is a way of defending the pan-Africanist cause by attacking above all those who are considered external adversaries (in the cases discussed in the interview, France), and denigrating the current system, including the current African governments and institutions.

[2] Kémi Séba is a French Beninese pan-African activist, head of the NGO “Urgences Panafricanistes”. He has a large following on social media, has extensive contacts with Russian officials, and he is currently a special counsellor of the Head of Niger’s military junta in power, Abdourahamane Tchiani. In January 2025, he announced his candidature at the 2026 presidential elections in Benin.

[3] Nathalie Yamb is a Swiss-Cameroonian social media influencer and activist, similar and close to Kémi Séba.

[4] The Manden Charter is a reconstructed transcription of an orally transmitted series of legal rules dating back to the Mali (or Manding) Empire, back in the XIII century. Two texts exist, based on the work carried out in the 1970s by Wa Kamissoko and Youssouf Tata Cissé: the “Oath of the wise” and the Kouroukan Fouga Charter.

[5] Elinor Ostrom, 2019 Nobel prize in Economics, develops her conceptualization of property rights in the commons, by following one of her maxims: a resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory. She highlights five principal rights: the right of access, the right of extraction, the right of management, the right of exclusion and the right of alienation.