And before somebody immediately accuses me of being anti-African, let me make something absolutely clear:

I am not against Africa. I am for Africa.

I believe in Ubuntu.

I believe in African sovereignty.

I believe in Pan-African cooperation.

I believe Africans should control their own resources, their own economies and their own future.

I believe Africa should be strong enough to defend itself against foreign political and economic interference.

But none of that automatically means that I believe in putting an entire continent into one gigantic political state.

In fact, I believe that blindly pursuing that idea could create exactly the opposite of what its supporters claim to want.

Because here is the question nobody seems to want to ask:

If smaller political units cannot resolve their internal divisions, why would making the political unit even bigger magically solve the problem?

Look around the world.

The United States has had secessionist movements and enormous regional and political divisions. The United Kingdom has dealt with Scottish independence and the constitutional question surrounding Northern Ireland. Yugoslavia was supposed to be a multinational political project — and eventually broke apart. Russia contains numerous peoples and regions with different historical identities and political aspirations. China faces longstanding tensions involving several ethnic and regional identities.

None of this proves that every federation or union must fail.

But it does prove something extremely important:

A flag does not create a people.

A constitution does not erase history.

And drawing a bigger border does not make differences disappear.

Now apply that logic to Africa.

The Democratic Republic of Congo contains an enormous number of ethnic communities. Nigeria is also extraordinarily diverse. These countries already face difficult questions concerning regional identity, ethnicity, language, religion, political representation and the distribution of power.

So then someone comes along and says:

“I know what the solution is. Let's make the political structure even bigger. Let's unite dozens of countries and create one continental state.”

Excuse me?

If you cannot make the smaller house work, why would adding fifty more rooms suddenly make the architecture better?

And then comes the question that is almost always conveniently avoided:

Who controls this new Africa?

Who gets the political power?

Which demographic groups dominate the institutions?

Which languages receive priority?

Which legal traditions?

Which cultures?

Which historical narrative?

And what happens to a small ethnic community when it suddenly finds itself inside a political structure containing hundreds of millions of people?

What exactly is the political value of its vote then?

That is not an insignificant question.

That is the question.

Africa is not one ethnicity.

Africa is not one language.

Africa is not one religion.

Africa is not one culture.

Africa is not one historical experience.

And Africa certainly did not develop as one political nation.

The colonial period made the situation even more complicated by drawing borders through existing ethnic, linguistic and cultural territories.

The Maasai live across Kenya and Tanzania.

Somali communities extend across Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya.

Lunda communities extend across several countries.

Bakongo communities exist across Angola, the two Congos and surrounding areas.

Fulani/Fula communities are spread across enormous parts of the Sahel and West Africa.

So I ask a very uncomfortable question:

Why should the colonial borders suddenly become sacred when the solution being proposed is to put all of those historically divided peoples into one enormous political structure?

Perhaps the first question should not be:

“How do we unite Africa?”

Perhaps the first question should be:

“How do we repair the fragmentation that already exists?”

My own answer is radically different.

First identity.

First culture.

First self-determination.

Then cooperation.

Then, if people actually want it, federation.

I deliberately use the provocative word Balkanisation.

Not as a call for war.

Not as a call for ethnic cleansing.

Not as a call for people to hate their neighbours.

I mean something very different:

What if we stopped treating the colonial map as untouchable?

What if Africans were finally allowed to ask which communities were historically divided by artificial borders?

What if those communities were allowed to rebuild their cultural, linguistic and historical connections?

What if political structures were built from the bottom up rather than imposed from the top down?

Maybe that eventually produces larger regional federations.

Maybe confederations.

Maybe something resembling a continental federation.

But then the unity would be chosen.

And that distinction matters.

Because unity imposed from above is not necessarily unity.

It can simply be centralisation with a beautiful slogan.

And there is another danger that supporters of a gigantic continental federation need to take seriously:

geopolitics.

Imagine one enormous African federation controlling vast territories, strategic minerals, energy resources, agricultural land, major waterways and enormous markets.

Do people seriously believe that foreign powers would simply sit back and say:

"Congratulations, Africa. Good luck. We won't interfere."

Of course not.

Every major geopolitical power would have interests.

And whenever enormous political structures contain internal divisions, foreign powers can potentially exploit those divisions.

A minority dissatisfied with the central government could become a geopolitical instrument.

Money can flow.

Weapons can flow.

Political support can flow.

Intelligence can flow.

Propaganda can flow.

Diplomatic recognition can be offered.

Independence movements can receive external support.

And the same thing could happen in reverse: an outside power could decide that supporting a demographic majority serves its interests better than supporting a minority.

Either way, Africans risk becoming pieces on somebody else's geopolitical chessboard.

The history of Africa already contains countless examples of external powers becoming involved in internal conflicts. Rwanda demonstrates how ethnicity, regional politics and foreign intervention can become deeply intertwined, although the historical reality is considerably more complicated than simplistic claims that one outside bloc simply “supported the Tutsi” or another simply “supported the Hutu.” France, for example, supported the government of Juvénal Habyarimana, while the RPF was a Tutsi-led movement operating from Uganda.

That complexity is precisely the point.

The more enormous and strategically valuable the political structure becomes, the more attractive it becomes as a geopolitical prize.

And then there is the language question.

People say:

“We'll simply make Swahili the African lingua franca.”

Why?

Kiswahili is absolutely an African language and an important Bantu language. It has played a major role as a lingua franca in East Africa, and the African Union adopted Kiswahili as one of its working languages.

But it also developed through centuries of interaction and contains substantial vocabulary borrowed from Arabic and other languages.

So if the argument is supposedly about decolonising Africa, I have a perfectly reasonable question:

Why Swahili?

Why should one regional language automatically become the linguistic identity of an entire continent?

Why not invest in the enormous linguistic heritage that already exists across Africa?

Wolof, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulfulde, Kongo, Lingala, Kinyarwanda, Amharic, Oromo, Tshiluba, Tshilunda, Akan, Zulu, Xhosa, Shona. And hundreds of others.

African unity should not require African linguistic erasure.

And this is where my disagreement with what I would describe as the more ideological forms of Pan-Africanism becomes fundamental.

For me, Pan-Africanism does not mean pretending that Africa is already one nation.

It means making African peoples strong enough to determine their own future.

That may eventually produce greater political unity.

But it should happen because people choose it, not because intellectuals sitting in capitals decide that everybody should suddenly forget their local identities and become citizens of one enormous ideological project.

I would rather see Africans rediscover their own histories.

I would rather see endangered languages protected.

I would rather see communities reconnect with their traditions.

I would rather see colonial borders questioned where appropriate.

I would rather see African countries develop strong regional alliances based on actual interests.

And I would rather see political power decentralised than concentrated into one enormous continental bureaucracy.

Because here is the uncomfortable possibility:

You can destroy one form of foreign domination and replace it with another form of domination from within.

A gigantic African state would not automatically be democratic.

It would not automatically be culturally fair.

It would not automatically protect minorities.

It would not automatically prevent corruption.

It would not automatically prevent authoritarianism.

And it certainly would not automatically prevent foreign powers from interfering.

So no, I am not against African unity.

I am against pretending that unity is a magic word that solves every problem.

I am against the idea that the bigger the political structure, the better the result.

I am against the assumption that anyone questioning the United States of Africa must therefore be anti-African.

And I am against sacrificing the identities of hundreds of peoples on the altar of an abstract political dream.

My position is simple:

First self-determination.

First cultural confidence.

First sovereignty.

First cooperation.

Then, if people freely choose it, greater political union.

Build Africa from the bottom up.

Not from the top down.

Because you can put 55 states inside one political structure.

You can create a parliament.

You can create a flag.

You can create an anthem.

You can print passports.

You can call it the United States of Africa.

But none of that answers the fundamental question:

Do the people inside that structure actually want to become one political nation?

If the answer is not clearly yes, then you haven't created unity.

You've created a bigger political container and hoped that identity would magically follow.

And history gives us plenty of reasons to question that assumption.

Africa does not need unity at any price.

Africa needs voluntary cooperation between strong, self-confident peoples who know who they are.

And if those peoples eventually decide that they want to build one federation together, then let them build it.

But let it be built on consent, sovereignty, diversity and political reality — not on the assumption that one gigantic map can erase centuries of history.

Because a united Africa that cannot protect its own diversity from internal domination or external manipulation is not necessarily stronger.

It may simply be a much bigger target.