Gradually, Africa is becoming a 'NATO' continent: No action, only talk – Alan Kyerematen laments

Alan Kyerematen , Ghana's former Minister of Trade and Industry and one of the architects of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has argued that Africa is turning into what he calls a "NATO continent," a place where leaders and citizens engage in endless debate without translating their words into action.

Speaking in an exclusive interview on The BreakDown with Sandra Babu-Boateng , Kyerematen reflected on the continent's long struggle with integration. He recalled that when the Organization of African Unity was formed in 1963, the founding fathers imagined a united Africa that traded with itself, created a common market, and ultimately built an African economic community. But within a few years, he said, the newly independent states became consumed by post-colonial struggles and drifted away from that dream.

Although regional blocs such as ECOWAS , SADC, COMESA, and the EAC gradually took shape, Africa's internal trade remained stuck below 15%. For Kyerematen, this symbolized how far the continent still was from genuine integration.

Watch the interview below .

READ ALSO: Ghana's role in Africa's future: Alan Kyerematen calls for bold leadership on integration

His own work on trade deepened when he joined the UN Economic Commission for Africa in 2011 to lead the African Trade Policy Centre. He said he grew frustrated with the perception that Africa had become a "talk shop," where ambitious policies were drafted but rarely implemented. To counter that, he and his team pushed for not just a legal framework in the form of AfCFTA, but also an operational framework known as Boosting Intra-African Trade. Both were endorsed at the AU summit in 2012, but only the trade agreement gained significant traction, while the operational plan that would have driven it forward received far less attention.

Skepticism followed him throughout the process. Many African leaders doubted whether a continental framework could work when regional blocs themselves were struggling to deepen trade ties. Kyerematen, however, argued that only scale could unlock Africa's potential. He explained that countries like Ghana often imported basic goods such as sausages from Europe instead of sourcing them from fellow African nations, simply because of trade barriers tied to regional groupings. A continental framework, he insisted, could break down those barriers.

Despite resistance, AfCFTA Eventually came into being and today spans a market of 1.4 billion people with a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion. With Africa holding 60% of the world's arable land, vast water reserves, forests, and mineral wealth, Kyerematen sees the economic case as undeniable. Yet he cautions that trade alone will not guarantee prosperity. For him, Africa cannot be peaceful, secure, or prosperous without political unity and deeper integration.

READ ALSO: Ghana needs global vision - Alan Kyerematen hints at 2028 presidential campaign

He points to Europe as an example: independent states with distinct identities that nonetheless wield global influence through the European Union . He believes that the African Union, in its current structure, should be considered a transitional phase, ultimately paving the way for a "United States of Africa."

Seven years after AfCFTA was signed, however, he admits that progress has been uneven. Infrastructure gaps, unaligned customs reforms, and weak regulatory harmonization remain obstacles. Still, he views the agreement as historic, a foundation upon which Africa can build either a confederation or a federation to unlock its full economic power and geopolitical influence.

Reflecting on past attempts at unity, he recalled how Muammar Gaddafi His call for a "United States of Africa" failed in 2012 because it was rushed and lacked consensus. The lesson, he suggested, is that integration must be gradual, systematic, and built on existing structures.

Kyerematen emphasized that the necessary elements are already in place. AfCFTA has provided Africa with the legal framework, Agenda 2063 offers the vision, and regional economic communities provide the building blocks. However, without prioritizing political unity, he warns, the rest of Africa's aspirations will remain out of reach.

READ ALSO: One Market, 54 Nations: Why Africa's free trade pact is still stalled 7 years after signing

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The Sahel's juntas face a series of crises.

In Mali, General Assimi Goïta, who seized power in a 2020 coup, now plans to remain in power through at least the end of this decade, as do his counterparts in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. As long-ruling juntas consolidate power in national capitals, much of the Sahelian terrain remains outside government control.

Recent attacks on government security forces in Djibo (Burkina Faso), Timbuktu (Mali), and Eknewane (Niger) have all highlighted the severity of the insecurity. The Sahelian governments face a significant threat from jihadist forces belonging to two organizations: Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam wa-l-Muslimin (the Group for Supporting Islam and Muslims, JNIM, which is part of al-Qaida) and the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP). Additionally, the Sahelian governments also face conventional rebel challengers and interact, sometimes cooperatively and sometimes tensely, with various vigilante and community-based armed groups.

The roots of instability in the Sahel extend both to specific crises in the 2010s (especially a rebellion in northern Mali in 2012) and to broader, systemic issues related to land use, resource competition, poverty, official corruption, the spread of jihadist mobilization through a chain of socially combustible zones, and citizens' loss of faith in institutions. Government responses largely fueled insurgencies, as security forces committed abuses and collective punishment, and as civilian leaders pursued inconsistent and often tone-deaf policies.

Foreign intervention also exacerbated the situation. France, the European Union, and the United States pursued a narrowly security-focused policy framework that failed to reverse the escalation of violence in the 2010s and collapsed upon encountering the coups of the early 2020s. Russia, the new preferred partner for central Sahelian regimes, introduced an even more brutal level of violence, yet yielded no concrete benefits for national governments other than the Malian authorities’ triumphant but ultimately isolated victory in Kidal, a northern rebel stronghold. The jihadists, who welcome having a foreign adversary, have largely replaced the French with the Russians in their propaganda and targeting.

As the juntas have struggled on the battlefield, they have hollowed out their countries' politics, subverting decades of fragile but meaningful democratic experiences. Political parties have been banned, journalists arrested, critics conscripted, and associations dissolved. There are a few niches of resistance remaining, particularly labor unions, but those have largely challenged the juntas on a sector-by-sector basis over issues connected to pay and conditions; unlike in 1991 in Mali or 2014 in Burkina Faso, broader revolutions involving multi-sector coalitions have not coalesced. In fact, although it is difficult to measure given the lack of regular and reliable polling as well as the near absence now of investigative journalism, the juntas appear to enjoy substantial popularity. Military men have made invigorating promises about restoring security, championing national sovereignty, revitalizing economies, and bringing people dignity. Even as those promises remain unfulfilled, the message is clearly thrilling to a wide domestic audience.

Western governments are still adrift on Sahel policy. In Europe, expectations for how much influence governments can wield over the Sahel, bilaterally and collectively, have been tempered by the rebukes the Sahelian juntas have issued over the past five years. Ambitions to rebuild influence persist, and the most thoughtful suggestions This involves pursuing "a pragmatic course that reconciles [Europe's] interests and diplomatic priorities with political realities on the ground." Yet there are few genuinely new ideas emerging in Europe, as concerns about migration control and insecurity lead policymakers and analysts back to a familiar set of options including security assistance and development partnerships.

In the United States, intermittent concern about the Sahel under the Biden administration has given way to relative indifference under the Trump administration. Both under Biden and Trump, meanwhile, there was greater concern about the potential for (and to some extent, reality of) spillover from the Sahel into coastal West Africa than there was concern about the Sahel itself. Tellingly, U.S. Africa Command hosted the April/May 2025 edition of its annual Flintlock training exercise in Cote d'Ivoire , and periodic reports suggest that AFRICOM is exploring the possibility of basing drones there (after the government of Niger expelled U.S. personnel in 2024). AFRICOM, however, could ultimately be cut amid the Trump administration's ongoing restructurings.

To some extent, Western policy toward the Sahel is inadvertently replicating some long-discarded ideas about Somalia policy. In a refreshing set of analyses around 2009–2010, Bronwyn Bruton advocated what she called "constructive disengagement" from Somalia — a pause in perennial American and Western efforts to shape the politics and security landscape of that long-troubled country. Most of Bruton's suggestions were specific to Somalia and its Islamist Shabaab insurgency at that time, but some of them offer intriguing glimpses of what an alternative approach to the Sahel could look like.

In one report , Bruton wrote, "The United States and its partners can encourage the pragmatic, nationalist, and opportunistic elements of the Shabaab to break with their radical partners by adopting a position of neutrality toward all local political groupings and by signaling a willingness to coexist with any Islamist authority that emerges, as long as it refrains from acts of regional aggression, rejects global jihadi ambitions, and tolerates the activities of Western humanitarian relief agencies in Somalia."

This approach still sounds radical today, but it is effectively what has happened in Syria since late 2024. The U.S. should in no way cheer on a JNIM victory, but the U.S. should consider a range of options in case such a scenario transpires.

Bruton also recommended, meanwhile, that "new development initiatives...should be pursued in a decentralized fashion that involves collaboration with the informal and traditional authorities that are already in place on the ground – without attempting to formalize or empower them."

Here she was referring largely to the regional governments and would-be governments that existed (and still exist) in a fractured Somalia, a very different landscape than the Sahel’s current political map. But the underlying principle has appeal for the Sahel: the U.S. and Europe would do better to pursue development for development's sake in the Sahel, rather than trying to tie development to quixotic projects of reshaping society or steering national governments. Bruton's (unheeded) mix of recommendations for Somalia is not a blueprint for the Sahel some 15 years later, but her ideas point to ways that the menu of options could be expanded beyond what sometimes appears to be Western governments' search for a return to a modified status quo ante.

The Sahel appears poised to remain both politically frozen and deeply volatile through 2030, and if disruptions to that trajectory arrive, the easiest disruptions to imagine are ones for the worse, including further coups, the fall of major cities to jihadists, and/or mass famines. To the extent that Western governments seek to re-engage, it should be with a realization that the 2010s are not coming back, that the juntas have a do-or-die mentality, and that some fresh thinking is required.

This story originally appeared on Responsible Statecraft

• Washington's military-first approach is bearing rotten fruit in the Sahel
• It's time for a new Sahel strategy

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