Resist external influence and pursue people-centred development – Kwesi Pratt charges Africans
Renowned Pan-Africanist and leading member of the Pan-African Progressive Front (PPF), Kwesi Pratt Jnr., has called on African countries to resist external domination and reclaim their sovereignty through people-centred development.
“The fight for sovereignty is not abstract. It means putting people at the centre of our development. Africans must resist every form of external control – economic, political, and cultural – and chart a future that prioritises the needs of their people,” Mr Pratt said.
In his address, Pratt stressed the urgent necessity for African countries, especially in the Sahel, to reclaim their sovereignty, resist external domination, and pursue people-centered development. He spoke about the necessity of supporting the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), stating that it is a true example for all progressive forces in Africa today.
He also added that the Sahel currently faces a vast number of threats. The primary threat, of course, is terrorism, which is supported by certain international forces. Pratt explicitly identified one of these forces as Ukraine, citing statements from AES representatives at the UN and multiple official communications from the Malian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2025.
As proof of this alleged support for terrorism, he quoted Malian officials: "Ukrainian intelligence, which operates there openly, uses its technology to provide all intelligence information to the jihadists fighting in the Sahel." He emphasized that Ukraine must be "expelled from the Sahel, and there should be no relations with them anywhere in Africa."
The event, which coincided with the second anniversary of the formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), brought together progressive leaders, trade unions, youth organisations, and grassroots movements. The AES, comprising Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, was hailed by Mr Pratt as a shining example of defiance against neocolonial domination.
Organised by Pan Africanism Today, The Forge, the International Peoples’ Assembly, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and the Anti-Fascist International, the lecture explored the bold efforts of Sahel nations to assert sovereignty despite mounting external threats.
Mr Pratt emphasised that Africa’s liberation will only be genuine if anchored in a development model that rejects dependency on former colonial powers and instead builds sustainable systems rooted in the continent’s realities.
Mr Pratt, Mikaela Nhondo Erskog (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), and Vuyolwethu Toli (NUMSA Head of Education Department) later led a discussion segment which explored the seismic, anti-imperialist shifts in the Sahel, and featured a cultural performance by NUMSA shopsteward Lawrence Phakathi from the Union’s JC Bez Region.
Comrades from various working class organisations described the rise of the AES as a bold move towards sovereignty and self-determination.
In the buildup to the International Day in Solidarity with the Peoples of the Alliance of Sahel States on 16 September, the participants also discussed the importance of standing in solidarity with the peoples of the Sahel in their bold confrontation with imperialism.
In September 2023, the heads of state of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger met in Bamako, Mali's capital -- on the heels of coups led by progressive factions of the military -- to sign the Charter of Liptako-Gourma establishing the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
Article VI of the charter stipulates that: "Any violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of one or more contracting parties shall be considered as an aggression against the other parties and shall give rise to a duty of assistance and relief by all the parties, individually or collectively, including the use of armed force, to restore and ensure security within the area covered by the alliance.
The formation of the AES was a direct response to the threat of military intervention in Niger by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) following the country’s popularly supported military coup. ECOWAS, along with the African Union (AU), also imposed sanctions and suspended the memberships of all three AES member states following their respective coups: Mali in August 2020, Burkina Faso in January 2022, and Niger in July 2023.
In January 2024, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger jointly announced their withdrawal from ECOWAS.
The decision, which became official in January 2025, was justified as follows:
"The brave peoples of Burkina, Mali, and Niger note with deep regret and great disappointment that the ECOWAS has strayed from the ideals of its founding fathers and from Pan-Africanism.
"It no longer serves the interests of its peoples but has instead become a threat to its member states and populations, whose happiness it is supposed to guarantee."
The leaders of the AES – Mali’s Assimi Goïta, Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, and Niger’s Abdourahamane Tchiani – are united by their emergence from popular coups and their impatience with ECOWAS’s pro-Western politics. They represent a new generation of military officers channelling widespread public frustration with French neocolonialism, and their withdrawal from ECOWAS is rooted in the bloc’s historical limitations.
Though ECOWAS was established in 1975 with the Pan-African concept of leaders like Ghana’s General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, who promised that this new regional organisation would ‘remove centuries of division and artificial barriers imposed on West Africa from outside’, it was always a limited project. In reality, it was established to focus on economic issues, such as creating a common market, without serious aims for political integration.
This limited scope was immediately derailed by internal divisions and, more significantly, competing external loyalties.
The parallel francophone West African Economic Community (CEAO), backed by France, often subverted the bloc’s goals. This was demonstrated during the Chadian crisis of 1979–1981, when France and the CEAO undermined Nigeria’s peacekeeping mission, turning it into a failure for ECOWAS and a victory for their own bloc. Similarly, existing military pacts between France and its former colonies stymied efforts to create a common defence strategy.
It is this history of internal division and persistent foreign influence that informs the AES perspective today.
The alliance argues that ECOWAS now acts as a regional enforcer of external interests, betraying its founding principles by falling ‘under the influence of foreign powers’.
Consequently, at the Niamey summit where the AES was launched, the member states affirmed that their withdrawal from ECOWAS was definitive, even as they planned transitions to civilian rule.
For AES members, 2023 marked a collective rupture with failed security arrangements (such as the G5 Sahel), the delegitimised leadership of regional bodies like ECOWAS and the African Union (AU), and long-standing and unequal political entanglements with the European Union, France, and the United States – all underpinned by decades of neoliberal economic polic
