Abstract
The root cause of Africa’s persistent underdevelopment lies in structural global asymmetries of dependency on foreign aid and growing great-power competition. This article discusses the influence of the New Cold War between the US, China, Russia, and the rising BRICS powers on poverty and policy challenges in Africa. It draws on dependency theory, world-systems analysis, and modern theories on multipolarity and global governance. It examines the interaction between external financial flows, aid conditionalities and strategic alliances policies and domestic institutional weakness in perpetuating structural poverty, limiting policy choice, and enabling elite capture. It analyses the developmental effects of the recent instances, such as Chinese investments in infrastructure, Western conditional aid, BRICS involvement, and security alliances. It argues that the African states must strategically leverage multipolar competition and minimize aid dependency. Some of the solutions suggested comprising of diverse partnerships, empowering regional institutions, reforming fiscal and regulatory systems, and improving security collaboration. It highlights that poverty in Africa is a structural construction and proposes avenues to reclaim developmental sovereignty.
Introduction
The persistence of poverty and the varying levels of developmental success across much of Africa can be identified as one of the greatest paradoxes in modern-day global politics and economics. Given the many factors that provide Africa with the potential to succeed—abundant natural resources, vast agricultural lands, high population growth rates and increased geostrategic importance within the international system, this paradox appears even more puzzling. Therefore, this special edition of this journal will investigate this paradox through asking two questions—why has Africa been so persistently impoverished, and through what paths can the current state of affairs be reversed?
This article will examine this question through advancing the thesis that the historical imbalances of the international political economy and the growing geopolitical competition of the 21st century have restricted Africa’s ability to develop economically. The historical imbalances refer to the relationships between developed and developing nations, including those between nation-states, multinational corporations and international organizations. These relationships have created and maintained inequalities between developed and developing nations. The increasing geopolitical competition of the 21st century refers to the growing competition among developed nations (and other actors) for influence and power within the international system. This competition has limited Africa’s ability to make independent decisions about its own economic policies. The empirical evidence presented in this article examines how these two factors have affected some African nations’ abilities to achieve sustainable economic development since 2018.
The time period from 2018 to 2025 represents a uniquely important time to explore this question because it marks a rapidly changing set of external engagements with Africa. During this time, there were increased flows of development finance into Africa, deeper investments in transportation, logistics and energy through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a re-balancing of US and EU engagements with Africa through new policy architectures focused on democratic governance, green transitions and anti-terrorism partnerships, and Russia solidified its military and paramilitary presence in Africa through the Wagner Group and later its re-formation (Bello et al., 2025; Yildiz, 2025). Additionally, the expansion of BRICS and membership of African economies such as Ethiopia and Egypt highlighted Africa’s increased prominence in newly forming pluralistic governance structures and alternative financial systems (Paraguassu, 2025; Williams, 2025).
During the same time period, African states and regional institutions pursued internal efforts to create greater economic integration and institution-building. Notably, the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), ongoing reforms at the African Union, and the expanding roles of institutions such as Afreximbank and the African Development Bank demonstrate efforts by African states to increase their economic independence (Dludla, 2025; Reuters, 2025). Despite the growing interest in Africa by external partners, the influx of capital, and the innovation in institutional arrangements, however, did not lead to sustained structural transformations. Structural transformations refer to sustained changes in productive capacity, industrial diversity, fiscal autonomy, institutional strength and broad-based social/economic inclusion. Instead, many African economies continued to struggle with extreme debt vulnerabilities, constrained fiscal space and macroeconomic restructuring imposed externally.
For example, Ethiopia’s extended negotiations with the G20 Common Framework (CF) and International Monetary Fund (IMF)-led adjustments demonstrate how financially dependent African nations remain in terms of their domestic policy priorities and developmental trajectory (Oxford Analytica, 2024; Pinto, 2019). Additionally, while Kenya’s development strategy based on infrastructure investment has resulted in significant debt burdens along with serious concerns regarding unbalanced economic returns, weak governance and long-term unsustainable fiscal practices (Oloo, 2025; Omulo, 2023), similar challenges face conflict-ridden areas like the Sahel. For instance, foreign security partnerships in the Sahel region have dramatically changed governance architecture in favor of elite interests and regime stability over long-term inclusive development goals (Petidis, 2024; Stoicescu, 2020). Overall, these patterns indicate that increased external involvement has repeatedly reinforced rather than eliminated existing structural barriers to development.
Within this larger framework of intensified external engagement with Africa, the primary research puzzle posed by this article is: Why has the increased level of engagement between Africa and external partners during 2018–2025 not produced lasting structural transformation across selected case studies? Specifically, how do persistent aid dependency and contemporary multipolar rivalry (as conceptualized as “the New Cold War”) affect policy autonomy, institutional capacity and developmental outcomes? By focusing on this question, this article goes beyond simplistic explanations that attribute Africa’s poverty to domestic governance failures and instead seeks to understand how domestic political incentives are shaped by broader structures of dependency, asymmetric bargaining opportunities and competitive strategic interactions (Kalu, 2018; Luckham, 2025).
Therefore, this article does not argue that aid dependency is the sole reason for Africa’s persistent underdevelopment. Rather, it posits that aid dependency is one significant way in which external actors have influenced domestic policy preferences, fiscal choices and institutional trajectories of developing countries. Furthermore, the emergence of a multipolar international order complicates this relationship. The rising influence of China, Russia, India, Japan, and plurilateral formations such as BRICS increases the number of external partners that African states can engage with, thus providing them with greater bargaining leverage relative to traditional Western donor states. Nevertheless, this diversified partnership arrangement does not automatically remove dependency. Instead, it may create new forms of asymmetrical interdependency (e.g., new debt exposures, resource extraction, strategic dependencies, etc.). Recent events in Burkina Faso (where French forces were expelled from and redefined external security partnerships) serve as examples of both the political benefits associated with opposing previously established external influences as well as the hazards of replacing one type of dependency with another. The main focus of this article is therefore not whether external partners exist at all but how various combinations of aid, investment and security partnerships impact a country’s developmental sovereignty (i.e., its capacity to establish autonomous long-term developmental strategies free from debilitating external conditionalities or coercive asymmetric relations) and ultimately its ability to sustain structural transformation.
The article also presents three interrelated contributions to the literature. First, it integrates classic dependency theory/world-systems analysis with contemporary international relations work on multipolarity/great-power rivalry/global governance reform/structure—effectively linking structural political economy/critical IR approaches (Hurrell, 2018; Williams, 2025). Second, it develops the concept of developmental sovereignty—defined as a state’s ability to independently determine its own long-term developmental path(s) free from debilitating external conditionalities/asymmetric influences. Lastly, it provides empirically-grounded policy prescriptions through comparative analyses of four strategically selected regional cases. Geographically speaking this study uses a comparative analytical approach to assess four distinct regional contexts: the Sahel region where militarization/securing partnerships have transformed governance trajectories; Horn of Africa and Ethiopia which experienced significant debt restructuring; East Africa and Kenya which engaged in significant investment/bargaining related to infrastructure projects; and Southern Africa/South Africa which participated in BRICS/has been influential in regional financial dynamics affecting economic policy options. Together, these cases allow us to observe how aid, debt, security, infrastructure and multipolar competition interact to generate diverse developmental results.
In methodological terms, the article utilizes a combination of political economy/international relations approaches using qualitative comparative analysis, document reviews and process tracing. Data for this article were derived from multiple sources, including the World Bank, the IMF, the African Development Bank reports, and BRICS documents/regional security assessments/policy research reports. Utilizing a mixed-methods design allows for a multidimensional investigation into how flows of aid, debt, security alliances, and geopolitical competitions continue to define patterns of development and underdevelopment across Africa.
Literature Review
The academic discourses on the chronic underdevelopment of Africa cut across multiple intellectual traditions, each addressing different facets of the political economy of the continent while simultaneously revealing conceptual gaps that require further research. Additionally, by focusing on the issues of capital shortage, the enhancement of state capacity, and empowering low-income relative governments to increase the amount of provision of public goods, early development theorists advanced the perspective that foreign aid may be used as a catalyst and a stimulating tool in growth and development. The existing empirical studies demonstrate that under conducive institutional conditions, external financing can support measurable improvements in health outcomes, educational access, and overall humanitarian resilience.
Another parallel and equally significant body of work shifts the focus away from flows of aid to the structural forces within the global political economy, relying on the long-standing intellectual tradition of the dependency theory and world-systems analysis. According to these approaches, the underdevelopment of Africa is not an accidental by-product of bad governance but rather an expected by-product of the continent’s insertion into a global system that is structured around unequal exchange. The ongoing extraction of raw resources, the volatility and unpredictability of the commodity markets, and the lack of this kind of industrialization at the local level of indigenous economic development are not exceptions in this perspective, but are structural characteristics of a world economy that maintains the benefit of the powerful states (Mireille et al., 2024). Modern developments of this tradition underscore the persistent influence of such aspects of Africa on its economic standing as its environment remains determined by resource-intensive global value chains, financial markets’ fragility and technological dependence over the long term. While the classical frameworks sometimes do not fully reflect the internal political dynamics in developing countries, they are the foundation from which we derive the knowledge that domestic development paths are significantly influenced and, in most cases, constrained by external economic arrangements. However, given the nature of the shifts defining today’s international order, including the geopolitical decentralization of power evidenced by the emergence of China, India, Russia, Turkey and increasingly the BRICS group, there will be a number of fresh debates about what it means to be part of a “multipolar” world, and how this phenomenon could affect states within the geographic periphery. According to some scholars of international relations, multipolarity is not simply a descriptive concept; rather, it represents a transformation in the way incentives, alliances and strategic options are framed. A common representation of the emergence of competing centers of influence is that this should expand the policy options available to African governments. By virtue of having multiple partners, these governments would have greater diversity in their partnerships, be able to secure more favorable conditions than might otherwise be available to them and be less dependent on the financial support provided by traditional Western donors (Fentahun, 2023). As stated above, however, this perspective assumes that a fractured global order creates greater opportunities for self-determination and developmental agency.
Additionally, a rapidly expanding literature appears to take a much more cautionary approach. That is, while the growing competition among major powers—commonly referred to as the New Cold War has clearly established Africa as a battleground for great-power competition, financing infrastructure projects, negotiating security agreements, securing access to natural resources and establishing digital connectivity initiatives are all increasingly being used as tools of influence. Investments in Africa’s infrastructure through the BRI and security engagement by Russia, renewed US diplomatic and military commitments to Africa, and the nascent architecture of the BRICS group, along with continued provision of development finance, represent a broader reality: Africa’s developmental landscape is becoming increasingly intertwined with global strategies. Thus, in environments where partnership diversification generates both positive (i.e., alleviates) and negative (i.e., introduces new) forms of dependency, it cannot reasonably be assumed that multipolarity necessarily increases agency.
The ambiguity associated with these perspectives can be identified in recent scholarship on BRICS and South-South Cooperation. While alternative funding sources are now available through non-Western organizations (e.g., the New Development Bank), and these alternatives may be subject to fewer political preconditions than their Western counterparts (which may create additional opportunities for cooperation), nevertheless, concerns continue regarding long-term debt sustainability, transparency surrounding the lending practices of these institutions and continued dependence on the exportation of primary commodities. Furthermore, security-related partnerships (especially those focused on anti-terror cooperation or the use of private military contractors) raise similar concerns related to militarization and increased external pressure on domestic political systems. All told, these trends suggest that multipolarity not only opens up possibilities but also creates fixed points of geopolitical influence which may constrain Africa’s ability to realize its own developmental sovereignty (Luckham, 2025).
Therefore, across the range of literature reviewed above, there exists a clear analytical gap. The aid dependency literature has usually been analyzing development finance independently of other wider geopolitical tendencies. Structuralist interpretations recognize historic injustices within the international economic hierarchy but offer no complete explanation of the current balance of power struggles or the strategic interests of twenty-first-century activity in Africa. In the meantime, IR research on multipolarity tends to prioritize the interests and behavior of major powers at the cost of overestimating the economic processes, such as aid, debt, financial markets, and conditionalities, which play a tangible role in the realization of African development outcomes.
The lack of an integrated view blurs how aid regimes and geopolitical competition interrelate, mutually support each other, and jointly shape African policy autonomy. It also curtails our capacity to comprehend the reason why resource-endowed African nations are structurally susceptible despite the expansion of external relations. Through the synthesis of the findings of the development research, dependency theory, and international relations, the current study aims to address this conceptual gap and identify a conceptual framework that can be used to explain the continued poverty of Africa in the larger framework of world power.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical structure of this research combines political economy and international relations frameworks to account for the ongoing nature of structural poverty in Africa, especially during an era characterized by increasing geopolitical rivalry. A primary focus of this research will be the combination of dependency theory and world-systems analysis as developed by Frank and Wallerstein, and the concepts of multipolarity recently advanced by Acharya and Hurrell. These two theories together will allow for the understanding of the history behind African underdevelopment, while concurrently allowing for the evaluation of how changing global powers impact the amount of policy space available to African governments.
In addition to being able to evaluate how changing global powers affect the policy space available to African governments, the concept of developmental sovereignty will serve as a central analytical component. Developmental sovereignty refers to the government’s capacity to develop, negotiate and implement medium to long-term policies that align with the socio-economic needs of its citizens and are free from structural constraints placed upon them by other countries’ conditionalities, coercive financial institutions or unequal security relationships. As opposed to formal juridical sovereignty, this concept emphasizes substantive policy autonomy within an unequally structured international community. Substantive policy autonomy is not automatically provided by post-colonial statehood; it is created by developing fiscal capacity, industrial policy space, strategic bargaining power, regional institutional coordination, and governance structures that protect against elite capture and distortion caused by external parties.
Although the emergence of multipolarity may increase the potential for increased policy space for African governments to have alternative sources of funding outside of traditional Western donors, there exists a potential for creating new forms of dependency for African governments. Examples of this include increasing amounts of national debt resulting from large-scale investments in infrastructure financed through foreign loans, and becoming entangled in the rival interests of great powers. Therefore, the key issue facing African governments is whether multipolarity results in greater opportunities for developmental agency or simply redefines dependency in different forms.
Additionally, by locating African underdevelopment within the same analytical framework, this research views African underdevelopment as a historical continuum shaped by the long-term interactions of political, economic and institutional factors. “Structural Configurations” refer to systems and power relations that exist over time, such as colonialism, unequal trade agreements, exploitation of resources, debt dependence, lack of institutional capacity and unequal inclusion into the global economy, etc., that continue to affect development outcomes throughout Africa. Using this analytical structure allows this research to identify both historical continuity as well as analyze the evolving strategic options available to African governments within an increasingly unstable global structure.
Dependency and world-systems analyses provide a basic framework through which to understand how historical inequalities in exchange, external extraction, and peripheralization continue to influence African political economies. These traditions view the global system as hierarchical, where marginalized regions are structurally limited in their ability to pursue autonomous development paths. Dependency analysis helps explain how contemporary aid regimes, financial structures, and investment arrangements frequently replicate historic inequalities regardless of how they are framed as partnership-based on growth and development.
Nevertheless, dependency analysis is inadequate for capturing the complexity of today’s external environment faced by African governments. Therefore, this research incorporates some more recent international relations literature on multipolarity; specifically, the works of Andrew Hurrell, who argues that the number of major power actors has expanded, as well as the scope of competition among states has broadened beyond traditionally defined North-South boundaries. Furthermore, Hurrell argues that peripheral states do not passively accept external influences; instead, they act as agents in competitive global environments. However, these agencies are subject to overlapping economic, diplomatic, and security pressures that continue to limit their policy options and development capabilities (Hurrell, 2018).
On the basis of these schools of thought, this article introduces a concept called developmental sovereignty. Developmental sovereignty refers to states having the ability to establish and carry out independently designed pro-poor development programs without debilitating conditionalities or unevenly distributed geopolitical pressures. Developmental sovereignty is a useful framework for examining how the structural constraints and changing geopolitical dynamics interact. To turn this framework into practice, this research proposes four causal mechanisms by which external actors can influence domestic developmental paths. The conditionality channel looks into the effects of aid and loan conditions that affect policy priorities and restrict experimentation (Chikerema & Chakunda, 2025). The investment bargaining channel is used to assess the impact of the terms of foreign investment on industrialization and long-term capacity building, especially in the infrastructure and extractive sectors. The security and governance channel is concerned with relations between military alliances, counterterrorism cooperation and external security assurances on the one side, and domestic political incentives on the other, which in some cases reinforce elite capture. Lastly, the multilateral and financial architecture channel examines the more general principles of global governance, in the form of debt regimes and multilateral financing norms, which, when combined together, define the developmental space in which African states can operate. These mechanisms, in combination, enable the research to detail how structural economic legacies and the modern-day geopolitical rivalry interface to marginalize African decision-making regarding developmental strategies.
Research Methodology
The research design entails a qualitative comparative case study to explicate the causal mechanisms by which aid dependency, geopolitical rivalry, and the international financial governance system define the developmental autonomy of the African states. This is an appropriate methodological orientation because the study is concerned with identifying mechanisms and not just with establishing correlations. Selective use of quantitative proxies--sovereign debt profile, creditor structure, foreign direct investment inflows and infrastructure-financing indicators (based on multilateral databases, national budget, financial surveillance reports) further reinforce qualitative inquiry. This data is used to triangulate results and place each case in the context of larger structural patterns.
Selection of cases is driven by a purposive most-likely/least-likely logic to achieve maximum analytical leverage and bring variation in the key mechanisms theorized in the study. The Sahelian experience, as symbolized by Mali, is itself an example of a security-governance channel, in which the rearrangement of external security incorporation, such as French and EU visions to Russian-based missions, has both reorganized governing motives, increased militarization as well as restricted institutional adjustment. Ethiopia provides a window toward the financial architecture channel with its current participation in the G20 CF, wherein complex creditor politics comprising China, the Paris Club and the IMF have directly informed the macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal policy decisions. Kenya is chosen to question the channel of investment bargains, as it possesses an impressive portfolio of BRI and the new financing competition among the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the EU Global Gateway, that characterizes the infrastructure diplomacy competitive environment. The South African example and institutional entanglement in BRICS, AfCFTA and Afreximbank show that regional and plurilateral structures intercede on the impact of external pressure and offer alternative channels of realizing the developmental sovereignty.
The empirical material relies on policy documents, loan and investment agreements, IMF and World Bank program reports, the African Union, and high-quality investigative journalism. Cross-case comparison and within-case process tracing are both instrumental in facilitating a rigorous evaluation of the structural forces conditioning the pathways of development in Africa.
Aid Dependency and the “New Cold War”: Structures and Current Dynamics
The development of the African aid and development system since the beginning of the 2010s indicates a radical reorganization of the structural position of the continent within the international political economy. Although Africa has long been a part of asymmetrical aid relationships, the past decade has involved a diversification of traditional, concessional development aid into a complex set of geopolitical financing, securitized partnership, and commercial lending. This has coincided with the intensification of the great-power rivalry that has largely been described as the New Cold War, where the United States, China, Russia, Europe, and emerging BRICS countries are mobilizing more and more economic, financial and security resources to shape Africa’s strategic orientation. Consequently, aid flows cannot be understood without reference to the broader geopolitical realignments; instead, they are part of an emerging system of incentives, conditionalities, and power asymmetries which collectively restrict African developmental sovereignty.
An important aspect of this change is that Western donor strategies have shifted their focus off conventional donor aid toward development finance institutions and blended public-private financing instruments. The DFC of the United States, the European Global Gateway, and the strategic connectivity initiatives of Japan are all strategic interventions in recalibration of development engagement. They prioritize projects that improve the resilience of the supply chain, the governance of digital surveillance, and energy transition infrastructures and these dependencies have clear strategic goals to counteract the influence of China. The transformation of the grant-based working modalities to commercially exploitative instruments fundamentally changes the calculus for African states, as the financial risk is left upon the borrower governments, and the project choice is driven by geopolitical rationales rather than exclusively developmental needs. The outcome, reported in recent empirical evaluations of financing portfolios, is the convergence of development assistance and strategic statecraft, which increases the exposure of Africa to external bargaining pressure (Zambakari, 2025).
This situation is further complicated by the emergence of BRICS as an alternative to economic governance dominated by the West. The recent 2023–2024 expansion, to include Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, has provided the bloc with both increased financial and diplomatic power as well as the power to provide alternatives to the Bretton Woods architecture. In the African context, the BRICS growth is commonly viewed as a form of diversifying dependency as opposed to eradicating it. The increasing readiness of the New Development Bank to issue local-currency loans and extend regional sovereign financing projects, including Afreximbank, is a significant break from dollar-denominated lending (Williams, 2025). However, the political economy of BRICS financing is not devoid of asymmetry: the three largest powers within the bloc, China, India, and Russia, continue to exercise disproportionate power, and the African member states frequently find it difficult to influence the agenda-setting procedures. Although BRICS increases the geopolitical agency of Africa, it also integrates the continent into new hierarchies and strategic requirements.
China’s engagement with Africa must be understood within the wider architecture of contemporary geoeconomic statecraft and multipolar power realignment. Africa occupies a strategically indispensable place in Beijing’s global development vision, not merely as a recipient of capital but as a critical node within China’s long-term economic and geopolitical calculus. The continent provides access to vital natural resources, including cobalt, lithium, copper, rare earth minerals, oil, and agricultural commodities, all of which are essential to China’s industrial production chains, energy security, and technological ambitions. Equally significant is Africa’s role within the BRI, through which Beijing has invested heavily in ports, rail corridors, highways, industrial zones, digital infrastructure, and logistics corridors that integrate African markets into transcontinental trade networks. Such investments simultaneously serve developmental and strategic purposes: they enhance physical connectivity and productive infrastructure while also consolidating China’s influence over trade routes, resource corridors, and future market access.
However, the developmental implications of this engagement remain deeply contested within the political economy literature. On one hand, Chinese infrastructure financing has enabled several African states to address long-standing deficits in transport, energy, and connectivity that traditional Western development frameworks often failed to adequately support. In this sense, China offers an alternative financing architecture that may expand policy space and reduce exclusive reliance on Bretton Woods institutions. On the other hand, concerns regarding debt sustainability, opaque contractual arrangements, sovereign collateralization, limited domestic value addition, and extractive asymmetries have generated significant debate around what is frequently described as a “debt-trap” model. The critical question, therefore, is whether Chinese engagement facilitates genuine structural transformation and developmental sovereignty, or whether it reconstitutes dependency through a new geoeconomic modality of asymmetric interdependence.
The most transformative foreign presence in Africa continues to be China’s BRI. After a decade of compounding growth in project development, the post 2023 years have been associated with a strategic repositioning, with Beijing concentrating on risk-averse and quality-controlled lending. The African debt exposures to the Chinese policy banks have been subjected to complicated restructuring negotiations, more especially in Zambia, Ethiopia as well as Kenya, where loan maturities, grace periods and collateralization provisions have been key areas of negotiation. Although the BRI investments have substantially accelerated transport corridors, port infrastructure, logistics networks, and digital ecosystems, they have also raised fundamental challenges about the value capture, industrial spillovers domestically, and long-term fiscal effects of massive borrowing. The recent literature highlights that African states generally experience asymmetric information and bargaining power, as they attempt to negotiate the conditions of strategic infrastructure projects, leading to asymmetric gains and structural entrenchment of vulnerability (Yildiz, 2025).
The Russian re-emergence in Africa, unlike that of the West or China, is based more on security and regime-stability alliances. The establishment of the Wagner Group and the shift to the state-integrated “Africa Corps,” have resulted in a unique interpretation of dependency that obscures the relations between military assistance, resource extraction, and political patronage (Faulkner et al., 2024). The West has been replaced by the Russian security forces in Mali, the Central African Republic, and part of Sudan under the guise of counter-terror or peacekeeping measures, which has enabled ruling elites to consolidate authority amid domestic turmoil. The empirical research findings concerning these alliances explain that they facilitate restraining capacity in the short-term, but they facilitate institutional corruption, undermine civilian authority, and militarized political gangs and networks at the cost of transforming development in the long-term. This form of security-based dependency is an underexplored avenue whereby external actors shape state-building and policy discretion.
The sovereign debt model also reflects the structural constraint that defines the contemporary development process in Africa. The G20 CF was intended to facilitate the coordination of debt relief among Paris Club conventional lenders, China, and the private creditors in response to the COVID-19 fiscal crisis. In fact, its use in Ethiopia, Zambia and Ghana has exposed some deep flaws in the international financial system. The creditors’ heterogeneity, the differences of mistrust and institutional mandates across geopolitical borders have engaged in protracted negotiation processes, restricting fiscal space, budgetary planning and interfering with critical social expenditures (Fabiani et al., 2023). The inability of the CF to deliver immediate and universal relief exemplifies how the dependency of Africa is structural: monetary instability is not just a system of national governance but is structurally reproduced by the world financial regulations, according to which the interests of creditors prevail over the needs of development. Collectively, these dynamics support the fact that modern aid dependency in Africa cannot be detached from the geopolitical logic of multipolar rivalry.
The New Cold War restates the incentives of external actors, where aid is being used as a tool of strategic competition and placing African states in overlapping spheres of influence. The continent is, therefore, not simply a passive recipient of aid but a platform where great powers run economic, ideological and security agendas (Kalu, 2018). However, despite the diversification of partners and the growing external interest, the structural determinants of underdevelopment remain the same. External modes of financing still prioritize extractive enclaves, strategic infrastructure and security collaboration at the expense of long-term industrialization, innovation and creating domestic value. The African problem is thus not necessarily how to emerge out of the aid dependency trap, but rather how to maneuver the shifting international hierarchy so that developmental sovereignty is extended, and more control is gained over the terms of engagement.
Case Studies
Mali and the Sahel
Mali exemplifies the nexus of security crisis, geopolitics and limited developmental sovereignty in the modern African political economy. The nation has experienced a series of military coups in August 2020, May 2021 and December 2023, all under the rationale of the ruling juntas that they were responding to state weakness, jihadist insurgency and perceived failures of the civilian administration. These upheavals took place against a background of long-standing French-led Operation Barkhane and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), which failed to restrain the growing insecurity in central and northern Mali (Petidis, 2024). By 2022–2023, the growing disillusionment among the population with external security forces was combined with the increase in political nationalism, allowing the military to redefine the concept of sovereignty as a liberation from Western influence. The departure of French troops (by the end of 2022) and the declaration of the end of MINUSMA led to a strategic vacuum that Russian mercenaries and state-affiliated groups quickly occupied.
Since the end of 2021, the transitional government of Mali has signed a series of security and resource agreements with the Wagner Group, which was reconstituted into the Africa Corps of Russia following the 2023 reorganization. Reporting from UN panels, investigative journalists, and human-rights organizations indicates that Wagner deployments increased from an estimated 800 personnel in early 2022 to an expanded footprint across key military bases and mining corridors by 2024. These deployments were supplemented by non-transparent memoranda of understanding that provided Russian entities with access to gold and lithium concessions, profit-sharing, and de facto domination of some logistical centers. The allegations of extrajudicial executions, forceful disappearances, and attacks on civilians, especially in Moura (2022), Niono, and parts of Mopti, underscore the costs of governance associated with military outsourcing. All these dynamic processes have profoundly altered the political economy of Mali: Western bilateral donors halted non-humanitarian assistance; the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) imposed sanctions in 2022; and international financial institutions closed discretionary spending, collectively contracting Mali’s fiscal space (Stoicescu, 2020).
The strategic turn toward Russia in Mali has had mixed economic effects. Although military capacity grew in the short-run, the conditions of engagement are still highly asymmetric. Mining concessions are increasingly subjected to revenue diversion, and the secrecy of renegotiating contracts undermines institutional control. Budgetary priorities have also been shifted by the securitization governance: the increase in defense expenditure in 2021–2024 was significant, spending on health, education and modernization of agricultural activity remained stagnant or decreased. These changes annotate how the security-for-influence type of bargain will alter the direction of development: foreign players offer coercive resources, but in their place receive extractive access and political resources that undermine domestic accountability. Therefore, the situation in Mali demonstrates that the centralization of power by the military elite, enhanced by the presence of external security, has pushed out policy discussions on structural reforms, decentralization, and long-term economic diversification (Bell, 2025).
The political realignment of the Sahel, at the regional level, intensifies these problems. The fact that Mali withdrew out of the G5 Sahel, the security partnership within the 2023 Alliance of Sahel States, and its alignment with the Africa Corps of Russia is an indication of a wider rejection of Western-centered security constructs. Nonetheless, these emerging security alliances have failed to change the growing insurgent violence, which has escalated in numerous localities despite the intensified military activities. The ensuing cycle of insecurity, militarization and reduced institutional capacity institutionalizes this dependency on external coercive forces and reduces the capacity of the state to attain autonomous developmental interests. Moreover, the course of Mali reveals how multipolar security competition interacts with domestic elite incentives, resulting in a governance environment whereby development interests are subordinated to regime security. Additionally, it posits the key argument of this article that the external security partnerships, particularly those structured through opaque, asymmetrical arrangements, undermine developmental sovereignty and sustain structural poverty by diverting state capacity away from inclusive governance and long-term economic transformation.
Ethiopia’s Debt Restructuring & the CF
Ethiopia is at a high risk of experiencing economic and financial hardship due to its increasing debt accumulation and high debt service. Inflationary pressure, a fluctuating exchange rate, a lack of foreign currency liquidity, poor export performance, increasing debt accumulation, and high debt service are all problems facing the economy. Ethiopia made significant and quick investments in infrastructure, including the construction of roads, railroads, and energy projects. One outstanding Eurobond and a Chinese financing company fund these investments. The economy entered debt distress in December 2023 after it failed to make a coupon payment on its Eurobond due to weak foreign exchange earnings and fiscal constraints. As a result, calls for orderly debt restructuring agreements, like the current CF and the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), have resurfaced. In response to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, the G20 established the DSSI in April 2020 (it expired in December 2021). Its goal was to provide the poorest nations with a temporary suspension of debt service so they could use the money to address the current health and economic crises. Members of the Paris Club and G20 official creditors introduced the CF. It was intended to be optional. This implies that private creditors have the option of delaying involvement, negotiating independently, or refusing to accept losses until others (China and members of the Paris Club) do. Although it was more comprehensive than the DSSI, it was supported by the IMF and the World Bank and addressed to DSSI-eligible nations. Importantly, it involves non-Paris Club official creditors like Saudi Arabia, India, and China, and aims to align debt rearrangement plans by official creditors and external private creditors (Pinto, 2019).
Ethiopia’s call for debt restructuring was made during a civil war that started in November 2020, and growing debt vulnerabilities. In addition to these outside shocks, such as droughts and the conflict in Ukraine, economic and political factors have increased their susceptibility. Early in 2021, the nation requested treatment under the CF, but because of the nation’s civil war, which ended in November 2022, progress has been extremely slow. As part of the CF negotiations, China agreed in August 2023 to halt Ethiopia’s payments on its debt to China that matures in 2023 and 2024. Ethiopia’s debt trajectory has also been significantly influenced by the IMF (Oxford Analytica, 2024).
The multidimensional nature of Ethiopia’s economic strategy is the interplay between the debt management and the broader socio-political dynamics, where the governance, peace building, as well as the fiscal policy are all intertwined. The crucial problem in paying back the external sovereign debts is the shortage of foreign currency. Having said that, there are multiple ways out of debt. The first and foremost is to reprofile the CF debt that involves maturity extension, where there can be equal sharing of debt burden between China, creditors and lenders (UNDP, 2023). A second option can be to provide 20% of debt relief which can reduce the total volume of the debt service payments between 2024 and 2033. This will reduce the debt obligations on the outstanding debts. A third option can be a debt exchange in the local currency. This will require the government guarantee, donor support, as well as thorough monitoring. In sum, Ethiopia’s debt restructuring discussions mark a vital step toward recovery, but the nation’s capability to sustainably manage its debt hinges on resolving creditors’ disagreements and adhering to IMF-mandated adjustments.
Kenya
Infrastructure development is one of the critical aspects of Kenya’s development governance system. As a developing nation, Kenya has been making extensive investments in infrastructure projects, including roads, ports, railways, and the energy sector in recent years. Despite the crucial and vital investments and budget allocations, there have been persistent impediments, and some projects have also seen total neglect. These challenges have been further aggravated either due to poor weak governance or resource limitations.
As the debt burden upsurges, its ability to ensure an expanding array of partnerships does not undermine domestic accountability, which will be decisive in shaping whether the present infrastructure development serves as a catalyst for sustainable long-term development or merely replicates short-term political imperatives. Kenya’s debt contest is both structural and cyclic in nature. Incidents like heavy borrowings under President Uhuru Kenyatta, the COVID-19 pandemic, the high rate of inflation and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have left the country to its teethers (Omulo, 2023). The partner that has curated Kenya’s contemporary economic story is China. The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), financed largely by the Export-Import Bank of China, and constructed by the China Road and Bridge Corporation, was beckoned at its inauguration in 2017 as an indication of modernization. However, today it has often been cited as an instructive tale. Though SGR linked the cities but failed in the supply chains. It is cost of investment outweighs its returns. Multiple actors are engaging in Kenya’s infrastructure development. Japan had contributed to the quality infrastructure by supporting the steady pipeline from Nairobi’s Ngong Road to the Mombasa Port expansion. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the major players that have helped Kenya in its various logistic projects under broader Gulf strategies, that is, sovereign wealth funds and Saudi Vision 2030, to diversify their investments (Oloo, 2025).
Kenya stands at a crossroads after decades of heavy borrowing. The major challenge faced is not merely to attract the wealth but also to use it judiciously in a manner that the loans are converted into productive ventures instead of getting caught in the game of patronage. The policymakers should develop a coherent framework that aligns the borrowings with the solid economic returns, careful risk assessments, and gives more consideration to the social priorities. No doubt, on one hand, the investment competitions had encouraged innovation in financing, whereas, on the other hand, they had shifted the risks onto domestic institutions.
South Africa’s BRICS Engagement and Regional Financial Dynamics
The status of association with the BRICS has been a characteristic of the South African external economic system during the twenty-first century, both in its attempt to diversify its financial relationships and to play a more prominent role in the international system of economic governance. Since joining BRICS back in 2010, South Africa has been trying to use the bloc as a means to advance alternative development finance and political influence outside of the conventional Bretton Woods order. The recent innovation of expanding the BRICS membership that now encompasses countries like Egypt and Ethiopia underlines the aspiration of the group to understand the current aspect of global governance frameworks and increase the voice of developing economies in organizations that have traditionally been the center of influence of Western powers (Reuters, 2025). Notably, BRICS finance ministers have talked of concerted recommendations of reform in the IMF quota system and even signaled intentions to develop a guaranteed mechanism within the New Development Bank to reduce the cost of financing and trigger investment in member countries to demonstrate how the bloc itself is enhancing institutional heterogeneity and strategic weight (Paraguassu, 2025).
In this plurilateral system, South Africa has also strengthened its association with the continental financial institutions in order to promote intra-African integration and regional development. The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has emerged as a strategic partner, and collaboration has greatly increased since the beginning of the 2020s, encompassing joint project preparation plants to bridge the gap in the infrastructure of the country and to enable Southern African industrialization and development (Dludla, 2025). South Africa has been shifted toward full sovereign membership of Afreximbank’s highest governance tier, which would enhance its powers in resource distribution and its strategic orientation within the institution. This intensified partnership is part of a larger financial rationality of the region: by connecting plurilateral organizations like BRICS and pan-African ones like Afreximbank and the AfCFTA, South Africa can aim to decrease its dependence on foreign financial resources and strengthen continental financial integration and chain of values. Collectively, the strategic participation in BRICS and enhanced activity in regional financial dynamics all contribute to demonstrating that South Africa is planning a move to overcome multipolar competition, increase its policy space, and strengthen developmental sovereignty in the context of changes in global economic hierarchies (The HORN Institute, 2025).
Table 1 comparatively maps the four case studies onto the core causal mechanisms identified in the theoretical framework, demonstrating that Africa’s persistent poverty cannot be reduced to domestic governance failures alone. Instead, it reveals how differentiated configurations of aid conditionality, security externalization, investment bargaining, and global financial architecture shape variations in developmental sovereignty. Mali represents the most severe erosion of policy autonomy, where aid suspension, sanctions, and opaque security-for-influence bargains under multipolar competition have redirected state capacity toward regime security and elite consolidation. Ethiopia reflects a distinct but similarly constraining pathway, with developmental sovereignty mediated through IMF-led debt restructuring under the G20 CF, where prolonged negotiations and conditionalities limit policy space. Kenya occupies an intermediate position of negotiated sovereignty, as competitive infrastructure financing expands options but transfers fiscal and institutional risk to domestic actors. South Africa, by contrast, illustrates relatively expanded developmental sovereignty through strategic engagement with BRICS and African financial institutions. Collectively, the comparison underscores that reclaiming developmental sovereignty in the “New Cold War” context requires strategic navigation of multipolarity, institutional strengthening, and coordinated bargaining rather than withdrawal from global systems.
Comparative Pathways of External Engagement and Developmental Sovereignty in Selected African States (2018–2025).
Conclusion and Way Forward
This article has examined the impact of modern types of external relationships in influencing the developmental sovereignty of various African political economies beyond the dichotomous arguments around dependence and autonomy. In its comparative analysis between Mali, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa, it shows that multipolarity does not necessarily increase policy space. Rather, the mediation of outcomes depends upon institutional capacity on a domestic level, the incentives of elites and openness and symmetry of external arrangements. In locations where the securitization of external partnerships is opaque and personalized, such as Mali, these partnerships become concentrated in the hands of the elite and at the expense of developmental priorities. On the contrary, institutionalized and rule-based engagement, with South Africa emerging as the prime case, demonstrates more possibilities of using external partnerships to facilitate long-term developmental goals.
The results point to the fact that developmental sovereignty is not something absolute but a flexible process that depends on the decisions of governance. The restructuring frameworks of debts, infrastructure financing, and security relationships are associated with different risks and opportunities. But in the absence of strong domestic controls, these measures are likely to recreate structural weaknesses instead of addressing them. The article, therefore, highlights the shortcomings of current instruments of global governance, such as the CF and ad hoc security alliances, in dealing with the complex problems of development, stability, and accountability.
The solution lies in the need to recalibrate both domestic and foreign policy. African states must prioritize institutional transparency in external contracts, strengthen parliamentary and audit oversight, and align external financing with clearly articulated development strategies rather than short-term political imperatives. The creditor coordination mechanisms at the international level must be reviewed with the purpose of aiding efficient, equitable debt settlement in time, predictable and control mechanisms, whereas the development finance institutions need to entwine the governance and social spending security to a better extent. Moreover, enhancing developmental sovereignty depends not on withdrawing from global engagements, but on embedding them within accountable, inclusive, and development-oriented institutional frameworks.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.