The humiliation of bending the knee for a pittance

Africa’s leaders have become confirmed ‘summiteers’, obediently rushing en masse to summits called by the world’s powerful, humiliatingly bending the knee, then returning home with only a pittance. Unlike countries like China, they seem to learn nothing from their trips.

At the end of last month, the leaders of 48 of Africa’s 55 countries (including the Sahrawi Republic) flew home from the Third Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow. 

Twenty-two countries were represented by Presidents / Prime Ministers. That was up from 17 in 2023 in St. Petersburg, but much less than the 43 Heads of State who attended the first Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi (23-24 October 2019).

The day after the Moscow Summit on Friday the 30th was reserved for one-on-one meetings with President Vladimir Putin. You went in as the Catholics go to see their priests for confession. Eleven African Presidents went in to see ‘Father’ Putin on 30 October. The previous day, another six African Presidents and one Prime Minister had diligently filed in to see Father Putin, one-on-one.

Imagine Father Putin, in a resplendent white cassock, listening attentively and making the sign of the cross with his right hand to dismiss his supplicants, and occasionally saying, “You’ve been a bad boy, Mr President, you’ve been errant; go and sin no more”. 

Meanwhile, the queue waiting outside was heaving. William Ruto of Kenya comes out of Putin’s confession room; in goes John Mahama of Ghana.

Next its Felix Tshisekedi of DRC, followed by  Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, followed in turn by Next Mohamed Ould Ghazouani of Mauritania, Assimi Goïta of Mali, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia, Azali Assoumani of Comoros. Faustin-Archange Touadéra of CAR, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea, Salva Kiir of South Sudan and Faure Gnassingbé of Togo. 

Father Putin was kept busy, as was the benediction. These were real African Presidents bending the knee to another President deemed superior.

The previous day, 29 October, after the plenary session, Father Putin was at it again, with one-on-ones: Evariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah of Namibia, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of Sudan, Michael Randrianirina of Madagascar, Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe and Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia completed the line-up. 

A total of 18 African heads of state and government bent the knee to Putin on two consecutive days.

How does that make us feel when our apex leaders act like schoolboys going to see their headmaster? Where is our pride as Africans – that pride that took some of us to war to free ourselves from colonial subjugation? 

Where has that pride gone? Is it because we can’t eat pride, as some say? 

Jumping to obey

Tell me, how is it possible that one lone, ‘foreign leader can summon 54 African Presidents to his capital and our leaders jump and dutifully troop off to that capital, whether in the name of the Russia-Africa Summit, US-Africa Summit, China-Africa Summit, France-Africa Summit, UK-Africa Summit? 

Good God! What has happened to us?

There is even the Italy-Africa Summit where our grown-up leaders go and sit at the feet of Giorgi Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister, who was 47 years old when the first Italy-Africa Summit took place in Rome on 28-29 January 2024, attended by -please don’t laugh- 46 African countries, of which 21 were represented by Presidents. 

Let’s look at the figures: President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, aged 82, has been in power for about 42 years in total. His first stint was from 1979 to 1992 (13 years); his second stint was from October 1997 to date (29 years). 

This makes him Africa’s third longest-serving leader today after Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power for 47 years (since 3 August 1979), and Paul Biya of Cameroon, who has stayed for 44 years since 6 November 1982.

How can these old men, who have had ample time to develop and change their countries for the better but did not, feel comfortable sitting at the feet of a mere ‘youngster’ like Meloni, who was born on 15 January 1977, just two years before both Sassou-Nguesso and Nguema Mbasogo first came to power in 1979?

At the last US-Africa Leaders Summit (the big one) hosted by President Joe Biden in Washington, DC (13-15 December 2022), 49 African heads of state attended. $55bn was pledged over 3 years.

Since then, President Donald Trump, Biden’s successor, has hosted a mini White House Africa Summit (9-11 July 2025), to which only five African countries – Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Gabon were invited. The focus was on critical minerals, the Lobito Corridor, security and migration. No new aid was announced.

At the last China-Africa Summit (4-6 September 2024), 53 African countries (except Eswatini and the Sahrawi Republic) attended, with 51 Heads of State, a record, making themselves available, plus the AU Chair.

Is it the financial pledges (minuscule if you divide it by 55 countries) that the host nations make that entice the African leaders to jump and go? 

Yes, we are said to be the richest continent in the world by natural resources. But we have failed to make the maximum use of those resources or even to open our eyes and emulate what other countries did on their way to prosperity.

Lessons from Singapore

Look at China, where our leaders all go now to bend the knee – when we were growing up in the 1960s, China was a country of bicycles. China was poor. 

But over the last 40 years, in our very lifetime, when Deng Xiaoping cut out the ideology and opted for pragmatism (“It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”), China has achieved more economic miracles faster than anyone in history. 

China is flying not because they went to Europe-China Summits to kowtow to superior leaders; they did what developing a modern country demanded. 

I am reading, for the third time, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s wonderful book, From Third World to First – The Singapore Story: 1965-2000. He tells the story of how Deng Xiaoping, “a five-footer, but a giant among men”, “the most impressive leader [Yew] ever met”, visited Singapore in November 1978 and went back to say in a major speech a year later in October 1979: 

“I went to Singapore to study how they utilised foreign capital. Singapore benefited from factories set up by foreigners in Singapore: first, foreign enterprises paid 35% of their net profits in taxes which went to the State; second, labour income went to the workers; and third, [foreign investment] generated the service sectors. All these were income [for the State].”

In his book, Lee Kuan Yew commented: “What he [Deng] saw in 1978 had become a point of reference as the minimum the Chinese people should achieve … 

“After Deng’s endorsement, several hundred delegations, most of them unofficial, came from China armed with tape recorders, video cameras, and notebooks to learn from our experience. Singapore had been given the imprimatur of their supreme leader. They put us under their microscopes and studied those parts they considered attractive and wanted to reproduce in their cities.”

That was what China did, from 1978 onwards. They sent hordes of officials to Singapore to study what Singapore had done right. Again and again, the studious Chinese officials went and learnt good practice from Singapore and returned home to implement them, including even Singapore’s legal system. 

We in Africa like to attend Summits, and think that by going to those Summits we can achieve prosperity. May our ancestors have mercy on us. We drag our old bodies in front of mere youngsters in Rome and come back with pittance. Let’s read Lee Kuan Yew and emulate how to achieve economic success. It is all in his book. For free. 

In fact, global economic history tells us that every country that has achieved prosperity has emulated those before them. Emulation is the key. So wake up, Africa. Summits will not develop our countries. Emulation, hard planning, and implementing what we plan will do it.