Beyond the Rhetoric: Why Ambazonian Sovereignty Is the True Test of Pan-Africanism

By refusing to correct this historical injustice, the African Union chooses the legacy of forced unions over the Pan-African principle of voluntary association. A continent cannot be decolonized if its leading institution still worships colonial cartography. No border is more sacred than the blood of children in Gidado or Ngarbuh.

By Timothy Enongene, Guest editor The Independetistnews

Addis Ababa January 22, 2026 – For decades, Pan-Africanism has been wrapped in the language of brotherhood, liberation, and the rejection of colonial shackles. We celebrate the heroes of the 1960s who stood against the exploitation of the African man. Yet in 2026, a bitter irony persists: the most vocal champions of “African unity” are often those presiding over the internal colonization of their own neighbours. The struggle for Ambazonian sovereignty is no longer merely a local conflict. It has become the ultimate litmus test for the moral and political integrity of the Pan-African project itself.

The Hypocrisy of Hegemony

Pan-Africanism was never meant to be a pact of silence among the oppressed while their brothers are slaughtered. When the African Union invokes “African solutions to African problems” to shield the Biya regime from international accountability, it is not defending African sovereignty; it is protecting state-sponsored tyranny.

The rhetoric of a “United Africa” becomes a hollow weapon when it is used to justify the annexation of the Southern Cameroons. One cannot preach a “United States of Africa” while denying the basic right of self-determination to five million people with their own distinct legal, educational, and cultural heritage.

If Pan-Africanism cannot accommodate the diversity of its peoples — including the unique Anglophone identity of Ambazonia — then it is not a movement of liberation. It is a project of forced assimilation.

The Ghost of Berlin in Addis Ababa

The greatest tragedy of the modern African Union is its near-religious devotion to the borders drawn by European powers at the 1884 Berlin Conference. By elevating the “sanctity of colonial borders” above the lives of African people, the Union has inherited the very logic of colonial rule it claims to oppose.
The Ambazonian struggle exposes this contradiction with painful clarity. The Southern Cameroons was a United Nations Trust Territory with a clear legal path to independence — a path sabotaged by a deeply flawed 1961 plebiscite and an imposed political arrangement.

By refusing to correct this historical injustice, the African Union chooses the legacy of forced unions over the Pan-African principle of voluntary association. A continent cannot be decolonized if its leading institution still worships colonial cartography. No border is more sacred than the blood of children in Gidado or Ngarbuh.

Sovereignty: The Prerequisite for Contribution

Critics of Ambazonian independence often argue that smaller states weaken Africa. This is a fundamental misunderstanding. A captured, militarized, and unstable region — as the Southern Cameroons has been made under Yaoundé — drains the continent. A sovereign Ambazonia, governed with the consent of its people, would be a stable and productive member of the African family.
Ambazonians cannot offer their best to Africa while their hands are bound. They cannot contribute to continental development while their villages are being burned by a regime that treats them as internal enemies. Sovereignty is not isolation; it is the entry price to meaningful partnership. One must own one’s house before helping to build the neighbourhood.

The True Test.

Pan-Africanism stands at a crossroads in 2026. It can remain a dictators’ club that manages decline through silence and complicity, or it can reclaim its founding purpose as a movement for the dignity of African peoples. The test is simple: will the African Union stand with the people of Ambazonia, or will it continue to shield the regime in Yaoundé?

If it fails this test, Pan-Africanism will be exposed not as a vision of unity, but as a cover for state-sponsored oppression. Ambazonian sovereignty is not a threat to African unity. It is the only path to rescuing that unity from the rot of hypocrisy.
Timothy Enongene is a political analyst and scholar of decolonization, specialising in sovereignty and continental integration in Africa.

Timothy Enongene, Guest editor The Independetistnews