Is this Neo colonialism or are the Africans benefiting too?

What neocolonialism actually means

Neocolonialism is control without a flag. A powerful country does not need to govern territory directly. It shapes who gets investment, on what terms, and who keeps the profits, and through those levers it steers decisions that look sovereign but are not. It is an indirect form of control using cultural, economic and political power to exploit the labour and resources of weaker countries. The accusation sticks when money flows in but wealth does not stay.

That is a real pattern. The US and China both want critical minerals out of Namibia, cobalt and lithium out of the DRC, uranium and rare earths wherever they can find them. The embassy in Windhoek is not built because Washington loves Namibia. It is built because Namibia sits on materials that the next generation of semiconductors, EV batteries, and defense systems runs on. Acknowledging that is just reading the situation clearly.

Where Africans are genuinely benefiting

Benefiting and being used are not mutually exclusive. Consider what is actually landing on the ground.

Construction alone matters. The $90 million embassy project in Lilongwe flows directly into the local economy. Local firms get contracts, local workers get wages. The Windhoek campus's solar infrastructure transfers operational know-how. The US Embassy in Namibia actively encourages local businesses to participate in procurement opportunities, which puts dollars into Namibian hands rather than importing everything from Washington.

Beyond construction, the broader picture is improving. Foreign direct investment in Africa rose by 75% to $97 billion in 2024, raising the continent's share of global FDI from 4% to 6%. The IMF projects that Sub-Saharan Africa will outpace Asia in economic growth in 2026 for the first time, with six of the ten fastest-growing economies globally being African countries. Aid dependency is falling; investment is rising. Those are real gains.

Where the concern is legitimate

The honest critique is about terms, not presence. The emphasis on shared strategic priorities and supply-chain security, especially for critical minerals, suggests that investment decisions will reflect US strategic and industrial needs as much as African development priorities. Washington is competing with Beijing, and Africa is the terrain of that competition. African governments did not choose to be that terrain.

The current US approach pledges to prioritize trade over aid, using development dollars to create conditions for private investment, but critics argue the administration has the sequence backwards, and that the regulations, infrastructure, and technical capacity needed to make projects bankable are not yet in place.

What Africa is doing about it

The most important shift is African agency itself. The AfCFTA, the African Continental Free Trade Area, is projected to increase intra-African trade by up to 45% by 2045 and boost Africa's exports to the rest of the world by 32% by 2035. African governments are becoming more integrated rather than relying solely on partnerships with Europe, the US and China. Countries are starting to write their own terms rather than accept whoever shows up with a checkbook.

The question is not whether the US or China is the better patron. Patron relationships are the problem. The answer, which African leaders are increasingly building toward, is enough internal trade, enough local value-added processing, and enough regional institutions that no single outside power can dictate terms. That takes decades. It is underway.