Transforming nominal political independence of the post-colonial world into intellectual and economic sovereignty requires further deepening and widening of the emerging relationships between and within the BRICS+ members and partners, writes Rasigan Maharajh specially for the Valdai Club’s expert discussion titled “Decolonisation: 65 Years On.”
UN General Assembly Resolution 1514: On the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was passed in 1960 with 89 countries voting in favour, none against, and nine abstentions (Australia, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, France, Portugal, Spain, Union of South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States), which included the major colonial powers and signalled the reluctance of the old order to relinquish control,
That “Year of Africa”, 1960, witnessed 17 nations (Burkina Faso (Upper Volta), Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Dahomey (Benin), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, and Togo) gain nominal independence.
The post-colonial world inherited structures of profound inequality, institutional weaknesses, and even borders that in the case of the vast continent of Africa had been carved out in Europe, which posed major challenges to national efforts at reconstruction and development.
The cold war between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics also contributed to further impairing global developmental possibilities and potentials.
Today, the UN has 193 members, but 17 territories remain on the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, administered by New Zealand, France, Morocco, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Meanwhile, Palestine, recognised as a sovereign state by 157 member states, endures a brutal and genocidal occupation.
Unequal exchanges have persisted and framed neo-colonial relations which were, and are, maintained and reproduced through contemporary global institutions, multilateral agencies and their pernicious apparatuses in both private and public spheres.
Neoliberalism raged triumphantly, with some even suggesting the End of History, as many non-capitalist economies collapsed in the last decade of the 20th century.
Yusuf Serunkuma from Uganda posed the following prescient question in the Review of African Political Economy in 2022: “With all the evidence in our midst–foreign monopolies in mining, banking and the coffee trade, humongous profit expropriation, policy double-standards, direct foreign aggression such as foreign capital land grabs, and violent aggression as witnessed in Somalia and Libya, endless captive debt and so-called aid–why have Africans failed to stage committed resistance [intellectual, cultural or even military] against the ongoing pillage? Most of this is championed through the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) whose ruins on the continent have been acknowledged as visible everywhere. Why have Africans refused to resist this pillage with their lives, as their grandparents resisted colonies and protectorates?” (Serunkuma, Y. 2022. Colonialism is alive and well in Africa, but goes by many nice names, Review of African Political Economy, 26 January).
Global inequality has accelerated, with the latest World Inequality Report indicating that “At the global level, around 1% of the global GDP flows each year from poorer to richer countries through net income transfers associated with persistent excess yields and lower interest payments on rich-country liabilities, nearly three times the amount of global development aid”.
This global inequity has domestic ramifications, as also evidenced in the WIR, which also shows that “Average education spending per child in Sub-Saharan Africa stands at only €200 (PPP), compared with €7,400 in Europe and €9,000 in North America and Oceania–a gap over 1 to 40, approximately three times as much as the gap in per capita GDP”
According to the WIR, “Such disparities shape life chances across generations, entrenching a geography of opportunity that exacerbates and perpetuates global wealth hierarchies”.
The World Bank updated its International Poverty Line from $2.15 to $3.00 per day (in 2021 Purchasing Power Parity terms) in June 2025 and currently estimates that 817 million people were to be surviving under conditions of extreme poverty in 2024.
Sub-Saharan Africa is identified as the epicentre of extreme poverty. While home to just 16% of the world population, 67% of the people there live in extreme poverty.
Against this backdrop, alternatives have emerged and BRICS+ nations have demonstrated that other paths are possible.
China not only accounted for two-thirds of the world’s reduction in extreme poverty four years ahead of the Millennium Development Goal target in 2015, but also announced it had eradicated absolute poverty in 2021.
Russia reduced its poverty rate to 7.2% or approximately 10 million people by 2024.
The Indian state of Kerala, with a population of 34 million people, was declared free of extreme poverty in November this year.
These successes stem not from neo-liberal dogma, but from mobilising domestic resources, deploying productive forces, international scientific learning, and the capability to translate knowledge into nationally appropriate strategies.
South Africa’s G20 presidency, under the theme “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability,” provided a platform to challenge Western arrogance and bullying, while beginning to link the work of BRICS+ nations even across this podium, which remains an extension of the G7 and G3, notwithstanding the emerging cracks in between them.
As India assumes the BRICS chair in 2026, we should support centring our collective struggle on fighting neo-colonialism and embracing national development.
The neo-colonial praxis of structural adjustment has left many nations poorer, with unsustainable infrastructures and weak domestic institutions. Our core challenge is to replace them with multipolar, polycentric frameworks for development that work for all.
This may require just transitions across infrastructures, industries, and knowledge systems.
Transforming our nominal political independence into intellectual and economic sovereignty requires further deepening and widening of the emerging relationships between and within the BRICS+ members and partners.
Recently, the International Conference on Colonial Crimes in Africa: Towards Correcting Historical Injustices by Criminalising Colonialism was convened in Algeria and adopted the Algiers Declaration, which consolidates decades of reparations and anti-colonial advocacy into a coherent continental position on December 1, 2025.
This follows the adoption of a resolution by the African Union, which recognised slavery and colonialism as genocides and crimes against humanity on February 16, 2025.
These developments converge with the consolidation and continued advances of BRICS+, thereby manifesting a coherent demand and support for countering neo-colonialism.
It is therefore imperative that the struggle for sovereignty and against colonial subordination should therefore continue to occupy a prominent place on the BRICS agenda, at least until the promise of UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 is fully realised for all.
* The slogan ‘Free the Mind, Free the Land’, was coined by Strini Moodley for the founding of the Umtapo Centre, which sought to: provide a platform for the different liberation forces to engage in critical dialogue; make relevant information accessible, to young people in particular; and promote, through training, the principles of anti-racism, anti-sexism, self-reliance, and nation-building in 1986. Umtapo is an isiZulu word for library
