Despite Moves Toward African Unity, Why Are Africans Still Strangers In Africa?

For decades, African leaders have talked about breaking the barriers that separate Africans. They have created regional organizations, signed treaties, established mechanisms for economic integration and repeatedly promised a continent where Africans can move, live, work and trade more freely across borders.

The latest expression of that ambition is the ECOWAS National Biometric Identity Card (ENBIC), which the Economic Community of West African States, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) say will simplify cross-border travel, strengthen identity management, improve border security and facilitate trade.

The card is expected to give ECOWAS citizens a more efficient means of exercising their rights to free movement, residence and establishment within the community. It is an important development.

But there is a question that should not be lost amid the excitement over biometric technology and easier border crossings: “What happens when an African who is legally allowed to cross a border is still regarded as an unwanted stranger on the other side?” That is the deeper problem Africa must confront.

There is no doubt that a biometric card can establish identity, ease border crossing and strengthen border management. But no biometric card can manufacture African unity. Without unity, elaborate efforts to facilitate free movement across African countries could ultimately become an exercise in futility.

The ECOWAS Director of Free Movement of Persons, Migration and Tourism, Obinna Ajugwo, made an important observation at a recent media sensitization workshop in Lagos when he said the success of ENBIC would depend not merely on technology or policy frameworks, but also on people, trust and information. That statement goes to the heart of Africa's integration challenge.

For more than six decades, the continent has been constructing the institutional architecture of unity. On May 25, 1963, independent African states established the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa to promote African unity and solidarity, coordinate cooperation and defend the continent's sovereignty and independence.

The OAU gave way to the African Union (AU) in 2002, with a broader vision of political and economic integration. Elsewhere, ECOWAS was established in 1975; the Lagos Plan of Action followed in 1980; the Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community was adopted in 1991; while SADC, the East African Community, COMESA, ECCAS and IGAD emerged as regional vehicles for cooperation.

In 2018, African countries also adopted the agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), another major attempt to create a single continental market. The message has remained consistent: Africa is stronger together.

Yet an uncomfortable contradiction persists. While governments have been constructing institutions for integration, Africans have often continued constructing psychological walls against one another.

To be fair, it is against the backdrop of previous moves made by African countries and Africans to be united, and see themselves as brothers and sisters that ENBIC presents both an opportunity and a challenge. In fact, if the card is intended to make it easier for a Nigerian to travel to Ghana, a Ghanaian to Senegal, a Senegalese to Côte d'Ivoire or another ECOWAS citizen to move across the sub-region, then Africans must also create an environment in which travelers are received as fellow Africans rather than treated as intruders. Otherwise, what exactly has been achieved? A faster way for a Nigerian to reach a border where he will still be treated with suspicion? A sophisticated identity card for a trader whose business may still be threatened because he is a foreigner? A seamless travel document that takes someone across a border only for xenophobia to stop him at his destination? That would be integration in form but not in substance.

Ajugwo's description of ENBIC as not merely a card but a symbol of belonging is particularly significant. For free movement to work, Africans must begin to feel that they belong to a larger African community. This does not mean abolishing national identities. A Nigerian should remain Nigerian, a Ghanaian Ghanaian, a Kenyan Kenyan and a South African South African. But those identities should coexist with a broader African identity. Unfortunately, that broader identity remains fragile.

Sadly, South Africa, a country whose liberation was supported by Africans across the continent, has experienced repeated episodes of xenophobic violence against African migrants. Nigeria's National Assembly has also raised concerns over attacks against Nigerians and other African migrants in South Africa.

The irony is painful. African countries stood with South Africa when apartheid treated black South Africans as though they did not belong. Yet decades after apartheid, other Africans can still find their belonging questioned there.

Kenya provides another example, although the circumstances are different. Measures concerning foreign traders have been presented as efforts to enforce immigration and business regulations, particularly against those operating without required permits. However, no sovereign country can be denied the right to regulate its borders or enforce its laws. But the anxiety generated among foreign African traders demonstrates how quickly nationality can become a source of fear and insecurity. This is precisely why Africa must look beyond documents, protocols and border procedures.

A law can regulate movement. A card can facilitate movement. A border official can process movement. But only trust can make movement sustainable. Consider the ambition of the ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol. It was a bold idea: citizens of West African countries should be able to move, reside and establish themselves within the community under agreed regional rules. ENBIC is intended to strengthen that vision.

But imagine an African trader who possesses the correct biometric card, meets all requirements and crosses a border legally, only to encounter hostility because local residents believe foreigners are taking their jobs or businesses. The technology has worked. The policy has worked. The border has been crossed. Unfortunately, integration has failed. This is why the African unity debate must go beyond the mechanics of movement. Africa must ask whether it is psychologically ready for the freedom of movement it has spent decades trying to create.

Can a Ghanaian enter Nigeria without being regarded as a competitor? Can a Nigerian trade in Ghana without being treated as a threat? Can a Burundian live and work in Kenya without being made to feel unwelcome? Can a Zimbabwean work in South Africa without becoming a convenient scapegoat for unemployment? These are not merely immigration questions. They are questions about the meaning of African unity.

There is nothing wrong with countries protecting their economies, regulating immigration or insisting that foreign businesses comply with local laws. There is, however, a fundamental problem when nationality becomes a justification for collective hostility. An individual who violates immigration law should face the law. He should not face the hatred of an entire population. A criminal should be treated as a criminal; he should not become a criminal simply because he is a foreigner.

Africa cannot demand that Africans be treated fairly when they travel to Europe, America or Asia while tolerating discrimination against Africans within Africa. We cannot complain about foreigners stereotyping Africans while Africans stereotype one another.

We cannot demand open markets while closing our minds. We cannot celebrate AfCFTA while treating African traders as invaders. We cannot promote free movement while making Africans afraid to move.

The ENBIC is therefore more than a travel document. It is also a test of the sincerity of Africa's integration project.

If ECOWAS citizens are expected to move more easily across borders, the people of the region must also become more accepting of one another.

If Africans are expected to trade more freely, they must recognize that competition is not necessarily aggression.

If African economies are to become more integrated, Africans must understand that another African's economic success does not automatically mean their own failure.

If Africa wants one continental market, it must eventually develop something resembling a continental consciousness.

From the OAU to the AU; from the Lagos Plan of Action to the Abuja Treaty; from ECOWAS to SADC; from EAC to COMESA; and from regional integration to AfCFTA, the continent has never lacked grand ideas.

What it has often lacked is the trust required to make those ideas work at the level of ordinary people. In fact, the tragedy is that Africa may have spent too much time trying to integrate governments and too little time integrating peoples. Not only that, presidents meet, ministers sign agreements, officials establish committees, and documents are issued. But at the grassroots, Africans can still ask one another: "Where are you from?" And sometimes, the answer determines whether the person is welcomed or rejected. That must change.

Africa's borders may not disappear tomorrow. Its 55 countries may not suddenly become one political entity. National identities will remain important. But an African should not become less African merely because he crosses a national boundary.

A Nigerian who crosses into Ghana does not cease to be African. A Ghanaian who travels to Nigeria does not become less African. A Kenyan in Uganda remains African. A Zimbabwean in South Africa remains African. The passport may change. The jurisdiction may change. The laws may change. But the humanity does not.

This is why African unity cannot be reduced to free movement. Rather, free movement should be one of the fruits of African unity. If unity is absent, free movement could become a technical arrangement without a human foundation. A biometric card may tell us who an African is.

In fact, only African solidarity can determine whether that African feels at home. That is the real challenge before ECOWAS, the African Union and other regional integration bodies: not merely to build systems that make Africans mobile, but to help build a continent in which Africans are willing to receive one another.

Otherwise, Africa may succeed in creating sophisticated mechanisms for moving Africans across borders while failing to answer the more fundamental question: Why should Africans continue to be strangers in Africa?

After more than six decades of the OAU and AU, after ECOWAS and other regional blocs, after the Lagos Plan of Action, the Abuja Treaty, AfCFTA and countless declarations about Pan-Africanism and continental integration, the time has come to move beyond the politics of conferences. Africa needs unity not merely as a slogan, but as a lived reality.

Because without unity, free movement may only make it easier for Africans to cross borders without ever truly crossing the barriers that separate African hearts and minds.