When President Yoweri Museveni declared that Uganda’s access to the Indian Ocean “must never be treated as a favour, but as a sovereign right”, he did not merely articulate a logistical concern; he detonated a long-suppressed geopolitical truth.
His words reverberate far beyond Kampala, speaking directly to the existential dilemma faced by 16 landlocked African nations whose economic futures remain tethered to the goodwill of their coastal neighbours.
From the mineral-rich interior of Chad to the densely populated highlands of Ethiopia, from the mountainous enclaves of Lesotho to the contested borders of South Sudan, these nations, Burundi, Rwanda, Central African Republic, Mali, Niger, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Burkina Faso, are structurally disadvantaged by geography.
They do not have direct access to the oceans that fuel global commerce and, therefore, are denied full sovereignty.
Their dependence on external ports is not a technical inconvenience; it is a strategic vulnerability. It exposes them to trade delays, inflated transport costs and political leverage. It renders their economic independence conditional.
Museveni’s assertion must be understood not as a nationalist provocation, but as a Pan-African reckoning. It challenges the transactional logic of regional cooperation and demands a redefinition of sovereignty, one that transcends colonial cartography and embraces shared infrastructure as a continental right.
In a post-colonial Africa still shackled by inherited borders and extractive systems, the ocean is not a privilege. It is the unfinished frontier of African liberation.
Political risk in a fractured region
The geopolitical terrain of East Africa is already precariously poised on a knife-edge, with fault lines deepening across multiple axes of identity, resource control and infrastructural dependency.
The 2025 border dispute between Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo over Goma and the mineral-rich Katanga province has not only displaced more than 237,000 people and claimed more than 2,900 lives, but it has also exposed the fragility of post-colonial territorial arrangements and the combustible nature of unresolved historical grievances.
South Sudan remains a powder keg, its internal divisions and contested borders a legacy of secession that failed to deliver stability. Ethiopia, once heralded as a regional anchor, now grapples with internal fractures that threaten to spill across its borders, destabilising the Horn of Africa.
Meanwhile, Kenya’s coastal politics are increasingly shaped by the strategic calculus of port access, regional competition and the growing influence of external actors.
In this volatile context, the prospect of Uganda’s access to the Indian Ocean, via Mombasa or Dar es Salaam, being restricted by tariffs, political retaliation or infrastructural sabotage is no longer a distant hypothetical. It is a plausible and deeply alarming trajectory.
Such a scenario would trigger a cascade of destabilising consequences: the economic strangulation of Uganda’s export and import sectors; the militarisation of border zones and trade corridors; the erosion of diplomatic trust within the East African Community (EAC); and the accelerated pivot of landlocked nations toward alternative patrons, particularly China and Gulf states, whose infrastructural investments often come with geopolitical strings attached.
But this risk is not confined to East Africa alone. In southern Africa, the securitisation of migration and trade routes, exemplified by xenophobic movements such as Operation Dudula in South Africa, signals a growing intolerance toward regional mobility and economic interdependence.
Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, all landlocked, remain vulnerable to shifts in South African port policy and domestic instability. In Central Africa, countries such as Chad, the Central African Republic and Rwanda face compounded risks: porous borders, weak state institutions and external dependencies that render them susceptible to both internal implosion and external manipulation.
What emerges is a continental pattern of fragmentation, where access to ports, corridors and markets is weaponised and where regional integration remains shallow, transactional and hostage to national interests.
If Africa continues to treat infrastructure as a sovereign asset rather than a shared right, it will perpetuate a system of exclusion that breeds conflict, undermines development and invites external domination. The political risk is not merely theoretical; it is structural, systemic and imminent.
Colonial borders: The original sin
The enduring fragility of Africa’s political landscape is rooted not in the continent’s internal contradictions, but in the deliberate cartographic violence inflicted during the Berlin Conference of 1884-85.
The borders drawn in European capitals, without African representation, consultation or consent, were never intended to reflect the continent’s geography, cultural continuities or economic logic. They were engineered to divide, extract and control.
What emerged was not a map of nations, but a blueprint for fragmentation. Today, these artificial boundaries remain etched into the continent’s psyche, not merely as lines on paper, but as scars that fuel conflict, polarisation and systemic instability.
From the mineral-rich hills of Eastern Congo to the arid plains of the Sahel, from the fractured communities of South Sudan to the tense streets of Johannesburg, violence erupts not as random chaos, but as a predictable consequence of a broken architecture.
These are not isolated incidents; they are interconnected expressions of a colonial legacy that pits kin against kin and neighbours against neighbours.
Ethnic groups that once shared language, land and lineage have been splintered across multiple states, forced to navigate imposed national identities that often conflict with their historical affiliations. The Tuareg are divided across five countries. The Chewa span four. The Fulani across six. The Somali, Tswana, Shona, Mandinka, Maasai, Hutu and Tutsi, all fragmented by borders that were never theirs.
This fragmentation distorts identity and complicates governance. It breeds suspicion, fuels xenophobia and undermines the very notion of African brotherhood. The psychological damage is profound: Africans have been conditioned to see one another not as kin, but as foreigners.
The rise of movements like Operation Dudula in South Africa, where fellow Africans are targeted as outsiders, is not an anomaly. It is a symptom of border-based exclusion, a manifestation of the colonial logic that still governs our interactions.
The tragedy is not just political, it is existential. Until Africa confronts and dismantles the inherited boundaries that divide its people, true unity will remain elusive and the dream of Pan-African solidarity will be perpetually deferred.
Regional blocs must lead the reconnection
Africa’s regional blocs, SADC, Ecowas, EAC and others, were conceived as instruments of continental cohesion, designed to transcend colonial fragmentation and foster economic, infrastructural and political integration.
In practice, many of these institutions have devolved into ceremonial gentlemen’s clubs, more adept at issuing congratulatory statements after botched elections than confronting the structural crises that undermine African unity. Their inertia is not benign; it is complicit.
By failing to act decisively on matters of mobility, infrastructure and sovereignty, these blocs perpetuate the very divisions they were meant to dismantle.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is often hailed as a landmark achievement and rightly so, but without the free movement of people, capital and goods across borders, it remains a half-measure, an ambitious framework shackled by the same colonial logic it seeks to overcome.
Trade without mobility is a contradiction. It is a hollow promise that benefits external actors more than African citizens. The dream of a unified market cannot be realised if engineers, entrepreneurs and educators are treated as foreigners in neighbouring states, if trucks are stranded at border posts for days and if port access is politicised or monetised.
Regional blocs must evolve from bureaucratic shells into engines of transformation.
- They must guarantee uninterrupted port access for landlocked nations, not as a favour, but as a sovereign right.
- They must harmonise infrastructure planning across borders, creating continental transport corridors that reflect Africa’s internal logic rather than colonial extraction routes.
- They must enforce mobility rights for African citizens, dismantling visa regimes that criminalise movement and fracture solidarity.
The failure to do so is not merely administrative; it is ideological. It signals a lack of seriousness about Pan-Africanism, a betrayal of the continent’s liberation legacy and a surrender to neo-imperial inertia.
If regional blocs continue to prioritise electoral endorsements over economic justice, they will remain irrelevant in the eyes of the people. Africa does not need more summits or passports. It needs corridors, railways and ports. It needs action, not applause.
The economic and cultural cost of fragmentation
Africa’s economic fragmentation is not a natural condition, but a manufactured consequence of colonial design and post-independence inertia.
Intra-African trade remains below 20%, a damning indictment when compared with Europe’s 60%. This disparity is not due to a lack of entrepreneurial spirit or productive capacity. It is the result of infrastructure built to extract, not connect.
Railways still run from mines to ports, bypassing cities and communities. Roads are designed to serve foreign markets, not regional integration. Ports are nationalised bottlenecks rather than continental gateways.
The architecture of African commerce remains externally oriented, structurally dependent and strategically incoherent.
But the economic cost is only the surface of a deeper malaise.
Mobility, the lifeblood of any integrated market, is systematically stifled. African professionals, entrepreneurs and skilled workers face exorbitant visa fees, opaque immigration systems and humiliating work permit regimes when attempting to contribute to neighbouring economies.
A Ghanaian engineer cannot easily work in Zambia. A Malawian doctor is treated as a foreigner in Kenya. A Zimbabwean teacher is criminalised in South Africa.
This is not just a logistical failure; it is economic stupidity. It is the deliberate exclusion of talent from economies that desperately need it. It is the weaponisation of borders against development.
The tragedy is compounded by a cultural dislocation that runs even deeper. Families are divided across artificial boundaries. Ethnic groups are criminalised for migrating within their historical homelands. National identities, imposed by colonial cartographers, clash with centuries-old affiliations.
The Chewa span four countries. The Fulani six. The Somali people are scattered across four. These divisions distort identity, complicate governance and fuel xenophobia.
Africans have been conditioned to see each other not as kin, but as competitors. The continent bleeds from invisible wounds, wounds inflicted by borders that were never ours.
Until Africa dismantles these inherited constraints, until it treats mobility as a right, not a privilege, the dream of a unified market will remain a mirage. Visa regimes must be harmonised. Work permits must be liberalised. Infrastructure must be reimagined. And above all, Africans must be free to move, to build and to belong, anywhere on their continent.
The Indian Ocean is not a gate, it’s a commons
President Museveni’s assertion that Uganda’s access to the Indian Ocean must be recognised as a sovereign right does more than challenge the transactional politics of regional infrastructure, it fundamentally reframes the debate.
It compels us to reconceptualise port access not as a national asset to be leveraged, but as a Pan-African commons to be protected. Strategic maritime gateways such as Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Beira and Djibouti must serve the continent, not merely the interests of their host nations.
These ports are not gates; they are arteries of continental survival, and their politicisation carries profound implications for Africa’s cohesion and sovereignty.
To operationalise this vision, Africa must move beyond rhetorical solidarity and enact binding regional treaties that guarantee uninterrupted access to maritime infrastructure for landlocked nations.
Joint infrastructure investments must be prioritised, transcending national budgets and reflecting a shared commitment to continental mobility. Furthermore, multilateral oversight mechanisms are essential to ensure that port access is not weaponised for political retaliation or economic coercion.
The stakes are high: if Kenya or Tanzania were to restrict Uganda’s access to the sea, whether through tariffs, bureaucratic obstruction or infrastructural sabotage, it would not merely be a bilateral dispute. It would constitute a continental crisis, threatening the integrity of regional blocs, undermining trust and inviting external actors to exploit the vacuum.
In this context, the Indian Ocean must be understood not as a boundary, but as a shared inheritance, a commons that anchors Africa’s economic emancipation and geopolitical autonomy. Anything less is a betrayal of Pan-Africanism.
Julius Malema’s vision for a borderless Africa must not be dismissed as utopian idealism; it is a strategic imperative grounded in historical redress and continental necessity.
His five pillars for African unity may appear radical to the uninitiated, but two of them, dismantling colonial borders and enabling the free movement of Africans, are not only feasible, but they are also immediately actionable.
These proposals do not require revolution; they require political will, institutional courage and a reawakening of Pan-African consciousness.
The precedent exists. Europe’s Schengen Area has demonstrated that passport-free movement across sovereign states is not only possible, but economically transformative.
Africa, too, has its models: the East African Community’s regional passport and the bilateral removal of passport requirements between Botswana and Namibia are tangible steps toward mobility justice. These examples prove that integration is not a fantasy; it is a choice.
A borderless Africa would unlock unprecedented potential. Economically, it would create a unified market capable of rivalling global powers, reducing transaction costs, stimulating intra-African trade and attracting investment.
Socially, it would reunite families long divided by colonial cartography, revive cultures suppressed by artificial boundaries and restore the dignity of movement. Strategically, it would unleash the mobility of skills, allowing engineers, doctors, teachers and entrepreneurs to move freely across the continent, filling gaps, building capacity and driving innovation.
But this vision transcends economics.
It is a matter of justice. It is about reclaiming what was stolen, our freedom to move, to belong, to build. It is about dismantling the architecture of division and replacing it with a framework of solidarity. A borderless Africa is not a dream deferred. It is a future demanded, and it begins with the courage to redraw the map, not with ink, but with intention.
The future demands audacity
Africa’s redemption will not be forged in the crucible of war, but in the clarity of vision. It will not be delivered by arms, but by architecture, of policy, of infrastructure, of imagination.
The Indian Ocean must cease to be a contested threshold and instead become a continental commons, a symbol of shared destiny.
Uganda’s access to it is not a diplomatic courtesy; it is a non-negotiable right. It is foundational to the economic sovereignty of 16 landlocked nations and to the moral coherence of Pan-Africanism itself.
If we fail to act, if we continue to treat ports as private fiefdoms, borders as weapons and mobility as a threat, we will invite the very conflicts we claim to abhor.
We will see wars not just over territory, but over dignity, over access, over the right to belong. But if we rise to the moment, if we dismantle colonial constructs, harmonise our institutions and embrace the logic of unity, we will build a continent where no African is landlocked, economically, politically or spiritually.
This is not a plea. It is a declaration. The age of polite paralysis must end. The time for continental courage has come. Africa must choose vision over violence, integration over isolation and justice over inertia.
The future is not waiting. It is demanding. And it is ours to define. DM
Wellington Muzengeza is a political risk analyst and urban strategist offering incisive insight on urban planning, infrastructure, leadership succession and governance reform across Africa’s evolving post-liberation urban landscapes.