Ras-I Mhofu #One Drop Media

I'm not religious by any means but if I were God, it would be evident that based on the geographical arrangement of the world, I have my favourites. Africa is that favourite. There is literally no material or human resource under the sun that cannot be found here in absurd quantities. We have EVERYTHING that humanity has ever fought wars over, in such quantities that I can understand why Leopold described Africa as a 'geological scandal.' We are so absurdly stacked that even despite having the largest empire in history standing on our necks and extra ting ruthlessly for 500 years, we have still managed to be the world's 2nd most populous continent and by far the world's fastest growing population. No matter how breathlessly they extract, there are so many resources that 1.5 billion people still manage to exist without really doing so on purpose or having a plan for the future. We are still the sovereign owners of this land, but at the rate we are fucking around, not for much longer. Nature has a habit of taking away gifts that are not utilised. If despite having all that we have, plus cheap instant communication and Ethiopian Airlines that reliably puts 90% of us within 6 hours of each other, we STILL manage to come out of the 21st century losing, then we will have fully earned the loss of our homeland and our disappearance from the earth, the same way the Mayans and Aztecs disappeared. When Ibrahim Traoré says "Homeland or Death," it's not a patriotic slogan. It's a statement of ugly fact.

Mukoma Rutendo, to argue that colonial extraction was superior because it left behind cities is to embarrassingly normalise - even elevate - subjugation. It mistakes the architectural residue of empire for benevolence. Railways, mines and settler cities were not gifts; they were instruments of removal. Their purpose was not African industrialisation but imperial extraction. The urban footprints that remain were by-products of a system designed to externalise African wealth, not entrench African prosperity. Serious economic analysis begins with incentives. No capital - Anglo-Saxon, Chinese, Indian or otherwise - moves as charity. Investment flows where return is possible. The British South Africa Company did not mine for philanthropy; Anglo American did not construct shafts out of altruism. Likewise, China’s engagement is grounded in trade and strategic interest. That is not moral failure; it is the grammar of global capitalism. The relevant question is not whether investors seek benefit - they always do - but whether the host state secures reciprocal advantage. Historical scale also matters. Western capital entrenched itself in Southern Africa for over a century. China’s modern engagement spans barely two decades in intensity. Structural transformation is generational. Shenzhen did not emerge in twenty years; it was the product of sustained policy, industrial discipline and infrastructure layering over decades. Comparing a 100-year colonial footprint with a 20-year trade partnership is analytically shallow. Moreover, development in the 21st century does not require foreign powers to build settler cities. It requires platforms: energy, logistics corridors, ports, industrial parks and digital backbones upon which domestic enterprise can compound. Across Africa - and in Zimbabwe - Chinese financing and engineering have expanded power generation, modernised highways, upgraded telecommunications, rehabilitated border posts and built public infrastructure. Infrastructure is the skeleton of industrialisation. Cities are its eventual musculature. One does not construct skylines before stabilising the grid. On trade, China’s removal of tariffs for the majority of African exporters is not symbolism; it is structural access to one of the world’s largest consumer markets. Diversified demand expands bargaining space and reduces overdependence on any single bloc. That strategic widening of options is economically significant. If mineral value chains remain shallow, the constraint is domestic capability - refining capacity, skills and policy coherence - not the nationality of the buyer. China processes lithium because it invested in downstream ecosystems for decades. Industrial depth is built, not granted. China is neither saviour nor villain; it is a rational actor pursuing interest. The same is true of the West. The decisive variable is African governance - the ability to regulate, negotiate, tax and channel capital into structural transformation. The choice before Zimbabwe is not nostalgia for empire, nor naive enthusiasm. It is strategic agency. On balance, China’s engagement - market access, infrastructure scale and policy non-interference - has expanded Africa’s room to manoeuvre rather than constrained it. Production precedes prosperity. Infrastructure precedes industry. Sovereignty lies not in romanticising former masters, but in mastering present partnerships.