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Once appeared with a shirt full of African leaders, men like President Gamal A. Nasser or former Emperor of Ethiopia Hailse Selaisse, Patrick Lumumba , Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara or even Nelson Mandela.
When Muammar Gaddafi appeared in that shirt, it was a deliberate visual statement tying himself to a pantheon of African and Arab liberation figures.
But the man didn’t stop there but continued to play an ambitious role in the African Union and his efforts to secure a united Africa.
He did that by wealth and by weapon until he became popular figure.
As Professor Hussein Solomon noted in Libya’s Foreign Policy in Flux, Gaddafi’s foreign policy toward Africa was unpredictable, extravagant, and deeply controversial. He used Libya’s oil wealth to bankroll projects, buy influence, and position himself as a pan-African leader. Many African leaders, enticed by his largesse, dubbed him the “Son of Africa.”
He was their China with his Oil money and extravagant economic involvement in Africa.
The greedy Africans for money could simply said no so they followed him and even called him “ The Son of Africa”
Today AU don’t have Gaddafi but China instead who invested across nearly every African country and become center of influence and center of power.
The effect is the same: Africa’s collective destiny is being shaped by external capital.”
Any claims like those of @ymahmoudali are ultimately shaped by the gravitational pull of Chinese foreign policy under one man principle man Xi Jinping.
On matters of self‑determination and sovereignty, the African Union has failed to enact formidable changes. South Sudan’s independence in 2011 stands as a rare exception, but beyond that, the AU has struggled to uphold the principle of peoples’ right to decide their own destiny. Somaliland remains a striking example: despite functioning as a de facto independent state with its own institutions, currency, and governance, the AU has withheld recognition. This hesitation underscores the Union’s inability to consistently champion sovereignty, even as external powers like China increasingly shape its agenda.
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