By
Wale Alonge
The recent speech by Marco Rubio has generated significant global attention within the broader context of Donald Trump’s ongoing effort to unravel the post–World War II rules-based global order. Trump’s threat to invade and forcibly take over Greenland—a NATO territory linked to Denmark—has shaken the very foundations of Europe’s security architecture. Since the end of World War II, Europe has slept with two eyes closed, complacently relying on the U.S.-led NATO umbrella as the ultimate guarantor of its security. Trump has now thrown that guarantee off the rails, plunging Europe into panic.
It was within this context that Rubio’s speech in Munich assumed enormous geopolitical significance. Every word was scrutinized, parsed, and analyzed. The speech was directed squarely at Europe—intended as a reassuring olive branch. Yet pseudo-analysts on social media have cherry-picked snippets, twisted them to fit preexisting narratives, and spun wild conjectures. In one video circulating widely on Nigerian social media, a gentleman who could not even pronounce “Munich” correctly alleged that Rubio was advocating the recolonization of Africa.
Sadly, in today’s attention economy—devoid of the editorial gatekeeping that once characterized traditional media—every Dick, Tom, and Harry with a mobile phone is suddenly an expert. All it takes is the most outlandish, attention-grabbing claim to go viral. Predictably, this long-winded and incoherent video has been widely shared, further inundating our social media space with half-baked and outrageous content. The unnamed speaker has now been elevated, by sheer virality, into a supposed geopolitical analyst.
Yes, Rubio—himself the son of immigrants from colonized Cuba—did, in seeking to mend fences with a frazzled Europe, echo elements of Trump’s rhetoric about restoring a lost Western “glory.” That rhetoric is rooted in white Christian Euro-nationalism, xenophobia, and rage against perceived mass immigration from non-white countries. Trump has openly castigated Europe and the United States for what he describes in crude terms as allowing immigrants of color from “shithole” and “hellhole” countries to dilute and replace a supposedly superior white identity. He has repeatedly railed against European leaders for permitting large-scale immigration, arguing that it has destroyed the continent.
In Trump’s worldview, immigrants from Scandinavia are preferable to immigrants of color. He even offered white South African farmers fast-tracked green cards while simultaneously threatening to denaturalize Omar, the Somali-American member of Congress. He has openly embraced the so-called “replacement theory,” blaming it for the decline of Western civilization and the erosion of its racial and cultural identity.
However, nowhere in Rubio’s Munich speech did he recommend—or even hint at—Europe recolonizing Africa.
Rather, the speech was aimed at peeling Europe away from its growing romance with China, which has become an increasingly attractive partner as Trump alienated Europe with threats to undermine NATO’s Article 5 and seize Greenland. Rubio’s remarks were an attempt to recalibrate the geopolitical imbalance that China has exploited under Trump’s misguided “America First”—or more accurately, “America Alone”—neo-Monroe Doctrine.
With a pointed focus on China, Rubio warned against the illusion that the post–Cold War rules-based order would supplant national interest, ushering in a borderless world of global citizenship. He argued that the West embraced dogmatic free trade while other nations protected their economies, subsidized their industries, undercut Western companies, shuttered factories, deindustrialized communities, and shipped millions of working- and middle-class jobs overseas—handing control of critical supply chains to rivals and adversaries. There was no ambiguity about his target: China.
Yet somehow, this was twisted into an argument for Africa’s recolonization.
What Rubio was actually advocating was a united Euro-American front to counter China’s expanding influence in the Global South. He made this explicit by calling for Western-controlled supply chains for critical minerals—insulated from coercion by rival powers—and a coordinated effort to compete for market share in emerging economies of the South.
What should truly concern Africa is not imaginary European recolonization, but the dangerous over-romanticization of military juntas and Vladimir Putin’s proxies in the Sahel. Africa must not replace one imperial colonial master with another. In its engagement with China, the continent must also avoid sliding into a new, long-term neo-colonial dependency reminiscent of Europe’s past exploitation.
Africa is not helpless. Acting collectively, the continent can determine its own future and decide who has access to its vast resources—including its human capital, which since the era of the transatlantic slave trade has been extracted and exploited by successive foreign powers for their our benefit at the detriment of the continent. That cycle must end, and only Africans can end it—without apology.
Africa holds extraordinary advantages if its leaders regain confidence and play to the continent’s strengths. Africa possesses in abundance what the world urgently needs: lithium and rare earth minerals essential to the digital economy; a vast youth population that, with proper education and digital skills, represents immense human capital in a rapidly depopulating world; and enormous arable land with the potential to feed a hungry planet. What Africa must not continue to do is export raw, unprocessed materials. Value addition must be non-negotiable in every trade and investment agreement. China is a benevolent partner, neither is the West. We live in dog eat dog world where the weak and vulnerable gets the shaft.
The future belongs to Africa—but only if we are bold enough to claim it, instead of endlessly playing the victim. One striking quality of Bola Tinubu is the confidence he projects on the global stage. Educated in the West and well-traveled, he does not carry the inferiority complex that afflicts many African leaders. He has even managed to recast a bombastic Trump from a condescending overlord into a security partner.
That confidence—not hand-wringing victimhood—is what Africa needs. The world has little sympathy for the weak.
