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The End of American Imperialism and the Fading of the Old World dominated by Western Powers: The Ramifications and Prosects for Africa
A very interesting speech by Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs delivered at the University of South Africa (UNISA) during the 2025 Founders’ Lecture, in which he strongly criticizes Donald Trump’s decision to skip the 2025 G20 Johannesburg Summit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOGLxxiNeBc&t=1527s&pp=ygUSamVmZnJ5IHNhY2hzIHVuaXNh
Jeffrey Sachs’ speech is not merely a criticism of Donald Trump’s decision to skip the G20 Johannesburg Summit, rather it is an indictment of an entire geopolitical order that is reaching its natural end. The speech frames Trump’s “tantrum” as symbolic of a deeper anxiety gripping the United States and parts of the Western world: the fear of losing exclusive global dominance in an era when power is diffusing toward Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
For more than 70 years, the US-led Western bloc has set the rules, defined the institutions, controlled capital flows, and dominated global narratives. But Sachs argues that this era which he calls the imperial age is fading.
The West is struggling with reduced moral authority due to endless wars, hypocrisy on human rights, and selective justice. Its economic dominance is eroding as China, India, and emerging Global South economies reshape global trade and production. The West is confronted with diplomatic insecurity, evident in the refusal to engage when they cannot control the space as symbolized by Trump skipping the G20 in Africa.
Trump, in Sachs’ view, is simply expressing a cruder, unmasked form of Western entitlement: an unwillingness to sit on equal terms with others, especially in Africa, where the symbolism of hosting the G20 underscores a shift in global geometry.
What Sachs articulates implicitly is the transformation of US behaviour from active global leadership to defensive retreat. When the world no longer matches Western expectations or when Western countries are no longer guaranteed primacy, some leaders respond by withdrawing from global institutions, refusing multilateralism, demonizing Global South countries, and rejecting forums where they must be equals, not superiors.
This behaviour is not just about Trump; it reflects a broader Western discomfort with a world in which the Global South is no longer passive, at least many parts of it. Sachs positions Africa and the Global South more broadly as central players in a new multipolar world. The ramifications are profound reflected in the fact that Africa is no longer a peripheral arena.
The moral centre of global justice is shifting as the Global South is now insisting on equal dignity, fairer global rules, accountability for global powers, and redistributive justice for centuries of extraction and marginalization. Just look at the current COP30 in Brazil. Furthermore, new alliances are emerging such as BRICS+ and South–South development banks, among others which weaken the West’s monopoly on global influence.
The shifting tides of global power that Sachs describes present Africa with a unique historical opening but also an unavoidable truth: Africa cannot seize this moment if it continues to be held hostage by its own internal failures. Multipolarity will not rescue a continent weakened by poor leadership, authoritarianism, corruption, elite impunity, and institutional decay. The new world that is emerging demands courageous, ethical, visionary African leadership, not the recycled mediocrity that has undermined the continent for decades.
For too long, African governments and continental institutions including the African Union, ECOWAS, SADC, EAC, IGAD, and others have been complicit in strangulating democratic, silent in the face of repression, and tolerant of corruption and constitutional manipulation. They issue communiqués while citizens are jailed, elections are rigged, wealth is looted, and state resources are captured by small elite networks. This complicity is not passive; it is a betrayal of the continent’s future.
If Africa is to claim its rightful place in the new global order that Sachs envisions, then Africa must first clean its own house. The continent has the potential in every sense of the world to generate its own development. To continue to depend on the West’s development model of aid, charity, and dependency is not only obsolete but also self-destructive and irresponsible.
Finally, Africa cannot rise if its own leaders are the first to betray its people.
