Why is Africa missing from map of maritime power?

Zawya

2 days ago

At a recent high-level debate at the United Nations Security Council, global leaders gathered to confront what has become an undeniable truth. The maritime domain is no longer just a space of commerce. It is a theatre of geopolitical competition, digital infrastructure, and hybrid threats. The tone was urgent. The consensus was clear. Freedom of navigation, global supply chain stability, and maritime domain awareness were all underscored as priorities for international peace and economic resilience.
Yet as statement after statement filled the chamber, some bold, some tactical, many assertive, one reality became unmistakably clear. Africa was once again peripheral in the very conversation that should have placed it at the centre.
This is not a new pattern. It is a familiar and increasingly dangerous blind spot.
The oceans surrounding Africa cover approximately 214 million square kilometers, and with 90 percent of our trade flowing through maritime routes, the question is no longer whether the seas matter, but whether we control some of the most strategic maritime corridors in the global order — such as the Bab el-Mandeb, Gulf of Guinea, Mozambique Channel, and Red Sea. These are not peripheral routes.
They are critical arteries of global trade, leverage points for security, and gateways to the continent's economic future. The African Union already has a legally binding framework—the Lomé Charter, officially known as the African Charter on Maritime Security and Safety and Development in Africa—designed to safeguard this maritime space.
Yet the gap between this framework and actual enforcement remains dangerously wide. Unless Africa moves from ratification to real operational command, the Charter will remain an unfulfilled promise, while foreign actors consolidate control along our coastal zones.
In global maritime debates, Africa is still framed not as a sovereign actor, but as a vulnerability to be managed. While other states unveil national maritime strategies, negotiate port access, and expand blue-water naval capacities, Africa is often discussed in terms of donor support, capacity building, and technical cooperation.
This framing is no longer acceptable. It is not just inaccurate, it is strategically reckless.
The most recent UNSC debate reflected a growing recognition among powerful states that the maritime space is becoming the next frontier of rivalry and realignment. From illegal fishing and shadow fleets to undersea cables and dual-use ports, the threats and opportunities at sea are multiplying.
Notably, there was broad consensus around the principle that maritime security is foundational to global stability. But what went largely unspoken is that much of that stability hinges on African waters, and yet African states are neither setting the agenda nor controlling the frameworks through which their maritime zones are governed.
This is not merely a diplomatic oversight. It is a structural vulnerability.
Africa's maritime space is becoming a contested zone of influence, infrastructure, surveillance, and sovereignty. Foreign naval exercises are proliferating along our coasts.
Deep-water ports are being constructed or retrofitted with limited transparency. Seabed exploration contracts are being signed without robust continental oversight. Intelligence and surveillance capabilities are expanding in ways that often bypass our own regulatory institutions.
This is not partnership. It is strategic encroachment, masked in the language of cooperation.
If Africa does not establish its own maritime doctrine, if we do not assert control over our sea lanes, ports, and maritime infrastructure, we will find ourselves locked into a future in which our sovereignty is incrementally diluted.
That erosion will not come by way of invasion. It will come through quiet contracts, fragmented deals, and the absence of a unified continental response.
What is required now is not rhetoric, but a recalibration of posture.
The African Union must move beyond symbolic declarations and operationalize the 2050 Africa's Integrated Maritime Strategy. Regional institutions must lead in coordinating legal and security frameworks into a unified continental position on port access, naval cooperation, and maritime law.
A permanent continental body, independent, technocratic, and politically anchored, must be established to audit all foreign maritime infrastructure and security arrangements.
We need a binding Continental Maritime Sovereignty Protocol, adopted and upheld by member states, that sets clear standards for transparency, strategic alignment, and reciprocity in all maritime engagements with non-African actors. Member states must assert their collective right to shape the rules of maritime governance, not merely comply with frameworks set elsewhere.
In this context, the recent article 'From Pirates to Profits: East Africa Must Rule the Indian Ocean' published in The EastAfrican offers a timely and strategic intervention. It rightly reframes the Indian Ocean not merely as a security concern but as a zone of economic command, and calls for East African nations to lead rather than observe.
The emphasis on regional naval cooperation, robust port governance, and sovereign control of the Blue Economy resonates strongly with the broader continental imperatives discussed here. These are the types of contributions that must move from editorial pages to policy rooms.
Moreover, Africa must invest urgently in coastal surveillance, maritime intelligence fusion centres, and naval command capacity. Maritime security is not simply about defending waters. It is about controlling the flow of goods, data, energy, and influence. In this domain, control is strategy.
Africa has every right to be a decisive maritime power. But rights unclaimed become rights unrealised.
The tide is shifting in global maritime affairs. Africa can no longer afford to be cast as a passive route of extraction or a problem to be solved. We are a strategic continent. Our waters are not corridors. They are commands. It is time we start governing them as such.
Abdisaid M. Ali is the chairperson of Lomé Peace and Security Forum, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Former National Security Advisor, Somalia.
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