By Professor Artwell Nhemachena
 
IT is simplistic to assume that a world in which some are dispossessed and exploited by others can have a common future.
This cannot happen in the absence of redress and abatement of the vices which have sadly become so normalised that they did not even appear during such an important summit as was held from September 22-23 2024 by the UN in New York.
Ordinarily, an agenda for a common future presupposes a common past. Yet, the historical subjection of Africans to enslavement and colonisation, dispossession and exploitation belie the assumption of a common past which would have legitimised a common future among peoples of the world.
Before arranging and planning for a common future, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guteress should have worried about the absence of a common past. Without a common past, there cannot possibly be a viable, plausible and functional common future beyond lip service and beyond platitudes.

Surprisingly, even when citizens of West African countries like Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, among others, have demonstrated that what matters most for them is decolonisation and assumption of sovereignty over their resources and economies, the UN Summit of the Future, held from September 22-23 2024, does not even mention decolonisation and sovereignty over natural resources as part of the common future of humanity and nations in the world.

Besides, despite African struggles to reassert economic sovereignty and sovereignty over their natural resources, in countries like Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia, among others, the recent UN Summit of the Future does not even mention economic sovereignty and sovereignty over natural resources as part of the common agenda for humanity.
Instead, the UN made the following as its milestones for the future: Global Digital Compact intended to bridge the digital divide and ensure access to digital technologies. While this is important, in its own right, one would have expected the UN to have some kind of Global Land Compact in which it spells out access to and ownership of land as part of the common agenda and common future.
African states have, since the 1960s, been demanding sovereignty over their natural resources, and ordinary African citizens are demanding restitution of their land and other natural resources. Yet these demands have been ignored and are not even mentioned in the UN Summit of the Future as part of the common agenda and common future.
Put differently, the UN Summit of the Future did not put African future/s at the centre because it ignored African demands for sovereignty over their natural resources. Even as the UN Summit of the Future was ongoing in this 21st century, Africans are victims of transnational corporations land grabs which are a feature of the ongoing second scramble for Africa.
The UN Summit of the Future ignored the concerns of African victims of transnational land grabs who are puzzling over their futures after losing their land to the marauding transnational corporations.
While the UN Summit of the Future included a Declaration on Future Generations, it did not recognise the demands by African youths for sovereignty over their natural resources. It is difficult to see how future generations of Africans can have secure futures in the absence of their sovereignty over their natural resources on the continent.
Similarly, while the UN Summit of the Future included peace and security, sustainable development, human rights, youths and future generations as part of its agenda, it is difficult to understand how peace and security can be guaranteed when some in the world are being dispossessed and exploited; it is difficult to understand how sustainable development can be guaranteed or even be envisaged when others are being dispossessed and exploited in the world; it is difficult to understand how human rights can be realised when some in the world are being dispossessed and exploited.
Indeed, when African states demanded sovereignty over their natural resources in the 1960s, their argument was that, without such sovereignty over their natural resources, it would be impossible for them to ensure development within their nations.
In such a context, the recent UN Summit of the Future is meaningless for Africans in the absence of African state sovereignty over natural resources.
It is impossible for one to conceive a future without sovereignty over one’s natural resources!
The future that Africans want is a future where they have sovereignty over their natural resources and sovereignty over their economies.
It is only with sovereignty over their natural resources and economies that Africans will be able to eradicate poverty, ensure sustainable development, eliminate food insecurity and malnutrition and  ensure peace and security — indeed, as well as human rights.
It is not only necessary to close digital divides, as the UN Summit of the Future puts it, but it is more important to close economic divides and divides over land ownership. Africans are not only divided in terms of those who have access to digital technologies but there are also more worrying divides between those who own and control the land and economies on the continent.
Heads of State in the Global South have been quick to adopt the so-called Pact for the Future at the UN Summit of the Future. This Pact will prove to be useless for ordinary Africans and for African states that will continue to be denied sovereignty over their natural resources.
The common future envisaged in the Summit of the Future will not be so common after all. Important in the so-called Pact for the Future is not necessarily what it includes but what it excludes, and why it does so.
The Summit for the Future, and the ensuing Pact for the Future are meant to generate what is called strategic ignorance; and it does so by ignoring fundamental African interests, including sovereignty over natural resources.
Africans’ demand for restitution of their resources, and their resistance to ongoing transnational land grabs indicate that they cannot have peace and security in a world where they are dispossessed and exploited. Peace and security will follow restitution and reparations for those who have been dispossessed and exploited.
They require an agenda of restitution and reparations.
Without sovereignty over their natural resources, Africans do not have futures. The future is with those who own and control resources and not with those who continue to be dispossessed and exploited. Paradoxically, the future of such dispossessed and exploited people were ignored in the UN Summit of the Future.
Indeed, Western states shied from engaging on matters of reparations and restitution for slavery and colonisation at the UN Conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Evidently, the agenda for reparations and restitution to victims of enslavement and colonialism was not taken by the Western states as a common agenda.
The question then is: Whose agenda constitutes a common agenda for humanity in this world?
African leaders must be careful lest they are used as horses to carry the agendas of others in a world of horse and rider relationships.