Africa’s call to the G20: The new colonialism of the mind and a charter of values for a living economy
Key topics:
Critique of philanthropy’s cultural extraction and new mental colonialism
Call for Africa-led values rooted in Ubuntu and communal interdependence
Proposal for a G20 Charter centred on life, dignity, justice, and service
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By Jay Naidoo*
The new face of empire wears a benevolent smile
For decades, the “business of poverty” was the real estate of northern NGOs.
Then inequality became their new moral currency.
Now, we witness the most insidious shift yet: the commodification of Indigenous wisdom, repackaged, curated, and monetized by the same oligarchic lineages that once profited from colonial extraction.
In the name of sustainability, powerful “Foundations” inherit the mantle of empire. They turn living cultures into museums, elders into photo opportunities, and rituals into decorative prayers for conferences.
They host gatherings with Indigenous leaders dressed in regalia, a choreography of symbolic inclusion that conceals systemic exclusion.
It is the old colonial theatre restaged under the lights of “philanthropy.”
This is not partnership; it is charismatic capture and extraction.
The same forces that once dictated the terms of development now dictate the language of regeneration.
The same capital that mined our lands now mines our culture.
And the same power that silenced us now claims to “give us voice.”
This is the new colonialism, not of territory, but of the mind and spirit.
It replaces domination with dependency, and solidarity with spectacle.
Africa will not be curated
Our wisdom does not belong in PowerPoint slides or donor dashboards or the bean counters in Kondon, Seattle or Washington.
It lives in the soil, in the songs of our grandmothers, in the rivers that still remember our names.
It grows in the courage of young people who plant gardens where mines once scarred the Earth.
It breathes in the women who keep communities alive when institutions fail them.
Africa’s story cannot be translated into metrics; measured endlessly like a production line in a soulless smokestack factory. it must be lived.
And across the world, citizens are awakening to the same truth: the global system itself has become extractive, not only of resources but of meaning.
When philanthropy becomes performance, democracy becomes spectacle, and technology becomes a new colonizer of thought, humanity loses its compass.
We are drowning in information but starved of wisdom.
From growth agendas to values agendas
As the G20 gathers on African soil for the first time, history offers a sacred pause, a chance to turn from the noise of power toward the stillness of conscience.
Our planet is crying out for a new covenant between humanity and the Earth.
The old order, built on domination, consumption, and the illusion of separation, has run its course.
What we need now is not another “growth agenda,” but a values agenda, one that restores balance, dignity, and belonging.
At the heart of Africa’s philosophy lies Ubuntu: I am because we are.
It is not a slogan; it is a cosmology, the understanding that life is a web of interdependence, where the wellbeing of each is bound to the wellbeing of all.
Ubuntu teaches that the economy must serve life, not the other way around; that leadership is a form of stewardship; and that prosperity without justice is merely another face of violence.
A G20 Charter of Values
From this foundation, a G20 Charter of Values must emerge not as a political declaration, but as a moral compass for a living economy:
1. Life at the Centre: Every policy must begin and end with the protection and regeneration of life.
2. Enough for All: Growth must serve sufficiency, not excess; abundance is measured by care, not accumulation.
3. Dignity in Work: The future of labour is not automation but restoration, of land, community, and meaning.
4. Ancestral Wisdom and Modern Science United: The knowledge of elders and the tools of innovation must walk together.
5. Justice as Ecology: There can be no climate justice without economic justice, no peace without equality.
6. Leadership as Service: Power must return to its sacred purpose: to serve the common good.
The African invitation
This is the African message to the world: regeneration is not a policy, it is a way of life.
We do not need to invent new values, only to remember the old ones.
If the G20 is to matter, it must become a gathering not of dominance but of conscience, a community of nations ready to honour the simple truth that we belong to one another and to the Earth that sustains us.
The moral measure of our time will not be how much we accumulate, but how deeply we heal our soils, our societies, and our souls.
That is the work before us.
And that is the invitation Africa extends to the world:
to build, together, a civilization that remembers the sanctity of life.
*Jay Naidoo is an Elder, activist, inspiration mentor. He served as the founding General Secretary of COSATU and a Minister in President Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet.