“The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards.”

In the nineteenth century, many African communities traded their lands—and even their kin—for beads, mirrors, and trinkets offered by European traders. These baubles, devoid of real value, became symbols of imagined prestige and instruments of psychological conquest. They were the first tokens of Africa’s mental colonisation, the point where external allure began to outweigh intrinsic worth.

Over time, these objects of vanity evolved into fetishes—symbols of aspiration that redefined value through the lens of the coloniser. What sparkled was deemed precious; what was local became inferior. The tragedy of those early exchanges lay not only in the loss of land or freedom but in the surrender of perception—the belief that validation could only come from elsewhere.

Two centuries later, the same pattern persists. The trinkets have changed form, but the fascination remains. The beads and mirrors of the past have been replaced by dollars and SUVs—the new emblems of power, privilege, and success in postcolonial Africa.

The New Fetishes: Dollars and SUVs

Today, the colonial exchange has merely been refined, not abolished. The same elites who once served as intermediaries in the slave trade have reinvented themselves as agents of global consumerism. They sell Africa’s oil, gas, and minerals for foreign currency, only to spend the proceeds on imported luxuries—cars, wines, perfumes, gadgets, and homes abroad—objects that serve no purpose beyond the advertisement of wealth.

The African elite continues to equate civilisation with consumption, status with foreign symbols, and progress with imported glamour. The SUV, that ubiquitous status symbol, has become the twenty-first-century equivalent of the colonial trinket—an idol of vanity gliding over potholes and poverty. In cities where hospitals decay and schools crumble, convoys of gleaming four-wheel drives parade through dust and deprivation, each one a testament to misplaced priorities and moral erosion.

The Dollar as the New Deity

The dollar now functions as the invisible god in Africa’s temple of materialism. It dictates ambition, defines prestige, and measures stability. The trader dreams in dollars, the bureaucrat saves in dollars, and the politician hoards dollars. Even the student’s scholarship and the patient’s medical trip depend on the greenback.

Our economies, contributing less than one percent to global production, are spiritually anchored to a foreign currency. The result is a culture where self-worth is indexed not to creativity or productivity, but to purchasing power—where national pride is tied to exchange rates rather than innovation.

The Moral Cost of Materialism

This obsession corrodes the moral fabric of African society. Leadership has become a theatre of ostentation—measured by motorcades, mansions, and designer clothes rather than ideas or integrity. The masses, conditioned by consumerist propaganda, are taught to admire excess instead of questioning it.

The colonial masters may have departed, but their psychological infrastructure remains intact. Africans continue to view themselves through borrowed eyes, evaluate progress by foreign standards, and chase illusions crafted in Western billboards.

The Global Trap and the Local Elite

This state of dependency is sustained by global structures of trade and finance that keep Africa a supplier of raw materials and a consumer of finished goods. “Foreign investment” often means profit repatriation; “development aid” often deepens dependency.

Rather than resisting, Africa’s ruling elites have become willing collaborators, their education and tastes moulded by foreign approval. They are colonised from within—vectors of an imported virus of material aspiration that infects every layer of society.

Decolonising the African Mind

True liberation requires more than policy reform—it demands a cultural and psychological awakening. Africans must rediscover the intrinsic worth of their labour, intellect, and creativity. Progress must no longer be measured by imported cars or luxury malls, but by innovation, education, and the dignity of work.

The fetish of the dollar must yield to faith in self-reliance; the prestige of the SUV must give way to the pride of productivity. Development is not about imitation, but authenticity.

As Frantz Fanon warned in The Wretched of the Earth:

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove—not only from our land but from our minds as well.”

Until Africa learns to see beyond the shimmer of imported symbols, it will continue to exchange its soul for souvenirs. True freedom will come only when we cease to measure our worth in dollars and begin to value ourselves in ideas, integrity, and imagination.