`The colonizer left Africa but never left` - Kenyan Pan-Africanist, Prof. Lumumba

In a powerful address, Kenyan scholar and Pan-Africanist Professor P.L.O. Lumumba declared that formal independence has not ended foreign influence over the continent.

“The colonizer left but never left… Africa remains the only continent in the world that is still referred to as Francophone, Anglophone, Lusophone… and now even Russophone, Sinophone and Indophone,” Lumumba stated.

Speaking during a public lecture, the legal expert and anti-corruption advocate argued that these linguistic and geopolitical labels continue to define and divide African nations more than six decades after most countries gained independence.

He linked the persistence of such terms to neo-colonial structures that, in his view, keep Africa as a sphere of external interest.

Lumumba referenced ongoing events in countries such as Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali as evidence that former colonial powers and new external actors remain active on the continent.

The professor called on Africans to judge their progress through their own lens rather than Western perspectives and urged a shift away from borrowed systems of governance toward genuine self-definition and unity.

Lumumba’s remarks form part of a broader critique of post-independence challenges, including leadership failures, economic dependency and the incomplete nature of decolonization.