The world is no longer negotiating in measured tones. It is posturing. It is fortifying. It is drawing lines. Across Western capitals, politics has hardened to a more security-driven, more sceptical of interdependence, more willing to treat diplomacy as transaction rather than trust. Multilateralism now competes with muscular nationalism. The vocabulary of partnership yields to that of leverage. The global order is increasingly framed as contest: democracy versus autocracy, ally versus adversary.

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From a Rwandan vantage point, this shift is not abstract. It shapes how Africa is discussed, how Rwanda is interpreted, and how our region is positioned in global calculations. What appears ideological abroad is deeply material on this continent.

Great-power rivalry has returned in full force. Russia’s war in Ukraine revived bloc politics. China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific alongside its entrenched presence in African infrastructure and mineral supply chains sharpened Western anxieties. Washington and Brussels increasingly filter foreign policy through competition with Beijing and Moscow. Africa is no longer treated simply as a development frontier; it is a strategic arena.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the contest for critical minerals. Cobalt, lithium, copper and rare earth elements underpin the green transition and digital economies. DR Congo produces most of the world’s cobalt, granting it significant geopolitical weight. China consolidated influence in these value chains years ago through infrastructure-for-resources arrangements. Western governments, recognising their exposure, are now scrambling to diversify access.

Africa, however, should resist being cast as terrain in someone else’s rivalry. Our mineral wealth is not a trophy in an East–West contest; it is leverage, if governed effectively. And while DR Congo commands attention, it is not alone in geological endowment.

The decisive factor will not be what lies beneath the soil, but the quality of stewardship above it. Countries that stabilise their mining sectors, entrench transparency, secure logistics corridors and guarantee regulatory predictability will become indispensable partners. Political coherence and administrative credibility are strategic assets. Those who can offer them will attract both Eastern and Western capital without subordinating sovereignty.

Extraction without transformation is not partnership; it is repetition. If Africa exports raw ore and imports finished technologies, it remains peripheral to value creation. Anchoring beneficiation, processing and advanced skills domestically shifts bargaining power. The debate is not simply about access to minerals; it is about command of value chains.

Security dynamics further complicate the landscape. Eastern DR Congo has again been destabilised by genocide ideology and conflict. Rwanda has been accused of backing the AFC/M23 rebellion – an allegation Kigali rejects, framing its posture as only defensive against genocidal forces operating across its border. In 2025, the U.S.-brokered Washington Accords sought to de-escalate tensions and align economic cooperation with stabilisation. Implementation remains fragile. Beneath it lies a broader reality: regional conflicts are increasingly refracted through global strategic competition.

For Rwanda, this climate is double-edged.

Scrutiny has intensified. Aid flows can be reassessed. Diplomatic language sharpens when security narratives dominate. Our insistence on border protection is sometimes compressed into aggression; our regional engagement interpreted through suspicion rather than historical memory.

Yet Rwanda has deliberately diversified its alliances across Western, Asian and Middle Eastern partners in order to avoid dependency on any single patron. This is not ideological drift. It is calculated balance. Smaller states endure by widening diplomatic bandwidth.

Rwanda’s post-1994 recovery was neither organic nor improvised; it was engineered with precision. Public order was embedded in law, social cohesion reinforced through civic reform, and growth pursued through deliberate policy staging rather than rhetorical ambition. That same strategic sobriety must now shape foreign policy.

Partnerships should be plural but anchored in national interest. Security imperatives must be articulated firmly yet responsibly. Commercial accords must move the country up the value chain - privileging processing, skills transfer and technological depth over the old cycle of raw extraction and external dependency.

The broader continental question remains: can Africa convert geopolitical competition into structural advantage, or will it be manoeuvred into reactive alignments?

Binary narratives leave little room for nuance. African states are too often categorised as compliant partners or disruptive actors, democratic allies or authoritarian proxies. Such framing compresses complex national interests into external storylines and erodes sovereignty not through force, but through interpretation.

Competition among major powers also widens bargaining space. Gulf states are investing in East African ports and logistics. Asian middle powers are deepening trade corridors. The African Continental Free Trade Area offers a framework for strengthening intra-African commerce and reducing structural dependency on external markets. Strategic autonomy does not require isolation; it demands calibrated engagement on African terms.

The global system is fragmenting. Rhetoric is sharper. Power is exercised with fewer apologies. But Africa is not without agency.

If the prevailing mood insists on "either them or us,” the continent’s response must be more sophisticated: neither acquiescence nor antagonism, but strategic equilibrium. Partnerships that advance development. Security arrangements that safeguard sovereignty. Diplomacy that recognises power realities without surrendering policy autonomy.

The question is not whether the world is choosing sides. It is whether Africa will allow itself to be positioned by those choices, or whether, with clarity and resolve, it will define where it stands.

Laura Noella Rwiliriza is a communication specialist who continues to work across both the private and public sectors.