A new global tide is rising
CHINA has announced that it will replace the US dollar with a new Brics currency and fully operationalise its own interbank payment system, CIPS, to rival SWIFT.
For many in the West, this development is shocking.
For Africans, who have lived for decades under the suffocating shadow of dollar dominance, it is nothing short of a historic breakthrough.
This is not just another financial reform.
It is a strategic earthquake that will reorder global trade, weaken Western financial hegemony and redefine the future of African development.
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China is not playing games. It never has.
For centuries, China has demonstrated an unmatched capacity for long-term strategy, discipline and civilisational patience.
When Beijing makes a move, especially one of this magnitude, it is because it understands the true architecture of power.
And today, that architecture is shifting, brick by brick, away from the old imperial centres towards a more plural, multipolar world.
The end of dollar tyranny: Why this moment matters for Africa
For over 70 years, the US dollar has functioned not just as a currency, but as a mechanism of control that has allowed Washington to impose sanctions, confiscate sovereign assets, destabilise economies and punish nations that refuse to bow to its geopolitical preferences.
Africa knows this story all too well.
The dollar’s dominance has depressed African currencies by forcing governments to rely on Western financial institutions.
It has made trade more expensive because transactions must pass through US-controlled systems.
It has exposed African countries to sanctions even when they had no involvement in global disputes.
It has trapped Africa in cycles of debt, often denominated in dollars, which tend to appreciate at the worst possible moments for the global south.
The Brics currency, backed by China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa, and expanding membership, offers Africa something the West has denied it for decades: monetary sovereignty.
If Africa begins trading with China, India, Russia or even among its own nations without using the US dollar, it will liberate itself from the financial chains that have long limited its policy choices.
For economies that import fuel, medicine, machinery and technology, this shift is more than symbolic much more, it is an issue of economic survival.
CIPS vs SWIFT: A battle for the nerve centre of global finance
At the heart of China’s announcement is the expansion of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS).
Unlike SWIFT, which pretends to be international but is politically controlled by Washington, CIPS allows countries to transact independently of US surveillance and without fear of unilateral disconnection.
Africa has watched how the US wields SWIFT like a weapon.
Iran was cut off despite meeting its nuclear commitments.
Russia was sanctioned even when penalties harmed Europe more than Moscow.
Zimbabwe was punished for reclaiming its own land and asserting sovereignty.
Cuba has been financially strangled for decades for refusing to become a neo-colony.
What the West casually calls “sanctions”, Africans experience as collective punishment.
China’s CIPS system shatters this chokehold by giving countries the ability to trade, invest and settle payments outside of the Western-controlled financial architecture.
The message is clear: the era of Western financial dictatorship is finally coming to an end.
A bold move from China, rooted in millennia of strategic wisdom
Western analysts accuse China of “aggression” simply for making independent decisions.
But Africans who understand history know that China is one of the least imperial civilisations in world history.
While Europe partitioned Africa and pillaged its resources, China pursued relations based on diplomacy, commerce and mutual respect.
Today’s bold monetary shift reflects China’s civilisational habit: when great powers attempt to contain it, China responds by innovating, reorganising and advancing.
Examples of this strategic discipline are numerous.
China created the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) after the West blocked its voice at the IMF.
It launched the Belt and Road Initiative to redirect global development away from Western conditionality.
It built world-class technological giants despite US attempts to cripple Huawei, TikTok and ZTE.
It is transforming its industries to some of the world’s most advanced systems in response to external pressure and technological blockades.
Now, with the Brics currency and CIPS, China is striking at the core of global imperial power: financial dominance.
Africans should understand this strategic move more than anyone because, from Kwame Nkrumah to Thomas Sankara, our liberation heroes warned that political independence without economic sovereignty is nothing but an illusion.
Africa and China: A partnership shaped by development, not domination
Africa’s relationship with China is not perfect. After all, no major relationship ever is.
But it is rooted in pragmatism, development and shared interests, not colonial nostalgia or coercion.
The facts are undeniable.
China has built more infrastructure in Africa in 20 years than Europe and the US combined.
Chinese companies have constructed roads, railways, airports, hospitals, hydroelectric dams and industrial parks across the continent.
China is Africa’s largest trading partner, with trade exceeding US$280 billion annually.
African countries have benefited from Chinese agricultural technology transfers, extensive scholarship opportunities, industrial support and even peacekeeping assistance.
Critics claim China is “colonising Africa”, but these same critics were silent when Europe enslaved Africa, partitioned the continent, looted minerals, imposed structural adjustment programmes, assassinated liberation leaders and destroyed African industries.
The hypocrisy is staggering. China offers Africa what the West never has: development without domination.
The Brics currency will deepen this mutually beneficial dynamic.
Africa will be able to sell its minerals, oil and agricultural products directly to China using the new currency. It will be able to borrow for infrastructure without the political conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
It will conduct trade with fellow Brics nations and across Africa without relying on the US dollar.
It will protect its reserves from Western confiscation and political manipulation.
This is not charity; it is a partnership rooted in mutual sovereignty.
Real-world examples of dollar resistance and new pathways for Africa
The weakening of dollar hegemony is not merely theoretical; it is unfolding across the world in real time.
Russia and China now settle more than 90% of their trade in yuan, showing that a major economic power can survive and even thrive outside US financial control.
Saudi Arabia has begun accepting yuan for oil sales, an act that strikes at the heart of the petrodollar system created in 1973.
As Gulf States diversify their settlement currencies, the dollar’s foundation begins to crumble.
Brazil, Argentina and ASEAN nations are increasingly conducting bilateral trade in their own currencies, evidence that regions across the world are seeking financial independence from the dollar-based system.
Zimbabwe has experimented with a gold-backed digital currency as part of its efforts to escape dollar-induced instability and economic manipulation.
Though still evolving, it reflects a consistent desire by formerly colonised nations to escape Western financial control.
The Brics currency offers Africa a strong, stable alternative backed by the world’s fastest-growing economies and largest resource bases.
Why China’s move is anti-imperialist at its core
Financial imperialism is the final fortress of Western global control.
The US uses the dollar to fund wars, overthrow governments, manipulate global prices, punish sovereign nations, extract wealth from the global south, and reassert geopolitical dominance without deploying military force.
China’s announcement challenges this fortress directly. It is not simply economic; it is a project of global decolonisation.
An Africa that trades, borrows and invests through Brics is an Africa no longer subjected to IMF structural adjustment sabotage, dollarised inflation, arbitrary sanctions, capital flight caused by dollar fluctuations or neocolonial political conditions.
This is precisely why Western commentators express panic: they recognise that the empire’s grip is slipping, and slipping fast.
A multipolar world: The future Africans have always demanded
Africans did not fight colonialism only to live under a financial empire disguised as globalisation.
From Nyerere’s Ujamaa to Sankara’s revolutionary socialism, the dream has always been a world where Africa determines its own destiny.
The Brics currency, combined with China’s bold and decisive strategy, brings that dream closer to reality.
A multipolar world will enable Africa to choose partners based on development priorities rather than ideological pressure, to trade on fair and equitable terms, to build industrial capacity without sabotage, to create African value chains free from Western middlemen and to strengthen continental integration under the Africa Continental Free Trade Area.
This is the world Nkrumah envisioned one where Africa sits at the global table as an equal, not a subordinate.
Africa must not miss this historic shift
History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
In 1944, when the Bretton Woods system was created, Africa was still shackled under colonialism.
The dollar was imposed upon a continent that had no voice and no seat at the table.
Today, the world is fundamentally different. Africa has choices. It has agency.
It has partners who do not carry the blood-stained legacy of colonialism.
China’s declaration to replace the US dollar with a Brics currency and expand CIPS is not simply a financial announcement — it is an invitation to join a new world order founded upon sovereignty, equality and mutual respect.
The question now is simple: Will Africa cling to the colonial currency system designed to keep it poor or will it boldly embrace the emerging multipolar world unfolding before its eyes?
China has made its move with clarity, courage and strategic sophistication.
It is now time for Africa to do the same.