Justice cannot be built on stolen labor.

When we refuse to subsidise Northern institutions with our unpaid expertise, we are not being difficult, we are disrupting a centuries old pattern where African knowledge, labor, and insight is treated as freely available raw material for others to refine and profit from. We are saying our expertise about our contexts belongs to us and access to it... See more

Walking away from extractive opportunities is not missing out but maintaining dignity and making it possible for the next generation to work with compensation and dignity rather than relying on hope and exposure.

This is sophisticated neo-colonialism, more dangerous precisely because it is subtle, wrapped in the language of partnership, collaboration, co-creation and participation disguised as opportunity, capacity building and networking.

This is why collective refusal is so hard because it is not just simply saying no to future extraction but admitting that what we thought was success was actually managed exploitation. That the prestigious opportunities were extraction with good branding and that we helped legitimise systems that harm us. Our participation makes it easier for these... See more

So then it is not “why don’t you leave capitalism” instead “why do you think our labor should be free within it?”

Demanding that if we must participate in capitalist economies, we do so with compensation, dignity, and collective power not as infinite sources of free labor for those already positioned to accumulate.

The market stops being voluntary and starts looking like economic servitude when your choices are participate in extraction economies or have no livelihood at all. Work for free or be excluded from the networks that control access to paid work. Accept tokenism or lose the proximity to resources your communities need.

Those of us with positions must establish boundaries for those without. Those who have secured “seats at the table” must be willing to walk away when the table is built on unpaid labor from our own communities. It means giving up the individual comfort of being “the diverse voice” in rooms that will not change their extractive practices.

Being the... See more