Yaw Nsarkoh has called for a more honest and structurally grounded conversation around xenophobia, migration and African integration, warning that emotional reactions alone will not solve the continent’s growing tensions.
Speaking at an Africa Day event organised by the PLO Lumumba Foundation, Nsarkoh said Africa must confront the deeper economic and institutional conditions driving xenophobic violence across the continent.
Delivering a speech themed “Xenophobia and the African Condition: A Call for Sobriety,” he argued that while xenophobia must be condemned unequivocally, African societies must also seriously examine the pressures beneath the violence.
“Revulsion on its own is not analysis. Africa’s crises demand analysis, not sentiment,” he said.
Referencing recent attacks on African migrants in South Africa, Nsarkoh described xenophobia as “an affront to our common humanity” but stressed that borderlessness without functioning institutions and economic opportunity would create further instability.
“A borderless Africa cannot be an orderless Africa,” he stated.
According to him, governments have a legitimate responsibility to secure borders and manage migration pressures, but neither states nor citizens have the right to resort to violence against migrants.
He praised voices including former South African President Thabo Mbeki and opposition leader Julius Malema for publicly condemning xenophobic violence.
Nsarkoh also criticised African intellectuals who remain neutral during such moments, arguing that silence in the face of injustice amounts to complicity.
Throughout the speech, he repeatedly linked xenophobia to deeper structural challenges including unemployment, inequality, deindustrialisation and weak governance systems. Using South Africa as an example, he pointed to rising unemployment, especially among the youth, declining manufacturing activity and widening inequality as conditions fueling social frustration.
“This is not simply economic underperformance. It is systemic exclusion,” he said.
He argued that societies cannot indefinitely sustain large populations that remain economically excluded without social consequences, warning that deprivation combined with migration pressures creates what he described as an “explosive and toxic social brew.”
Nsarkoh further noted that South Africa’s inequality is deeply spatial, historical and racialised, particularly within townships and informal settlements where economic opportunity remains limited and social pressure remains high.
According to him, hostility toward migrants in such environments often reflects deeper class frustrations rather than simple hatred of foreigners.
“What appears as hostility to foreigners often carries the features of class struggle conducted through identity,” he said.
The Ghanaian business executive also challenged what he described as “metaphysical Pan-Africanism,” warning that African unity cannot survive on rhetoric and symbolism alone.
Referencing Kwame Nkrumah, Amílcar Cabral and Deng Xiaoping, Nsarkoh argued that meaningful unity must be supported by material improvements in people’s lives.
“Unity without material foundation is fragile,” he said.
He also revisited historical episodes of xenophobia across Africa, including Ghana’s 1969 Aliens Compliance Order under Kofi Abrefa Busia and Nigeria’s expulsion of Ghanaians in the 1980s under Shehu Shagari and Muhammadu Buhari.
The “Ghana Must Go” bags, he noted, remain symbolic reminders of the trauma and contradictions within Africa’s Pan-African aspirations.
Nsarkoh argued that xenophobia is not uniquely African but a broader human response that often emerges under conditions of severe economic and social pressure.
“Xenophobia is not African. It is human under pressure,” he noted.
He also criticised what he described as the failure of successive governments to effectively mediate growing economic and social pressures, particularly in South Africa where unemployment, weak policing and stalled economic transformation have deepened frustration among sections of the population.
According to him, when institutions fail, societies often attempt to improvise solutions, sometimes violently.
As part of his proposed way forward, Nsarkoh called for stronger productive sectors, expanded employment opportunities, reduced inequality, improved migration management systems and reforms in education, media and public discourse.
He argued that Africa’s long-term stability and unity would depend largely on whether governments and institutions are able to improve the material conditions of ordinary citizens.
“The historical task before Africa today is to eliminate extreme poverty by improving the material conditions of hundreds of millions,” he said.
He further warned that unless African countries address the structural conditions beneath xenophobia, including economic exclusion, weak institutions and social fragmentation, the continent risks repeated outbreaks of violence and instability.
Concluding on a reflective note, Nsarkoh invoked the liberation-era slogan “A luta continua,” meaning “the struggle continues,” reinforcing the idea that the challenges he outlined remain ongoing and unresolved.
