[This is an excerpt from an article in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and Policy Studies.]

Warren Buffett, celebrated US investor, wrote in 2021 that you should ‘Never bet against America’. He was referring to the US economy. In the epilogue to his new book, meditating on a recent journey through 14 West African states, Adéwále Májà-Pearce makes a much riskier bet. Concluding that the break-up of Nigeria is inevitable as by far the largest of the 14 West African states, he believes it ‘will probably be sealed in 2027’. We shall see…

Májà-Pearce, a British-Nigerian writer who worked for Index on Censorship and contributed a valuable press freedom report for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in the 1990s, is a close observer of both trends and minutiae. He has a mordant wit, and picks at scabs – showing the hypocrisy both of African leaders and of external, grasping and self-described do-gooding powers.

Now resident in Lagos, he started his two-month tour in late 2023 by visiting the Seriki Faremi Williams Abass Slave Museum in Badagry, Nigeria. He was greeted by a descendant of the original, long-lived Abass, an ex-slave who built it after making a fortune in exporting enslaved fellow-countrymen to Brazil, and running them past the Royal Navy patrols after the British Empire sought to end the trade. He was not surprised when the contemporary Abass was only mildly puzzled when asked whether he was embarrassed, for ‘Africans generally have yet to acknowledge their complicity’.

In Ghana he remarks on spotless beaches, which a Texan businessman saw as full of junk, and quotes Rita Marley, who moved to Ghana in 2000 after Bob’s death, as saying ‘Nigeria is more like New York, but Ghana is a lot more like what we expect Africa to be’. He devotes space to stories of press censorship in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but less to the impact of social media with its enormous influence on youth throughout the region.

He is unsparing in his criticism of continuing exploitation by ex-colonial powers, now joined by Russia whose Wagner militia has been extracting mineral wealth across the Sahel while offering help to the military rulers of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger to put down Islamist rebels. He also acknowledges the terrible savagery by both sides in the 10-year civil war in Sierra Leone.

Commonwealth Bookshelf April 2026

This is a book of anecdote, observation and insight, with some overlooked history thrown in. He generally avoids making direct comparisons between Anglophone and Francophone states, though he was locked up on entering Togo, some years before it joined the Commonwealth, travelling on his Nigerian passport. At Anglophone borders the underpaid immigration officers asked for ‘something for us’. At Francophone ones they demanded a fixed, non-negotiable entitlement. In Togo he was rescued by the British Honorary Consul – ‘Togo being too insignificant in the scheme of things to warrant a proper consulate – let alone an embassy’. He regards the cooperation agreements that French ex-colonies signed at independence as servitude, and sees less deference in public attitudes in the Anglophone ones.

Some of his most interesting reporting relates to the three Sahelian states, now with military rulers, which have broken away from ECOWAS. They are all Francophone, cut off from the Atlantic, seriously poor, hit by climate change and wrestling with Islamist insurgencies. He points out that winner-takes-all democracy deprives the losers of benefits, where goodies are scarce, and communities are accustomed to sharing whatever they have. Elections often promote violence. Soldiers in power appear better able to stand up for their countries.

Richard Bourne is an Emeritus Member of the Round Table Editorial Board.

Shine your eye: In search of West Africa by Adéwále Májà-Pearce, London, Hurst, 2026.