Africa’s Long Memory, Palestine’s New Moment

Beneath the Surface By Dakuku Peterside

A sovereign Palestinian state has long existed in the moral imagination of the Global South, both as a promise and a test of its ideals. It is the promise that people who suffered dispossession, military occupation, and the bureaucracies of humiliation might yet recover political agency. And it is the test of whether our international system—so fluent in the language of rights—can translate words into durable arrangements of law, borders, and governance that keep civilians safe and give societies room to breathe. For Africa, this is not an abstraction. It is memory with a pulse, a mirror that reflects the continent’s own passage from liberation movements to the craft of state-building, from martyrs’ cemeteries to ministries with budgets and auditors.

Across the continent, recognition of Palestine is not a diplomatic novelty, but a continuation of older, deeply rooted solidarities. The PLO’s observer status at the Organisation of African Unity in 1974 and the proclamation of the State of Palestine in Algiers in 1988 were not mere gestures. They were the punctuation marks in an extended sentence of shared struggle. Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, and Tanzania offered more than sympathy; they offered training grounds, safe houses, and the intangible endowments of friendship under pressure—intelligence, logistics, and the morale that comes when another geography affirms that your suffering is legible and your strategy is sane. The PLO–ANC relationship is etched into this archive: exile offices, joint workshops on political organisation, the study of how to negotiate without compromising one’s core demands, and that stubborn insistence that international law—however imperfect—is a powerful tool when memory is disciplined into evidence.

This is why, when Western capitals periodically rediscover Palestine, Africans often respond with a composed déjà vu. As Fidel Amakye Owusu notes, what appears new in Paris or Ottawa is old in Accra, Algiers, and Addis Ababa. Africa’s embrace of a two-state formula has never been a romantic reflex. It is a grammar learned from bitter experience: draw borders that restrain adventurism; embed security in reciprocal commitments rather than unilateral domination; make dignity administrable through courts, civil registries, and accountable police, not just poetry and flags. Owusu’s point about upgrading Palestine from UN observer to full member exposes the granite of power—the P5’s veto prerogatives—but it also expresses Africa’s long habit of leaning against unyielding doors until the hinges groan. The continent knows how slowly the dial moves; it moves anyway.

Yet, recognition by itself is insufficient, perhaps even anaesthetising if it is not matched by action. The stubborn difficulties remain. Borders must be more than lines on maps that have already been eroded by settlements, bypass roads, and geographic fragmentation, which turn daily life into a maze. The status of Jerusalem entangles theology, law, and memory in a complex knot; any arrangement that ignores one of these strands will inevitably unravel. Within Palestinian politics, legitimacy is contested: the PLO’s international standing, the Palestinian Authority’s administrative capacity, Hamas’s control of Gaza, the long postponement of elections, and the urgent question of a unified security doctrine that protects civilians and accumulates international credibility rather than squandering it. For Israelis, insecurity is equally real: rockets, cross-border raids, the fear of regional encirclement, and the trauma that shapes public opinion as profoundly as any manifesto. A reflective politics must carry these truths at once—not to flatten them into false equivalence, but to refuse the lazy moral arithmetic that excuses violations of humanitarian law under the alibi of necessity.

Abdal Karim Ewaida’s reminder that African recognition grew from “deep historical, political, and human ties” gestures toward a more useful future: revive solidarity as a verb. That means culture as diplomacy—book fairs that pair Gaza poets with Nigerian novelists; film festivals in Lagos that host Palestinian directors alongside South African documentarians of the anti-apartheid era; museum exhibits that place West Bank checkpoints and Soweto pass laws in the same analytical frame without collapsing their differences. It means economics as empathy—joint agrotech pilots on arid-land farming; telemedicine links between teaching hospitals in Ibadan and Ramallah; vocational exchanges that train municipal technicians to keep water flowing and grids stable. And it means institutions as the architecture of hope—civil service training on procurement integrity, police reform modules on community safety, and electoral management workshops that drill into the dull excellence of logistics, chain of custody, and results transmission.

So, what does this mean for Nigeria—beyond the vocabulary of ‘support’ that can become an alibi for inaction? First, it means clarity. Nigeria can reaffirm a two-state framework, as embedded in international law and humanitarian norms, while insisting that civilian protection is non-negotiable. This is not performative balance; it is strategic coherence. Abuja can work the concentric circles of influence: within the African Union to harmonise positions and to shield smaller states from bilateral pressure; in the Non-Aligned Movement to keep the conversation anchored in decolonisation and legal remedies; in the UN General Assembly to sponsor resolutions that have teeth—on settlement freezes, the protection of medical facilities, and unimpeded humanitarian corridors—rather than ritualistic edits to worn paragraphs.

Second, it means choosing work that tends to be invisible. Nigeria can be a art of the ecosystem that can help build the operating system of a future Palestinian state, so that when flags rise, citizens can also obtain passports, courts can issue binding decisions, and budgets can be audited without fear. Imagine a Nigeria–Palestine Governance Fellowship hosted in Abuja, with rotations through the Office of the Head of the Civil Service, the Budget Office, and an integrity clinic co-taught by EFCC and ICPC alumni. Add scholarships in public health, trauma surgery, water engineering, and municipal management, targeted not just at elite universities but at polytechnics and teaching hospitals where practice is the pedagogy.

Third, it means convening. Nigeria in conjunction with other natiions, can host quiet track-II and track-1.5 dialogues, including Islamic and Christian leaders with credibility among their own communities, municipal mayors who manage the dirty pragmatics of roads, rubbish, and reservoirs, business networks that can route reconstruction supplies through Nigerian ports, and humanitarian actors who understand that aid without logistics is merely theatre. These conversations do not replace negotiations, but they strengthen the social fabric that any agreement must rely on when the first inevitable shock arrives.

Fourth, it means storytelling at home. Government communication should be consistently pro-civilian, grounded in law, and cautious with language in a country where interfaith relations are delicate and sometimes fragile. Nigeria’s diaspora can help carry this message beyond official channels: academics to frame debates with evidence; artists to humanise statistics; tech founders to prototype tools for transparency—live dashboards of aid flows, open-source maps of damaged infrastructure, registries that protect orphans and reunite families.

Fifth, it means managing risk with clear eyes. There will be pressure—from powerful states that prefer quietism, from domestic actors who yearn for performative outrage, from information campaigns that thrive on provocation. Nigeria should anticipate these currents. Establish a cross-ministerial working group comprising Foreign Affairs, Humanitarian Affairs, Information, Finance, Interior, and Digital Economy to coordinate policy, public messaging, diaspora engagement, and cyber hygiene.

All of this unfolds amid uncertainty that no prose can smooth. Consider three near-term scenarios. In the first instance, a wave of recognition gathers at the UNGA, while the Security Council remains locked; then the work is to make de facto statehood less fictional—functional ministries, visible service delivery, and a political horizon that is credible enough to suffocate militancy’s moral oxygen. In the second stage, diplomacy stalls and violence cycles; then the task is protection: humanitarian corridors that actually function, electricity and water services that can be restored after strikes, and schools that reopen quickly because their supply chains were pre-positioned during calmer periods. In the third, borders and Jerusalem’s status inch toward a framework; then African technical missions—on elections, policing, municipal service delivery—can serve as stabilisers, the quiet brace that keeps a fragile arrangement from buckling under its own necessary compromises.

It is tempting to conclude with uplift, but precision serves better. A sovereign Palestinian state is a moral horizon and a logistical ordeal. It asks Palestinians to consolidate legitimate institutions with democratic mandate and professional security services; Israelis to accept that a neighbour’s permanence is not a threat to be managed but a precondition for their own enduring security; Arab states to align rhetoric with sustained financial and political investment; Western states to be consistent in their application of international law; and Africa to remember its sternest lesson: freedom without institutions is brittle, institutions without justice are brittle too.

If Nigeria brings anything distinctive, let it be the long memory of a federation that has survived stress tests and the practical habits learned from them. We know that amnesties and accountability can coexist if sequenced with care, that community policing and national security are complements when trust is built patiently, and that procurement rules are not clerical fictions but the foundation of fairness. We know that dignity is granular: a border crossing that does not humiliate, a clinic that keeps the lights on, a magistrate who is not for sale, a school where a child can plan next week without dread.

Statehood will not redeem history. However, it can redraw the possibilities of the future. Africa has walked that narrow edge between despair and design before and, more than once, found footing where none seemed possible. Nigeria can help steady the balance—quietly, consistently, and with the patient ambition that turns recognition into reality, slogans into services, and solidarity into the ordinary mercies of a life lived without fear.