‘Africa must learn to finance its own development with Africans’ own money’.

If this sentence had been uttered sixty years ago, no one would have had any doubt as to who had said it. They would have thought of Kwame Nkrumah, the theorist of anti-neocolonialism. Or of Julius Nyerere, the socialist inspired by Beijing.

Today, however, the words come from William Ruto, probably the African president closest to Western chancelleries. ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’, some might say, but in what sense? And above all, after more than half a century, could it really work today?

Pan-Africanism has always had two sides.

The first was political: to liberate the continent from colonialism and transform the newly independent states into a community capable of speaking with one voice.

The second was economic: to free itself from financial dependence on Europe and, later, on international organisations, by establishing African banks, insurance companies, investment funds and markets.

A dream from a time when one could still dream, but with the hope of doing so in a comfortable bed of one’s own making.

The first great theorist of the second path was Kwame Nkrumah, the President of Ghana who, in 1957, led the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to independence. A visionary, often accused of authoritarianism, Nkrumah argued that colonialism would simply change its guise. He called it neo-colonialism: no longer governors in pith helmets, but banks, debt, multinationals and economic coercion.

In his famous book Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, published in 1965, he explained that a country could be formally independent yet continue to be governed by decisions taken elsewhere, through credit, aid and control of resources.

A few years later, in Tanzania, Julius Nyerere took a different path. Less revolutionary on the international stage, he was more focused on building an African society founded on rural solidarity. Through Ujamaa, he envisaged an African socialism that was not a copy of the Soviet model, but a modern reinterpretation of traditional community life. His economic project failed in many respects, but it left an important cultural legacy: the idea that African development should be conceived by Africans themselves and not imported from outside.

Today, sixty years on, that rhetoric has come back into fashion.

It is used in far more radical terms by Ibrahim Traoré, the young general and coup leader of Burkina Faso, who has built much of his support base by denouncing French neo-colonialism, severing historic ties with Paris and seeking new alliances with Russia, Turkey and other non-Western partners. A few days ago, he severed diplomatic relations with France once and for all (or so he claims). His is a combative, identity-based form of pan-Africanism, which identifies the West as the main obstacle to full African sovereignty.

And it is precisely here, ‘caught in the middle’ as the British would say, that William Ruto comes into the picture.

Because the Kenyan president says, almost word for word, what Nkrumah might have said: no more loans with political strings attached, no more dependence on foreign capital, let’s build African financial institutions.

But Ruto does not have Nkrumah’s background.

Nor does he have Traoré’s camouflage tracksuit.

In fact, he probably represents the exact opposite.

In recent years, Kenya has become the West’s main point of contact in East Africa. Ruto was received with full honours at the White House; he is the only African leader to have attended the most recent G7 summits; he has forged close ties with Emmanuel Macron’s France – which chose Nairobi for the recent Africa-France Forum – and continues to present himself as the most reliable partner for Western economies on the continent.

On the diplomatic front, therefore, Kenya remains firmly anchored to the West.

Economically, however, something is changing.

The difficulties associated with public debt, the rising cost of borrowing and the growing realisation that international aid cannot be a permanent strategy are prompting many African governments – even those traditionally closest to Europe and the United States – to look more closely at domestic savings, pension funds, continental banks and African financial instruments.

This is not an ideological revolution.

Rather, it is a shift towards realism.

For this reason, Ruto’s speech should not be interpreted as a conversion to radical pan-Africanism. It should be seen as a sign that even the leaders most deeply integrated into the international economic order now recognise a structural limitation: a continent of one and a half billion people cannot continue to build its future by waiting for someone else to lend it money.

Perhaps this is Nkrumah’s true legacy.

Not so much the opposition between Africa and the West.

But rather the conviction that political freedom is never complete without sufficient economic autonomy.

And it is curious that the very African president who, more than any other, continues to engage with Washington, Beijing, Brussels, Paris and Rome is the one reminding other continental leaders of this today.