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For decades, we were instructed to nod politely at global summits while elites proclaimed that the rule of law is universal. Except, like a discount gym membership, universality apparently comes with fine print, blackout dates, and VIP exemptions reserved exclusively for nations backed by Western firepower.
Start with the constitutional oddity sitting in plain sight. The Board's Charter names Donald Trump personally not the office of the President, not the United States as a state party, but Donald J. Trump as inaugural Chairman, with a term that survives his presidency. He can only be removed through voluntary resignation or a unanimous vote of the Executive Board finding him incapacitated, and he alone selects his successor. No sitting president inherits the chair by virtue of the office; a future occupant of the Oval Office might find themselves outranked, within an organisation their own government helped charter, by a private citizen of their predecessor's choosing.
The performance requires a villain. Africa has been performing that role for free, and at some cost to itself for considerably longer than it should have.
But wars are not graded like Olympic gymnastics. There are no medals for technical execution if the end result leaves your opponent intact, emboldened, or—worse—adapted.
Next in Abuja, four governments will do something that sounds, on paper, like a belated act of economic self-respect. Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon between them the source of roughly two-thirds of the cocoa that becomes the world's chocolate will sign the Abuja Declaration and stand up a Cocoa Value Addition Alliance, a coordinated attempt to stop shipping out raw beans and start capturing some of the value that currently accrues, almost entirely, to everyone else. Nigeria will additionally sign its own Cocoa Value Addition Accord, a domestic compact roping in governors, farmer groups, financiers and researchers into the project of turning bean into brand rather than bean into someone else's bar.
