Abolish Embassies and Consulates

Why Africa Must Abolish Embassies and Consulates: From Diplomatic Relics to International Affairs & Trade in the Age of AI

BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE

Introduction: A Question Long Overdue

The presence of foreign embassies and consulates across Africa has long been treated as a symbol of sovereignty, international recognition, and diplomatic maturity. Yet symbols must never be confused with function. In the 21st century—defined by artificial intelligence, economic-internetisation, and transnational digital coordination—the traditional embassy-consulate system has become not only obsolete, but structurally misaligned with Africa’s developmental reality.

I argue that embassies and consulates are institutional relics of the capitalist and extractive era, designed for resource surveillance, political leverage, and migration gatekeeping rather than genuine economic cooperation. Africa’s future demands a complete restructuring of international engagement, replacing embassies and consulates with International Affairs & Trade Commission, while centralising all visa and mobility administration under the Ministry of HomeLand Affairs.

This is not an isolationist proposal. It is a modernisation imperative.

1. Embassies and Consulates: Institutions of an Extractive Age

Embassies and consulates emerged in an era when:

  • Diplomacy depended on physical proximity,
  • Communication moved at the speed of ships and cables,
  • Economic relations centred on resource extraction and colonial administration,
  • Migration was controlled through manual surveillance of bodies rather than data systems.

Their historical function was never neutral. In Africa particularly, embassies and consulates functioned as:

  • Instruments of imperial oversight,
  • Centres of commercial intelligence gathering,
  • Nodes of political influence and pressure,
  • Gatekeeping institutions regulating African mobility while facilitating Western access to African resources.

In short, embassies were not built to serve Africans; they were built to manage Africa. To preserve these institutions unquestioningly in the age of AI is to preserve capitalist-era governance architecture in a post-capitalist technological reality.

2. The Visa System: An Administrative Absurdity in the AI Age

One of the most indefensible justifications for embassies and consulates today is visa processing. Requiring citizens to:

  • Travel long distances,
  • Queue physically,
  • Submit paper documents,
  • Attend in-person interviews,
  • Navigate opaque bureaucratic discretion,

is not merely inefficient—it is administratively irrational in an era where:

  • Biometric verification exists,
  • AI-driven risk assessment exists,
  • Secure digital identity systems exist,
  • Blockchain authentication exists,
  • Video call interview exists,
  • Point-of-entry at the border that handle face-to-face interaction with immigration officers exist.

There is no technical reason why visas—both inbound and outbound—cannot be processed entirely online through a centralised in-country Ministry of HomeLand Affairs, operating interoperable systems with foreign governments.

The persistence of physical visa centres is not technological necessity; it is institutional inertia and power preservation.

3. Centralising Mobility: The Role of the Ministry of HomeLand Affairs

Under a modern African governance framework, all mobility-related functions should fall under a single national authority:

  • Visa issuance and authentication,
  • Travel clearance and compliance,
  • Digital identity verification,
  • Reciprocity enforcement,
  • Migration data analytics.

This centralisation:

  • Restores national sovereignty over movement,
  • Eliminates duplicative foreign bureaucracies,
  • Reduces corruption and discretion abuse,
  • Aligns mobility governance with economic planning.

African citizens travelling abroad do not require foreign consulates embedded in African cities. They require clear, predictable, digitally governed processes—something embassies have consistently failed to provide.

4. Why Africa Does Not Need Foreign Embassies on Its Soil

The assumption that countries must maintain physical diplomatic compounds in every other country is a 19th-century fantasy. In reality:

  • Governments no longer need physical presence to communicate.
  • Secure diplomatic channels are digital.
  • Negotiations occur in multilateral forums.
  • Crisis coordination happens in real time online.

What embassies actually provide today is:

  • Legal immunity enclaves,
  • Unequal power spaces,
  • Political pressure points,
  • Surveillance and lobbying hubs.

Africa does not need foreign governments embedded within its territory to manage relations. What Africa needs is transparent, reciprocal, economically grounded engagement.

5. Replacing Diplomacy with Economic Intelligence: International Affairs & Trade Commissions

The emerging global order is not driven by ideology or political alliances—it is driven by economic capability, skills circulation, and production capacity.

  • Migration today is overwhelmingly economic.
  • Diplomacy today is overwhelmingly economic.
  • Influence today is overwhelmingly economic.

Thus, the appropriate replacement for embassies and consulates is not isolation, but International Affairs & Trade Commissions.

These commissions would:

  • Represent countries economically, not politically,
  • Present what each nation can produce, invest, or exchange,
  • Specify skill shortages and labour needs transparently,
  • Facilitate joint ventures and cooperative development,
  • Enable reciprocal trade and industrial planning.

Unlike embassies, these commissions:

  • Do not function as protectionist enclaves,
  • Do not mediate power asymmetrically,
  • Do not disguise economic extraction as diplomacy.

They make relations transactional, transparent, and mutual.

6. From Capitalist Diplomacy to Global Corporatism

Embassies belong to global capitalism. International Affairs & Trade belong to global corporatism.

Capitalism thrives on:

  • Asymmetry,
  • Protectionism,
  • Gatekeeping,
  • Resource concentration.

Global corporatism thrives on:

  • Functional exchange,
  • Productive cooperation,
  • Skills circulation,
  • Mutual economic uplift.

In a world governed by AI and economic-internetisation, States are no longer ideological fortresses—they are economic platforms. Countries that fail to present themselves as economic platforms will be bypassed, regardless of how many embassies they host.

7. Why This Shift Empowers Africa

For Africa, abolishing embassies and consulates:

  • Ends diplomatic dependency,
  • Removes colonial-era power asymmetries,
  • Reclaims administrative sovereignty,
  • Aligns governance with economic reality,
  • Forces engagement on what Africa can offer, not what it can be extracted from.

It shifts Africa from:

  • Petitioning to negotiating,
  • Appealing to offering,
  • Being managed to self-directing.

Conclusion: The Future of International Relations Is Economic, Not Diplomatic

The embassy-consulate system was built for a world that no longer exists. Africa stands at a crossroads:

  • Preserve obsolete institutions designed for its exploitation, or
  • Pioneer a new model of international engagement suited to the AI age.

Abolishing embassies and consulates is not radical. What is radical is continuing to defend them in an era where economy—not politics—drives global movement, cooperation, and power.

  • International Affairs & Trade Commissions represent the future.
  • Centralised digital mobility governance represents the future.
  • Economic reciprocity—not diplomatic theatre—represents the future.

For Africa to rise, it must stop hosting the architecture of its past subordination and begin constructing the infrastructure of its economic sovereignty.

The age of embassies is over. The age of economic intelligence has begun.

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