Dear Editor,

In the wake of another gathering of the world’s most powerful in Davos, Switzerland, the words of Jamaican musician Sizzla Kalonji in his epic song Dem a Gaze rang with prophetic clarity: “What’s di result from your conference? No solution, you confuse you and yuh friends. Babylon laws come to an end.”

This year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting, themed ‘Rebuilding Trust’, unveiled the final bankruptcy of the so-called rules-based international order. As former central banker now Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney bluntly declared, “That order is dead.” What is being built in its place, however, is not liberation for the Global South, but a more volatile and transactional system in which powerful nations and corporations form exclusive blocs for their own security — a system that offers the world a “piece” of the action, but not true “peace” as US President Donald Trump purports with his board of peace.

The conference was dominated by the spectacle of Trump’s return and the manoeuvres of “middle powers”. Meanwhile, the plunder of the Third World continues under new guises. The discussions on securing critical minerals for the energy transition too often sound like a polite, suited version of the old “smash-and-grab” Sizzla condemns: “Bun dem to ashes dem ah pollute Jah land.” Where is the discussion on Africa’s own mineral strategy, on just partnerships, on leaving more than extracted wealth and pollution behind?

The “lightning message” from Davos 2026 is clear: Nations are on their own in a fractured world. The fight Sizzla names — “Fight dem ah fight fi King Selassie position” — is, in this context, the eternal fight for true sovereignty and respect. It is the fight against a world in which Africa and the Caribbean are perpetually on the menu, never at the head of the table. It is a fight for the spiritual and political authority embodied by Haile Selassie I’s founding role in the Organisation of African Unity — the right to self-determination and dignity.

Therefore, our critique must go deeper than choosing sides in this new great game. The emerging global power structure, obsessed with artificial intelligence (AI) dominance and economic fortresses — which is what Greenland is partially about — remains rooted in a materialistic, individualistic world view. It dismisses the communal ethos and the balance of rights with responsibilities found in African human rights law. It cannot conceive of a peace that is not merely the absence of conflict, but the active presence of justice, ecological harmony, and shared well-being — what Rastafari terms “I and I” consciousness.

The “Babylon system” is indeed in crisis, but we must not mistake its frantic rearrangement for its end. The task for the pan-African and Third World perspective is to reject the false choice between old masters and new blocs. We must advance a vision of development that is decolonised at its core, protects communal land rights, and builds societies in harmony with nature, not at its expense. That is the “lightning message” every nation truly needs.

Yannick Nesta Pessoa

yannickpessoa@yahoo.com