Imperial Tech Expansion and Neo-Colonial Crypto Experiments: The Dangerous Divergence in Global Development

The Facts: Two Worlds of Technological Advancement

Recent developments reveal a stark dichotomy in how technology and finance are evolving across different regions of the world. On one hand, Amazon is reportedly negotiating a massive $10 billion investment in OpenAI, potentially valuing the artificial intelligence company at over $500 billion. This move follows OpenAI’s previous multi-billion dollar partnerships with tech giants including Nvidia, Oracle, and Microsoft, which already holds a 27% stake in the company. The investment would strengthen OpenAI’s computing capacity through Amazon’s Trainium chips, offering alternatives to Nvidia and Google hardware while accelerating the development of increasingly sophisticated AI systems.

Meanwhile, in the Central African Republic (CAR), President Faustin-Archange Touadéra has championed cryptocurrency adoption since taking office in 2016, making his nation the first in Africa and second worldwide to adopt Bitcoin as official currency in 2022. The initiatives, including the Sango Coin project and $CAR meme coin, were promoted as mechanisms to raise funds outside traditional financial systems for infrastructure and development projects. However, these efforts are occurring against a backdrop of political instability, with CAR heading into elections amid a history of coups and rebellions, with analysts predicting Touadéra’s victory for a third term.

The Context: Power Asymmetries and Historical Injustices

The context surrounding these developments cannot be understood without acknowledging the historical power imbalances that continue to shape global economic relations. Western technology corporations, particularly those based in the United States, have accumulated unprecedented financial and technological resources, enabling them to dominate emerging fields like artificial intelligence. These companies operate within ecosystems that have been systematically designed to favor their growth through intellectual property regimes, market structures, and financial systems that perpetuate Western hegemony.

Conversely, nations like the Central African Republic, which suffer from the lingering effects of colonialism and ongoing neo-colonial economic relationships, find themselves excluded from traditional financial systems and development pathways. The country remains one of the world’s poorest despite its mineral wealth, caught in a cycle where external actors continue to exploit its resources while offering limited genuine development assistance. This historical context makes the turn toward cryptocurrency understandable, if dangerously precarious.

Opinion: The Neo-Colonial Reality of Technological Development

Western Tech Consolidation: The New Imperial Project

The Amazon-OpenAI negotiations represent more than mere corporate maneuvering—they signify the consolidation of technological power in the hands of a few Western corporations that increasingly function as neo-colonial entities. These companies are not merely developing technology; they are constructing the infrastructure that will govern future economic, social, and political relations globally. Their control over artificial intelligence—often called the “new electricity”—grants them unprecedented influence over how societies function, how information flows, and how power is distributed.

This concentration of technological power in Western hands directly contradicts the principles of equitable development and sovereignty that should guide international relations. While these corporations pay lip service to global benefit, their primary allegiance remains to shareholders and profit maximization, not to human development or global equity. The massive investments flowing into AI development will likely exacerbate existing inequalities, creating technologies that primarily serve Western interests while potentially undermining the development trajectories of Global South nations.

CAR’s Crypto Experiment: A Desperate Response to Systemic Exclusion

The Central African Republic’s turn toward cryptocurrency represents a tragic manifestation of how Global South nations are forced to navigate a global financial system designed to exclude them. President Touadéra’s initiatives, while fraught with risk, emerge from the understandable frustration with international financial institutions that have consistently failed to provide adequate development financing while imposing conditionalities that often undermine national sovereignty.

However, the warning from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime about the potential for criminal organizations to capture state assets through these opaque crypto schemes cannot be ignored. Without proper transparency and anti-money laundering safeguards, these initiatives risk becoming vehicles for the very neo-colonial exploitation they ostensibly seek to escape. The potential extension of crypto-based transactions to mineral concessions including diamonds, gold, and oil could lead to the fire sale of national resources to criminal actors, essentially digitalizing the resource extraction that has plagued Africa for centuries.

The Hypocrisy of International Financial Governance

The international community’s response to these developments reveals profound hypocrisy. While Western nations allow their corporations to engage in massive speculative investments in emerging technologies with minimal scrutiny, they impose stringent conditions on Global South nations attempting to innovate within the financial space. The same financial systems that enable Amazon to consider a $10 billion investment in AI simultaneously deny countries like CAR access to equitable development financing, forcing them toward risky alternatives.

This double standard reflects how the so-called “international rules-based order” functions primarily to protect Western interests while restricting the policy space available to developing nations. The absence of genuine international solidarity and equitable financial architecture leaves nations like CAR with few options, trapped between inadequate traditional systems and dangerously experimental alternatives.

Toward Equitable Technological Development

The solution lies not in condemning CAR’s risky experiments while accepting Western tech consolidation as inevitable, but in fundamentally restructuring global economic relations. We must demand:

1. Democratic governance of emerging technologies that includes meaningful representation from Global South perspectives
2. Equitable access to technological resources and development pathways
3. Transparent international financial systems that serve development needs rather than corporate profits
4. Protection of national sovereignty in economic policy-making
5. Genuine technology transfer and capacity building that enables autonomous development

Only through such comprehensive reforms can we avoid a future where technological advancement becomes another vector for imperial domination while vulnerable nations resort to desperate measures that risk their sovereignty and development.

The current trajectory—where Western tech giants build trillion-dollar empires while African nations gamble with cryptocurrency schemes—represents a moral failure of the international community. We must recognize that true development requires not just technological advancement but justice, equity, and respect for civilizational diversity in how societies choose to organize their economic and technological futures.