When economic pressure becomes political coercion, the issue is no longer ideology — it is principle.
I have admired the Cuban Revolution for as long as I have studied the history of liberation movements. Not because it was perfect. Not because its leaders were beyond criticism. But because in a world shaped by empire, a small island ninety miles from the United States dared to insist on dignity.
Today, as Cuba faces intensified fuel shortages that strain its energy infrastructure and daily life, much of the Western press reduces the crisis to a morality tale about “failed socialism.” Rarely mentioned is that sanctions and economic pressure have been tightened once again as fuel suppliers are threatened, shipping companies intimidated, and insurers warned that trading with Cuba could mean exclusion from the U.S. market. This tightening includes threatened tariffs on any country that supplies oil to Cuba in an effort to choke off energy imports that are vital to the island’s economy.
The U.S. military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, a critical oil supplier to Cuba, was basically a de facto kidnapping designed to sever Havana’s lifeline and seize Caracas’s crude resources. Trump himself declared that no more Venezuelan oil or money will go to Cuba, urging the Cuban government to “make a deal ... before it is too late.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has explicitly warned Cuban leaders that “they’re in a lot of trouble” following Venezuela’s political upheaval, linking Havana directly to Caracas’s political and security apparatus and signaling that Cuba may be next in Washington’s crosshairs.
A Shared History of Solidarity
Cuba’s struggle has never felt distant to Africa. We share more than diplomatic ties — we share blood, sacrifice, and memory. When liberation movements across Southern Africa fought colonial domination and apartheid, Cuba did not merely issue statements. It sent people. More than 300,000 Cubans served in Africa. Thousands never returned home. In Angola and Namibia, and in the broader struggle that helped dismantle apartheid, Cuban internationalists stood beside Africans at a time when powerful Western governments supported the very regimes oppressing us. That is not propaganda. That is history.
Today, Cuban doctors continue to serve across Africa, often in remote areas few others will go. In The Gambia, their contribution is deeply felt. At Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital in Banjul and in regional facilities from Farafenni to Basse, Cuban doctors have performed life-saving surgeries, staffed overstretched wards, and mentored young Gambian physicians in critical specialties.
For many Gambians, Cuba is not a geopolitical debate. It is the doctor who treated a child, stabilized an accident victim, or worked tirelessly in a provincial hospital where specialist care is scarce. During the Ebola outbreak, Cuba deployed one of the largest medical contingents to West Africa. During COVID-19, Cuban medical brigades crossed borders while wealthier nations hoarded vaccines and protective equipment.
The Precedent That Should Concern Africa
The blockade against Cuba remains the longest-running unilateral sanctions regime in modern history. For decades, the United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to condemn it. For decades, those votes have been ignored. If near-universal global consensus cannot protect a small island nation from economic strangulation, what protection exists for African states that step outside preferred geopolitical lines?
We have seen similar tools used elsewhere: sanctions, financial restrictions, extraterritorial pressure on banks and companies. We understand what it means when financial infrastructure becomes leverage. The mechanism is straightforward: threaten companies, insurers, and banks. Make trade too risky. Create scarcity. Amplify internal pressure. Then label the resulting hardship “policy failure.” For African policymakers, this is not about ideology. It is about precedent.
Sovereignty Is Not Selective
I do not romanticize hardship. Cuba faces real internal challenges, as every nation does, including my own. But there is a difference between internal reform and external strangulation.
The principle at stake is simple: does a nation have the right to choose its development path without being economically suffocated into submission? Africa’s history should make us sensitive to this question. Colonialism dictated our economic structures. Post-independence debt shaped our fiscal policies. Structural adjustment reshaped our states. We are still reclaiming full economic sovereignty.
Cuba’s example matters not because Africa must copy it, but because its persistence under pressure demonstrates that alternative paths, even difficult ones, are possible. If deviation is punished so severely that no country dares to experiment, then sovereignty becomes decorative rather than real.
Multipolarity Must Mean Something
Africa seeks diversified partnerships — engaging East and West, North and South — out of strategic calculation. A multipolar world offers options. Options increase leverage. Leverage increases dignity. But multipolarity must mean respect for independent policy choices. When economic warfare is normalized against one Global South nation, it weakens all of us. It reinforces a system where financial power overrides international law and domestic political calculations in powerful countries can devastate entire populations abroad. Standing with Cuba is, ultimately, about resisting that normalization.
The Choice Before Africa
Africa must decide whether sovereignty is divisible, granted to the powerful and conditional for the weak or universal. If we defend Cuba’s right to choose its path, we defend our own. If we accept economic warfare as legitimate policy, we legitimize the same tools being used against us tomorrow.
The question now is whether Africa understands that standing with Cuba is not charity, not nostalgia, not ideology — but an affirmation that small nations have the right to stand upright in a world that too often demands they bend.
As Fidel Castro once reminded the world about Cuba’s duty to others: “When we were helping revolutionaries… They told us they would lift the blockade if we stopped helping Angola and other African countries. It never crossed our minds to negotiate our principles.”
¡Hasta la victoria siempre! Ever onward to victory!
