Decaying Parts of Africa Need Benign Colonization" in the Los Angeles Times and the International Herald Tribune, which was translated into various languages.
In the article, Mazrui argues that "surely it is time for Africans to exert more pressure on each other, including through benevolent intervention, to achieve a kind of Pax Africana based on regional intervention or unification of smaller states," further stating that some countries may need to be temporarily controlled by others and "submit to trusteeship and even tutelage for awhile," citing the case of Zanzibar's annexation by Tanganyika in 1964.
Mazrui proposed an African Security Council which would "oversee the continent" and coordinate with the United Nations, concluding that "if Africa does not follow this path, the lack of stability and economic growth will push the entire continent further into the desperate margins of global society" and reflecting that "self-colonization if we can manage it, is better than colonization by outsiders.
"[4] Mazrui was accused by Mafeje of being an "unconscious agent of Western racism" who used the terms recolonization and colonization in a manner which was "intellectually bankrupt" and "analytically superficial."
Jaafar Kassem-Ali argues that Mazrui's article was "dreaming of an early Pax Africana" rather than inviting the preceding system of colonization back to Africa.