Neo-Colonial Architecture: A Unified Framework for Measuring Economic Sovereignty Loss in Post-Independence Africa

African states have been formally independent for over six decades, yet structural conditions of economic dependency-rooted in colonial-era extraction architecture-persist across the continent. Existing scholarship treats debt dependency, monetary control, foreign military presence, trade structure, and cultural capital as separate phenomena, studied in isolation by distinct disciplinary traditions. This research proposes a unified analytical framework: the Economic Sovereignty Index (ESI), a composite quantitative measure capturing the degree to which post-independence African states retain meaningful control over their own economic futures. Constructed from six empirically measurable dimensions and applied across all 54 African states from independence to 2024, the ESI will constitute the first comprehensive longitudinal measure of economic sovereignty on the continent. The study will test whether low ESI scores correlate with stunted industrialization, higher coup incidence, capital flight, and persistent poverty-thereby establishing that what is conventionally described as 'African underdevelopment' is structurally produced, not intrinsic. Policy implications target debt architecture reform, monetary sovereignty restoration, and the conditions necessary for genuine African economic independence.