Tefesehet Hailu
Researcher, Amani Africa

Solomon Ayele Dersso, PhD
Founding Director, Amani Africa

In an era where the global order resembles less a hierarchical pyramid and more a shifting but rugged playing field, Africa finds itself at a decisive juncture. The growing competition by old and new as well as middle powers for Africa’s support in international affairs and access to its resources continues to shape Africa’s rising visibility in global affairs. This visibility is reflected, among others, in African Union’s admission into the Group of 20 (G20) as a permanent member and the increase in the number of African states in the BRICS. Yet visibility is not the same as influence and influence same as outcome. The central question confronting Africa today is how Africa position itself in a shifting geopolitical landscape to break its historic standing as a marginal player and become an active actor and shaper of the process of the redefinition of the rules and structure of the game for the emerging multipolar world order.

This question lay at the heart of a two-day conference co-convened by Chatham House, Amani Africa, and UNDP, which brought together policymakers, scholars, and practitioners from across the continent to reflect on Africa’s role in a rapidly evolving world order. The discussions were rich in insight, examining how Africa’s agency can be strengthened through coherence, strategic partnerships, and leadership anchored in the values of Pan-Africanism.

A metaphor shared by Gedion Timotheos, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia, in his keynote address in the opening session served as a useful analytical frame that shaped much of the discussion during the conference. Drawing from the world’s most-watched sport, he likened today’s global order to the ‘English Premier League’, unpredictable, competitive, and full of surprise victories. No longer a two-team league of superpowers (as during the Cold War) or a one-club show (the post Cold War unipolar moment), the world is increasingly multipolar, with many players vying for influence. The implication for Africa is clear: it must decide whether to maintain its marginal place or to step confidently onto the field as a united, disciplined, and strategically minded team.

Kicking off the substantive segment of the conference, the panel on Power, Partnerships, and the Global Order, explored the contours of this changing landscape. Participants emphasized that Africa must move from being an arena of competition to a player of consequence. The continent’s demographic vitality, resource wealth, demonstrated self-awareness and historical moral vision position it to be a strategic actor, not merely a passive recipient of global shifts. But agency requires more than awareness, it demands deliberate strategy and coordinated action rooted in principle. The modern reinterpretation of non-alignment and Africa’s role as a moderating and balancing power articulated in the Joint Namibia-Amani Africa High-level Panel of Experts on Africa and the Reform of the Multilateral System emerged as a central idea. The reinterpretation of non-alignment rather than signaling just neutrality or indecision or not taking sides, it represents strategic independence whereby Africa partners with all actors based on its interests.

Pan-Africanism, participants reminded, remains the philosophical compass guiding this endeavor. It is not merely a historical sentiment but a living principle, one that ties Africa’s global engagement to solidarity, justice, and collective progress. In a fragmented world where power often speaks louder than principle, in addition to harnessing its resources for advancing its agency, Africa’s moral voice, anchored in Pan-African ideals, constitutes its most valuable currency.

A second theme that echoed throughout the discussions was the need for coherence between Africa’s national and continental institutions. The discussions underscored a long-standing paradox: while Africa is institutionally rich, it often struggles to harness that abundance into collective strength. Participants observed that Africa’s effectiveness abroad begins with alignment at home. As Hannah Tetteh, Special Representative of the Secretary General and Head of UN Mission in Libya, put it, the first and critical level of alignment is between continental frameworks and policies on the one hand and national level politics and policies.  The other level is the one between the AU and Regional Economic Communities/Mechanisms (RECs/RMs). The challenge here is not the absence of frameworks, but the need for clarity in their division of labour, stronger accountability mechanisms, and above all, political will in delivering jointly, collaboratively and complementarily.

As several speakers put it, Africa’s problem is not a deficit of policy frameworks and institutions, but a deficit of implementation. The continent must transform existing commitments into concrete outcomes, bridging the gap between policy ambition and practice.

Not surprisingly, the other issue that received particular attention was financial autonomy. The conference’s exchanges laid bare a structural paradox: despite its vast resources, Africa’s financial dependency often constrains its political independence. Without self-sustaining financial mechanisms, even the most well-crafted strategies remain vulnerable to external pressures. ‘Africa’s political liberation must now be matched by financial emancipation,’ one speaker noted. This perspective reflects a growing consensus that Africa’s agency begins to systematically weigh in global affairs and materially advance its interests when Africa takes leadership in financing its priorities, leveraging, among others, its vast natural resources endowment, through increasing beneficiation and better terms of trade and pushing for a more just global tax regime.

If financial independence defines the foundation of agency, sustainable development and climate diplomacy represent its forward-looking frontier. Discussions during the session on ‘African Priorities in Sustainable Development, Climate Diplomacy, and Biodiversity’ highlighted Africa’s growing leadership in shaping global environmental governance. Through the two Africa Climate Summits and related initiatives, the continent is articulating a development model that integrates climate action with economic transformation, a ‘climate-conscious growth’ paradigm that links decarbonization with industrialization on the basis of the principle of just transition.

Without being oblivious to the fact that climate change is driven by greenhouse gas emissions for which advanced economies largely bear the responsibility and the attendant burden of responsibility for addressing it, participants also pointed to the crucial role of local and sub-national actors whose initiatives in renewable energy, waste management, and urban sustainability are driving meaningful change from the ground up. Their experiences illustrate how climate governance is most effective when it is both localized and inclusive.

At the global level, the discussions called for a unified African voice in negotiations on critical minerals, carbon markets, and climate finance. As a recent Amani Africa policy brief compellingly argued, a unified negotiation position on critical minerals can be achieved through the establishment of a continental natural resource governance authority. Additionally, Mechanisms such as the African Group of Negotiators and the African Green Mineral Strategy were identified as essential instruments for ensuring that Africa engages with global markets on fair and transparent terms. Equity, community benefit, and transparency in carbon trading were seen as non-negotiable principles if Africa’s green transformation is to be both just and sustainable.

Turning attention to the economic engines that must drive Africa’s transformation, it was indicated that despite mounting challenges, from debt distress to declining aid inflows, Africa’s economic fundamentals remain promising. However, as participants observed, the path forward requires diversification, industrialization, and inclusive growth that empowers youth and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) not merely as beneficiaries but as architects of innovation and resilience.

The conversation also linked peace, governance, and prosperity as inseparable dimensions of Africa’s progress. Economic growth cannot flourish in contexts of instability or exclusion. Sustainable peace and inclusive development are mutually reinforcing, the twin pillars of a resilient Africa. Building on this understanding, the reflection on African-led peace and security initiatives shifted the focus from abstract aspirations to the practical question of how Africa can exercise genuine ownership over its security and governance agenda.

On peace and security, the conversation underscored a necessary shift from reactive peacekeeping to proactive prevention and peacemaking, where conflict is addressed through governance reform, inclusive dialogue, and creative diplomacy rather than militarized responses. Financing emerged as a critical fault line, emphasizing the need for enhanced financial contribution from Africa while recognizing that international peace and security on the African is not a matter to be left to be financed by Africa but is a collective global responsibility that directly implicates the UN which bears primary responsibility for international peace and security, including in Africa. Interestingly, the debate also highlighted that more than resources, what matters most for advancing Africa’s leadership in peace and security is the provision of technical and strategic analytical leadership by the AU and its ability to mobilise a unified position and voice by its member states. It is on these bases that the session called for a recalibration of Africa’s peace and security architecture, anchored in human security, knowledge production, and political courage, to ensure that African leadership defines the continent’s peace agenda to contain the worrying trend of reacting to external designs.

This two-day dialogue (which reaffirmed the importance of African perspectives through collaboration between research organisations in shaping not only Africa’s future but the global order itself) was not an end in itself but a catalyst, a moment to connect ideas with strategy, reflection with resolve. As Amani Africa’s policy brief for the conference showed, the emerging multipolar world presents both opportunities and risks. Yet, this emerging order also offers space for Africa to assert its agency. But this demands coordination and foresight based on, as the policy brief outlined, deliberate and well-thought-out strategy and foreign policy to avoid fragmentation and marginalization.

Across the sessions, a powerful consensus emerged: the era of aspiration and norm development has passed; this is the time of implementation and action. As the Chief of Staff of the AU Commission, Souef Moahmmed El-Amine underscored in his opening address, this is the moment to convert Africa’s visibility into influence and its influence into outcomes that improve lives.

This transition from symbolism to substance depends on Africa’s ability to act in consistent unity grounded in solidarity. When its nations, regions, and institutions work in harmony, Africa’s collective voice resonates more strongly in global forums. But disunity frustrates agency. To borrow again from football metaphor of Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, the question is not whether Africa can play the game. Africa can. It even has shown flashes of brilliance as documented in the policy brief Amani Africa released to accompany this conference. The question is rather whether it can play as a team and consistently. The continent has talented players, from Tunis to Cape Town, Lagos to Nairobi, Addis to Dakar. But as any football fan knows, talent without teamwork wins no championship.

The match of global politics is already underway; the referee will not wait for Africa to warm up. The task now is to train together, strategize together, and play for the same side. That requires coherence in policy, consistency in diplomacy, and commitment to collective action.