At the G-7’s three-day summit hosted last weekend by Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in Hiroshima, the assembled leaders discussed a broad range of issues, including the war in Ukraine, growing tensions between China and the West, nuclear nonproliferation, artificial intelligence and sustainable development.
Another major theme of this year’s summit was the stated efforts by the rich, industrialized nations that make up the G-7 to engage with the Global South, amid intensifying geopolitical competition between the West and an adversarial axis led by China and Russia. Leaders from India, Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam were invited to Hiroshima, as was Comorian President Azali Assoumani, who attended in his capacity as the African Union’s rotating chairperson.
But the presence of these leaders from Africa and the rest of the Global South had little impact on the substantive outcomes from this year’s summit, where the concerns of countries outside the group once again took a back seat to an agenda set by the small coterie of rich, mostly Western nations that make up the G-7.
In the aftermath of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, tensions between Kyiv’s Western allies and developing countries in the Global South have grown over what the latter regard as the West’s attempt to force them to take sides in that standoff at the expense of their own interests and priorities. In recent years, the summit has invited representatives from non-Western countries partly in response to criticism that the G-7 is a small, exclusionary and hegemonic association whose importance is shrinking amid a rapidly changing global balance of power.
Recognizing the salience of both issues, Kishida embarked on a mission to court countries in the Global South, of which the 54 African members of the United Nations comprise the single largest bloc, ahead of the summit. During a one-week tour earlier this month, he visited four of them—Egypt, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique—to demonstrate the group’s “greater involvement in the Global South.” In addition, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni added that next year’s summit, set to be held in Italy, will be a gathering “in which the South of the world will be central.”
But if there was a slight improvement in the tone adopted by the G-7 toward the Global South ahead of this year’s summit, it was not matched by a shift in substance. To begin with, the main outcomes of the gathering were a pledge to continue military and economic support for Ukraine “for as long as it takes” and a declaration to take a firm stand against China’s use of “economic coercion” and “interference … aimed at undermining the security and safety of our communities, the integrity of our democratic institutions and our economic prosperity.”
To say the least, neither objective ranks highly on the priority of African policymakers, who must contend with worsening economies battered by global shocks, including the coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the inflationary effects of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes; a climate emergency that is taking a disproportionate toll on African countries; a sharp increase in poverty levels; growing fears of debt distress; and political instability, including fears of a return to military rule in some parts of the continent and the entrenchment of competitive authoritarian systems in others.
At a time when African leaders—as well as citizens—are stepping up criticism of the so-called liberal international order and the inequities embedded in the institutions that uphold it, the activities of last weekend’s summit did not live up to the promise of “engaging with the Global South” and the issues they care about.
It also reflected a dispiriting inability by Western leaders to reckon with the nuances of positions held by people across Africa and the rest of the Global South. Many across the Global South have argued that they have no desire to take sides in the intensifying strategic competition between the U.S. and its European allies on one hand and China and Russia on the other, and prefer to maintain productive relations with as many countries as possible. But Western governments and commentators have typically dismissed those positions—many of them rooted in diplomatic traditions dating back to the Cold War and the decolonization era—as sympathy for Beijing and Moscow, while regularly invoking Chinese loans and Russian propaganda as drivers of that sentiment.
But as many in Africa and elsewhere across the Global South have repeatedly made clear, they altogether reject a binary choice between the West and the East. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s frequent refrain that “the world is bigger than five,” referring to the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, is a crowd-pleaser in Africa and across the Global South. Indeed, the desire by many African countries to pursue good relations with multiple international actors reflects their preference for a multipolar order, or at least one in which they can be part of a multiplicity of voices at the decision-making tables.
Evidently, they do not believe that the current Western-led order can accommodate their preferences and meet their aspirations to grow their economies, develop their societies and strengthen their links to the global community. It remains to be seen how effective the ongoing efforts by China and Russia to “dedollarize” their international trade will be in weakening the preeminence of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. But the renewed enthusiasm for the BRICS grouping—comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—and other alternatives to Western multilateral institutions speak to a genuinely held desire to break out of a U.S.-led Western hegemony that a large segment of the global majority, which is the more accurate way to characterize the Global South, believes does not serve their interests.
That was one important message G-7 leaders failed to internalize during last week’s summit, and it bodes poorly for their stated claims to engage with the Global South and make that engagement produce tangible results.
Civil Society Watch
The annual World Health Assembly opened this week in Geneva, Switzerland. This year’s gathering, scheduled to run from May 21-30, was organized under the theme “WHO at 75: Saving lives, driving health for all,” to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization.
For many African delegates attending this year’s assembly, a major story is the broken trust between African countries and the wealthy, industrialized nations that engaged in “vaccine apartheid” and imposed travel restrictions on eight Southern African countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. “There’s some serious structural, systemic issues of course that have led to this, and as we begin to talk about trust and the erosion of trust, we must, must, must acknowledge those failures of the past,” Ayoade Alakija, the WHO’s special envoy for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, or ACT-A, initiative told Devex in an interview on the health inequities affecting African countries.
Also launched this week was a collaboration between African governments, WHO’s Regional Office for Africa and Amref Health Africa to tackle the health impacts of climate change in Africa. The initiative was inaugurated against the backdrop of increasing climate-linked emergencies in Africa. WHO’s Africa office found that 56 percent of the 2,121 public health events recorded in the region between 2001 and 2021 were climate-related.
Culture Watch
The Venice Biennale, an art and architecture exhibition held every two years in Venice, Italy, opened on May 20. This year’s edition was curated by the Ghanaian-Scottish architect Lesley Lokko and will feature a heavy showcase of underexplored talent from Africa and its diasporas. This year’s theme is titled “Laboratory of the Future” and will feature presentations centered on decarbonization and decolonization.
Exhibitions by a range of African artists—including Congo’s Sammy Baloji, Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye and the award-winning Nigerian-American artist Olalekan Jeyifous—can be viewed at this year’s biennale, which is scheduled to run until Nov. 26.
Chris O. Ògúnmọ́dẹdé is an associate editor with World Politics Review. His coverage of African politics, international relations and security has appeared in War on The Rocks, Mail & Guardian, The Republic, Africa is a Country and other publications. Follow him on Twitter at @Illustrious_Cee.