Africa's demand for U.N. Security Council reform needs a sharper focus
The inordinate attention paid to the U.N. Security Council at the expense of African regional and continental organizations like the AU and ECOWAS is misguided
African preoccupation with joining the ranks of exclusive, Western-dominated clubs like the United Nations Security Council and the G-20 while regional and continental organizations like the African Union (AU), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), East African Community (EAC), Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa that are more consequential to the continent's present and future fritter away is a case of putting the cart before the horse. It is also irresponsible at a time when the continent’s multilateral institutions are gripped by major challenges to their stated mission of regional economic integration, collective self-reliance and consolidating historical affinities and links among the people of their regions.
For instance, the coup-afflicted ECOWAS is faced with the biggest jolt to its existence since the breakout of civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. The EAC, which recently added the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia to its ranks, is beset by mistrust, trade disputes and the questionable commitment of some of its members to the ideals of regional integration. As for the AU, its ability to play a consequential role on key issues affecting its members continues to be in doubt and many African citizens view it as little more than a club of dictators.
African demands for permanent membership of the Security Council and other global institutions on the principles of equity and inclusion are well-founded, but an African presence in these global clubs will not bring about a fairer international order if the continent does not resolve the many quagmires that handicap the effectiveness of the continent’s institutional architecture in advancing the objectives of the AU’s Agenda 2063.
The road to UNGA79 was paved with not-so-good intentions
UNGA79, the high-level week of the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that was held last week, has come and gone. The inaugural Summit of the Future, a two-day event created to forge a new global consensus needed to tackle contemporary challenges and pursue a fairer world, concluded with the adoption of a Pact for the Future. The document included two separate annexes, a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations.
The theme of this year’s General Debate was “Leaving no one behind: acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human dignity for present and future generations.” The convoluted U.N. bureaucratese aside, the sentiment resonated with world leaders and other delegates who trooped into New York for the week’s deliberations. To that end, demands for reform of the U.N. system and a more modern, inclusive multilateral system formed a major part of the week’s agenda.
For the U.N.’s African members, the buildup to this year’s high-level week took an unexpected turn when, roughly two weeks before the beginning of the General Debate, the United States announced that it would support the creation of two permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council for Africa. African demands for an overhaul of the post-World War II international order have existed since at least the 1950s and have gotten more frequent and louder in recent years amid economic, geopolitical and demographic shifts on the continent and across the globe.
On the face of it, Washington’s proposal would back the most significant change to the Security Council since the People’s Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1971. It would also seemingly accede to a key African position on reform of the U.N., in which the continent would get at least two permanent seats on the Security Council together with all the benefits that come with it. That’s where things got interesting. The United States’ announcement was accompanied by a major caveat: Its support for two “African” seats would not extend to the all-important veto, the fulcrum of the Security Council’s permanent membership.
Washington’s proposal, announced in a speech by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., landed in continental capitals with a big, screeching thud. Few governments responded on the record to it, but their icy silence following Washington’s proposed resolution to an issue they care deeply about spoke volumes. Unless I missed it, the AU, whose stance on Security Council reform was adopted in 2005 as the common position of its members, did not issue an official statement either.
Privately, many African government officials regarded Washington's position as insulting and expressed disapprobation of it. In public, however, they diplomatically sidestepped the proposal and many African leaders who attended the UNGA79 high-level debate reiterated the terms of the AU’s Ezulwini Consensus, which calls for “not less than two permanent seats with all the prerogatives and privileges of permanent membership including the right of veto” in addition to five non-permanent seats.
Africans were right to push back against the United States’ proposal given that it was disingenuous, cynical and unacceptable, if predictable and deliberate. As stated by Professor Tim Murithi in an excellently argued column, Washington’s “offer” seemed almost like a way to bait its African interlocutors into an indignance that it could then dismiss as recalcitrant and irrational. Biden administration officials must have known what the AU’s position on Security Council reform is, and why the bloc and its members adopted it. If they didn’t, that reflects one of the many weaknesses of their policy toward the continent and the blind spots of their engagement with a part of the world they claim is important to the United States. If they did, then this would suggest that their claims to desire a “reset” of relations with African countries and vow to make the “liberal international order” more inclusive were not sincere. It is debatable which is worse, but what is surely the case is that Washington’s insistence on preserving a long-outdated status quo would further undermine its credibility as an African partner at a time when it is growing nervous about what it believes is the growing influence of its rivals and other global actors on the continent.
Africa needs more than ‘representation’ on the U.N. Security Council
The Security Council is dominated by its five permanent members—the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom—whose veto powers allow them to block any resolution for whatever reason, usually from the prism of their national interests. When the U.N. was formed from the ash heap of World War II, much of the globe including Africa was under colonial rule. Today, African nation-states are nominally independent members of the U.N. and they form the single largest geographic bloc—54 of its 193 member states, or approximately 28%—in the body.
African contributions to the U.N. and to multilateralism more broadly are grossly underappreciated relative to their extensive history. The continent has been at the forefront of many of the organization’s seminal milestones and spurred many significant changes, including the expansion of the Security Council and the anti-apartheid crusade. Africa has produced two U.N. secretaries-general and four of the top 10 contributors to peacekeepers as of June 2024 were African countries. When the U.N. turns 100 in 2045, it has been projected that Africa will make up a quarter of the globe’s population.
The premise behind Africa’s demand for reform of the Security Council, thus, can be best summed up with the words of Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio, who said in August that “… The current structure of the Security Council reflects an outdated world order, an era that fails to recognize Africa's growing importance and contributions.” Others have argued that because African issues are said to take up anywhere between 50 to 60% of the Security Council’s daily agenda, it is only right that the continent have permanent membership of it.
These arguments are compelling, straightforward and technically accurate, but they suffer from shortcomings of their own. Far too often, the discourse around African demands for the reform of global multilateral institutions centers on questions of inclusion, representation and equity in global affairs. There’s nothing inherently objectionable about those concepts, but they are the right answer to the wrong question. They are the intellectual offspring of the “decolonize” zeitgeist that in recent years has engulfed Western academia, non-profits and donor organizations, one that prioritizes the form of including “subalterns” in the operating procedure of imperial structures over the substance of eradicating—or at least reducing—imbalances that perpetuate the hierarchies of power and wealth embedded within them.
Put another way, inclusion, representation and equity are a necessary but insufficient condition of resolving the question of why the Security Council in its current iteration has failed to effectively address Africa’s peace, security and governance challenges.
For the Security Council to work for Africa, its regional and continental institutions must step up to the plate
Across the continent, the tendency to ascribe elevated status to all things foreign—particularly Western—and grant preferential treatment to them at the expense of those on the home front has a rich history.
African governments grant waivers, tax holidays and other incentives to “foreign investors” while crippling local businesses and entrepreneurs through poor policymaking and predatory enforcement. Many young African professionals yearn to work for multinational corporations, international NGOs and multilateral organizations given the scarcity of good, well-paying private sector jobs in their country. It is common for many, particularly those who occupy the higher rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, to eschew the consumption of local African media and entertainment in favor of foreign ones on the premise that they are “better” and more worthwhile.
There is an entire book to be written about African football federations hiring underqualified European coaches while failing to develop and empower homegrown ones. From consumer brands to universities, many Africans believe that foreign always means better or more important. In that vein, the uneven attention paid by African governments to international organizations like the U.N. and G-20 at the expense of African ones is part of a pattern that applies to many issues of differing degrees of consequence.
Earlier this year, I attended an African regional dialogue organized to recommend ways to improve the performance of global institutions like the U.N. as well as Africa’s regional bodies like ECOWAS ahead of last week’s Summit of the Future. One of the key points that I emphasized during our discussions was the disconnect between the youthful population in West Africa — and the continent at large — that increasingly views the world around it in horizontal terms and vertical, stuffy and out-of-touch institutions like ECOWAS, the AU and U.N. that continue to apply methods crafted for the 20th century to address challenges of the 21st century.
As someone whose work and professional expertise focuses on the West Africa region, it has long been apparent to me, for instance, that the legitimacy problems ECOWAS now faces within the region stem from its failure to enforce the norms and principles it claims to believe in. Thus, the conclusion by young, disaffected people in the region that the union is accountable not to them but to government leaders explains its unpopularity among many West African youths.
Furthermore, I argued at the dialogue that a failure to make Africa’s regional and continental institutions effective at home would not bode well for the continent’s engagement with the U.N. — including its demands for more inclusion and representation there — for the simple reason that charity begins at home. If ECOWAS, the EAC and AU struggle to be coherent and are failing to resolve challenges closer to home, then Africa would not fare better with advancing its agenda on a Security Council filled with wealthier, more powerful members and whose portfolio is much broader.
Despite the predominance of African issues on the Security Council’s agenda, the failure to strengthen the capacity of the AU and the continent’s regional organizations will hinder Africa’s effectiveness on it. Given the institutional links that exist between the U.N. and African organizations as well as the spillover effect from their close interaction, it is fundamental that they are empowered if Africa’s presence on the Security Council is to contribute toward safeguarding the continent’s interests.
Thinking strategically about Africa's place on the Security Council
Longtime readers of my work know that I am a skeptic of many of the arguments that underline African demands for reform of the Security Council. In one such writing from two years ago, I contended that it was not clear how “African” seats on the Security Council would inherently bring about an improvement on the shortcomings of the 79 years of its existence.
Events that have transpired since I published the piece—most notably in Sudan, where anywhere between 20,000 and 150,000 have been killed in the 18-month war there—have only raised more questions in my mind about the claim that permanent African representation on the Security Council would necessarily equal better handling of its Africa workload.
What would two permanent, veto-wielding African members of the Security Council have done differently to preserve the lives of the dead in Sudan, to say nothing of those in Ethiopia, Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Mozambique, Somalia and the many other conflict hotspots around the continent? How would granting veto powers to permanent African members of the Security Council pull it out of the gridlock and geopolitical rivalry that has crippled its effectiveness in recent years?
In addition, which countries would occupy the “African” seats and for how long? What would the process that would determine the occupant look like? To resolve some of these dilemmas, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has suggested that the AU occupy one of Africa’s two permanent seats on the Security Council. But that would not eliminate the rivalries among the AU’s members that regularly spill over into global forums. Naturally, the likes of Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya believe that the responsibility to be “Africa’s voice” should fall on their shoulders. However, population and economic might doesn’t inherently equal legitimacy.
Moreover, Nigeria wants its own presence on the Security Council, would that affect the AU’s longstanding demand for two African seats? Can Africa’s giants, beleaguered by domestic challenges and known for their proclivity for pursuing provincial agendas and—in the case of Kenya—undercutting regional and continental common positions, truly be effective advocates for Africa and live up to the leadership label they claim for themselves?
The permanent members of the Security Council are net contributors of official development assistance who fund a significant portion of the U.N. peacekeeping budget. How would Africa—which consists mostly of aid beneficiaries—step up to the financial and geopolitical responsibilities that come with permanent membership of the Security Council?
Invariably, some struggle to think outside the U.N.’s box and conceptualize a world where it is not the alpha and omega of international politics. Many African scholars, diplomats, government officials and civil society personalities frequently justify their calls for Africa’s permanent presence on the Security Council with the aphorism which states that if you are not at the table, you’re on the menu. The U.N., they argue, is far too important for Africa not to be part of its deliberations and the continent’s growing significance dictates that it should be a member with full privileges of the U.N.’s most powerful organ.
The flaw in this argument isn’t that it is wrong but that it fails to reckon with the U.N.’s historical and contemporary failings that have hindered its ability to play a role in resolving the challenges African states face. The more intellectually honest of these folks might sometimes concede that the U.N. has many deficiencies that hamper its credibility but even so, they circumvent lingering questions many on the African continent have about the organization’s legitimacy by pointing to longstanding African membership of the U.N. and the dominance of the great powers on the Security Council as an obstacle to its effectiveness.
In advocating for an African presence on the Security Council despite its shortcomings, some others allude to a quote commonly attributed to former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld stating that the U.N. was not created to take mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell. Thus, they insist, Africa should bring about reform of the Security Council from within by securing a permanent presence there and using it as a bully pulpit to reshape the global order into a more equitable one.
These arguments contain a sleight of hand that weakens their authority. If the importance of the U.N is such that it is the most essential platform for Africa’s global engagement, then it must be able to deliver meaningful solutions to the continent’s biggest challenges far more than it has. By the same token, if Africans must temper their expectations of the U.N. because of the power politics that plague the Security Council, then perhaps its indispensability has been overstated. If five veto-wielding members of a 15-member club can cripple its agenda, it suggests that other alternative settings that might be better equipped to tackle some of the important issues of our time should be considered.
This is not to diminish the preeminence of the U.N. nor is it a call to “abolish” or withdraw from the organization—although support for pulling out of the U.N. has long existed among parts of the U.S. public despite the United States being one of its founding members—but to recognize the tendency by many Africans to overemphasize the U.N.’s importance and capabilities especially at the expense of African regional and continental institutions as well as other international forums that are just as—if not more—consequential for their affairs.
Africa at a crossroads
The continent's institutional architecture stands at a crucial junction in history.
The African Continental Free Trade Area, said to be the largest free-trade area in the world, entered into force five years ago. The process to select the next set of senior leaders of the AU Commission is underway, and the winning candidates will take office in February 2025. In May, ECOWAS will commemorate the 50th year of its existence as a regional bloc. The African Development Bank, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, will also appoint a new president next year when the incumbent, Nigeria’s Akinwumi Adesina, steps down after serving two five-year terms.
Amid a changing geopolitical context, Africa’s demographics and the rush for “critical minerals” that will shape the future of energy, climate and economics, the continent’s significance in international affairs will continue to sprout. For Africa to efficiently leverage its global importance in order to meet the objectives of the AU’s Agenda 2063, its regional and continental organizations must be able to work with the continent’s governments to safeguard Africa’s collective interests.
Whatever the merit of two African seats on the Security Council, it is unlikely to positively improve the continent’s engagement with the U.N. if the organizations tasked with facilitating African regional integration and shepherding its people toward self-sustainability lack the credibility needed to enhance the continent’s global posture. The U.N. and other global forums are undoubtedly important and have a role to play in Africa's aspiration toward peace, security and prosperity but not more than the continent's own institutions. For that reason, the undue attention paid to global bodies like the Security Council at the expense of the AU, ECOWAS and other African organizations must be recalibrated if the continent desires for the global to positively impact the local.