Africa has moved from guest to member in some of the world’s most consequential forums. The African Union’s admission as a permanent member of the G20 in New Delhi in September 2023 was a formal acknowledgement that the global system cannot credibly be re-imagined without the continent’s voice and agency.
That step, long sought by African leaders, signalled a structural shift: the G20’s agenda on debt, climate, trade and development now includes, by design, a continental interlocutor representing more than fifty countries and a population that will account for roughly a quarter of humanity by 2050. The symbolism matters, but the task ahead is practical, re-tooling multilateralism so Africa is a co-author of the rules, not a rule-taker.
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The global community has admitted, in unusually frank language, that current arrangements are lagging behind the problems they were built to solve. In September 2024, world leaders adopted the United Nations’ Pact for the Future, with annexes on a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations. The document calls for a step-change in financing for development, reforms to global governance, and sharper delivery on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 2024 UN SDG Report underscores the urgency: only about 16–17 per cent of targets are on track, with progress stagnant since 2020 and reversals on some goals. The implication is clear, Africa’s development and the world’s credibility rise or fall together.
UN population estimates show a continental population heading towards one in four people on Earth by mid-century, with a median age dramatically younger than other regions. That demographic dividend will only be paid out if matched by investment, jobs and competitiveness. The IMF expects growth in sub-Saharan Africa to firm through 2025 despite financing pressures and external shocks, but the region’s share of global GDP remains modest. Transforming scale into influence requires improving productivity, deepening regional trade, and securing affordable capital at terms that match the continent’s infrastructure and industrial ambitions.
A Market Taking Shape Behind the Border
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the most important single lever for the continent’s bargaining power because it builds scale at home. As of 2025, ratifications have neared universality among AU members, and governments are moving from signatures to shipments through tariff schedules, rules of origin and pilot trade under the Guided Trade Initiative.
Intra-African trade still hovers near the mid-teens as a share of Africa’s total, far below Europe or Asia, but the policy plumbing is being connected. When executed fully, AfCFTA can convert 55 fragmented markets into a platform that attracts supply chains, reduces tariff and non-tariff barriers, and strengthens Africa’s hand in rewriting trade rules that have often stranded value offshore.
Trade Rules at the Hinge
The world trade rulebook is being re-opened. At the WTO’s Thirteenth Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi in 2024, members renewed a commitment to restore a “fully and well-functioning” dispute settlement system and extended the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions.
The package fell short of transformational reform, but the door remains ajar. Africa’s opportunity is to press for a system that is faster for small economies, clearer on special and differential treatment, and more honest about the developmental impact of security-related trade measures.
That means African capitals coordinating their positions through the AU and AfCFTA institutions, tabling text, not just principles and insisting on timelines that turn “reform by doing” into reform accomplished.
Energy Transitions
The energy transition is global, but the investment map is lopsided. The International Energy Agency estimated in 2024 that clean energy investment would top two trillion dollars that year, yet only a sliver reaches Africa even as nearly six hundred million Africans live without electricity access. New initiatives, most notably the African Development Bank and World Bank’s plan to connect 300 million Africans by 2030 aim to close the gap, blending public finance with private capital and country-led reforms. Progress will depend on de-risking utility balance sheets, first-loss capital at scale, regulatory stability, and the bankability of mini-grids and distributed generation in places where the main grid will not arrive soon.
Minerals of the Future, Value of the Present
Africa’s critical minerals are central to green supply chains. In 2024, the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for an estimated three-quarters of global mined cobalt; South Africa and Gabon are mainstays of manganese; and the continent holds significant reserves of platinum group metals, graphite and rare earth prospects. Prices and geopolitics are volatile, cobalt, for instance, has swung lower on oversupply, yet the structural demand from electrification and storage remains persuasive. The strategic question for African policymakers is not extraction alone but local value addition: refining, precursor materials, environmental and labour standards, and the regional infrastructure that makes industrial clusters competitive and conflict-free.
Climate Finance: From Pledges to Production
The Paris Agreement set the stage, but Africa has demanded delivery. The Loss and Damage Fund was operationalised after COP28 with initial pledges totalling roughly seven hundred million dollars, symbolic progress against needs that run to the tens of billions annually. The Bridgetown agenda, championed by Small Island and African leaders, sharpened the case for concessional climate finance, counter-cyclical instruments, and multilateral development bank balance-sheet reform. The World Bank’s “evolution” reforms and subsequent decisions are designed to stretch capital and crowd in private investment; the test will be whether African green and resilient projects move from PowerPoint to procurement at the speed that climate realities demand.
Money That Arrives When Others Do Not
Remittances remain a quiet macro-stabiliser for many African economies, supporting consumption, investment and external balances. World Bank estimates show remittance inflows to sub-Saharan Africa at about fifty-four billion dollars in 2023, with modest growth projected for 2024. The average cost of sending two hundred dollars globally was still above six per cent in early 2024, with sub-Saharan corridors among the most expensive, well above the SDG target of three per cent. Reducing costs and improving competition, especially through digital channels with fair foreign-exchange margins, would put more money directly into African households while improving financial inclusion.
The Hinge Institutions: IMF, World Bank and the Regional System
Representation and resources are the two rails of reform. The IMF quota increase of late 2023 boosted the Fund’s capacity but did little to rebalance voting power; the next review is the venue to push that change. At the World Bank, measures under the Evolution Roadmap have aimed to unlock tens of billions in additional lending headroom over the decade through balance-sheet optimisation and guarantees, while donor agreements in 2025 committed to strengthening concessional windows for the poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries. African voices should stay tightly coordinated on three asks: more concessionality for climate and adaptation, new instruments that reduce the all-in cost of capital, and governance reforms that align representation with twenty-first-century realities.
A Continental Strategy for a Changing Internet
The digital domain has moved from a side-issue to a centrepiece of governance debates. The Global Digital Compact, annexed to the Pact for the Future, sets expectations on connectivity, data, AI, and platform governance. Africa’s strategy should link that global text to domestic policy—spectrum management for affordable broadband, data protection regimes that enable trusted cross-border data flows, and AI adoption tailored to local languages and public-service needs. The AU’s collective position can translate continental market size into bargaining power with technology firms and standard-setting bodies.
The Global Reform Framework
The structural reference points for Africa’s reform leadership are now well-defined. The 2030 Agenda and SDGs remain the north star, even as delivery lags. The Pact for the Future (September 2024) articulates near-term commitments across financing for development, digital governance and institutional renewal, including its Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations. The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in 2025 produced the Seville Commitment to scale public and private finance and strengthen debt architecture, an anchor for revisiting tax cooperation, ODA targets and capital mobilisation. The Paris Agreement frames climate obligations, with the Loss and Damage Fund finally operational, and with a continuing push to raise the new climate-finance goal beyond the earlier hundred-billion-dollar benchmark.
At the WTO, the MC13 decisions lay out a path to restore binding dispute settlement and modernise rules that better reflect development needs. At the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF’s Sixteenth Quota Review and the World Bank’s evolution reforms are the platforms on which Africa is pressing for fairer representation and more affordable capital. Finally, within the continent, Agenda 2063 and the AfCFTA provide the policy spine for industrialisation, trade integration and jobs. Together, these texts are not just background reading; they are a workable blueprint for African negotiators to translate political aspiration into contractual obligation.
A Closing Thought, With Eyes on the Clock
History rarely offers long windows. With the AU now inside the G20, a UN pact that expressly invites reform, a trade system tentatively reopening, and energy and digital revolutions that reward agility, Africa has both the legitimacy and the leverage to lead. The hard work is administrative rather than rhetorical: filing text, landing deals, and commissioning projects. If the continent does those things in concert, regionally integrated at home, strategically confident abroad, Africa will not merely have a seat at the table. It will help set the agenda.
