Africa and the new global order: diversified partnerships and greater leverage
G20 Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, 22-23 November 2025. The African Union was admitted as a permanent member of the G20 in 2023. Photo: UNCTAD Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
As the global order shifts from US dominance towards a more multipolar system, African states are diversifying partnerships and demanding better trade and investment terms to underpin greater industrialization. They are also more assertive in protecting their policy autonomy and intensifying calls for a more just global financial architecture and fairer representation in the UN Security Council. NAI researchers Angela Muvumba Sellström and Patience Mususa unpack African perspectives on the emerging global order.
When almost half of African states failed to support a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some Global North countries saw it as defying the post-World War Two rules-based order, ostensibly designed to prevent future wars and promote liberal democratic values.
But many African leaders saw things differently, explains NAI Senior Researcher Angela Muvumba Sellström, who has extensively researched Africa’s peace and security and the United Nations Security Council.
"I would argue that African leaders don’t believe the rules-based order ever really existed," she says, pointing to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and NATO's intervention in Libya in 2011. "And what we're seeing now is that the blinkers are off. The one government that upheld the illusion [of a rules-based order] the most, is now much more explicitly flouting the so-called rules," she adds.
"Before the US would go to the UN Security Council and push through decisions which kind of hid the hypocrisy in the system. Now they can just go to Venezuela and change the leader, they can talk about invading Cuba – or even Nigeria, claiming Christians are being killed there."
This new “blinkers off” approach was preceded by new challenges to US hegemony as the world moved from a brief post-Cold War period of US dominance to today's multipolar system, she argues. Now a wider range of actors are engaging with African countries, drawn to their natural resources, strategic location, growing youth population and expanding consumer markets.
"Over the post-Cold War era, other powers have emerged like India and Brazil. Russia has also remained powerful and China has become the pre-eminent challenger to American power," says Muvumba Sellström.
Africa on the world stage
The African Union's admission as a permanent member of the G20 in 2023 was widely welcomed across the continent. Yet African leaders have repeatedly stressed that representation alone is not enough. Despite accounting for nearly one-fifth of the world's population, Africa contributes only about three percent of global trade, a disparity many governments on the continent see as reflecting structural inequalities in the international economic system. Through initiatives such as the Nairobi Declaration adopted at the 2023 Africa Climate Summit, African leaders have called for deeper reforms to the global financial architecture, arguing that developing countries continue to face higher borrowing costs, limited influence within international financial institutions and unequal access to development finance.
At the United Nations, African countries have intensified calls for Security Council reform, arguing that the continent remains underrepresented despite accounting for more than a quarter of UN member states and a large share of the council's agenda. The African Union's long-standing Common African Position, known as the Ezulwini Consensus, calls for at least two permanent African seats with full veto powers and five non-permanent seats on a reformed Security Council.
African states have alsop become more effective at advancing common positions within existing institutions. The three African members of the Security Council – often referred to as the A3 – have increasingly coordinated their diplomacy on issues ranging from key conflicts to calling for UN support for African peacekeeping. By speaking with a more unified voice, they have often succeeded in raising African priorities on the international agenda, demonstrating how collective action can strengthen the continent's influence even before broader institutional reforms are achieved.
While the EU remains Africa's largest trading partner, China has expanded its engagement through free trade agreements, education and investment. It also dominates processing of critical minerals – such as cobalt, copper and lithium – essential for electronics, electric vehicles and the green transition. An estimated 30 percent of the world’s reserves are in Africa.
When the United States sought closer minerals cooperation with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2022, Kinshasa negotiated additional commitments, including support for the Lobito Corridor railway network linking the DRC and Zambia through Angola to the Atlantic coast.
Diversified partnerships
Gaining closer cooperation with the USA provided the DRC with leverage to revisit certain mining agreements with Chinese state mining corporations that it was not satisfied with. China responded to the new competition through greater engagement, seeking to bolster ties with the DRC, explains NAI Senior Researcher Patience Mususa, who has a long experience of researching the impacts of natural resource exploitation in Southern Africa.
"You see China elevating its relations to strategic comprehensive partnerships with mineral rich countries such as the DRC and Zambia identify sectors of their economy where they are prioritizing inward investment," she says, adding that the new global order has amplified an existing trend.
"They are telling everyone that they no longer want to export raw ore but to process it at home and add value to domestic products. They want to expand mining and gain revenues to invest in other parts of their economies," she adds, citing Chinese, Indian and South African investments in copper wire and building materials as just two examples among many ranging from infrastructure, to manufacturing and agribusiness.
Diversified security partnerships
African countries are increasingly pursuing more diverse security partnerships, engaging a wider range of external actors rather than relying mainly on traditional Western allies. In the Horn of Africa, Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, alongside Türkiye, have become important partners through military cooperation, mediation, infrastructure projects and investment. This has given governments greater room to manoeuvre and reduced dependence on any single external power. Somalia has cultivated particularly close ties with Türkiye, which has become a major partner in security cooperation, infrastructure development and state-building efforts, while continuing to work closely with Western donors.
Elsewhere on the continent, governments are adopting similar approaches. Kenya cooperates closely with the United States while deepening engagement with Türkiye and Gulf countries in areas ranging from infrastructure to defence. Egypt maintains long-standing military ties with Washington and has also diversified its defence partnerships through arms purchases, military exercises and training cooperation with Russia, reflecting a broader preference for strategic flexibility over alignment with a single bloc.
South Africa offers another illustration of this balancing act. While it has strengthened its role within BRICS, a coalition of major non-Western economies including Brazil, India, China and Russia, and advocated for reform of global governance institutions, it has also maintained extensive trade, investment and diplomatic ties with Europe and the United States.
The Sahel is a partial exception. Following the withdrawal of French and other Western forces, the military-led governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have moved substantially closer to Russia for security support and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), partly in response to tensions with Western partners. Yet even these countries continue to cultivate ties with Türkiye, China and Gulf states, suggesting that strategic flexibility remains important even where security cooperation has become more concentrated.
The DRC and Zambia have gone further than most. They are jointly working to develop a battery industry for electric vehicles and energy storage with support from the African Export-Import Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The initiative has become a prime example of how African governments are using geopolitical competition to indicate a desire to secure investments that support industrialisation rather than simply extraction, explains Mususa.
Together with other Southern African countries, they are also leveraging competition for minerals to mobilise development for transboundary rail infrastructure, as part of Africa’s continental trade integration. Prominent examples include support from the European Union and the United States of America for the Lobito Corridor project and from China for the rehabilitation of the Tanzania –Zambia railway line (TAZARA), which connects Zambia’s Copperbelt region to the Indian Ocean.
"They have adopted a pluralistic approach to investment. They do not want to pick one partner over another but rather to negotiate favourable terms with several that can contribute to broader goals of industrialisation, green transition and electrification – while also creating decent jobs," says Mususa.
More muscular approach
The dramatic aid cuts from USAID, introduced by President Trump’s administration in 2025, alongside reductions by some European donors, have accelerated this trend as well as wider structural changes.
In countries such as Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, governments have been forced to consider how to replace donor-funded health programs while seeking new sources of investment and economic growth.
"Aid cuts put pressure on African governments to deliver basic services and this is translating to new ways of working with international partners," explains Mususa. "Citizens are calling on their governments to take more responsibility and be more muscular regarding access to natural resources so they get better terms and finance for health and other key areas."
That change was exemplified earlier this year when Zambia reportedly rejected a US proposal that would have linked US$ 1.5 billion in US health sector assistance to preferential access to critical minerals. The government insisted that health cooperation and investment agreements should be negotiated separately and on mutually beneficial terms.
For Mususa, the episode illustrates a broader shift.
African governments are becoming more assertive in their dealings with external powers, she argues, seeking investment, technology transfer and industrial development while resisting arrangements they view as undermining their policy autonomy.
TEXT: Tom Sullivan