Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Scholars at Nigeria’s premier institution, the University of Ibadan, were engaged in an intellectual debate considered a watershed moment for African intellectual thought over the legacy of colonialism. On one hand, the Ibadan school of history led by Kenneth Dike and J.F Ade-Ajayi viewed it as a mere episode in the continent’s history. But on the other hand, Peter Eke of the Ibadan School of Politics argued that its impact is epochal. Several decades after this debate, Eke’s description of the postcolonial era as an extension of the colonial situation has been expanded to highlight how social formations, political behavior, and even political thought in Africa, remain intrinsically linked to the colonial experience — or what Eke preferred to call the colonial situation.
Last month, as African leaders arrived in New York to join other global political leaders representing member-states of the United Nations for this year’s General Assembly, they carried on their notes, not only the interest of citizens of the African countries they represent, but also messages that indicate that the continent’s development and socio-political realities are still very different from that of the global North. This reality is exemplified in the pattern of their messages, the nature of their demands, and the tone through which they presented them. This piece seeks to analyze, arguably, the most important of these demands, the establishment of permanent seats for Africa on the Security Council, within the context of the international global order today and examine what it says about the political and economic realities of African countries.
Permanent UN Security Council Seats
A core aspect of the message from African leaders at this year’s general assembly centered around the need for a reform of the UN Security Council to give African countries permanent and additional non-permanent seats. In his speech, Nigerian President, Bola Tinubu, argued that an expansion of the Security Council is necessary, first, to reflect the current state of diversity and plurality globally, and second, to give African countries the respect they deserve in the comity of nations.
The demand for permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council by African countries is not new. In March 2005, at the 7th Extraordinary Session of the African Union’s Executive Council, African countries adopted a common position on the reform of the UN. A major component of this position, popularly known as the Ezulwini consensus, demands that the continent should be adequately represented in the Security Council, the principal decision-making organ of the UN, by having “not less than two permanent seats with all the prerogatives and privileges of permanent membership including the right of veto” and “five non-permanent seats”.
A background necessary to understanding the agitation of African countries is that when the United Nations and its organs were established in 1945, the majority of the continent was still under the imperial hold of colonialism, and when the 1963 reform of the organization happened, the few African countries that had gained independence were still in their formative stage. However, the current state of international affairs, from an African perspective, and even an objective one, is starkly different from what was obtainable back then. More than one out of every four countries in the United Nations today is from Africa and the continent’s population, currently the second-largest in the world, is also expected to account for one out of every four persons globally by 2050. Despite this paradigm shift in terms of Africa’s place, the UN Security Council continues to hold on to a system designed when African countries were largely not independent political entities yet.
In August, amid rising chatter on the need for a shift in the current structure because of its outdated nature, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres acknowledged the flawed setting of the Security Council and why it must be reformed to accommodate representatives of African countries. However, the most critical development regarding the ongoing demand for reform on the issue came from the United States two weeks before the general assembly in New York. The United States, one of five permanent members of the security council, announced that it’s throwing its weight behind the call for permanent seats for African countries. Ideally, an announcement like this should move the needle because permanent members of the council must agree for the reform to come into effect. But there was a clause. The support of the United States is contingent on the proposal that the new permanent seats do not include a veto power.
Fundamentally, the consensus among African countries is that the veto power at the Security Council should be abolished because of its imbalanced nature and its tendency to undermine the effectiveness of the organization. However, Washington’s proposal is problematic because, without the veto power, the most critical voting right in the council, a permanent seat in any African country will be equivalent to a permanent observer membership. This explains why in the Ezulwini convention, African countries maintained that even though, in principle, they are against the veto power, so long as it exists, it should be made available to all permanent members of the Security Council, including representatives of the continent when they join.
Considering the fact that currently, almost 60 percent of the agenda of the Security Council is allocated to issues directly relating to Africa, the absence of an African country as a permanent member already goes against the fundamental principles of equal representation in the international order, but Washington’s proposed solution, which seeks to officialize a flawed notion which implicitly considers Africans as second-class citizens in international affairs, is even more concerning. So it logically follows that African leaders were vocal in their call for a reform of the Security Council at this year’s General Assembly. Aside from Tinubu, who was represented by his Vice Kashim Shettima, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, and Kenya’s Williams Ruto, were all clear in their demand that the current structure is outdated and must be redesigned to reflect the current realities of the global order.
A Pact for the Future
At the end of this year’s General Assembly, on September 22, Member States of the United Nations adopted a new resolution for global affairs. Titled Pact for the Future, the agreement is the end result of negotiations between countries globally spanning several months, including new areas that consensus has been impossible to reach over the past few decades. At the core of the new pact, a statement by the UN indicates, is a commitment to create a new order in global affairs that reflects today’s realities, especially in terms of the structure of international institutions.
In the adopted resolution, Member States of the United Nations, in reaction to the rising demand for equal representation by African countries and the need for an increased effectiveness of the institution, committed to a reform of the Security Council in a fashion like never before, one that the organization has described as “the most progressive and concrete commitment to Security Council reform since the 1960s.”
Specifically, according to Article 39 of the pact, the UN made a commitment to address the historical injustice against African countries that continues to fuel their underrepresentation alongside the Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean. Member States also resolved to enlarge the Security Council to a new version that reflects current global realities, especially for developing countries. In the same section, as part of other resolutions to reshape the Security Council and its level of effectiveness, the UN resolved to continue to engage in conversations about the future of veto power on the council and how it is implemented, including the limitations of its scope.
A long way to go
The resolution of the Pact for the future is a good starting point in the search for permanent seats in the UN Security Council by African countries, but the actualization of that goal is almost as far away as ever before. This hard reality is because for a reform of this magnitude to come to effect, it requires approval by all five members of the Security Council – the US, UK, China, Russia, and France – and two-thirds of the General Assembly. The biggest hurdle here is the approval by members of the Security Council who currently hold the veto power and consider its expansion as a dilution of their exclusive influence over the direction of the United Nations, and by extension, global issues.
Closely linked to this is that there are specific considerations for these countries that make the idea of such expansion uncomfortable for them. In fact, the conditional announcement by the US to support permanent seats without veto power for Africa is the most significant shift any of these countries have made on the issue. Aside from the damning implication of this proposal which makes it unacceptable for African leaders, the extent to which Washington even wants that unacceptable change to happen in reality is sketchy. For example, the US also made a similar announcement backing the extension of permanent membership to India, Germany, Japan, and another country representing Latin America and the Caribbean.
The timing of Washington’s announcement is also key to understanding these dynamics. Currently, the US is locked in a battle for influence in Africa with China and Russia. While China has continued to make strategic economic and political inroads that has made it Africa’s biggest trade partner, Russia’s security influence on the continent has been on the rise and its popularity in Africa has increased by 8 percent in the past year. Within this context, it’s not out of place to consider Washington’s support as lip-service to improving its image on the continent, especially since China and Russia, in spite of their ‘global south’ posturing with African countries, have never shifted the needle on the issue.
Another key consideration for African countries is the fundamental question of who the occupants of the seat on behalf of the continent will be. While some have championed the idea that the AU itself should take one of such seats, this is problematic because at best, it’s still an intergovernmental body that lacks any supranational authority. The big names on the continent – South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, among others – have all been touted as possible representatives. But the truth is that none of these countries can lay a full claim to the level of immense influence that objectively puts them above others on the continent. Nevertheless, the question of who occupies the seat on behalf of Africa is a relatively less cumbersome one than that of how African countries will convince current permanent members of the council to spread their veto power across the world.
Conclusion
The ongoing efforts by African countries to ensure their representation on the apex body of the United Nations which was a major talking point for many African leaders is commendable, the road to securing this representation remains deeply intertwined with the dynamics of the relationship between global powers. What this shows is that African countries must make deliberate investment in their own regional organizations – AU, ECOWAS, etc – to increase their own agency and capacity to influence their economic, security, and political realities locally and internationally.