SANDY AFRICA: Huge role for Africa amid greatest need yet for nuclear disarmament

As the world marked the 80th anniversary of the founding of the UN, one of the most gloomy challenges in international security — the ever-present risk of nuclear conflict — cast one of many clouds. With so many armed conflicts raging and unfolding, it is easy, sitting relatively far away from the theatres of war, to dismiss nuclear war as unlikely. But the need for serious commitments by those who possess nuclear weapons to radically reduce the chance of these tools of war ever being used has never been greater.

The threat of using nuclear weapons in interstate conflicts is assuming a prominence that the international community has worked hard to reduce. In the course of its war with Ukraine, senior Russian officials have — perhaps rhetorically — threatened to use nuclear weapons. US President Donald Trump recently — probably also in rhetorical mode — has ordered the movement of nuclear submarines in response to these veiled nuclear threats. The UK and France are considering expanding their capabilities, and public sentiment about entering the nuclear arms race is shifting in countries where there had been no such appetite before.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (framing talks between Russia and the US) is set to expire in February 2026, and Russia has agreed to extend the treaty by a year, but only if the US does the same. Russia recently withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The US also withdrew in 2019, rendering defunct this agreement that had been signed by the two countries in 1987. There are suspicions that some nuclear-weapon states are conducting low-yield tests, despite the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, which has yet to enter into force. North Korea, which is not a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), has tested weapons to signal that it has these capabilities and use its status as leverage. The June 2025 bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by the US appeared to show that the attack had dented Iran’s faith in the NPT, to which it has been a signatory since 1968. When Iran held talks with France, the UK and Germany to find a diplomatic way forward, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief, but the imposition of snapback sanctions on Iran creates an atmosphere of uncertainty over the future once again.

The threat of weapons of mass destruction has loomed large over the Global South for decades. The Cold War period saw these territories, under the weight of colonialism and apartheid, being used as nuclear test sites, as well as sites of competition for the mineral resources that fuelled the nuclear arms race. Moreover, the world has painful memories of the devastating impact of nuclear weapons, used only in the context of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with catastrophic results for the people. But it also has memories of, and is still living with, the effects of nuclear tests and the exposure to radiation in the Pacific region, in the Sahara, and in other places worldwide. According to a 2025 article in the journal Science Advances, radioactive dust particles from the Cold War period, most likely emanating from nuclear weapons testing in North Africa, were found to be floating around in the atmosphere as late as 2022, as samples tested from Belgium, Spain, France, Austria, Luxembourg and Germany showed.

Oversight of the implementation of the provisions of the NPT is the responsibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which, at the time of the unprecedented bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, had expressed grave concern about the safety implications.

The 1996 African Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone Treaty (also known as the Treaty of Pelindaba) commits African states to refrain from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons, allowing testing or assisting other states to test or place their nuclear weapons facilities, and allowing these states to dump radioactive waste on their territories. It is a powerful assertion of African countries’ sovereignty and accountability to the continent’s people in a geopolitical context where the odds weigh heavily against the continent on so many fronts. It is a powerful lever that the continent can use to press for disarmament and the dismantling of the nuclear arsenals making the world so unsafe.

A more recent development has been the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was signed into force in 2021. The treaty seeks to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Two African states, SA and Nigeria, with Brazil, Ireland, Mexico and Austria, were actively involved in the negotiations that led to its adoption.

SA’s role in this initiative, and other roles it has assumed in nuclear disarmament diplomacy, is significant given that during apartheid it developed a nuclear weapons programme but later dismantled it before acceding to the NPT in the early 1990s. It serves as an example of how disarmament can happen in a way that meets standards of international compliance.

African agency remains important. The Nuclear Suppliers Group concluded its 34th plenary meeting on July 25, and Ronald Lamola, SA’s international relations minister, warned at this gathering of the high risk of nuclear conflict the world is facing. 

Two major events are set to take place in 2026. The first will be the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in April. Then, SA will preside over the first review conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons towards the end of next year. And, several weeks ago, the UN secretary-general announced the appointment of a scientific panel on the effects of nuclear war. The global panel of experts includes an SA scientist, signalling recognition of the role of experts from the African continent.

Despite these positive developments, the pressure on the architecture underpinning the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament regime weighs heavily. African states must use all avenues. They should challenge the claim that nuclear weapons are a “necessary evil”, a deterrent in an increasingly unpredictable and violent world. Their disastrous, lifelong effects, which people of the developing world have borne the brunt of, speak for themselves. African states, and SA in particular, should also share lessons from their own experience of disarmament, how this can be done orderly, and how that builds confidence, and support those regions of the world, such as the Middle East, that are advocating to establish other nuclear weapons-free zones.

African states should advocate strongly for the right to the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes as envisaged in the NPT. As the site of many of the locations of the critical minerals needed for industrialisation, they should collectively lead to defend the peaceful uses paradigm and ensure that the continent does not become a site of extraction of minerals to fuel more wars, especially nuclear wars. African states should use their collective strength in numbers to pressure the nuclear weapons states to get back on track with their commitments to disarmament and nonproliferation so that the goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons, as envisaged in the TPNW, can assume its rightful place on the agenda of international security. 

• Dr Africa is research director at the Mapungubwe Institute of Strategic Reflection.