World leaders will descend on the UN secretariat in New York next weekend to negotiate an ambitious Pact for the Future, which seeks to rebuild the faltering pillars of multilateralism by addressing five areas — sustainable development and financing development; international peace and security; science, technology, innovation and digital co-operation; youth and future generations; and transforming global governance.
To craft recommendations for Africa at this summit a policy dialogue was recently convened at SA’s department of international relations & co-operation in collaboration with the UN resident co-ordinator in SA and the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.
While acknowledging the volatile geostrategic environment spawned by the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, participants described this summit as a “once in a generation” opportunity to build bridges to the future, and to alleviate Africa’s pressing socioeconomic challenges.
With only 12% of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) implemented halfway to its end date of 2030, and poverty, inequality and hunger having all increased, there were calls to align the SDGs more closely with implementing the AUs Agenda 2063, which seeks an integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa through regional integration, democratic governance, silencing the guns, a people-driven continent prioritising women and youth (70% of whom are unemployed), and an Africa that plays an influential global role.
Such synergy should also occur with Africa’s regional economic communities and national development plans. The commitments in the 2015 Addis Ababa action financing for development agenda thus needs to be urgently fulfilled.
Without resolving Africa’s conflicts and the jihadist terrorist threat, none of these development goals can be achieved. The anachronistic but still powerful 15-member UN Security Council was criticised for continuing to reflect the victorious alliance of eight decades ago. While the council represented 22% of the UN membership in 1945, it accounts for just 8% of today’s members. Africa — with 28% of the UN’s membership — must therefore be granted permanent representation on this body, along with Latin America.
The UN was also urged to strengthen the conflict management capacity of African regional bodies, while continental leaders were tasked with operationalising their long-delayed African Standby Force to work alongside a reformed UN. Funding for the UN Peacebuilding Commission should be expanded so that it can be capacitated to work more effectively with the World Bank and African Development Bank.
African diplomats were urged to prepare thoroughly for the summit to be able to advocate effectively for the continent’s interests. SA was specifically encouraged to use its membership of the Brics+ bloc to bridge divisions between a US-led Western bloc and a Sino-Russian bloc. Tshwane was also urged to use its forthcoming presidency of the Group of 20 industrialised countries, from December, to push for African priorities such as debt suspension, climate financing, infrastructure development, fair trade and reform of institutions of global governance such as the UN, World Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Specifically, far better access to affordable financing must be provided to African countries, while a 25th chair should be created for the continent on the IMF executive board. The WTO must also help ensure preferential trade access for Africa and other developing countries.
The UN ambassadors of Namibia and its former colonial master, Germany, Neville Gertze and Antje Leendertse respectively, have co-facilitated negotiations on the Pact for the Future in New York. They are seeking consensus and the abandonment of red lines by powers pursuing parochial national interests. Windhoek and Berlin have thus pushed hard for progress on the reform of institutions of global governance, accelerating the global development agenda, and mitigating the harmful effects of climate change.
The stakes are high, but the prevailing mood in diplomatic circles for a transformative summit appears to be somewhat gloomy.
• Adebajo is professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.
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