Calls to Reform Multilateral Institutions Echo Africa and the Global South's Longstanding Demands

Frustration has grown in Africa over marginalization within institutions shaped by Global North interests, prompting louder reform demands. As Global South influence grows, countries like China and Russia have advocated for the expansion of the UN Security Council for fairer representation, Christian-Geraud Neema Byamungu, an independent expert on America-Africa and China-Africa relations from the Congo Democratic Republic, told Sputnik Africa in an interview.

"The main reasons have been, for so long, the frustration that we've been seeing among African countries about the... I'd say the unfairness and the marginalization of African countries within those organizations. For so long, there have been calls, and from African countries, from countries in the Global South, for the need of a reform of the institution that was built 60, 70 years ago, way before many African countries were independent, that were not reflecting the reality of the current international system and international governance today. The Security Council has become a Western-oriented kind of organization, fulfilling and even pushing more for interests in the countries in the G7, in the Global North, more than countries in the Global South," Byamungu says.

For his part, Dr. Daniel Omoro Achach, a Kenyan international trade law and trade policy expert, opines that the World Trade Organization’s trade rules emerged from a post-WWII effort, primarily led by wealthier nations, to establish a rule-based trading system. Developing nations, who made no contributions to the founding of the WTO, now strive for reforms to create fairer trade policies that address their economic needs.

"If you look at the general agreement on trade and tariffs, the original one that was made in 1947, you realize that a lot of it then reflects the perspectives or the interests of the wealthier nations. In any event, if you think of it in terms of Africa, in 1947, most African nations were colonies and so were not there at the table when these rules were being negotiated [...]. And so that then brings in the criticism that the policies of the WTO disproportionately benefit the wealthier nations [...]. The push between the developing nations on the one side and the developed nations on the other side has largely contributed to the impasse or to the problems that we are experiencing at the WTO currently," Achach notes.

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