By Kingsley Moghalu
27 February 2026
Even before the rapid, ongoing reconfiguration of the global order, Africa was always mostly on the menu ON the table, not AT the table. The fact that African countries are bemoaning the defenestration of multilateralism and the rise of unilateral approaches and a balance of power by and between powerful states in the international society is, it seems to me, evidence that the continent does not understand when the rain began to beat it.
What is happening is nothing as strange as we might think. What we are witnessing is the gloves coming off – the quiet part being said out loud. The hand was always there, and it was always the same hand, but in the past covered by smooth conventional wisdoms about an illusory “international community” in which we were all supposed to be our brothers’ keepers. But power has ever been exercised by the countries that have its currency – technology, productive economies that have created wealth for the nations that have this and a high quality of lives for their citizens, and military power. These are the real currencies of global power. They have not changed in thousands of years.
To these we might add a comment: the first is that, while the presence of all three factors guaranteed the countries that have it a seat at the table, not all countries that have power necessarily have all three at the same levels. There are international actors -countries – that have had one or two of these “enablers” without others at some points, but were always to be reckoned with for various reasons. An example is China, which always had “demographic power” plus, even more important, military power, i.e. nuclear capability, long before it achieved economic power.
Another example is that all states that have nuclear power are to be reckoned with in world politics. You can call this the power of “destructive nuisance”, or military nuisance value. North Korea is a perfect example. India and Pakistan have – at the least – tertiary levels of influence in the global pecking order (especially India which is a rising Emerging Market and has “demographic power” as well).
Against this backdrop, Kenyan President William Ruto’s suggestion that the African Union should select 5 personalities from the continent’s five sub-regions to frame a common African foreign policy makes sense.
How practically this can be achieved is another matter, for two reasons. The first is a lack of internal state capacity and cohesion within many African countries. The second is the absence of a unified, foundational African worldview that drives Africa’s understanding and navigation of its own environment and that of the wider world. Most African countries have been “client states”, and with high levels of internal corruption, for so long that it will take completely new leadership class to think differently and achieve continental cohesion. Consider that 70% of the AU’s program budget is funded by its external “partners”. Common foreign policy? Not a bad idea.
