Africas

Abuja, Nigeria – Africa’s long-running campaign for permanent representation on the United Nations Security Council is back in focus at the 81st UN General Assembly, with leaders renewing calls to reform a body whose five permanent members have remained unchanged since 1945.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used his final address to the General Assembly on Tuesday to renew his call for Security Council reform, saying it must become more representative and better reflect today’s geopolitical realities.

Nigeria’s Vice President Kashim Shettima, delivering President Bola Tinubu’s national statement, called for at least two permanent seats for Africa, with veto powers for as long as the veto exists, as well as five non-permanent seats for the continent.

Ghana’s President John Mahama made a similar appeal: “Security Council reform is not a favour to Africa; it is an imperative for the legitimacy, credibility and survival of the United Nations”.

The renewed calls highlight the scale of Africa’s demand. But translating them into an agreement that changes the Council’s structure remains a far more difficult task.

A reform process that has stalled

The Security Council has 15 members: five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and 10 members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.

The five permanent members hold veto power, allowing any one of them to block a substantive Council resolution.

No African country has a permanent seat.

Yet Africa remains central to much of the Council’s work. In 2025, the Council adopted 44 resolutions, including 24 under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which covers measures such as sanctions and authorisations for the use of force.

Eighteen of those 24 Chapter VII resolutions concerned Africa.

For Professor Ibrahim Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister and former Nigerian permanent representative to the UN, the issue is not simply one of geography.

“The status quo is not really interested in change,” he told Al Jazeera. “In the appointment of the Secretary-General, you cannot be a candidate unless each of the five permanent members agrees. Therefore, we have the privilege of the unelected P5, which they don’t want to relinquish.”

Gambari said Africa’s absence was difficult to justify given the continent’s size and the amount of Security Council business involving it.

“In the case of Africa, we have a whole continent that has the largest single bloc, yet has no permanent seat on the Security Council,” he said.

The General Assembly launched the intergovernmental negotiations process on Security Council reform in 2008. The talks cover the Council’s size, membership categories, regional representation and the veto, and have continued through successive General Assembly sessions without agreement on the core questions.

Changing the Council’s permanent membership would also require an amendment to the UN Charter. Under Article 108, that requires approval by two-thirds of the General Assembly and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent members.

That gives the existing permanent members a formal role in any change to the system that grants them permanent membership and veto power.

Nigeria wants a permanent seat

Which African countries would eventually occupy any new permanent seats is another unresolved issue.

Nigeria has consistently presented itself as a country prepared to take on such a role. At this year’s General Assembly, the country renewed its call for at least two permanent African seats with all the rights and responsibilities of permanent membership, including the veto for as long as it exists.

Dr Fola Aina, a political scientist and international security expert at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, told Al Jazeera the issue also carried particular significance for Nigeria.

“Securing this position would essentially elevate Nigeria’s global diplomatic influence, give Africa a continuous voice in international security decisions and grant Nigeria the power to consolidate its position as a regional hegemon and middle power,” he said.

“The timing of Nigeria’s push is particularly strategic given the current age of strategic competition.”

Nigeria is not alone in seeking a permanent role. Egypt and South Africa have also pursued permanent representation, while other African states have expressed interest.

The African Union, however, has not selected specific countries to occupy the proposed seats. Its common position calls for at least two permanent African seats and five non-permanent seats on an expanded Council, with the AU determining which countries should represent the continent.

The veto question

Even if agreement could be reached on who should represent Africa, another obstacle would remain: the veto.

The African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus calls for any permanent African members to have the same rights and privileges as the existing permanent members, including veto power for as long as the veto remains part of the Council’s system.

African governments have therefore argued that adding permanent seats without equivalent powers would not fully address the imbalance they are seeking to correct.

That leaves two separate questions: whether the Council should expand and what powers any new permanent members would receive.

A question of influence

Gambari argues that Africa’s absence also affects the Council’s day-to-day work.

“All these peacekeeping missions in Africa are based on the mandate of the Security Council,” he said.

“The P5 assign themselves the role of penholders, which hardly allows elected non-permanent African countries to initiate draft resolutions affecting their region.”

He said the imbalance was also visible in the way Security Council missions operate on the continent.

“Even Security Council missions to Africa are not led by Africans nowadays. How can the parties in dispute have confidence in such a team?” he said.

“Even for the Security Council’s continued relevance, it has to be reformed so that Africa can have representatives in the permanent seat category.”

For Favour Aniezi, a Nigerian creative and youth advocate, the issue is also about who has influence over decisions affecting the continent.

“Beyond representation, Africa’s absence from the permanent seats of the UN Security Council is a question of whose voice gets to shape decisions that affect the continent,” she told Al Jazeera.

“As a young Nigerian woman, I think it matters that Africa is not only present when global institutions discuss our challenges but has a meaningful role in deciding how those challenges are addressed. We should not simply be represented at the table, Africa should have a voice with the weight to influence what happens at it.”

For now, the core questions remain unresolved: how many new permanent members there should be, which African countries would take the seats, whether they would receive veto power and whether the existing permanent members would accept the changes.

“As long as they keep sticking to this anachronistic formula, reforms will be hard to attain,” Gambari said.

This year, AGRA, the donor-funded agricultural development initiative formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

AGRA’s slogan is “sustainably growing Africa’s food systems”, but for years, researchers and farmers have warned that the policies it promotes are having a negative impact on African agriculture.

Our new research provides more evidence to that effect. We have documented how AGRA’s Green Revolution, with its well-funded promotion of commercial seeds, fertilisers and other inputs, has failed to spur the “productivity revolution” promised by its founders.

Worse still, its promotion of monocultures, such as maize, has led to the massive expansion of land dedicated to them. At the same time, more resilient and nutritious local crops, such as millet, are losing ground.

Funding the loss of traditional crops

Hunger continues to increase in Africa, driven by climate change, desertification, conflict and disruptions to international supply lines from international conflicts like the Ukraine war. The Green Revolution promoted by AGRA does not seem to have made much of a difference.

In countries where AGRA has had significant presence, the number of undernourished people has increased by about 60 percent – roughly the same rate as the rest of the continent.

The United Nations is calling for greater attention to “affordable healthy diets”. For Africa’s small-scale farmers, who grow what their families and communities eat, that means more, not less, crop diversity, which is the opposite of what the Green Revolution has produced.

In countries that have participated in AGRA projects, crops such as maize are promoted and funded with billions of dollars in subsidies and investment. Despite that, yields for maize have grown only modestly, just 40 percent over 18 years, well below the 100 percent improvement promised by AGRA.

Some countries, like Malawi and Ethiopia, have seen stronger yield growth for maize, but some, such as Kenya – where AGRA’s headquarters are located – have seen yields decline.

Maize production has soared across participant countries, driven mainly by the massive expansion of plantings as subsidies drive farmers to plant maize on new land.

In contrast, our research shows that traditional African staples such as sorghum, cassava, and groundnuts have lost land and investment. Since AGRA was launched in 2006, 13 countries that have participated have seen a decline in productivity of 21 percent for cassava and 10 percent for groundnuts in total.

But millet – a climate-resilient, nutritious grain – is the crop that has suffered the most. Before 2006, millet was as prevalent as maize in these countries. Since 2006, millet production has fallen 27 percent, while maize production has more than doubled. Millet yields have fallen 17 percent with the lack of investment. And as land allocated to maize production increased 71 percent, land for millet fell 12 percent.

Millet is not some backward crop waiting to be replaced by maize. For generations, it has fed communities across some of Africa’s driest regions. It can withstand heat and drought, grow with relatively few external inputs, and provide nutritious food where other crops struggle.

In 2023, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) celebrated the “Year of Millets”, highlighting the multiple benefits of the crop to the environment and social welfare.

The same is true of many of Africa’s traditional crops – sorghum, fonio, cowpeas, cassava, indigenous vegetables and many others. They are part of the biological diversity of African farming, but also of our cuisines, knowledge and cultures.

At a time of climate change, pushing such crops aside makes particularly little sense. Farmers need more options in their fields, not fewer. A diverse farm spreads risk: when one crop suffers from drought, pests or disease, another may survive. Rotation and diversity of crops help keep soils more fertile.

Valuing diversity

Rhetorically, AGRA now professes to value the very crops that its Green Revolution helped push to the margins. It speaks of diverse, nutritious and climate-adapted crops, and its seed programmes include millet, sorghum, cowpea, groundnut and others.

We welcome serious investment in these crops. It is overdue. But there is no indication that AGRA and other Green Revolution proponents will abandon their chosen monocrops, such as maize. AGRA’s current seed strategy still emphasises improved varieties, certified seeds, faster variety turnover, commercialisation and market-oriented seed systems.

Investment needs to support farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange and develop their seeds, protect crop diversity and indigenous knowledge, and ensure that farmers and communities – not seed markets alone – determine which varieties survive and spread.

African farmers do not need saving, but their crops – millet, sorghum, cowpea, fonio, and other traditional crops need to be rescued from Green Revolution crop-breeders.

When a traditional crop disappears from farmers’ fields, we can lose locally adapted seed varieties, knowledge about how to grow and prepare them and foods that are central to local diets and identities.

This is why the decline of millet should concern us far beyond the millet field. Africa is already dangerously exposed to climate shocks and volatile international food and fertiliser markets. Diversity is one of our greatest protections against those risks. Yet we are subsidising its disappearance.

It is not enough for the UN to call for greater access for all to nutritious diets. For the majority of Africa’s rural populations, who are also among its least food-secure, crop diversity is key to diet diversity. It is time for AGRA, the African Development Bank, foreign donors and African governments to stop subsidising and promoting the crops that are driving the loss of such diversity.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told a briefing held on August 20, 2026, that “a substantial package of intergovernmental documents and commercial contracts is planned to be signed during the Russia-Africa summit, scheduled for late October.” Given the “mutual interest in stepping up our trade and investment cooperation, we plan to focus the agenda of the upcoming summit meeting on economic matters,” she said.

There, the attendees can discuss in substance a wide range of matters, including boosting Russian-African ties in agriculture, healthcare, education, and scientific-technical and cultural cooperation. “We expect to sign a substantial package of interstate documents and commercial contracts during the event. Well, and we also note, of course, with satisfaction, our partners’ considerable interest in the forthcoming event. Many African capitals have already confirmed their attendance and declared their intention to send representative delegations to Moscow, including heads of state entities and businessmen, of course,” Zakharova explained.

“We have a huge potential in this sphere, which has not yet been fully realized, as everyone admits. Key priorities have also been determined: to cooperate on peaceful uses of nuclear power; to develop independent payment systems, food security, and digitalization, including the adoption of artificial intelligence,” Zakharova underlined.

It is time to face rising realities and the balance of investment power in this 21st century. Whether Russia colonized Africa or never colonized Africa, the most convincing and essential factor is Africa simply has to work with the world’s players. Africa should collaborate with potential foreign investors with adequate funds, in practical terms, ready to invest in its development as exemplified by China. And there is still a growing sense of analytical debates over Russia’s policy approach, though. Ultimately, at least three fundamental assumptions, or appropriately primary principles, can be described as follows:

*Russia’s forthcoming October 2026 The Russia-Africa summit is framed as a chance to consolidate dozens of prior agreements and shift toward concrete economic cooperation in trade, investment, nuclear energy, food security, digitalization, and independent payment systems, yet critics note that rhetoric and signed MoUs have so far produced limited tangible results on the ground.

*Despite historical Soviet-era goodwill and frequent high-level visits, Russia remains a marginal player in African infrastructure, industry, and agriculture compared with China, the EU, and the United States; many announced projects have stalled, financing instruments are weak, and younger Africans see little contemporary economic impact beyond anti-Western messaging.

*Experts and African partners urge Moscow to move beyond nostalgia for past assistance, deliver on existing pledges with real capital and project execution, leverage platforms such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and engage Africa’s large youth and middle-class markets if it wishes to convert political alignment into sustained, mutually beneficial economic partnership.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) provides a unique and valuable platform for businesses to access an integrated African market of over 1.4 billion people. The growing middle class, estimated at 380 (twice the aggregate of Russia’s population), among other factors, constitutes huge market potential in Africa. The African continent, currently, has enormous potential as a huge market, which some experts often refer to as the last business market frontier. Nevertheless, Africa’s trade with the European Union stands at $400 billion, and with China, almost $300 billion. And based on military equipment and weapons and agricultural products such as ice cream, chicken meat, fertilizers, and grain exports, Russia quoted a bilateral trade figure as $27 billion in June 2026.

The world is, increasingly, becoming multipolar. Therefore, Africa’s strength has to be directed at continental development and entrepreneurship, not at building solidarity for geopolitical games. Many African countries are enacting economic reforms; demand is growing for high-quality, competitive products. Russian businesses are interested in this niche, but Russian operators are extremely slow. The ‘snail-pace approach’ reflects their inability to determine financial instruments for supporting trade with Africa and corporate investments in Africa.

There is some level of optimism for a change, though. Russia plans to hold the next Russia-Africa summit in late October 2026. And Sergey Lavrov, minister of foreign affairs of the Russian Federation, indicated in an explicit message mid-July that “in these difficult and crucial times, the strategic partnership with Africa has become a priority of Russia’s foreign policy. Russia highly appreciates the readiness of Africans to further step up economic cooperation.”

At a meeting of the ministry’s collegium, Lavrov strongly suggested the necessity of borrowing a chapter on policy approaches and methods adopted by China in Africa. In fact, Lavrov’s suggestion exposes the inability to play catch-up and, most significantly, Russia’s financial fragility. Lavrov also said, “It is in the interests of our peoples to work together to preserve and expand mutually beneficial trade and investment ties under these new conditions. It is important to facilitate the mutual access of Russian and African economic operators to each other’s markets and encourage their participation in large-scale infrastructure projects. The signed agreements and the results will be consolidated at the forthcoming Russia-Africa summit.”

During the past years, there have been several meetings of various bilateral intergovernmental commissions both in Moscow and in Africa. The first Sochi summit discussed broadly the priorities and further identified opportunities for collaboration. There were 92 agreements signed in Sochi, which totaled RUB 1.004 trillion (equivalent to $12.5 bn), and approximately 240 agreements during the African Leaders Summit held in St. Petersburg, according to official documents. It, however, requires understanding the specific tasks and emerging challenges. The current tasks should concretely focus on taking practical and collaborative actions leading to goal-driven results. Notwithstanding the lapses, Lavrov hopes “the signed agreements and the results will be consolidated at the forthcoming Russia-Africa summit.”

Accentuating the importance of multilateral cooperation between Russia and Africa, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation Anton Kobyakov said, “The current situation in the world is such that we are witnesses to the formation of new centers of economic growth in Africa. Competition for African markets is growing, accordingly. There is no doubt that Russia’s non-commodity exporters will benefit from cooperating with Africa on manufacturing, technologies, finances, trade, and investment.”

Kobyakov pointed to modern Russia, which already has experience of successful cooperation with African countries under its belt, as ready to make an offer to the African continent that will secure a mutually beneficial partnership and the joint realization of decades of painstaking work carried out by several generations of Soviet and Russian people.

The Soviet Union was quite extensively engaged in Africa, comparatively. Historical documents show that after the Soviet collapse, there were approximately 380 mega-projects across Africa. In the early 1990s, Russia exited, closed a number of diplomatic offices, and abandoned all these, and now there are hardly any signs of Soviet-era infrastructure projects across Africa. And now post-Soviet relations are interestingly engulfed in extensive geopolitics; Russia has only engaged in trading anti-Western slogans on the continent, which also threatens the African Union’s steps to consolidate African unity. 

In addition, Russia has only been criticizing other foreign players during the past two decades without showing any of its own template model of building relationships directed at transforming Africa’s economy. Moreover, Russian officials have underestimated the fact that Russia’s overall economic engagement is largely staggering; various business agreements signed are still not fulfilled with many African countries. Its foreign policy goal is simply to sustain the passion for declarations, signing several MoUs and bilateral agreements with African countries. Grappling with reality, there are equally many investment challenges, including official bureaucracy and the governance system in Africa.

Despite this policy rhetoric and attractive summit outlines, Russia still plays very little role, particularly in Africa’s infrastructure, agriculture, and industry. Investing in agriculture to ensure food security and investing in industry to add value to raw materials in the continent. While, given its global status, it ought to be active in Africa with noticeable corporate investments, similar to policy models of Western Europe, the European Union, the United States, and China, it is all but absent, consistently engages in geopolitical symbolism and rhetoric, and plays a negligible role, according to Professor Gerrit Olivier at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, and former South African Ambassador to the Russian Federation.

Now at the crossroads, it could be meandering and longer than expected to make the mark. If existing challenges, obstacles, and impediments are not addressed, Russia’s return journey could take another generation to reach its destination, Africa. If not at the crossroad, then possibly at the periphery of Africa. With the current rapidly changing geopolitical world, Russia has to redefine and reassess policy parameters and adopt a more strategic approach, working with absolute consistency within the principle of finding common solutions to Africa’s development expectations and consolidating its economic sovereignty.

*This is part of the forthcoming book: Putin’s African Dream: Emerging Challenges and Opportunities (Third e-handbook).