There is something in the way part of the world still talks about Africa at the United Nations that no longer fully matches the continent’s contemporary realities.
Here, its growing demographic weight is invoked; there, its promising economic growth. Then, all too often, attention fades away again, except when it comes to opportunistically courting its 54 votes in the major international forums.
Yet Africa cannot be viewed solely through the lens of its electoral weight or the crises it faces. Today, it is a space for diplomatic initiative, growth, and innovation, whose choices are increasingly helping to shape the international balance.
The succession to Guterres offers a historic opportunity to take better account of this shift.
READ MOREUN secretary-general race: Latin America faces two African rivals, Sall and Otunnu
In 2026, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Somalia sit on the Security Council. These countries will carry weight in a decision that will matter for the entire international system.
But their presence is above all a reminder of a deeper reality: whoever they are and wherever they come from, the next secretary-general will need to grasp Africa as it has become, not as it is sometimes still perceived through frameworks inherited from an international context that has now been left behind.
Changing the way we see Africa
Seeing Africa as it truly is calls for at least two shifts in perception. The first is that African unity is stronger than is often assumed.
On Security Council reform in particular, Africa has long made a clear demand: a continent of over a billion people cannot remain under-represented in some of the bodies where decisions with the heaviest consequences for its future and the world’s are taken.
READ MORESouth Africa’s Trevor Manuel: ‘Our democracy needs a lot of repair work’
This aspiration to fairer representation is, moreover, part of a broader debate on adapting multilateral institutions to the realities of the twenty-first century. But unity does not mean uniformity – the continent’s political diversity is very real.
This is partly where Africa’s political strength today comes from. Like many countries around the world, African states are seeking to preserve their decision-making capacity and diversify their partnerships in an increasingly complex international environment.
Dealing with Washington need not preclude a solid relationship with Beijing, Brussels, New Delhi, Ankara, Riyadh, Doha or other partners – and vice versa. This diversification is sometimes read as ambivalence, when in fact it often reflects a search for strategic autonomy and for partnerships suited to national and regional priorities.
Being able to engage with different partners, depending on the issue at hand and in keeping with one’s own priorities, has less to do with bloc logic than with a diplomatic pragmatism now visible in many regions of the world, from Africa to the Middle East, and across Asia and Latin America.
READ MOREThe state of Africa: Pan-Africanism in an age of recolonisation
This is now a fundamental political factor for understanding Africa, and a reality the next secretary-general will need to reckon with if he or she is to help build a solid consensus for carrying through the organisation’s transformation.
In practical terms, this means it will be essential to sound out African positions before any strategic decision. It will also mean accepting that an African state may be supportive on one issue and far more distant on another.
As the fragmentation of the world order deepens, diplomacy will need to be capable of building convergence among states whose interests do not necessarily align on every front.
Rethinking the relationship with Africa
The second shift concerns the UN’s relationship with the continent itself. For decades, Africa has occupied a prominent place in the work of the United Nations, particularly in peacekeeping and peacebuilding, development and humanitarian action.
Yet many other issues that bear directly on the continent’s future would call for it to be more closely involved in strategic decisions – among them development financing, energy policy and the rules governing artificial intelligence.
READ MOREMacky Sall and Olara Otunnu’s bids for the UN: how the crucial secret ballot stage will unfold
The forthcoming election will inevitably give rise to calculations. That much is unavoidable. But once the vote is over, a crucial question will remain on the table: will whoever takes up office on the 38th floor be able to treat Africa as it is – an indispensable actor in a world being reshaped, more united than is often assumed on certain fundamental priorities, and rich in a diversity still too often underestimated?
For the organisation’s transformation to succeed, the next secretary-general will need to reckon with Africa, not merely rely on it.
