The distance between hegemonic and non-hegemonic nations shapes how humans move through the world that they inhabit with tensions that sometimes disturb the structure but never quite displace it. We see this with the rise of the semi-periphery or emerging nations, including, China and India; and Angola, Nigeria and South Africa in Africa that have not quite dislodged the construct of global power hierarchies.
Though the past has located these spaces at a disadvantage in global power hierarchies, there are important and salient conversations about reimagining these structures. In part, the very challenges that have historically marginalized Africa are sites for innovative leadership.
South Africa demonstrated this when it initiated proceedings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel in 2024 alleging that the country’s conduct in the Gaza Strip contravened its obligation
under the Genocide convention – an allegation that Israel has refuted. While South Africa’s role in this situation might signal a disruption of distance between Africa and global institutions, questions arise as to whether, and to what extent this is an exercise of agency by South Africa with intentionality on behalf of all of Africa or drawn from a sense of shared history with the Palestinian people. Such questions are important for any discussion about how Africa might situate itself in global power hierarchies.
Another example is the Gacaca courts in Rwanda which addressed layered and complex justice realities in the aftermath of the genocide. Côte d’Ivoire’s Kubeko low cost biowaste processing system allows the conversion of post-harvest by-products into compost and cooking gas. These interventions have contributed to bridging the distance between socioeconomic as well as judicial norms and realities across local, national, regional, and global landscapes.
There are innovative mental health interventions, such as, Nigeria’s Counselling on Wheels and Zimbabwe’s Friendship Bench that rely on community systems and operate in complex settings. Countries such as Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, for example, have worked on bridging the digital divide through the creations of various telemedical innovations to the effort to solve inefficiencies and resource gaps in the healthcare system, particularly in rural areas in the region.
The use of digital tools in peace and security, particularly with the African Union’s ‘Silencing the Gun’ initiative has become essential to bridging the technological divide in modern-day peacebuilding efforts and enhancing cross-border dialogue and mediation.
In finance, Nigeria is negotiating currency swaps with China to narrow distances in global finance hierarchies. This builds on the efforts of the African Continental Free Trade Area’s Pan African Payment and Settlements System. Foreign capital interests in critical minerals are being compelled to move beyond mining only to domestic processing. This was the case with the rejection of Elon Musk’s interest in lithium extraction without processing in Nigeria.
African creatives have shown adeptness at innovating across ideation, production and supplying creative outputs across the continent and globally using technology to narrow distances to markets and between populations.
All this notwithstanding, there are enduring structural constraints that weigh heavily, including the dominance of the ownership and control of capital beyond the continent, which underpin extractivist logics that cut across from resources to highly skilled labour. The recognition of uneven access to, ownership of, and control over power and resources are credited as the basis for the establishment of global institutional infrastructure to redress the imbalance and narrow, if not quite eradicate these distances.
The growing dissonance between global institutions designed to tackle global challenges and the realities on the ground are more pronounced than ever. The UN system is arguably the most fundamental embodiment of this attempt to intervene and redress the balance. Yet, its most recent scorecard in a year of disastrous violence, abuse of power, breakup of regimes and fragmentation of
erstwhile respected institutions shows reinforced hegemony and distances evident in some regions of the world: distance between systems and societal realities, and between leaders and the people they govern. This outcome is compounding distances, creating distrust and apathy within nations and between nations, institutions, and communities.
Against this background, we ask:
- What forms of leadership will disrupt the growing distances between nations, and between institutions and the people they are supposed to serve?
- How can Africa exercise greater agency in disrupting these distances created by global power hierarchies?
Throughout Africa week we will critically interrogate these questions drawing on the research, policy and practice work of King’s academics, policy actors and practitioners across King’s College London and among our African inter-generational community of scholars and practitioners.