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This was the United Nations week. Global leaders were the sights and sounds of New York at their annual fifteen minutes on the global podium and the opportunity to hobnob with colleagues from near and far.
But behind the pomp and pageantry lies a fundamental question, particularly for Africa: is the UN still fit for purpose? Founded eighty years ago, the UN promised a world of collective security and sovereign equality.
For Africa, however, that promise has morphed into a paradox.
The UN’s first contradiction is structural. The Security Council is the organisation’s most powerful organ, yet its most undemocratic.
Five permanent members, none of which are African, hold veto power over global peace and security.
Africa, with 54 member states and
a population of over 1.4 billion people, has no permanent seat. Africa contributes roughly 60 per cent of the Security Council’s work, yet lacks representation to shape it.
The continent that supplies the majority of UN peacekeepers, including in far away countries like Haiti, hosts the majority of its missions, and suffers the majority of its conflicts, remains structurally excluded from the decisions that shape its fate.
There is no better exhibition of global apartheid.
President Ruto, restating Africa’s 20-year-old position for 2 permanent seats in the Council, told the global body that reforming the UN was not a favour to Africa, but a “necessity for the United Nations’ own survival”. Chadian President Mahamat Déby described the UN as a structure “frozen, inherited from the post-war era, where Africa, cradle of a fifth of humanity, remains excluded from any permanent representation”.
Secondly, UN peacekeeping was supposed to be the organisation’s signature contribution to African stability. Instead, it has become a case study in institutional failure. In Rwanda in 1994, the UN Security Council voted to reduce its peacekeeping force from 2,500 to 270 soldiers as the genocide began.
Robust mandate
The Independent Inquiry found the “overriding failure” was “a lack of resources and a lack of will to take on the commitment which would have been necessary to prevent or to stop the genocide”.
More than three decades later, the pattern repeats. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi has accused the UN of being incapable of “protecting those who suffer most,” pointing to the “silent genocide” unfolding in Eastern DRC.
In the Central African Republic, the MINUSCA mission failed to defend the town of Am-Dafok despite a robust mandate and years of deployment. Denis Kodhe, former President of the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) called it “a systemic problem that keeps recurring in the DRC, Mali and Somalia”.
Mali expelled the UN mission after a decade without peace. The DRC has partially expelled MONUSCO. As one analysis concluded, UN missions “end up managing instability instead of building peace”. Thirdly, the UN’s development model has entrenched a dependency that undermines African sovereignty.
Official development assistance has long been portrayed as partnership, but is increasingly perceived across the Global South as coercion, a system of conditionality that constrains policy space. The results are damning.
With five years remaining until the 2030 deadline, only 4 of 169 measurable SDG targets in Africa are on track. 70 are advancing too slowly; 29 are regressing. Over 600 million Africans remain without electricity, and 476 million live in poverty. The SDG financing gap has reached $1.3 trillion annually.
UN agencies provide technical support, but as critics note, they “do not build autonomous African capacity. They replicate dependency”.
The UN’s failures in Africa are not failures of capacity. They are failures of will. The Rwandan genocide was preventable. The ongoing wars in the DRC and Sudan are stoppable.
The veto that shields perpetrators of atrocities when they are allies of the privileged veto holders is a choice. The exclusion of Africa from permanent membership is not accidental.
African leaders increasingly recognise that strategic value cannot be derived from an institution that lives in the 50s, treating them as wards rather than equals.
The UN no longer exists for Africa’s benefit; it exists to stabilise the interests of the Global North. Until its architecture is dismantled and rebuilt, Africa’s engagement with the UN will remain what it has always been: an embarrassing performance of inclusion that delivers neither justice nor peace.
– The writer is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya
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This was the United Nations week. Global leaders were the sights and sounds of New York at their annual fifteen minutes on the global podium and the opportunity to hobnob with colleagues from near and far.
But behind the pomp and pageantry lies a fundamental question, particularly for Africa: is the UN still fit for purpose? Founded eighty years ago, the UN promised a world of collective security and sovereign equality.
For Africa, however, that promise has morphed into a paradox.
The UN’s first contradiction is structural. The Security Council is the organisation’s most powerful organ, yet its most undemocratic.
Five permanent members, none of which are African, hold veto power over global peace and security.
Africa, with 54 member states and
The continent that supplies the majority of UN peacekeepers, including in far away countries like Haiti, hosts the majority of its missions, and suffers the majority of its conflicts, remains structurally excluded from the decisions that shape its fate.
There is no better exhibition of global apartheid.
President Ruto, restating Africa’s 20-year-old position for 2 permanent seats in the Council, told the global body that reforming the UN was not a favour to Africa, but a “necessity for the United Nations’ own survival”. Chadian President Mahamat Déby described the UN as a structure “frozen, inherited from the post-war era, where Africa, cradle of a fifth of humanity, remains excluded from any permanent representation”.
Secondly, UN peacekeeping was supposed to be the organisation’s signature contribution to African stability. Instead, it has become a case study in institutional failure. In Rwanda in 1994, the UN Security Council voted to reduce its peacekeeping force from 2,500 to 270 soldiers as the genocide began.
Robust mandate
The Independent Inquiry found the “overriding failure” was “a lack of resources and a lack of will to take on the commitment which would have been necessary to prevent or to stop the genocide”.
More than three decades later, the pattern repeats. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi has accused the UN of being incapable of “protecting those who suffer most,” pointing to the “silent genocide” unfolding in Eastern DRC.
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In the Central African Republic, the MINUSCA mission failed to defend the town of Am-Dafok despite a robust mandate and years of deployment. Denis Kodhe, former President of the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) called it “a systemic problem that keeps recurring in the DRC, Mali and Somalia”.
Mali expelled the UN mission after a decade without peace. The DRC has partially expelled MONUSCO. As one analysis concluded, UN missions “end up managing instability instead of building peace”. Thirdly, the UN’s development model has entrenched a dependency that undermines African sovereignty.
Official development assistance has long been portrayed as partnership, but is increasingly perceived across the Global South as coercion, a system of conditionality that constrains policy space. The results are damning.
With five years remaining until the 2030 deadline, only 4 of 169 measurable SDG targets in Africa are on track. 70 are advancing too slowly; 29 are regressing. Over 600 million Africans remain without electricity, and 476 million live in poverty. The SDG financing gap has reached $1.3 trillion annually.
UN agencies provide technical support, but as critics note, they “do not build autonomous African capacity. They replicate dependency”.
The UN’s failures in Africa are not failures of capacity. They are failures of will. The Rwandan genocide was preventable. The ongoing wars in the DRC and Sudan are stoppable.
The veto that shields perpetrators of atrocities when they are allies of the privileged veto holders is a choice. The exclusion of Africa from permanent membership is not accidental.
African leaders increasingly recognise that strategic value cannot be derived from an institution that lives in the 50s, treating them as wards rather than equals.
The UN no longer exists for Africa’s benefit; it exists to stabilise the interests of the Global North. Until its architecture is dismantled and rebuilt, Africa’s engagement with the UN will remain what it has always been: an embarrassing performance of inclusion that delivers neither justice nor peace.
– The writer is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya
By Kamotho Waiganjo