Agency in a Changing Global Order: African Priorities for the Transformation of Global Governance
Introduction
For at least two decades, global public opinion has focused on tectonic shifts in global governance marked by visible social, political, and economic fissures. More recently, sharp domestic and external changes by significant global powers have intensified debates, anxieties, and realignments. The world has been drawn into once-in-a-lifetime questions about the changing global order, thrusting the ‘reform of global governance’ firmly at the centre of the international agendas. Africa has not been untouched by the revolutionary upending of relations between nations and regions in which regional and global institutions are implicated. The resultant concern about Africa’s place and role in the rapidly evolving global governance architecture spurred a group of intellectuals to convene a forum to brainstorm pathways for Africa’s priorities. The motivation is that nearly all world regions and nations are strategizing self-interested approaches to survive in an uncertain global present and future.
The forum took the form of a roundtable discussion, convened on 2-3 July 2026, at the University of the Witwatersrand under the theme “African Agency in a Shifting Global Order: African Priorities on the Reform of the Multilateral System”. The engagement was designed as a multistakeholder dialogue bringing together scholars, civil society actors, policy practitioners, diplomats, and other stakeholders to reflect on Africa and its place in a rapidly changing international order. The objective was to generate practical recommendations to strengthen African agency in the emerging contestations and possibilities. It also aimed to influence global debates and initiatives around multilateral reform from an African standpoint.
