UNGA 2026: AFRICA’S MUFFLED VOICE AND THE UNFINISHED DREAM OF UNITY
By Jerry Adesewo
There is something profoundly familiar about President William Ruto’s call for a stronger African voice in global affairs. It is a message African leaders have delivered in different forms for generations: Africa must speak with greater authority, negotiate from a position of strength, and stop allowing decisions about its future to be made without its meaningful participation.
However, the more uncomfortable question is not whether Africa has a voice. It is whether Africa has ever truly agreed on what it wants to say.
Ruto’s intervention, therefore, should not be read simply as a speech by the Kenyan president. It is another chapter in a much older African conversation about unity, sovereignty, and the continent’s place in the world.
READ ALSO: Nigeria; A Gen Z Will Soon Be President
And that conversation takes us back to Accra, to Kwame Nkrumah, and eventually to Muammar Gaddafi’s passionate campaign for a United States of Africa.
Gaddafi’s proposal was controversial, and his politics remain deeply contested. But the historical question surrounding his African unity campaign deserves to be separated from the man himself. In 2007, at the African Union summit in Accra, Gaddafi passionately argued that Africa could not negotiate effectively with a united Europe, the United States, China, and Japan while remaining divided into dozens of separate states. He called for continental political unity, a common government, and stronger collective institutions.
The response was revealing. African leaders did not agree. Some supported the idea of deeper integration; others considered a continental government premature or unrealistic. At the 2009 AU summit, when Gaddafi was chairman of the Union, his proposal for a “United States of Africa” again failed to secure the necessary backing. Leaders instead opted to consider strengthening the existing AU Commission rather than immediately creating a continental government.
That moment should remain somewhere in Africa’s collective memory. Not because Gaddafi was necessarily right about everything. He was not. Not because a United States of Africa was then, or is now, the only possible solution. It is not. But because the episode exposed one of Africa’s oldest contradictions: we repeatedly agree that Africa needs greater power, yet struggle to agree on how that power should be organised.
Today, an African president speaks about reforming global institutions. Tomorrow, another African government takes a completely different position. One country negotiates for itself. Another negotiates with an external power. A third remains silent. A fourth calculates what the position means for its immediate national interest.
And somewhere between these competing calculations, the continental voice becomes muffled. This is why Ruto’s words deserve to be heard beyond Kenya.
Africa’s problem is not simply that the world refuses to listen. It is that Africa has often presented itself to the world as a collection of national interests rather than as a coherent continental force.
The continent has 55 countries and more than 1.5 billion people. It possesses enormous natural resources, a young population, vast agricultural potential, and some of the world’s most important strategic minerals. Yet when major questions of global governance, finance, security, technology, or trade arise, African countries frequently arrive at the table with different priorities.
The result is predictable. The louder blocs negotiate. Africa reacts.
We have seen this pattern in global finance, climate negotiations, debt restructuring, vaccine access, technology, and international security. African countries may share a broad interest, but shared interest is not the same thing as coordinated power.
And that is the difference between having a voice and having influence.
The irony is that the idea of African unity is not new. It predates the African Union and even the Organisation of African Unity. Nkrumah and other Pan-African thinkers understood that political independence without some form of economic and political solidarity could leave newly independent African states vulnerable to external influence.
The continental institutions that followed were important achievements. But the unfinished business of integration remains. Perhaps, we have been too frightened of the word unity, to even put it to use.
Unity does not necessarily mean abolishing national borders tomorrow morning. It does not mean erasing the sovereignty or identity of African nations. It does not require every African government to surrender its individuality. It can begin with something much more practical: agreeing that on certain fundamental questions, Africa will negotiate together.
Debt.
Trade.
Climate finance.
Technology.
Critical minerals.
Peace and security.
Global health.
Migration.
Reform of international institutions.
Imagine an Africa that decides that these issues are not merely Kenyan, Nigerian, Ghanaian, South African, or Ethiopian issues, but African negotiating priorities. That would be a different kind of African voice.
And perhaps this is where the legacy of the Gaddafi debate becomes useful—not as an endorsement of his politics, but as a reminder that the argument over continental unity has never really disappeared. African leaders disagreed with his timetable, his methods, and his vision. Yet the fundamental question he raised remains remarkably relevant: how long can a fragmented Africa expect to exercise the influence of a united world?
Ruto’s speeches are therefore part of a continuum. From Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanism, through the creation of the OAU, the establishment of the AU, Gaddafi’s unsuccessful campaign for a continental government, and today’s renewed calls for reform of global governance, Africa has been searching for the institutional expression of its collective strength.
The search continues. But there is another uncomfortable truth. Africa cannot demand that the world listen to it while Africans themselves are not always listening to one another. Nor can continental influence be built entirely through presidential speeches.
It requires institutions capable of turning declarations into policy. It requires economic integration that goes beyond conferences and communiqués. It requires infrastructure connecting African markets. It requires African capital financing African development. It requires universities, industries, and technology companies capable of producing knowledge and value rather than merely consuming them.
Above all, it requires political courage. Because there will always be moments when national interest and continental interest appear to collide.
That is where leadership is tested. The Africa of the future cannot simply be an audience at global meetings, waiting for its turn to speak. It must become a negotiating bloc capable of determining what it will accept, what it will reject, and what it will build for itself.
Ruto’s speech, therefore, should not end with Ruto.
It should take us back to a much older question. What would Africa sound like if it finally spoke with one voice?
We have heard individual African presidents speak eloquently for Africa. We have heard Nkrumah’s dream, Mandela’s moral authority, Gaddafi’s provocative call for continental government, and countless declarations from African Union summits.
The words have never been in short supply. Undoubtedly, what Africa has lacked is not a voice, but the collective will to amplify it. Until that changes, Africa will continue to speak. The world will continue to listen selectively. And the continent’s voice—rich, intelligent, resourceful and potentially powerful—will remain, tragically, muffled by its own divisions.