Stop asking for permission: Africa must wield its power – Moky Makura

When I was a teenager at boarding school, a group of us decided to raid the school kitchen for a midnight feast. We were defiant, daring and had no intention of asking for permission. We were caught the next day – it turned out the kitchen also stocked the church’s communion wine, and that was our undoing.

There were consequences, but if you had asked me whether it was worth it, my answer, then and now, would have been a resounding yes.

There’s a lesson in there for our African leaders.

I am not suggesting that they behave like a group of rebellious teenage girls. But they could use some of the defiant teen spirit we had naturally then: the audacity to go after what we wanted without waiting for permission to do so.
Let me tell you why.

I wasn’t in New York last week to hear Kenyan President William Ruto address the UN General Assembly, but I read his call for Africa to have permanent representation on the Security Council and felt a strong sense of disappointment and déjà vu. It sounded like he was asking for permission for something that Africa deserved. Again.

Security Council reform has been on the General Assembly’s agenda since 1979 – nearly 50 years. African governments agreed on a common position in 2005. Formal negotiations began in 2009. We have had summits, declarations, 17 years of negotiations and more speeches. But what we have not had is a permanent African seat.

Ruto’s speech seemed to be the diplomatic equivalent of taking a knife to a gunfight: morally right, but nowhere near powerful enough to change the outcome.

And yet the argument for Africa to have a seat is so compelling that African presidents have been making it for decades, using the same proverbial knife.

Nelson Mandela called for the UN’s structures to reflect the diversity of the world in 1995. Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo called Africa’s exclusion “incomprehensible” in 2024. President John Mahama returned to the same point last year. Ruto made the case in 2024, in 2025 and again this year. We are nothing if not persistent.

At what point do we realise that eloquent speeches, delivered with passion, don’t work on their own? The message these “Please, Sir, can I have…” speeches are sending to the world is that we are not worthy.

We can keep explaining why we deserve to be let in. The gatekeepers can keep agreeing that our case deserves consideration. Another year passes, another speech is made, and nothing changes. Repeat.

It’s time for a different tactic. Time to act on the power we have to create the change we want, just as we did in getting the world to “#CorrectTheMap”. Admittedly, the stakes were not as high, but the principle of better representation for Africa is exactly the same.

The Security Council’s decisions directly affect the continent. It decides on peacekeeping missions, sanctions and military action, often in Africa. So, while being part of the UN is valuable, we should stop behaving as if admission to that body is the only way to exercise power over our territories.

We should be using and strengthening the strongest collective-action institution we already have: the African Union. Properly empowered, it is our superpower – a platform that already unites us and allows us to act collectively.

Ruto made this point himself in 2023, when he questioned why 54 African leaders should attend the many “Africa + 1” summits to meet a single foreign leader. He argued then that the African Union should be able to negotiate for the continent collectively. Yet we still too often turn up as individual countries, weakening the bargaining power we would have together.

Why are our leaders trying to join a club that doesn’t want us while ignoring one that needs us – and that, with more support, has the potential to fulfil a similar mission?

The AU can’t replace the Security Council’s global authority, but it can give Africa far greater control over security issues in its own backyard. To do that, it must become stronger, better funded and, crucially, more respected by the leaders of its own member states. That work could begin now, at a moment when power is shifting away from the old world order.

Strengthening the African Union will allow us to press for change at the Security Council with more than just the power of words.

The continent’s 54 countries equate to 54 votes at the UN and, if used together, these votes are our secret weapon. Alone, they can’t create permanent Security Council seats, but collectively they can be used as leverage to negotiate for them. This would require the hardest thing for our leaders to do: act together rather than agree in principle and negotiate separately in practice.

So there is work to be done.

Luckily, we have a whole year ahead of us to strengthen our superpower and sharpen our secret weapon. I am hoping that by the time our leaders return to New York next year, they will have real ammunition – not a rolled-up speech – in their back pockets.

I would love to see some of that defiant teen spirit at UNGA in 2027. A midnight feast in New York sounds like a wonderful idea.

Moky Makura is the Executive Director of Africa No Filter, the advocacy organisation behind the #CorrectTheMap campaign. They are working to change how the world sees Africa and how Africa sees itself.

Written by Moky Makura for bird story agency