Africa's Voice at UNGA 2025: Silence on the Continent's Deadliest Conflicts—A Missed Strategic Moment?
When African leaders took the podium at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, they spoke powerfully about climate justice, debt relief, and the urgent need for Security Council reform. They condemned Israeli actions in Gaza with moral clarity. They demanded that the international community recognize Africa's legitimate grievances against a global order built on colonial extraction and sustained by structural inequality.
What they largely didn't talk about were the wars tearing through their own continent.
Sudan's civil war, which has displaced over 10 million people and created what the UN calls one of the world's worst humanitarian catastrophes, received minimal attention in African heads of state speeches. The Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern conflicts, which have killed millions over decades and continue to displace communities while fueling a global mineral extraction economy, were mostly absent from African diplomatic statements. Somalia's ongoing insecurity, the Sahel's cascading crises, and Mozambique's northern insurgency—all received limited mention in Africa's collective presentation to the world.
This wasn't an oversight. It was a choice. And that choice reveals deep fractures in continental diplomacy—fractures that undermine Africa's ability to shape global narratives, control its own crisis responses, and claim the moral authority necessary for the systemic changes African leaders say they want.
UNGA 2025: What Africa Chose to Say
To be clear, African statements at UNGA 2025 weren't empty or inconsequential. Kenya's President William Ruto delivered a forceful call for climate finance reform, pointing out the contradiction of Africa being asked to develop sustainably while being denied the capital to do so. Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo continued his advocacy for debt restructuring and international tax justice. Multiple African leaders demanded permanent African representation on the UN Security Council—a long-standing and entirely justified ask given that Africa is the region most frequently subject to Security Council actions yet has no permanent voice in those decisions.
The solidarity with Palestine was real and, from an anti-colonial perspective, entirely consistent with Africa's own history. Many African nations know intimately what it means to live under military occupation, to see international law selectively enforced, and to watch Western powers excuse violence against colonized peoples while demanding restraint from those resisting. That solidarity deserves recognition, not dismissal.
But solidarity is most powerful when it's consistent. And Africa's relative silence on its internal conflicts—conflicts that are killing and displacing Africans by the millions—creates a credibility problem that undermines the continent's broader moral claims.
Absence as Strategy—or Failure?
Why would African leaders, having secured precious minutes at the world's most prominent diplomatic forum, choose not to address the conflicts devastating their own populations? Several possible explanations exist, none particularly reassuring.
Internal divisions make unified African positions nearly impossible. Egypt and Ethiopia remain at odds over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, making coordinated Nile Basin diplomacy difficult. In the DRC conflict, regional actors have competing interests—some supporting armed groups, others trying to mediate, all while protecting their own economic and security interests. When African countries are on opposite sides of these conflicts, public solidarity becomes diplomatically dangerous.
Dependency on external actors constrains what African leaders can say. Gulf states—particularly the UAE and Saudi Arabia—are major players in Sudan's civil war, backing different sides while also providing significant investment across Africa. Russia's Wagner Group (now Africa Corps) operates in multiple African conflict zones. Western powers fund peacekeeping operations, provide military aid, and control access to international financial institutions. Speaking too directly about conflicts where external powers are involved risks alienating partners that African governments believe they need.
Image management plays a role that's both understandable and troubling. African leaders are exhausted by Western media narratives that reduce the continent to chaos, disease, and war. There's a legitimate desire to present Africa as a place of dynamism, growth, and potential rather than reinforcing "African chaos" stereotypes. But the result is a kind of silence that allows those external narratives to persist precisely because African leaders aren't offering alternative frameworks for understanding these conflicts—frameworks that center colonialism, resource extraction, and external interference rather than tribal animosity or governance failure.
The problem is that this absence isn't strategic—it's a failure of strategy. By not centering African conflicts in African diplomatic discourse, African leaders cede control of those narratives to external actors who inevitably frame them in ways that serve external interests.
Consequences of Silence
The cost of Africa's diplomatic silence on its own conflicts is paid in three currencies: narrative control, policy autonomy, and moral authority.
Narrative control: When African leaders don't define the terms of debate around African conflicts, others do. Western governments and media frame these conflicts through familiar colonial tropes—ancient tribal hatreds, corrupt governance, failed states—that obscure the roles of resource extraction, arms flows, and external interference. Without African counternarratives that center these structural factors, the dominant story remains one that pathologizes Africa rather than examining the global systems that profit from African instability.
Policy autonomy: The absence of strong African diplomatic positions creates space for external actors to dominate conflict mediation and resolution. In Sudan, the primary mediation tracks run through Jeddah (led by Saudi Arabia and the U.S.) and various other external forums, with the African Union's role marginalized. In the DRC, despite decades of conflict, external powers continue to set the terms of peace processes and peacekeeping operations. The UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, MONUSCO, finally withdrew after years of criticism, but its replacement isn't an African-led security architecture—it's simply the absence of any coherent security framework.
When Africa doesn't assert ownership over its own peace processes, it ends up with solutions designed by external actors pursuing external interests. This isn't speculation—it's history. From Cold War interventions to contemporary "counter-terrorism partnerships" that militarize governance without addressing underlying grievances, externally-led approaches to African conflicts consistently fail African populations.
Moral authority: Perhaps most damaging, Africa's silence on its own conflicts undermines the continent's broader demands for global justice. How does Africa demand that the international community take Palestinian rights seriously while appearing to accept that Sudanese or Congolese suffering is somehow less urgent? How can African leaders credibly advocate for Security Council reform when they seem unwilling to use existing diplomatic platforms to address African crises?
This isn't about moral equivalence or suggesting that African leaders must choose between solidarity with Palestine and addressing African conflicts. It's about recognizing that moral authority is built on consistency. The same principles that demand justice for Palestinians—the right to self-determination, protection from military violence, application of international law—apply to Africans. When African leaders don't center those principles in relation to African conflicts, they weaken their own standing to demand them elsewhere.
Systemic Constraints: Why African Diplomacy Struggles
To be fair, Africa's diplomatic limitations aren't just failures of will—they're products of structural constraints that are themselves legacies of colonialism and underdevelopment.
The African Union's Peace and Security Council is chronically underfunded. Despite being responsible for conflict prevention and resolution across a continent of 1.4 billion people, the AU's peace and security budget is a fraction of what effective continental security governance would require. The AU lacks rapid deployment capability, sustainable financing for peace operations, and the institutional capacity to lead complex mediations. Much of its funding comes from external partners, creating dependencies that limit its autonomy.
Regional Economic Communities (RECs) often work at cross-purposes. ECOWAS, SADC, IGAD, and other RECs each have their own peace and security architectures, sometimes with conflicting mandates and competing interests. What ECOWAS considers a security threat, SADC might view as an internal matter. Without effective coordination mechanisms, Africa's regional approach to conflict becomes fragmented and incoherent.
Peace processes are often hijacked by external actors from the start. Sudan's conflict involves Jeddah-based talks led by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, separate Addis Ababa processes, Egyptian initiatives, and various other tracks—none of them genuinely African-led. The multiplication of processes doesn't represent African agency; it represents external powers competing to shape outcomes while African institutions struggle to assert relevance.
These structural problems are real, but they're also convenient excuses. The AU's underfunding is a choice by African governments to prioritize other spending and to accept dependency on external funding. The lack of REC coordination reflects political fragmentation that African leaders could address through political will and institutional investment. External domination of peace processes happens because African institutions allow it to happen.
What Assertive African Diplomacy Could Look Like
It's not as if Africa lacks examples of more assertive diplomatic approaches. Rwanda, whatever one thinks of its domestic governance, has consistently shaped international narratives around its interests—often successfully countering criticisms and maintaining international support despite serious human rights concerns. Kenya has positioned itself as a diplomatic hub and mediator, actively shaping regional conflict responses rather than simply reacting to external initiatives.
These examples suggest what's possible when African states prioritize diplomatic capacity and strategic communications. An assertive African diplomacy on conflict would involve:
Centering African narratives from the start. Rather than allowing Western media and governments to frame African conflicts through familiar colonial tropes, African leaders could use platforms like UNGA to explicitly name the structural factors driving violence: resource extraction economies that incentivize conflict, arms flows from external powers, and the legacy of colonial borders that created ungovernable territories. This isn't about denying African agency or responsibility—it's about contextualizing African conflicts within the global systems that shape them.
Building from non-aligned tradition. Africa's mid-20th-century leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement represented a form of diplomatic power that contemporary African leaders have largely abandoned. That tradition of refusing to be pawns in great power competition, of building south-south solidarity, and of asserting the right to autonomous development hasn't become irrelevant—African leaders have simply stopped practicing it. Reclaiming that tradition would mean using forums like UNGA to explicitly reject the framing of African conflicts as theaters for great power competition and instead demanding support for African-led solutions.
Creating institutional capacity for conflict diplomacy. The AU could establish a standing corps of Special Envoys with real resources, genuine continental backing, and the political support necessary to lead mediations. Rather than waiting for external actors to convene peace processes, the AU could proactively assert its role as the primary mediator for African conflicts. This requires funding, but more fundamentally it requires African governments to genuinely empower the AU rather than treating it as a symbolic forum.
Coordinating positions ahead of international forums. Rather than African leaders arriving at UNGA with disparate messages, the AU could coordinate unified positions on major African conflicts—not to paper over disagreements but to ensure that when African leaders speak about African issues, they're advancing shared strategic objectives rather than individual national interests.
Strategic Reorientation: From Reaction to Ownership
What Africa needs isn't just better speeches at UNGA. It needs a fundamental reorientation from reactive crisis management to proactive conflict diplomacy infrastructure.
That means:
Creating Special Envoys with collective continental backing. Rather than mediation being ad hoc and dependent on individual countries' initiatives, the AU should establish a permanent mediation capacity with envoys who have explicit mandates from the continental body and the resources to operate effectively. These envoys should be empowered to engage all parties to conflicts, including armed groups, rather than limiting themselves to state actors.
Funding African-led peace operations autonomously. The AU's current dependence on UN and external bilateral funding for peace operations creates a fundamental constraint on African strategic autonomy. The proposed AU levy—a small tax on eligible imports to fund AU operations—has been discussed for years but insufficiently implemented. Making this real would require political will from African governments to prioritize continental capacity over short-term national fiscal interests.
Partnering with diaspora policy networks for strategic communications and global advocacy. The African diaspora, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, represents a massive resource for shaping international narratives and creating political pressure on external actors. African governments and the AU could build systematic partnerships with diaspora organizations, providing them with information and coordinating advocacy around African conflicts. Black Americans, in particular, have increasingly connected their struggles against systemic racism to global anti-colonial solidarity—that energy could be harnessed to build support for African-led conflict resolution.
Establishing an annual AU "Conflict Diplomacy Summit" ahead of UNGA. Rather than African leaders arriving at the General Assembly with ad hoc positions, the AU could institutionalize a pre-UNGA summit specifically focused on coordinating African diplomatic positions on ongoing conflicts. This would create accountability—African leaders would have to explain to each other why they are or aren't prioritizing certain conflicts, making silence harder to sustain.
The Absent Diplomacy
Africa's silence at UNGA 2025 on its deadliest conflicts wasn't inevitable—it was chosen. And that choice reflects deeper problems in how African states relate to each other, to continental institutions, and to their own populations.
The silence says: We will demand justice for others, but we struggle to demand it consistently for ourselves. We will critique global power structures while accepting external domination of our own crisis responses. We will speak of African unity while allowing internal divisions to paralyze collective action.
This isn't a moralistic critique—it's a strategic assessment. Africa's global influence depends on its ability to speak with coherence and moral authority. That authority is undermined every time African leaders appear more willing to address conflicts on other continents than the wars displacing and killing millions of Africans.
The good news is that these are political choices, which means they can be changed. African leaders could decide that continental coherence matters more than individual bilateral relationships. They could invest in building the AU's capacity to lead on peace and security rather than treating it as a largely symbolic institution. They could use the diaspora's growing political consciousness and economic power to build support for African-led solutions.
But that requires seeing this moment not as an embarrassing gap in UNGA speeches but as a fundamental challenge to Africa's vision of itself. Is Africa a collection of nation-states competing for external patronage, or is it a continental project capable of collective self-determination? The answer to that question will be written in how African leaders choose to speak—or not speak—about African lives.
UNGA 2026 will come. The conflicts will still be there. The question is whether Africa's voice will be too.
