UN General Assembly
2025

Out of the 42 founding Member States of the League of Nations, only three were African – Liberia, the Union of South Africa and Ethiopia. Egypt was to join later in 1937. Africa's overall participation in the organization's founding was minimal and relatively unimportant. That's because before all the other talks and meetings, representatives from a group of 14 nations gathered in Berlin for a series of discussions that began in 1884 and which led to the partitioning and formal colonization of the African continent, which is also called the Scramble for Africa. It has famously been written that past is prologue. Well, in the past, the majority of the 54 nations that now comprise Africa were never offered a seat at the table where plans for a new world order were being drawn. But, Madam President, as fate would have it, the tables are turning, and Africa's role in the alter shape of whatever is yet to come for this world is going to be huge and it will be consequential.