By Cheikh Fall, Third Path Africa
South-South Day is not a ceremonial nod—it is a strategic summons. It calls us to remember Bandung, where in 1955, leaders from Asia and Africa refused to be proxies in global power games. They envisioned a world where solidarity among the formerly colonized would birth a new geopolitical grammar. Today, that grammar must be rewritten again—with Africa not as a footnote, but as a co-author.
The Non-Aligned Movement was never about passivity—it was about principled defiance. South-South cooperation, born of that ethos, is not a technical arrangement. It is the architecture of dignity. But dignity demands structure. And today, BRICS stands at a crossroads.
BRICS—originally a coalition of emerging economies—has expanded, but risks becoming a club of selectively elevated states rather than a platform for collective emancipation. If it is to serve the Global South, it must reflect the South in its entirety. Africa cannot be represented by a handful of states. Africa must be present as a continent, as a civilization, as a strategic bloc.
We must call for a BRICS+Africa framework—not as a gesture, but as a geopolitical correction. The continent that holds the world’s mineral wealth, the youngest population, and the deepest reserves of spiritual and cultural capital cannot be sidelined in the very coalition that claims to challenge Western hegemony.
South-South cooperation must evolve from rhetorical solidarity to treaty-based sovereignty. It must birth institutions that reclaim our minerals, our water, our data. It must forge continental authorities that do not mimic the North, but reflect our own epistemologies—our own rhythms of governance and care.
Africa must not be a recipient of development. Africa must be a co-author of global futures.
Let this South-South Day be a call to action. Let it be the day we stop asking for seats at tables built elsewhere—and begin building our own. Let it be the day we move from shared pain to shared power.
Bandung was not a moment. It was a beginning. BRICS must not be a club. It must be a covenant. And African unity is not a dream. It is a duty.