Context

This DevTransform-led dialogue formed part of its ongoing African-led conversation series, following the Post-ODA Order webinar. It continued to explore how Africa can assert agency within global systems that were not designed for its liberation, from IMF and World Bank reform debates to climate finance and trade mechanisms. The session drew African thinkers, activists, and policymakers into a collective interrogation of whether current “reform” efforts genuinely shift power or merely recycle dependency.

Framing the Debate

Opening the session, DevTransform recalled how African voices are too often forced to respond to narratives set elsewhere. The provocation was clear: just as the “white gaze” distracts by defining the terms of debate, so too do global reform agendas pull Africa into conversations that are not its own. The challenge posed to participants was to move beyond critique — to imagine alternative architectures rooted in African values of solidarity, reciprocity, and care.

Themes and Reflections

1. Reform or Distraction?
Speakers questioned whether the wave of reform talk at the IMF, World Bank, WTO, or UN offers any real departure from systems built to preserve global hierarchies. Several warned that these processes risk legitimising inequitable power structures, allowing donor interests to dictate Africa’s future under the language of inclusivity and participation.

2. Power and Agency in a Failing Multilateralism
Participants described how Africa remains structurally marginalised even within spaces it helped to create. Examples included the IMF’s quota system, UN Security Council vetoes, and the OECD’s control of global tax norms. The discussion underscored that while the rhetoric of reform persists, the proportions of power rarely change , “the pizza expands, but the slices remain the same.”

3. Delinking and African Alternatives
Drawing from thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah, Samir Amin, and Karl Polanyi, the dialogue revisited earlier visions of “delinking” — not isolation, but the creation of self-determined economic and political systems. Speakers highlighted home-grown models such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as evidence of what African solidarity can deliver when decoupled from external prescriptions.

4. From Diagnosis to Design
The room converged on the need to transform analysis into praxis. Participants urged scholars, negotiators, and movements to articulate concrete principles for African-led multilateralism, guided by justice, sovereignty, and ecological balance. The call was for courage: to stop waiting for reform from the top and instead build parallel mechanisms grounded in Ubuntu and mutual care.

Emerging Messages

• Reform without structural change entrenches dependency.
• Africa’s collective agency must be exercised through solidarity, not mimicry.
• True transformation requires delinking from exploitative architectures and designing new ones based on shared values.
• Knowledge production and policy imagination must be reclaimed by Africans for Africa.

Looking Ahead

The discussion sets the stage for DevTransform’s continuing exploration of African-centred reform and resistance. The next conversation, planned ahead of COP30 in Belém or as a side event during the conference, will build on these themes, examining how African negotiators and civil society can act together to shape a fairer global order, with particular focus on what an alternative system could look like and what it would take to achieve it.