OPINION: Economic Diplomacy should embrace African justice movements

Whenever debates about economic diplomacy arise, immediate definitions point to the conduct of international relations aimed at securing national interests—strategies that promote exports, attract foreign investment, facilitate market access, and shape international rules for countries.

Governments, the private sector, civil society, and religious organisations are generally expected to work in unison to champion the prosperity and global influence of their respective countries.

This understanding, however, does not take into account the numerous other experiences that could inform the practice of economic diplomacy.

For example, legitimate African experiences in terms of the logic, law, and language of dignified economic independence in relation to the global financial and economic architecture are markedly different from those of the Global North.

This is due to the persistent institutional legacy of exploitative economic systems such as slavery and colonialism.

The African policy decision-making superstructure, therefore, requires a broader conceptualization in determining fairness in trade, investment, standards setting, financial instruments, and partnerships. Such an approach should not only address past grievances but also allow Africa to leapfrog into the digital future on its own terms.

Consequently, social and economic justice movements on the continent can provide fresh perspectives on navigating the debilitating effects of existing development models, particularly on issues such as pernicious debt, tax sovereignty, and climate resolution, among other global challenges.

Worldwide interactions demand a challenge to dominant Eurocentric models and the championing of a collective continental imagination within economic diplomacy.

This will allow for original thought and contextualization that can unshackle Africa from systemic challenges hindering the transformation of lives for millions of people on the continent.

It is therefore refreshing to follow the fifth African Conference on Debt and Development (AFCODD) in Accra, Ghana, which seeks to tackle the African debt crisis by exploring a framework for reparative justice. The continent has faced—and continues to face—various forms of harm in its economic interactions that demand restorative action.

Over the course of three days, from 27–29 August 2025, the conference convened 57 organizations and brought together more than 250 participants from Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone countries. AFCODD is a showcase of how non-state actors can mobilize to confront existing challenges in developmental thought and debate.

Technocratic negotiations and research approaches are bolstered by real-life, people-to-people experiences that are needed to develop common African positions for a political economy of liberation.

This should address existing injustices by establishing domestic and international accountability in economic relations.

Justice movements are therefore providing continental leadership by pushing Afrocentric perspectives that stand for plurality, interdependence, alternative methodologies, and values to ensure a more prosperous continent—particularly one aligned with the ambitions of its increasingly youthful population.

By introducing a “justice quotient” in the foreign policy, external relations, and international affairs of African states, citizens, commercial actors, and faith-based entities on the continent can begin constructing the necessary elements of solidarity needed for Africa’s economic integration.

New ideas, such as feminist foreign policy, which are already being discussed in these non-state actor spaces, are well ahead of state exploration and inclusion in determining outcomes on issues such as gender-based violence within traditional diplomatic interests like war.

Rapid African responses to current policy uncertainty, the need for resilience amid geopolitical shifts, the emerging influence of expanding digital universes, and sustainable development are therefore crucial.

Movements championing greater fairness are consequently at the vanguard of restructuring the existing global framework as part of their development finance campaigns, working to prevent illicit financial flows and engaging parliamentarians through African roll calls on key issues—thereby paving pathways to self-sufficiency.

This will unleash structural changes and provide the sectoral shifts, labor movements, capital transitions, increased productivity, and demographic adaptations necessary in the era of the fourth industrial revolution.