Africa’s middle-power conundrum
Africa’s regional anchor states must convert niche assets into leverage, not pretend they can build a middle-power third way.
The role of middle powers in international relations has gained considerable attention in recent years. This has been spurred on primarily by the United States (US) pivoting away from the liberal, rules-based, international order it created and steered since the end of the Second World War, the rapid and ongoing ascendency of China, and the rise of a varied constellation of powers from the global south.
These developments have propped up an increasingly uncertain global environment, with most state actors scrambling to reassess the durability and predictability of their many bilateral and multilateral pacts and agreements. This has also necessitated a deep rethink of their respective allegiances, alignments and strategic engagements on the world stage.
For many countries, pursuing avenues to ensure greater strategic autonomy, particularly between an increasingly unreliable Washington and a dominant Beijing, has become a critical endeavour. One that has led to the fashionable idea that middle powers could (and should) chart a “third way” to influence the nature and trajectory of an emergent future international order.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos 2026 call for “variable geometry” perfectly captured this mood, alongside a recent wave of expert analyses and commentary on whether middle powers can effectively restrain great-power rivalry, move beyond blocs or gain influence by working alone rather than together.
For Africa, however, middle-power debates are most often misleading.
While the continent’s major powers do not lack ambition, influence or dynamism, they do lack the material capabilities and internal cohesion to fully realise and instrumentalise their collective capabilities on the world stage. Given the broad, relational and self-identifying nature of the term, there is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a middle power. Nonetheless, most international relations scholars would use this category for what would otherwise be called second-tier states. Namely, countries with some notable degree of agency as a function of their soft and hard power projection capabilities, and which are capable of directly (albeit marginally) shaping the international order.
As argued by Stewart Patrick, senior fellow and director of the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ‘... the concept of a middle power is inherently relative and relational. Historically, middle powers have ranked below the great powers. In today’s world, dominated by the United States and China, the category could in principle encompass most other members of the G20…’ Yet even this does not fully account for the varied countries that would describe themselves as middle powers, again, given the inherently relative and relational nature of the term.
These include other emerging powers from the global south, increasingly capable of asserting their autonomy and shaping the global agenda. There are also “residual great powers”, with particular regard to the United Kingdom and France, who once dominated the international order, but whose relative structural weight is likely to diminish as power shifts toward the US, China and a broader constellation of emerging powers.
Accordingly, what would ordinarily be thought of as Africa’s middle-power bloc should perhaps be understood more accurately as a disparate collection of regionally influential anchor states with uneven leverage, competing priorities and a limited capacity to meaningfully shape global order.
Africa’s middle-power bloc should perhaps be understood more accurately as a disparate collection of regionally influential anchor states
More broadly, middle-power cohesion is far less robust than many would assume. Middle powers from the global north, such as Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia, Italy and South Korea, all appear relatively coherent on account of their shared democratic systems, open market economies and investment in the (now floundering) liberal rules-based international order. However, most remain deeply embedded within a global US-led security architecture that they now seek to insure against.
These states also do not share a common hierarchy of global threat perceptions. Most European middle powers are primarily focused on Russia and Ukraine. In contrast, Japan, South Korea and Australia are preoccupied with China, Taiwan and the status quo in the East Asian security theatre.
Middle powers from the global south face an even broader set of challenges. While a shared dissatisfaction with Western dominance may anchor their agenda for greater coordination, they nonetheless lack a common geopolitical project and a shared worldview for an emergent international order.
India pursues greater strategic autonomy while balancing China. Brazil seeks reform of global governance and financial institutions without hard alignment. South Africa (again with debatable middle-power credentials) leans heavily into BRICS and the normative appeal and utility of global south solidarity and south-south cooperation.
Turkey, on the other hand, pursues greater room to manoeuvre across NATO, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates appear locked in a contest for regional leadership requiring ever more shrewd power-projection strategies across the Middle East, North Africa, East Africa and the Horn. Meanwhile, Mexico struggles to escape its deep dependence on the US economy.
Africa’s middle-power dilemma is further compounded by the lack of systemically influential states capable of materially shaping the international order. While South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Kenya do indeed possess considerable strategic weight and may influence regional, continental and global governance matters, they are nonetheless materially incapable (even collectively) of serving as anchors in a distinct third geopolitical pole for an emergent international order.
Based on IMF April 2026 projections, even if the continent’s top 5 largest economies were pooled together, with South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria and Morocco, seeking to establish a BRICS-like African minilateral diplomatic club, their combined nominal GDP would work out to roughly USD 1.8 trillion. This would place the bloc below South Korea or Spain, and just ahead of Turkey or Saudi Arabia. If economic might were the exclusive measure for middle-power status, Africa’s five largest economies would just about match the heft of a single middle power elsewhere.
Luckily, this is not the case. Influence on the world stage (even if not able to systematically alter the direction of the international order) is far broader than the heft of individual economies. Regardless, African policymakers would be wise to adopt a more honest vocabulary and dispassionate assessment of what they ought to do to support a more enabling global environment.
While aspiring to conventional middle-power status and attempting to chart a “third way” with other middle powers could anchor a longer-term developmental vision, most of the continent’s regional powers should immediately aim to build and instrumentalise “niche superpowers” (in the colloquial sense) from specific national capabilities. As argued by Professors Pardo and Klingler-Vidra from Kings College London, Taiwan and its “silicon shield” perhaps best exemplify how a niche national capability can have far-reaching security and geopolitical implications. Specifically, as a producer of approximately 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductor chips, critical to almost every facet of modern human life and industry, Taiwan remains theoretically insulated from Chinese aggression, while almost necessitating US security guarantees, due to its critical global geostrategic value.
As the global geopolitical environment grows increasingly transactional and unpredictable, Africa’s regional powers will benefit far less from attempting to work as a collective bloc and far more from the strategic use of assets and endowments that other international actors need.
Africa’s regional powers will benefit from the strategic use of assets and endowments that other international actors need
From critical mineral endowments (DR Congo), to geographic proximity to global maritime trade chokepoints (Egypt), to regional convening power (Kenya), to demographic scale (Nigeria) or financial market and regulatory environment sophistication (South Africa), these comparative national capabilities need to be transformed and shrewdly employed as instruments of power on the world stage.
This could be achieved by designing national strategies around these niches so that they may be conditioned as deployable negotiating chips with external partners. This could help guarantee the inclusion of local value addition, technology transfer and skills development in future agreements with Washington, Beijing and other major capitals seeking access to critical minerals, more secure passage through the Bab el-Mandab Strait and committed regional strategic and commercial partners.
For many, this may be an uncomfortable conclusion to arrive at, as it points to the renewal of realpolitik as the primary driver of international cooperation.
Yet the prospects of a truly robust coalition of middle powers spanning the global north and south, capable of serving as a third geopolitical pole, do not appear plausible. Nor does the prospect of any one of the continent’s regional powers being able to offer, construct and underwrite the costs of a truly continental regime that can wield and leverage the collective weight of most African states on the world stage.
What is far more likely is the development of multiple issues- and interests-based minilateral structures that could be established and steered by middle powers, so long as these do not overstep their bounds and draw the ire of Washington or Beijing. This would also likely be accompanied by further fragmentation, weakening multilateralism and the continued erosion of any normative basis for international cooperation.
While building a coherent “third way” appears attractive on paper, this moment should instead be seen as a critical opportunity to develop and stockpile as much deployable leverage as possible, drawing on unique national capabilities and converting these into tangible material gains.
Africa’s regional anchors may not be able to remake the international order. However, they can still bargain harder, coordinate more selectively and extract greater value from a world in which every major power increasingly needs what the continent has to offer.
Image: tommyvideo/Pixabay
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AFI Seminar exploring the opportunities and risks of a growing ‘middle power moment’ and what it means for Africa: Can middle powers deliver for Africa? - ISS African Futures
