How the Global South is shaping the future of multilateralism
A loose coalition often labelled “the Global South” is using numbers, new alliances, and control over key resources to push for changes in how the world sets rules on trade, finance, climate, and technology.
This isn’t a single bloc with one voice, but on several files, developing countries are coordinating more effectively and extracting concessions that would have been hard to imagine a decade ago.
Two headline moves show the political centre of gravity edging outward. First, BRICS expanded in 2024 beyond Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, enlarging a forum that presents itself as a counterweight to Western-led clubs. Leaders announced the expansion at the 2023 Johannesburg summit, and Saudi Arabia confirmed it officially joined on January 2, 2024.
Second, the African Union gained permanent membership in the G20 in September 2023. That gives 55 African states a standing seat in a forum that steers much of the global economic agenda, an institutional upgrade many African leaders had pushed for.
At the World Trade Organisation’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in 2024, developing-country coalitions helped shape outcomes. Members agreed to keep working on dispute-settlement reform and development issues, while also extending the moratorium on customs duties for digital trade for two more years amid divisions over its costs and benefits. Talks on fisheries, agriculture, and investment facilitation continued without a final package, illustrating how larger developing-country groupings can stall or steer files until concerns are addressed.
Climate finance
The Loss and Damage Fund, a long-sought demand of climate-vulnerable nations, was operationalised at COP28, with the World Bank hosting the fund on an interim basis. Pledges initially totalled about $700 million, far below estimated needs, but the institutional foothold matters: developing countries now have a vehicle to keep pressing for scaled-up support in the run-up to COP29 and COP30.
That pressure is expanding to market design. As COP30 approaches in Brazil, the host is floating a coordinated global carbon pricing push and a major forest finance plan—an attempt to shape rules rather than simply react to measures like the EU’s carbon border tax. Even if a single global market is unlikely, Brasília’s agenda signals a more assertive Global South role in writing the climate playbook.
After years of debate on voice and resources at the IMF, members approved a 50% overall quota increase in December 2023 to shore up the Fund’s lending capacity—without immediately rebalancing voting shares. Many developing countries still want deeper governance reform, but the capital boost keeps crisis financing available while that fight continues.
Parallel institutions are also evolving. The New Development Bank (NDB), created by BRICS, set a target to lift local-currency lending to roughly 30% of its portfolio by 2026, an appeal to borrowers wary of dollar-debt swings and a signal that alternative financing norms are maturing. Recent statements suggest the bank has already moved a quarter of its book into BRICS currencies.
South–South deals
Beyond the big summits, South–South agreements are quietly redrawing trade maps. The UAE–Kenya comprehensive economic partnership agreement, the UAE’s first of its kind with a mainland African country, shows Gulf–Africa corridors becoming platforms for investment, standards, and logistics that don’t run through traditional Western hubs.
At the same time, the G77 + China has revived coordination around science, technology, and development, using high-level summits to set common negotiating lines at the UN on digital gaps, industrial policy space, and financing.
A growing number of Global South governments and cities are also backing supply-side ideas like a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to complement demand-side climate policy. While still outside the UN negotiating track, the movement’s expanding political endorsements show how agenda-setting can start in the South and ripple outward.
The Global South isn’t replacing existing institutions; it’s remixing them, adding seats (AU in the G20), widening clubs (BRICS+), and using coalition power to stall, shape, or accelerate agendas on trade, climate, and finance.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
