The eighteenth G20 Summit and the first hosted by India got under way on Saturday with the admission of African Union (AU) as its permanent member even as last-minute negotiations were on to achieve complete unanimity on an exhaustive Joint Declaration that spans about 80 paras.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his opening remarks at the summit, invited the AU, represented by the current Chairperson and President of Comoros Azali Assoumani, to take a seat at the table of G20 leaders as a permanent member.
“We welcome the African Union as a permanent member of the G20 and strongly believe that inclusion of the African Union into the G20 will significantly contribute to addressing the global challenges of our time,” noted the Prime Minister.
AU is the second regional organisation after the European Union to have full membership of G20, upgraded from its existing designation as an “invited international organisation”. A 54-country organisation, all G20 leaders state that their bloc keeps uppermost the concerns of least developed countries, a bulk of which are in Africa. That the African contingent constitutes almost a quarter of the UN’s membership is another factor.
The move was proposed by PM Modi in June and followed up by letters to all other leaders of G20 member countries proposing full membership to the AU at the New Delhi summit. The path had been smoothened with US President Joe Biden calling for full membership for the AU at the US-Africa Summit in December last year.
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