Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks at a special session of the Business 20 or B20 Summit ahead of the G20 Summit to be held in September, in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023. The B20 is the official G20 dialogue forum with the global business community, which aims to deliver concrete actionable policy recommendations on priorities by each rotating presidency to spur economic growth and development. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Indian PM proposes full G20 membership for African Union

On Aug 28, 2023

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for the African Union (AU) to become a member of the G20, the club of the world’s richest countries due to meet in India in September.

“We have invited the African Union with the idea of granting it permanent member status” of the G20, Narendra Modi said during the B20 business forum which was held ahead of the G20 summit on 9^th and 10^th September.

In December, US President Joe Biden had already expressed the wish that the African Union join the G20 as a permanent member, assuring that “it was going to happen”.

Only one African country, South Africa, is currently a member of the G20, which brings together 19 of the world’s largest economies plus the European Union, representing 85% of world GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population.

Based in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, the AU has 55 member countries, totalling three trillion dollars in GDP.

The Indian Prime Minister also affirmed that his country, China’s great rival, had the capacity to compensate for the supply problems caused by the Covid crisis.

India is the “solution” to create “a reliable global supply chain”, because “the world has changed a lot after Covid-19”, Mr Modi said.

Thursday at the BRICS summit (group of large emerging countries) in South Africa, Mr Modi spoke one-on-one with Chinese President Xi Jinping

Africanews/Hauwa M.