As the current chairperson of the African Union, Rwandan president Paul Kagame was among the first five leaders to address the just-concluded 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Kagame extolled the “deepening” partnership between Africa and the global body, noting, “the dividend of a more focused and functional Africa benefits everyone.”
But even as he emphasized this mutual cooperation, it was hard not to notice the absence of major African leaders at the world’s biggest political summit. A Quartz analysis of the African principals who spoke at the general debate using the country list published by the UN shows fewer African presidents attended the general assembly in New York than were at the third summit of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation that took place in Beijing two weeks earlier in September. The index of leaders who attended FOCAC was gathered from the forum’s official English website. By Quartz’s count 51 African leaders were in Beijing compared with 27 in New York.
Published on QUARTZ by Abdi Latif Dahir