New Delhi: The African Union will be admitted as a full member at the 18th summit of the G20, Russia has confirmed.
The Russian G20 sherpa Svetlana Lukash told a Russian business daily, Vedomosti that the provision for making the regional African organisation a full member will be included in the outcome document. Till now, the grouping had been made up of 19 countries and one regional organisation, the European Union (EU).
The annual summit of the grouping of the 20 large economies will be held over two days in New Delhi on September 9 and 10.
With AU’s membership of G20 confirmed, the efforts will shift towards the competition for claiming credit.
The Indian prime minister Narendra Modi had written to leaders of G20 member states in June “to propose that the African Union be given full membership at the upcoming Delhi Summit of G20, as requested by them”.
With India getting ready to project the AU membership as an achievement of its G20 presidency, an article was published in a South African paper earlier this week with the authorship of Indian PM Modi. He highlighted that India had advocated for the inclusion of the regional group in the G20.
The Russian official was also not behind in emphasising that Russia was among the first countries to support the AU’s application, which was submitted last year by Senegalese President Macky Sall during his chairmanship of the AU in 2022, urging G20 leaders to grant the African bloc a permanent seat within the group.
“Russia believes that once implemented, the initiative of African nations would contribute to strengthening the positions of the majority of countries worldwide and the interests of the Global South,” Lukash told the Russian media outlet. She also reminded that Russia had recently held a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in July, where Russian President Vladimir Putin had publicly voiced his support for the AU joining G20.
Russia had been wooing African countries and the Global South aggressively, as many of them had a more ambiguous position on the Ukraine war and had abstained on UN resolutions related to the conflict.
Bloomberg had reported on Wednesday that in the absence of Russia and China, EU was stepping up its outreach to African countries on the sideline of the G20 summit. Terming it as a ‘mini summit’, top EU leadership and national leaders like German chancellor Olaf Scholz will hold a meeting on September 9 with their counterpart from South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and current AU chair, Comoros.
The gathering of EU and African leaders on Friday will endorse the entry of African Union to the G20, the news agency reported.
While India had written to G20 leaders this July, the US had already given its support to the quest for AU’s membership during the summit with African leaders in December 2022. Japan had also come forward the same month.