The participants of the G20 Foreign Ministers' meeting in New Delhi agreed that the African Union should become a permanent member of the G20, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.
"We have agreed that the African Union will now be a permanent member of the G20, as the European Union has been participating in this work for several years," Lavrov said at a press conference after the meeting.
Russia has called for the African Union to become a member of the G20 several times.
For instance, in December 2022, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov argued that Moscow was in favor of the African countries' bloc being included in the G20.
"All 20 of the G20 countries and not just one country [the US] should decide who can join and who cannot. We are not against it in principle, of course, we really have advanced relations with the African Union, African countries. We are preparing the summit ourselves. It is necessary to hold talks within the framework of the G20," Bogdanov said.
The 55-member African Union is one of the largest regional blocs in the world. It was established in 2002 as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), as the need arose to refocus attention from the fight for decolonization and ridding the continent of apartheid, which had been the focus of the OAU, to increasing the cooperation and integration of African states to stimulate Africa’s growth and economic development.
The G20 has already implemented several projects with African countries. In 2017, the German presidency of the group launched the G20 Compact with Africa initiative to attract private investment in participating African nations by carrying out reforms to improve the business climate there.
The project involves international organizations and partners within and outside the G20, as well as 12 participating states which include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, and Tunisia.
On 1 March, the G20 Foreign Minister's meeting started in the Indian capital of New Delhi as a part of a series of events being held prior to the G20 Summit scheduled to take place later in September.
On 2 March, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the Opening Segment of the meeting in New Delhi, pointed out that the event is taking place at a time of deep global division.
The prime minister also said that, as the leading economies of the world, the meeting's participants have a responsibility toward those outside the G20.
"The world looks upon the G20 to ease the challenges of growth, development, economic resilience, disaster resilience, financial stability, transnational crime, corruption, terrorism and energy security, in all these areas the G20 has capacity to build consensus and deliver concrete results," Modi stated.
The Indian prime minister also said that multilateralism is in crisis nowadays and that the global governance architecture established after the Second World War has failed to prevent problems such as financial challenges, climate change, the spread of diseases, terrorism and wars.
India assumed the G20 presidency in December and will hold it to 30 November 2023. Within that time, India will host more than 200 meetings with the Foreign Ministers' gathering being one of the most significant events of the forum before the G20 Heads of State and Government Summit that will take place on 9 and 10 September 2023.