Silence Charumbira
As the world commemorates the 80th anniversary of the United Nations in 2025, it has become increasingly clear that the current global governance system has failed to serve the interests of small, landlocked nations like Lesotho. For decades, countries in the Global South have been subjected to exclusionary tactics, economic bullying, and systematic marginalization by traditional Western powers. However, President Xi Jinping’s Global Governance Initiative (GGI) presents a transformative opportunity—perhaps the most significant chance in generations—for smaller nations to break free from the shackles of dependency and achieve genuine equality on the world stage.
The current system: A legacy of exclusion
For far too long, exclusionary tactics by Western powers have ensured that poverty and underdevelopment remain constants in the Global South. Resultantly, most developing nations are left behind in all sectors and are saddled with crookedly structured debts that perpetuate cycles of dependency. Lesotho’s experience exemplifies this systemic marginalization that characterizes the current international order.
Consider the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), initially hailed as a pathway to prosperity for African nations including Lesotho. While ostensibly designed to promote trade, AGOA’s restrictive conditions and arbitrary enforcement mechanisms have turned it into yet another tool of control. The United States has repeatedly threatened to suspend Lesotho’s AGOA benefits over internal political matters, demonstrating how trade preferences become instruments of coercion rather than genuine development partnership. In 2015, the US suspended Lesotho’s AGOA eligibility citing concerns over democratic governance, effectively punishing the entire Basotho people for political disputes that should have been resolved internally.
The tariff system employed by Western nations represents another classic example of exclusionary tactics meant to subjugate smaller countries while ensuring they remain leashed and controlled by the powerful. Raw materials from Lesotho—whether diamonds, wool, or mohair—are imported into Western markets at minimal tariffs, but any attempt to add value through processing attracts punitive tariffs designed to keep African nations as mere exporters of raw materials. This structural arrangement ensures that value addition, job creation, and technological advancement remain concentrated in the Global North.
The UN system: From hope to disappointment
The United Nations, once the beacon of hope for global equality, has been rendered a talk shop that is neither respected nor recognized by the powerful. Despite representing nearly 30% of UN member states, African nations hold no permanent seats on the Security Council. Lesotho, like other small nations, finds its voice drowned in an assembly where real power remains concentrated among the five permanent members—four of whom represent the old colonial powers and their allies.
The UN’s inability to address fundamental inequalities became glaringly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Western nations hoarded vaccines and blocked technology transfers that could have enabled countries like Lesotho to produce their own vaccines, the UN system proved powerless to enforce equitable distribution. The World Trade Organization’s intellectual property rules, backed by Western powers, ensured that life-saving technologies remained locked away while millions in the Global South suffered.
Against this backdrop of systemic exclusion, the GGI emerges as a beacon of hope. It represents a fundamental departure from the winner-takes-all mentality that has characterized international relations for centuries.
The initiative is built on five core concepts that directly address the grievances of nations like Lesotho. First is sovereign equality—the revolutionary idea that all countries, despite size, strength, or wealth, should have their sovereignty and dignity respected. For Lesotho, this means freedom from the condescending paternalism that has characterized its relationship with Western powers, where economic assistance comes wrapped in lectures about governance and democracy.
Second is the commitment to international rule of law applied equally and uniformly, without double standards. This principle alone would transform Lesotho’s international experience. No longer would trade agreements be weaponized based on the political preferences of powerful nations. No longer would international law be selectively applied depending on which countries are involved.
The third principle—multilateralism—ensures that global affairs are decided by all, not just the privileged few. This means that Lesotho’s voice in international forums would carry weight proportional to its dignity as a sovereign nation, not its economic or military power.
The practical implications of the GGI for Lesotho are profound and far-reaching. In the realm of infrastructure development, China’s approach through initiatives like the Belt and Road (BRI) has already demonstrated the difference between partnership and paternalism. Unlike Western development models that come laden with political conditions and structural adjustment programs, Chinese infrastructure investment focuses on building the physical foundations necessary for economic takeoff. What countries like Lesotho with need is the will and knowledge to leverage such infrastructure to achieve their economic, social and developmental needs.
For Lesotho, this could mean finally realizing the long-delayed dream of economic diversification. The country’s strategic location between South Africa’s major economic centers makes it ideally positioned to become a logistics hub, but this requires massive infrastructure investment that Western donors have consistently failed to provide at the scale needed. Under the GGI framework, such investments would be driven by mutual benefit rather than donor fatigue or shifting political priorities in the West.
The initiative’s emphasis on addressing governance gaps in emerging areas like artificial intelligence (AI), cyberspace, and outer space offers Lesotho unprecedented opportunities to leapfrog traditional development stages. Rather than being relegated to the margins of the digital revolution, small nations could participate as equal partners in shaping the rules that govern these new frontiers.
Consider the potential impact on Lesotho’s textile industry, which has long been subject to the whims of AGOA preferences. Under a more equitable global governance system, trade rules would be negotiated multilaterally with genuine input from all stakeholders, not dictated by the preferences of major consumer markets. This could enable Lesotho to develop a more sustainable and diversified manufacturing base, moving beyond the low-value assembly operations that characterize much of the current AGOA-dependent production.
Breaking the debt trap by reforming the global financial architecture
Perhaps nowhere is the need for reform more urgent than in the international financial architecture. The current system, dominated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, has trapped countries like Lesotho in cycles of debt and dependency. Structural adjustment programs imposed by these institutions have consistently failed to deliver sustainable growth while undermining national sovereignty over economic policy.
The GGI’s emphasis on reforming the international financial architecture offers hope for a more equitable system. China’s experience with development banking through institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank demonstrates how multilateral financial institutions can operate without the political conditionalities that have made Western-dominated institutions instruments of control rather than development.
For Lesotho, this could mean access to development finance that supports national priorities rather than donor preferences. Infrastructure projects could be evaluated based on their contribution to national development goals rather than their compliance with Western environmental or social standards that often reflect the preferences of rich countries rather than the realities of developing nations.
Innovation and technology transfer
Rather than being relegated to consumers of technologies developed elsewhere, small nations could become active participants in global innovation networks.
This is particularly relevant given Lesotho’s young, educated population and its experience with mobile money and digital banking. Under a more inclusive global governance system, these innovations could be scaled up and shared with other developing nations through South-South cooperation mechanisms, rather than being co-opted by Silicon Valley giants or European tech companies.
Sustainable development and climate justice
The current climate governance system exemplifies the inequities of the existing international order. Despite contributing minimally to global carbon emissions, countries like Lesotho face some of the most severe consequences of climate change. Yet access to climate finance remains controlled by the same institutions and donor countries that have failed to deliver on development promises for decades.
The GGI’s people-centered approach and emphasis on real results could transform climate governance by ensuring that adaptation and mitigation efforts are designed by and for the communities most affected by climate change. This means moving beyond the carbon offset schemes and green bonds that primarily benefit Western financial institutions toward genuine technology transfer and capacity building in renewable energy and climate adaptation.
In light of all these inequalities and glaring inefficiencies, the GGI represents more than just another diplomatic proposal—it embodies a vision of international relations based on mutual respect rather than domination. For Lesotho and other small nations, it offers perhaps the best chance in generations to achieve any semblance of equality while catching up and elevating themselves from poverty.
The initiative’s timing, coinciding with the UN’s 80th anniversary. Its goal is not to overturn the existing international order but to make it more responsive to the needs of all countries, particularly developing ones. This evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach increases the likelihood of successful implementation while addressing the fundamental inequities that have plagued the current system.
As Lesotho and other Global South nations consider their response to the GGI, it is crucial to recognize that this represents a historic opportunity to reshape international relations fundamentally. The alternative—continued subjugation under a system designed to perpetuate unilateralism and dominance by a few—offers only more of the same: exclusionary trade practices, conditional aid, and systematic marginalization.
The GGI’s emphasis on extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefit offers a genuine alternative to the paternalistic approach that has characterized North-South relations for centuries. For the first time in generations, small nations have the opportunity to participate as equals in shaping the rules that govern international relations.
The choice before Lesotho and the Global South is clear: embrace this opportunity for genuine equality and partnership, or remain trapped in a system designed to ensure their perpetual dependency. The GGI offers not just hope, but a concrete pathway toward a more just and equitable international order. It is a chance that cann
