COFFEE WITH THE AFRICA REPORT
AMINA J. MOHAMMED
UNITING NATIONS The UN deputy secretary general chats with The Africa Report about the future of multilateralism, the social contract in the Sahel and the urgent need for solidarity By PATRICK SMITH
Members of the welcoming party in the lobby of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) nervously checked their watches, waiting for their star speaker to arrive. Just a few days earlier, South African epidemiologists had discovered the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Western governments were putting up the shutters and throwing international travel into chaos. Minutes later, broad smiles broke out. UN deputy secretary general Amina J. Mohammed breezed in, resplendent in an emerald green boubou. “The planes are still flying,” she said. “I left New York yesterday morning […] though I’m not quite certain when I’m going to be able to get back.” Mohammed is zig-zagging from the UN headquarters on Manhattan’s East River to its European base in Switzerland, then 24 hours in London to deliver a lecture at the Royal African Society, then more sessions in Geneva before, fingers crossed, a return flight to New York. After almost two years of enforced stasis, the continent-crossing
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diplomatic schedule seems simultaneously exotic and old-fashioned. We are ushered into a quiet room in the SOAS director’s office. South African academic and activist Adam Habib took over at SOAS in January and has injected a note of internationalism and radicalism into the venerable institution. That is also a profile with which Mohammed seems happy. After schooling in Kaduna and Maiduguri in northern Nigeria, then college in Britain, she joined an architectural practice back home and launched into community activism. That tipped her into running a social enterprise before she was recruited by three successive
‘The UN has to be more inclusive, more responsive, or it will become a relic’
THEAFRICAREPORT / N° 118 / JANUARY-FEBRUARY-MARCH 2022
presidents of Nigeria to advise on development policy. After two decades in government and the international system, how does she deal with galloping cynicism towards the UN and tub-thumping nationalism taking hold in so many states? “Even my children ask me: ‘Why are you still at the UN?’,” she laughs, suggesting that her six globe-trotting children are not entirely convinced by her answers. One of the six, Nadine Ibrahim, has directed a film about the interior life of a 12-year-old female suicide bomber in northern Nigeria. This growing nationalism may mean the UN has to develop its own form of transactional diplomacy. It is the convening power of the UN that matters, she says. “What are the dividends that you get for investing in an organisation like this?” For Mohammed, in this era of pandemics, broken supply chains and climate crises, the UN’s relevance should be greater than ever. “The UN has to be more inclusive, more responsive or it will become a relic. It’s important for us to remember that we’re not far away from that.” Rich countries have become ever more curmudgeonly on vaccines, migration and climate finance. Doesn’t this widening chasm point to a dismissal of the UN’s relevance by the most powerful states? “I do think that the breaking point is going to be the response to Covid. Everyone’s talking about a recovery. Frankly, we’ve not had the response to guarantee that recovery. There’s not been the solidarity behind it.” It doesn’t look the most propitious time for Mohammed and Secretary General António Guterres to launch the UN’s boldest bid for reform since it was founded in 1945. The ‘Common Agenda’ calls on the organisation to be
