Rethinking Power: How middle powers and Africa can shape a fragmented global order

As the curtains fell at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the mood among wealthy nations was unusually somber.

Speakers repeatedly described a world no longer governed by stable rules, but by power, leverage, and coercion.

Yet beneath the lamentations of the rich lies a deeper shift: the growing assertiveness of middle powers (a new concept describing countries neither hegemonic nor marginal) seeking to shape a fractured global order before it hardens against them.

What Davos revealed most clearly is that this is not a “transition” in the international system but what one speaker bluntly called a rupture.

Economic integration, once sold as a universal good, has become weaponised. Tariffs, sanctions, supply chains, and even payment systems are now tools of geopolitical pressure.

As Canada’s former central banker and prime minister, Mark Carney, warned, “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”

For decades, many countries, especially middle powers, operated within what Carney described as a “pleasant fiction”: a rules-based international order that promised predictability, fairness, and shared prosperity.

That fiction allowed smaller economies to trade, borrow, and grow without constantly hedging against coercion by larger powers.

That bargain, Carney argued in Davos, has collapsed. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he said, invoking Thucydides’ warning that the strong do what they can while the weak suffer what they must.

The difference today is that economic interdependence itself has become a vulnerability. “You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

This diagnosis resonated strongly with other middle-power voices.

The implication is stark: waiting for the old order to return is futile. As Carney put it memorably, “Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

If Carney’s speech was a philosophical call to honesty, the address by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, offered a policy blueprint for navigating the rupture.

Speaking under the Davos theme of “Rebuilding Trust,” von der Leyen identified disinformation, geopolitical rivalry, and technological disruption, especially artificial intelligence, as the defining risks of the decade.

Her core message was not withdrawal from globalisation, but selective resilience. “Overreliance on one company, one country, one trade route comes with risks,” she warned.

Europe’s response has been to “de-risk, not decouple”: diversifying supply chains, investing in clean energy, and reducing strategic dependencies without abandoning openness altogether.

This approach, she argued, paid dividends during Europe’s energy shock following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

By acting collectively and doubling down on renewables, Europe transformed vulnerability into opportunity.

“Last year, for the first time, the European Union produced more electricity from sun and wind than from gas,” she noted, proof that resilience and competitiveness can align.

Von der Leyen extended this logic to technology. AI, she insisted, is both a risk and an opportunity.

“Our future competitiveness depends on AI adoption in our daily businesses,” she said, outlining Europe’s push for “industrial AI” governed by democratic guardrails.

The goal is not dominance but agency: ensuring that technological change serves societies rather than subordinating them.

Taken together, these speeches signal what many at Davos called a “middle power moment.”

Countries like Canada and members of the European Union recognise that they cannot compete with great powers individually, but neither can they afford passivity.

Their answer is coalition-building: flexible, issue-based partnerships across trade, energy, defense, and technology.

Carney described this as creating a “dense web of connections” rather than relying on failing multilateral institutions alone.

Middle powers, he argued, must stop competing with one another for favour from hegemons and instead build a “third path” rooted in shared standards, diversified partnerships, and collective resilience.

This strategy is not altruistic. In a world of “fortress economies,” middle powers have the most to lose. But it also contains an implicit warning for those outside the Davos spotlight.

For developing countries, especially in Africa, the rupture described in Davos is already a lived reality.

Rising protectionism, debt burdens and technological gaps are shrinking policy space for poorer nations.

Many face interest payments that exceed spending on health and education, while AI adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa lags far behind that of richer regions.

In this new order, poor countries are rarely “at the table.” Too often, they are indeed “on the menu,” absorbing the shocks of tariff wars, supply chain disruptions, and climate crises they did little to cause.

The danger is not just marginalisation, but lock-in being trapped as raw-material suppliers or low-value markets in an increasingly fragmented global economy.

The message from Davos, stripped of diplomatic language, is this: no one is coming to save us. But it is also this: collective action still works if we build it ourselves.

For African countries, the lesson is not to imitate middle powers wholesale, but to adapt their core insight.

Over-reliance on one export (agriculture!), one lender, or one external partner is now a strategic risk. Diversification is no longer a development slogan; it is a survival strategy.

Regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), investment in digital infrastructure, and coordinated positions on debt and climate finance are essential tools for bargaining power.

Equally crucial is technological agency. Closing the AI and digital gap is not optional if African economies are to participate in the fastest-growing segments of global trade.

As von der Leyen argued for Europe, technology must “enhance human capabilities and serve society.”

For Africa, that means using digital tools to boost productivity, improve governance, and leapfrog legacy systems on African terms.

Finally, Africa must resist the temptation to “live within the lie”: to accept rhetoric about partnership that masks asymmetric power.

As Carney urged middle powers to remove the sign from the window, so too must poorer nations insist on honesty from creditors, trading partners, and themselves.

The world is rupturing. The rules will not protect the weak by default. But those who organise, diversify, and act collectively can still shape their destiny.

The choice, as Davos made clear, is stark but it is not closed.

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