UN chief race raises questions about representation, reform and what is at stake for Africa

This year, for the first time since 2016, the United Nations (UN) is choosing its new United Nations Secretary-General, as António Guterres of Portugal steps down on 31 December 2026 after two terms.

Procedurally, states nominate candidates, who face interactive dialogues with the UN General Assembly (UNGA) before the UN Security Council (UNSC) tests support through secret straw polls; a candidate needs nine votes from the SC, and none of the P5 (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US) to object (veto) before the General Assembly can appoint them.

Eight candidates have now entered that pipeline.

This could be an exciting time for the UN. For real change. Two things are worth separating here.

First, the Organisation is now in what Guterres calls a “critical new phase” of its “UN80” reform drive, having cut roughly a fifth of Secretariat posts and trimmed its budget – not because of any crisis of legitimacy, but because the United States abruptly withdrew its funding.

Second, a deeper set of challenges predates and will outlast that funding shock: donor shortfalls beyond the US, resurgent wars, trade disputes and eroding trust in multilateralism.

Guterres’ scorecard

Guterres’ own record hangs over the contest. Critics point to a retreat from high-visibility diplomacy: Kofi Annan made 479 trips between 1997 and 2006; Ban Ki-moon logged 646. Guterres travelled just 163 times in five years, and only 13 through May 2026, amid what he calls the most armed conflict since the UN’s founding.

Defenders counter the role carries no power to end wars, and two Trump presidencies, Ukraine, Gaza and a pandemic would have tested anyone.

Some note he mediated actively on Cyprus, Libya and early Russia-Ukraine deals. Perhaps any UNSG would have grown warier as tensions among the UN’s powerful members hardened, leaning, as Guterres has, towards a humanitarian focus and broader advocacy, for instance on climate and global financial reform.

This is the central question this piece asks: unfortunately, this process shapes the contest for the next UN Secretary-General at least as much – if not more – by whose “turn” it is (explained below) and who holds a veto, than by any candidate’s actual record or vision for the UN.

In this respect, for African governments and people, three questions cut through the noise.

What is Africa’s position?

The first is why the continent isn’t fielding a unified candidate. One reason: an informal convention has rotated the post among regions since the 1950s, and this cycle belongs to Latin America and the Caribbean, a norm Africa is largely deferring to.

That norm is implied rather than binding – nowhere written into the UN Charter – and Guterres' own appointment broke it: Western Europe had already held the post three times, while Eastern Europe, which never had, was passed over.

The second, more contentious reason: Africa, perhaps because of that convention, did not try, and likely could not have agreed internally anyway. African contenders entered regardless: first, former Senegalese president Macky Sall, nominated in March by Burundi (then chairing the AU) rather than his own country.

When Burundi tried to convert that into continental endorsement via a rushed “silence procedure”, 20 of the AU’s 55 member states broke the silence, and Senegal distanced itself from the bid.

As the Institute for Security Studies has argued, this reflected AU vetting – as with Egypt’s Khaled El-Enany at UNESCO in 2025 – rather than disunity. To diplomats reading Africa as a single bloc, though, it still looked like the continent talking past itself.

That calculus was further complicated on 24 July, when Uganda nominated Olara Otunnu, a 75-year-old former UN under-secretary-general, as the seventh candidate – again without an AU mandate, and too late to join the other six at the UN’s televised “Town Hall” debate on 23 July.

So now just two male African contenders remain, neither with broad Council support: Sall drew seven discourage votes and Otunnu five in the 21 August straw poll. A third straw poll took place on 18 September; results were not yet public at time of writing.

First-ever woman UN chief?

That brings the second question: after 80 years and nine men, could the UN finally be led by a woman? There were loud whispers that PM Mia Mottley of Barbados or Nigeria’s Amina Mohammed, current Deputy UNSG, might run.

They haven’t, but four other women are: Grynspan, Bachelet, Espinosa and Rodrigues-Birkett. Brazilian President Lula has told the outgoing General Assembly president it is time to elect a woman.

Of the four, though, Bachelet’s support has collapsed – from six ‘encourage’ votes to just two, with six ‘discourage’, by the second straw poll – leaving Rodrigues-Birkett and Grynspan the real contenders.

But some analysts warn of a “glass cliff”: crisis-hit organisations are more likely to appoint a woman, then blame her when things stumble – and the UN of 2026, they argue, is “perfect glass-cliff territory”, risking a first woman SG inheriting blame without real power.

The point isn’t that a woman shouldn’t win, but that a breakthrough without reform and shared accountability would be problematic.

High stakes for Africa

Last, and perhaps most importantly, the third question is Africa’s objectives within the UN.

None of the eight candidates' statements or debates prioritised key African demands, including Security Council reform, debt restructuring, and fairer peacekeeping funding. Even Otunnu’s platform has stayed general.

The one notable African intervention on process, rather than candidacy, came from South Africa in November 2024, during a General Assembly debate on the UN Secretary-General (UNSG) selection process, which backed letting the Council recommend more than one name if members cannot unite.

That gap should be a huge concern right now for African governments and citizens – the UN has, after all, backed decolonisation, helped delegitimise apartheid, and still runs the continent’s largest peacekeeping and much of its development financing.

That history is exactly why it matters whether the institution, and whoever leads it next, still works for Africa. Indeed, the continent must get its asks ready for whoever wins.

The next Secretary-General will steer the UN80 reform agenda, the future of peacekeeping on a continent that hosts most of it, a financing system African governments have long called unjust, and – increasingly – the reparations agenda African and Caribbean states have pushed onto the UN’s table – newly bolstered by CERD’s General Recommendation No. 40 on reparatory justice, adopted 25 August 2026.

African agency, in short, runs through institutions as much as candidacies – and right now, no candidate has yet reached the nine votes needed to advance without a P5 veto.

Right now, the “world’s” choice is, procedurally, a five-governments’ choice. It needn’t stay that way substantively. Africa must work out and push a collective UN agenda to every current candidate, and whoever succeeds Guterres.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT Afrika.