Commentary
Mark Carney’s Davos Era-Defining Message: The World Has Changed, and Canada Is Preparing for It
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address on January 20, 2026, in Davos was not merely a speech—it was a strategic communiqué. Beneath its philosophical tone and moral framing lies a carefully calibrated geopolitical repositioning of Canada and, by extension, other middle powers navigating the collapse of the post–Cold War order.
What makes the speech era-defining is not its diagnosis—many leaders privately acknowledge the same realities—but Carney’s decision to say them out loud, in Davos, and to do so without euphemism.
1. Naming the End of the “Rules-Based Order” Without Naming Its Architect
Carney never explicitly says “the United States,” yet American power looms over every paragraph.
By calling the rules-based order a “useful fiction” and admitting that enforcement was always asymmetric, Carney is doing something rare among Western leaders: publicly acknowledging that hegemony, not law, sustained global order.
The hidden message:
- The era in which middle powers outsourced their security, trade stability, and moral authority to U.S. leadership is over.
- Washington can no longer guarantee predictability—and is now a source of risk as often as protection.
This is not anti-Americanism. It is post-American realism.
2. “Living Within the Lie” as a Direct Rebuke to Diplomatic Hypocrisy
The Václav Havel metaphor is the intellectual core of the speech—and its sharpest blade.
When Carney urges countries to “take the sign out of the window,” he is indicting:
- Selective outrage over sovereignty violations
- Silence when allies weaponize trade, finance, or sanctions
- Moral inconsistency masked as pragmatism
The subtext is unmistakable: middle powers have enabled coercive systems by pretending they still work.
This is a quiet rebuke to:
- European states that decry Russian coercion but tolerate economic pressure from allies
- Countries that condemn tariffs when used against them but justify them when imposed by partners
Carney is arguing that hypocrisy is no longer a survival strategy.
3. The Strategic Warning to Middle Powers: Fortress Sovereignty Is a Trap
Carney acknowledges the instinct toward strategic autonomy—food, energy, minerals, defence—but warns that unilateral fortification leads to fragmentation, poverty, and instability.
Hidden geopolitical signal:
- The Global South’s turn inward is understandable—but dangerous if done alone.
- Sovereignty must be pooled, not isolated, if it is to remain meaningful.
This is particularly relevant for:
- Africa’s regional blocs
- ASEAN
- Latin American middle economies
- Secondary European powers
Carney is offering an alternative to both dependency and isolation.
4. “Values-Based Realism”: A Rebranding of Power Politics With Moral Limits
Carney’s phrase “values-based realism” is not accidental branding—it is a direct counter to:
- China’s interest-based pragmatism
- America’s increasingly transactional alliances
- Europe’s rule-heavy but power-light diplomacy
What he is really saying:
- Values without power are performative.
- Power without values is unstable.
- The future belongs to states that can combine both.
Canada’s emphasis on defence spending, industrial policy, AI, critical minerals, and trade corridors is meant to prove that ethics must be backed by capacity.
5. Variable Geometry: The End of Universal Multilateralism
Carney effectively pronounces the death of one-size-fits-all multilateralism.
By advocating “different coalitions for different issues,” he is:
- Acknowledging the paralysis of the UN system
- Accepting that legitimacy will increasingly come from effectiveness, not universality
This is a subtle but profound shift:
- From global consensus to functional legitimacy
- From institutions to networks
- From permanence to adaptability
It also signals that countries unwilling to act will simply be bypassed.
6. The Greenland Passage: A Direct Shot Across Washington’s Bow
Carney’s explicit support for Greenland’s right to self-determination and his opposition to tariffs linked to Arctic security is the speech’s most concrete geopolitical signal.
Read plainly:
- Canada rejects coercive security economics—even from allies.
- Arctic sovereignty is non-negotiable.
- NATO unity does not mean unconditional compliance.
This is Canada asserting strategic adulthood.
7. The Quiet Invitation to the Global South
Though framed around “middle powers,” the speech is also an open hand to:
- African states seeking leverage beyond great power competition
- Latin American economies wary of extractive partnerships
- Asian states balancing China–U.S. rivalry
Carney’s message:
You do not have to choose a hegemon. You can help build a third path—if you are willing to invest in your own strength and align with others honestly.
8. The Core Hidden Message: Legitimacy Is Becoming Scarce—and Valuable
Perhaps the most important subtext is this:
- As hard power proliferates, legitimacy becomes the rarest currency.
Carney argues that legitimacy—earned through consistency, restraint, and cooperation—can still shape outcomes if wielded collectively.
This is a call for:
- Moral coordination, not moral grandstanding
- Strategic honesty, not diplomatic nostalgia
Conclusion: A Declaration Without Declaring
Mark Carney did not announce a new alliance, doctrine, or bloc. But he did something arguably more consequential: he named the world as it is and invited others to stop pretending.
This speech marks:
- The intellectual end of post–Cold War complacency
- The emergence of middle powers as agenda-setters, not spectators
- A transition from rule-worship to rule-building
In Davos, Carney didn’t mourn the old order.
He closed the door on it—and turned to those ready to walk forward.
Here is the full text of Carney’s speech:
It’s a pleasure – and a duty – to be with you at this turning point for Canada and for the world.
Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.
But I also submit to you that other countries, particularly middle powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of states.
The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.
Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
This aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable – the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety.
It won’t.
So, what are our options?
In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. In it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?
His answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe it. No one believes it. But he places the sign anyway – to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.
Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.
It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works.
Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture of collective problem solving – are greatly diminished.
As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains.
This impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.
But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.
And there is another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from “transactionalism” become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.
Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. Buy insurance. Increase options. This rebuilds sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.
As I said, such classic risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.
The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls – or whether we can do something more ambitious.
Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.
Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid.
Our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb has termed “values-based realism” – or, to put it another way, we aim to be principled and pragmatic.
Principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter, respect for human rights.
Pragmatic in recognising that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner shares our values. We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for a world we wish to be.
Canada is calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values. We are prioritising broad engagement to maximise our influence, given the fluidity of the world order, the risks that this poses, and the stakes for what comes next.
We are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength.
We are building that strength at home.
Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, capital gains and business investment, we have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade, and we are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors, and beyond.
We are doubling our defence spending by 2030 and are doing so in ways that builds our domestic industries.
We are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including joining SAFE, Europe’s defence procurement arrangements.
We have signed twelve other trade and security deals on four continents in the last six months.
In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar.
We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur.
To help solve global problems, we are pursuing variable geometry— different coalitions for different issues, based on values and interests.
On Ukraine, we are a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defence and security.
On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future. Our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering.
We are working with our NATO allies (including the Nordic Baltic to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks, including through Canada’s unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, submarines, aircraft, and boots on the ground. Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve shared objectives of security and prosperity for the Arctic.
On plurilateral trade, we are championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union, creating a new trading block of 1.5 billion people.
On critical minerals, we are forming buyer’s clubs anchored in the G7 so that the world can diversify away from concentrated supply.
On AI, we are cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure we will not ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.
This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.
And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.
Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.
Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.
This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.
In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.
We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together.
Which brings me back to Havel.
What would it mean for middle powers to “live in truth”?
It means naming reality. Stop invoking the “rules-based international order” as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.
It means acting consistently. Apply the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticise economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.
It means building what we claim to believe in. Rather than waiting for the old order to be restored, create institutions and agreements that function as described.
And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion. Building a strong domestic economy should always be every government’s priority. Diversification internationally is not just economic prudence; it is the material foundation for honest foreign policy. Countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.
Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. We have capital, talent, and a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively.
And we have the values to which many others aspire.
Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse, and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability.
We are a stable, reliable partner—in a world that is anything but—a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.
Canada has something else: a recognition of what is happening and a determination to act accordingly.
We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.
We are taking the sign out of the window.
The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.
But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just.
This is the task of the middle powers, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.
The powerful have their power. But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together.
That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently.
And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.”
In Ghana, as in much of the world, a woman’s university degree, her salary, and her professional title are often taken as proof that she has made it; that she is empowered. But for many educated and wealthy women, those markers of advancement coexist with something far darker: violence, control, and a silence that their status only deepens. Drawing on Ghanaian data and international research, this analysis by Shallom Abla Lumor examines why resources alone do not guarantee agency, why economic abuse can erode independence, and why the women best positioned to leave are sometimes the ones least seen. It asks a harder question than whether women are advancing: whether they are actually free. Read the full article below.
Educated, Wealthy and Still Trapped: Why Women’s Advancement Falls Short of Empowerment
By Shallom Abla Lumor | Email: princesshallom@gmail.com
She has a university degree, perhaps two. She has a good job, earns her own money and pays a large share of the household bills. She may be a lecturer, a doctor, a banker or a lawyer. From the outside, we call her an empowered woman.
Yet she may be afraid to disagree with her husband. She may earn a good income and have little say over how it is spent. She may stay in a violent marriage because of her children, her church, her family name, fear for her safety, or what people will say.
Her degree and income tell us about her advancement. Whether she has power over her own life is a separate question.
Resources and the freedom to use them
Development scholar Naila Kabeer (1999) describes empowerment as the ability to make strategic life choices where that ability was previously denied. She separates resources, such as education and income, from agency, the ability to set goals and act on them. Resources make agency possible. They do not guarantee it.
So our questions must go further. Can she control the money she earns? Can she disagree with her partner without fear? Can she safely leave a dangerous relationship?
Education protects, up to a point
Ghana’s own data shows that education matters. Analysing the 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, Kwamena Sekyi Dickson, Castro Ayebeng and Joshua Okyere (2024) found that 36.4 percent of the married or cohabiting women in their sample had experienced some form of intimate partner violence. Women with secondary education or more had about 60 percent lower odds of having experienced it than women with no formal education.
That is a strong reason to keep investing in girls’ education. Lower odds still leave many educated women exposed. Even in the most educated group, about one in five women (19.2 percent) had experienced partner violence, compared with 41.7 percent of women with no formal education. The same study identified a partner’s dominance as an important predictor of violence, and a degree does little to change the man a woman comes home to.
Earning money and controlling it
Researchers including Judy Postmus and colleagues describe economic abuse as a distinct form of intimate partner abuse: controlling a woman’s access to money, monitoring her spending, running up debts in her name, or interfering with her work. A good salary offers limited protection when someone else decides how it is used.
Abuse can also wear away the independence a woman once had. Using police and employment records for the whole of Finland, economists Abi Adams-Prassl, Kristiina Huttunen, Emily Nix and Ning Zhang (2024) found that women whose partners were later reported for physical violence saw their earnings and employment fall sharply as soon as they moved in with these men, compared with similar women. The authors read this as economic suppression: abusive men weakening a woman’s ability to support herself and, later, to leave.
When her success collides with his beliefs
In a US study using a national sample of 4,296 people surveyed in the late 1980s, Maxine Atkinson, Theodore Greenstein and Molly Monahan Lang (2005) found that a wife’s share of household income was associated with a higher likelihood of abuse only among husbands with traditional gender beliefs. In Australia, Yinjunjie Zhang and Robert Breunig (2023) found that women who out earned their partners reported partner violence at a rate about 33 percent above the average, and emotional abuse about 20 percent above it. The authors concluded that the pattern points to norms about male breadwinning.
These studies show associations, from countries far from Ghana, so we should not borrow their numbers. Their question still applies here. If a man has been taught that a husband must always be the head and the main provider, what happens when his wife earns more? The risk lies in a belief system that reads her success as a threat to his authority.
Status can become its own prison
We assume a wealthy, educated woman would find it easier to speak up. The American psychotherapist Susan Weitzman suggests it can be harder. Drawing on interviews with fourteen affluent women, her book Not to People Like Us (2000) describes what she calls “upscale violence,” and argues that police, courts and counsellors often overlook such women because many people believe abuse happens only to other kinds of women.
When she does speak, she hears: “You are a lawyer, how can you allow this?” “You have your own money, why don’t you leave?” Such questions turn his behaviour into a verdict on her intelligence.
Children, church and the cost of leaving
In her master’s research at VID Specialized University (2020), Elorm Ama Stiles-Ocran interviewed ten Anlo Ewe survivors of domestic violence. They named poverty, the effects of divorce on their children, the shame and stigma of violence and divorce, fear of further violence, and church teaching on marriage as reasons they felt there was no way out. In a 2023 article in the African Journal of Gender and Religion, she draws on the stories of thirteen abused Christian women in a mainline church in southern Ghana to examine how theology shapes their agency.
Faith gives many women strength. In these women’s accounts, it could also hold them in place, when submission was taught as silence or when keeping the marriage together counted for more than the safety of the woman inside it.
Church leaders disagree about the church’s part in this. On 12 April 2022, the then Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church Ghana, Most Rev Dr Paul Kwabena Boafo, said it was unwise to stay in an abusive marriage in the name of religion or society, and spoke about pastors who had persuaded abused members to stay. The next day, Rev Prof Johnson Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, now Presiding Bishop of the same church, said no Christian church encourages members to remain in abusive marriages and that the church was not to blame, while urging churches to protect victims and discipline abusers. Survivors deserve to know which of these they will meet in their own congregation.
Leaving also carries danger. A US study led by Jacquelyn Campbell (2003) compared 220 women killed by intimate partners with 343 women living with abuse, and found that separating from a controlling partner after living together was associated with a higher risk of being killed. Ghana’s context differs, yet a woman who has not left may understand the risk better than those judging her.
What we still don’t know
Ghana has the Domestic Violence Act, 2007 (Act 732) and the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service. Yet we have very little Ghanaian research on abuse among educated and wealthy women, and most of what we know about “upscale” abuse comes from abroad. The more firmly we picture the abused woman as poor and uneducated, the less likely we are to see her when she is a doctor or a director.
What each of us can do
Families can believe a daughter who reports abuse and stop sending her back to manage the marriage. Pastors can treat abuse as a safety matter first and refer survivors to DOVVSU and trained counsellors. Employers can offer confidential support, knowing senior staff may be living with violence at home. Men can challenge the idea that a wife’s income diminishes her husband. Friends can ask, “What do you need to be safe?”
A woman’s degree, income and title are achievements worth celebrating. Empowerment asks whether she can use them to shape her own life, freely and safely, and whether her home, church and community let her.
Sources
- Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Development and Change, 30(3).
- Dickson, K. S., Ayebeng, C. and Okyere, J. (2024). Unveiling Shadows: Investigating women’s experience of intimate partner violence in Ghana through the lens of the 2022 Demographic and Health Survey. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309564
- Postmus, J. L., Plummer, S. B. and Stylianou, A. M. (2016). Measuring economic abuse in the lives of survivors. Violence Against Women, 22(6).
- Adams-Prassl, A., Huttunen, K., Nix, E. and Zhang, N. (2024). The dynamics of abusive relationships. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 139(4). https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjae022
- Atkinson, M. P., Greenstein, T. N. and Lang, M. M. (2005). For women, breadwinning can be dangerous: Gendered resource theory and wife abuse. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67(5).
- Zhang, Y. and Breunig, R. (2023). Female breadwinning and domestic abuse: Evidence from Australia. Journal of Population Economics, 36(4). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-023-00975-9
- Weitzman, S. (2000). Not to People Like Us: Hidden Abuse in Upscale Marriages. Basic Books.
- Stiles-Ocran, E. A. (2020). No way out? The dilemma of survivors of domestic violence and the church’s response in Ghana. MA dissertation, VID Specialized University. https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2825498
- Stiles-Ocran, E. A. (2023). Theology and women’s agency in the context of intimate partner violence in Ghana. African Journal of Gender and Religion, 29(1), 74 to 101. https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3082947
- Stiles-Ocran, E. A. [Title and year to confirm]. Religion and Development, 4(2 to 3), from p. 213. https://brill.com/view/journals/rnd/4/2-3/article-p213_5.xml
- Campbell, J. C. et al. (2003). Risk factors for femicide in abusive relationships: Results from a multisite case control study. American Journal of Public Health, 93(7). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12835191/
- Ghana News Agency (12 April 2022). Don’t die in abusive marriage, Bishop Boafo. https://gna.org.gh/2022/04/dont-die-in-abusive-marriagebishop-boafo/
- Ghana News Agency (13 April 2022). No church supports abusive marriage, Clergyman. https://gna.org.gh/2022/04/no-church-supports-abusive-marriageclergyman/
Commentary
As Ghana Advances Move to Join the BRICS, These Are Among The Potential Benefits From the Deal
Ghana is preparing to formally apply to join BRICS, opening a new chapter in the country’s effort to diversify its international partnerships and gain greater room to manoeuvre in an increasingly fragmented global economy.
Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa announced on October 6 that President John Dramani Mahama’s Cabinet had approved Ghana’s decision to submit a formal application to the bloc.
“Another major highlight which I am disclosing to the Ghanaian people for the first time is that the Cabinet of President John Dramani Mahama has decided that Ghana should put in a formal application to join BRICS,” Ablakwa said, according to the Ghana News Agency.
The announcement places Ghana inside a much larger geopolitical conversation.
BRICS has evolved considerably from the original grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa joined in 2011, while Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were added in the latest major expansion. Indonesia subsequently became a full member.
The group also created a partner-country category, with Nigeria, Uganda and other countries joining that framework. Partner status gives countries opportunities to participate in selected BRICS meetings and discussions, although it does not provide the same participation as full membership.
Ghana is now seeking something more ambitious: membership.
But joining BRICS would not, by itself, transform Ghana’s economy.
The real question is what Ghana intends to negotiate once it gets a seat at the table.
Beyond the BRICS Label
BRICS is not a conventional economic union or free-trade bloc. It has no constitutive treaty, permanent secretariat or common budget, and its members coordinate across areas including politics and security, economics and finance, and people-to-people cooperation. Major decisions are made by consensus.
That distinction matters.
Membership would give Ghana additional diplomatic access and a platform for cooperation with some of the world’s major emerging economies. It would not automatically deliver factories, infrastructure projects, investment, technology transfers or new export markets.
Those outcomes would have to be negotiated.
And that is where Ghana’s BRICS strategy becomes much more important than the application itself.
What Should Ghana Negotiate For?
If Accra is serious about using BRICS as an economic-development instrument, its negotiating agenda could extend well beyond diplomatic visibility.
1. Better market access for Ghanaian exports
Ghana should seek practical pathways into BRICS markets for products capable of generating greater value domestically.
That means going beyond the traditional export of raw commodities.
Cocoa is the obvious example. Rather than viewing BRICS primarily as another destination for Ghanaian cocoa beans, Accra could pursue partnerships that expand processing, chocolate manufacturing, packaging and related industries inside Ghana.
The same logic applies to minerals, agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, processed foods and manufactured goods.
The objective should be simple: more Ghanaian value created before products leave Ghana.
2. Make the AfCFTA connection a strategic advantage
This may be one of Ghana’s most important cards.
The Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area is headquartered in Accra, giving Ghana an unusual position within Africa’s emerging single-market architecture.
The AfCFTA’s central challenge is moving from negotiated rules to implementation and increasing intra-African trade. Its Secretary-General, Wamkele Mene, said in July 2026 that implementation remains the priority and that intra-African trade exceeded $220 billion in 2024.
Ghana should therefore resist treating BRICS membership simply as a bilateral relationship between Accra and the BRICS capitals.
It can position itself as a gateway between BRICS economies and the African Continental Free Trade Area.
That creates a potentially powerful proposition:
Invest in Ghana, manufacture in Ghana, and use the AfCFTA market as part of the commercial opportunity.
The value would not be Ghana’s population alone. It would be Ghana’s location within a continent-wide market framework.
3. Turn investment interest into industrial capacity
Ghana does not simply need foreign capital.
It needs capital tied to productive capacity.
That means negotiating for investments in manufacturing, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, logistics, digital infrastructure and other sectors capable of creating jobs and increasing exports.
Accra should be particularly interested in agreements that include local-content requirements, skills development, technology transfer and Ghanaian participation in supply chains.
The question should not simply be:
How much money will you invest?
It should be:
What will Ghana be able to produce five or 10 years after you invest?
4. Pursue development financing strategically
BRICS also has an important financial dimension.
The New Development Bank, created by the BRICS countries, is designed to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable-development projects.
For Ghana, the potential attraction is not simply another source of borrowing.
The strategic question is whether alternative financing relationships can give Accra more options when funding infrastructure, energy, transport, water, technology and industrial projects.
But additional financing is not automatically beneficial.
Ghana would still need to assess the cost of borrowing, repayment risks, project viability, procurement arrangements and the effect on public debt.
BRICS should therefore expand Ghana’s financing choices—not replace financial discipline.
5. Build technology partnerships, not just technology imports
India and China, among others, offer Ghana potential areas for cooperation in digital technology, manufacturing, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and technical education.
But Ghana’s objective should be to develop domestic capabilities rather than become permanently dependent on imported technology.
That means negotiating for training, research partnerships, scholarships, technology transfer, local engineering capacity and participation by Ghanaian companies.
A successful BRICS relationship should leave Ghana with more expertise than it had before the relationship began.
6. Agriculture and food security should be central
Food security is increasingly tied to geopolitics.
Ghana has an opportunity to seek partnerships in agricultural technology, irrigation, mechanization, fertilizer production, food processing, storage and logistics.
The goal should be to move from importing finished or semi-processed food products toward strengthening domestic production and processing.
This would also fit into the broader AfCFTA objective of developing regional value chains.
The Western Question
Perhaps the most delicate part of Ghana’s BRICS strategy will be managing its existing relationships with Western partners.
Ghana does not have to choose between BRICS and the West.
That is one of the most important points in understanding what BRICS membership could mean for Accra.
Ghana has long maintained extensive economic, diplomatic and development relationships with countries and institutions outside BRICS. A strategy of expanding ties with Brazil, Russia, India, China and other emerging economies does not inherently require Ghana to abandon relationships with the United States, European Union, United Kingdom or international financial institutions.
In fact, Ghana could seek to use the competition and diversification of partnerships to increase its negotiating options.
The objective would be strategic diversification, not geopolitical substitution.
But there are also complications.
BRICS includes countries with sharply different political systems, strategic interests and relationships with Western powers. The group also includes Russia, while some BRICS members maintain close relationships with the United States and Europe.
Ghana would therefore need to maintain a foreign policy capable of working across competing geopolitical blocs.
That requires diplomatic discipline.
Accra would need to make clear that economic cooperation with BRICS does not automatically translate into alignment with every member’s foreign-policy position.
Ghana’s Potential Leverage
Ghana may have more to offer BRICS than simply another membership application.
Its democratic credentials, diplomatic relationships across different regions, English-speaking business environment and position in West Africa could give it strategic relevance.
Most importantly, Ghana hosts the AfCFTA Secretariat.
That creates the possibility of positioning Ghana as a meeting point between BRICS economic interests and Africa’s continental market.
The opportunity could be especially significant if Ghana can persuade investors from BRICS economies to use the country not merely as an export destination but as a production and distribution base for the wider African market.
That would make Ghana’s BRICS strategy part of its industrialization strategy.
But Accra Must Avoid the Symbolism Trap
There is a danger in treating BRICS membership itself as an economic achievement.
Membership does not automatically create jobs.
It does not automatically attract factories.
It does not automatically increase exports.
It does not automatically reduce Ghana’s financing costs.
And it does not automatically produce technology transfers.
The BRICS framework itself emphasizes cooperation among major Global South economies and greater participation in global governance, while its expanded membership creates opportunities for broader economic and diplomatic partnerships.
But Ghana’s gains will ultimately depend on what it brings to the negotiating table.
The country will need clear national priorities, strong commercial diplomacy and institutions capable of following agreements from announcement to implementation.
That means ministries, investment agencies, trade negotiators and Ghanaian businesses must be working from the same strategy.
A headline announcing a major investment is not the same thing as a functioning factory.
A memorandum of understanding is not the same thing as a completed project.
A diplomatic meeting is not the same thing as market access.
And a BRICS membership card is not an economic-development plan.
The Bigger Opportunity
Ghana’s BRICS application comes at a moment when the international economic system is becoming more multipolar.
The BRICS group itself describes its expansion as strengthening the ability of Global South countries to engage on issues including global governance reform and sustainable development.
That changing environment could give middle-sized countries such as Ghana greater space to pursue diversified partnerships.
But diplomatic diversification only becomes economically meaningful when it produces tangible outcomes.
For Ghana, those outcomes could include new export markets, industrial investment, infrastructure financing, technology partnerships, stronger agricultural value chains and greater integration between Ghanaian businesses and global supply chains.
The AfCFTA could make the proposition even more powerful.
Instead of presenting Ghana simply as a small West African economy seeking investment, Accra can present itself as a country sitting at the intersection of BRICS capital, African markets and continental trade integration.
That is a much stronger negotiating position.
So, What Will Ghana Negotiate For?
Ghana is asking for a seat at the BRICS table.
The harder question begins after the invitation—or after the application process moves forward.
Will Ghana negotiate for factories or simply investment announcements?
Will it negotiate for technology transfer or simply technology imports?
Will it negotiate for value-added exports rather than continued dependence on raw commodities?
Will it negotiate financing that supports productive infrastructure without creating unsustainable debt?
Will it use its position as the home of the AfCFTA Secretariat to connect BRICS investors to the wider African market?
And can it deepen relationships with emerging powers while maintaining constructive relationships with Western partners?
Those questions matter more than the symbolism of joining another international grouping.
If Ghana gets the strategy right, BRICS could become another instrument in a broader foreign-policy and economic-development agenda.
If it does not, membership could amount largely to another diplomatic badge.
Commentary
Making Foreign Influence Look Local: How AI Is Reshaping Russia’s Information Operations in Africa
A recent report by Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude models, has exposed two distinct and troubling operations on the African continent: one that used AI to generate pro-Russia, anti-France narratives for a radio station in the Central African Republic, and another that used the same technology as an engineering workforce to help build a national surveillance platform in Mali capable of monitoring 25 million SIM cards. Together, these cases reveal a convergence of influence, cyber capability and surveillance inside the same technological ecosystem, and raise urgent questions about who is really speaking to African audiences, and who is watching them.
In this analysis, Joseph McCarthy, an analyst specializing in Sahel governance and security, examines what these developments mean for Ghana and West Africa, particularly as the region approaches a pivotal election year and as ECOWAS grapples with evolving threats that transcend borders.
Read the full analysis below.
Making Foreign Influence Look Local: How AI Is Reshaping Russia’s Information Operations in Africa
By Joseph McCarthy · Analyst, Sahel governance & security
| 25M SIM CARDS TARGETED IN MALI | 3 NATIONAL MOBILE OPERATORS COVERED | Cat. 4 BREAKOUT SCALE RATING, CAR CASE |
Artificial intelligence is no longer simply a tool for making human work faster. It is becoming an instrument of power, capable of generating propaganda, conducting cyber operations, building surveillance systems and shaping public opinion at a scale that was previously difficult to achieve. Work that once required teams of writers, translators, researchers and media operators can increasingly be accelerated, coordinated and automated. The result is a new kind of geopolitical competition in which influence itself can be industrialised.
A recent threat intelligence report by Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude models, offers a glimpse of what this looks like in practice. The company disclosed that it had disrupted an operation linked to Politology, the Africa Corps/Wagner influence branch that Anthropic assesses came under the control of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service in late 2023.
A Russian-speaking operator based in Bangui used Claude to produce daily content for Radio Lengo Songo, a Central African Republic radio station, generating pro-government, pro-Russia and anti-France narratives that were then amplified through Russian state outlets including RT, Sputnik Afrique and TASS, as well as the Russian House in Bangui. The operator reportedly instructed the model to make the material “look like ordinary journalism” rather than AI-generated content, and separately used it to draft forged communications attributed to the Central African Gendarmerie and Ministry of Defence, and to track opposition figures. Notably, Anthropic says Claude refused a request to name real individuals as militants, a detail that speaks to the limits built into the system rather than its capture by it.
“The objective is no longer only to tell people what to believe; it is to obscure who is asking them to believe it.”
The significance of this case goes beyond the volume of material AI can produce. It lies in the possibility of making foreign influence appear local. Traditional propaganda depended on people to write, translate, adapt and distribute messages, a slow and labour-intensive process. AI increasingly performs many of these functions at once. Anthropic describes the technology as a “force multiplier”: operations that once required specialised teams can now be run faster, at greater scale and at lower cost. This changes the economics of influence, but the more consequential shift is in its visibility. A narrative created or coordinated by a foreign actor can now pass through a local radio station, circulate on social media, and reach audiences as though it were an independent domestic view.
Russia has long understood that geopolitical power extends beyond military reach into the information space. The Central African Republic case does not establish that Russia’s entire African messaging strategy is now automated. What it demonstrates is narrower but still significant: AI can be folded into an existing network of media outlets, personnel and political relationships to make foreign messaging faster to produce, easier to localise and harder to trace to its source.
FROM PERSUASION TO SURVEILLANCE
Anthropic’s report also documents a second, quite different case, one that shows AI’s reach extending from persuasion into surveillance. The company says it identified an actor, likely an independent consultant based in Bamako, working with Mali’s state intelligence service, the Agence Nationale de la Sécurité d’État, who used Claude as the primary engineering workforce behind a national surveillance platform named Lakana 360. The system was designed to monitor roughly 25 million SIM cards across Mali’s three mobile network operators, collecting call records, text messages and voice traffic, matching identities across cards, and generating dossiers on individual phone numbers. According to Anthropic, the consultant removed a warrant check from the dossier function, at an operator’s request, circumventing the legal safeguard that would otherwise have required judicial authorisation before such records were disclosed.
The distinction that matters here is what Claude actually did. It was not used to analyse finished surveillance output; it was used to help design and build the software that made the surveillance possible. Anthropic’s ban on the account halted further design assistance but did not disable the system already deployed, which continued to run on other, locally hosted models. The case does not show that the Malian government itself directed the misuse. It shows something arguably more important: that a single individual, working with a state security service, could use a commercial AI model as an engineering workforce to help build surveillance infrastructure at national scale.
Together, these cases point to a challenge broader than disinformation. The same systems that can generate a convincing local narrative can also help build the tools to monitor the populations exposed to it. For African states, the question is no longer only whether a piece of content is true or false, but who produced it, who financed it, who is amplifying it, and whether the apparent local voice behind it is local at all.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR GHANA AND WEST AFRICA
Ghana’s own experience during its 2024 elections offers an early domestic parallel, if not a directly connected one. The Media Foundation for West Africa documented fabricated audio recordings of the two main presidential candidates, while Freedom House reported AI-generated deepfake audio and video alongside coordinated bot activity spreading misleading narratives. What Ghana encountered as isolated synthetic-media incidents could, as the tools mature, become part of far more systematic operations of the kind Anthropic has now documented elsewhere on the continent.
Information does not respect West Africa’s borders, and a narrative built in one country can be adapted and amplified in another within minutes. ECOWAS has historically organised its security cooperation around terrorism, organised crime and border control. The evidence now emerging suggests that information integrity and digital authentication need to sit alongside those priorities, with member states building the capacity to identify coordinated foreign influence, verify digital content and share intelligence on emerging technological threats.
The lesson for West Africa is not that another foreign power has acquired a new propaganda tool. It is that influence, cyber capability and surveillance are converging inside the same technological ecosystem. The states that prepare for that reality will be defending something larger than their information space. They will be defending the institutions and, ultimately, the sovereignty that rests on citizens’ ability to know who is speaking to them, and why.
Joseph McCarthy is an analyst and researcher specialising in governance, security and political transitions in the Sahel. He writes on geopolitics, development and African diplomacy. joecarthy30@gmail.com
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