The first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, proclaimed after his country’s independence, “We face neither East nor West: we face forward.” The recent GLOBSEC Forum in Prague brought together a star-studded lineup of the Western political and military establishment. The conference welcomed presidents and prime ministers, military leaders, and heads of major development banks to discuss issues ranging from artificial intelligence to climate change to pandemics to supply chains.

One panel, moderated by one of the authors and featuring insights from panelists from the Global South with a range of professional backgrounds, both echoed Nkrumah’s outlook and provided a central insight that Western leaders would be wise to heed. Only by moving beyond attitudes shaped by outdated, Cold War-era assumptions, the panelists argued, could the assembled leaders work together to craft lasting solutions to the challenges of our time.

The panel identified multiple challenges in how the “West”—a term that encompasses the United States, its European allies, and, in some cases, Japan, Australia, and South Korea—engages with the Global South. As Oby Ezekwesili, a former World Bank economist, pointed out, even the Cold War-era term “Global South” is problematic and fails to capture contemporary realities. A term such as “Global Majority” would more accurately reflect contemporary geopolitical realities since 88 percent of the world’s population now lives in these regions.

Another major challenge identified included the persistence of a perception of “us and them” between the West and the Global South. Harsh Pant of the Observer Research Foundation argued persuasively that, in order to engage better, the West should put itself in the shoes of these regions and recognize how contemporary geostrategic issues are experienced differently. The conflict in Ukraine, he argued, is one example of the West neglecting Southern perspectives. Western governments view the conflict through the lens of sovereignty, but in the Global South, it is viewed through its impacts on energy and food prices and sovereign debt. Some Western politicians have belatedly recognized this, with former British foreign minister James Cleverly identifying that the West needs to “listen better to the Global South” and demonstrate that it is “committed to helping the developing world deal with their pre-existing challenges.”

The West should also recognize that in the context of new economic realities, it can no longer take these regions for granted. Trade flows between countries in the Global South are now greater than those between the West and the South. The economic rise of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has been accompanied by alternative perspectives, breaking the monopolization of Western narratives on international issues. Increasingly, countries of the Global South are not reliant on Western know-how or capital. Notably, China has become Africa’s largest trading partner, with trade increasing from $2.7 billion in 1990 to $209 billion in 2022, while in the security sphere, African forces have been central to peacekeeping solutions on the continent, as former Chief of Kenya Defense Forces General Robert Kibochi made clear at the panel.

In spite of the growth in local solutions to a greater range of issues, our panel did underline that shared challenges provide a golden opportunity for renewed engagement by the West to serve mutual interests: addressing global challenges will require robust West-South cooperation.

The Global South has already become a key player in the “green industrial revolution,” providing critical minerals needed for battery manufacturing. A recent report from the Milken Institute highlights how “nearshoring” has strengthened U.S.-Mexico trade in critical sectors such as semiconductors. This boosted economic security in the West while developing Mexico’s fledgling industries, for which Western capital has been instrumental. Reflecting this trend, U.S. imports from Mexico surpassed those from China in early 2023. This shows how both sides can obtain “win-win” outcomes through greater engagement in shared interests.

In technology, the West can help widen access to AI opportunities by channeling its capital to develop new clusters in the Global South, reduce “tech nationalism,” and provide greater access to intellectual property. But this is not just a one-way street. India and Brazil, for example, have developed significant tech clusters with globally scalable solutions, demonstrating how future engagement should be undertaken from a more equitable partnership than historically.

In public health, COVID-19 has demonstrated the importance of West-South cooperation in international pandemic surveillance, but also the inequality of access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. As Obiageli Ezekwesili noted, the West prioritized vaccinating its own populations before the rest of the world. Furthermore, access to the most effective vaccines was restricted in the Global South. COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic, and as the Mpox emergency shows, early and equitable access to vaccines is vital to preventing this contagious disease from transitioning into a deadly and disruptive pandemic.

And in climate change—the greatest global challenge we face—there are significant opportunities for enhanced cooperation. Harsh Pant identified how the “adversarial approach” between the developed and developing world to addressing shared climate challenges is increasingly giving way to a more engagement-focused approach. The Milken Institute’s work on financing the climate transition has provided a roadmap for the changes needed to entice more capital to projects in the Global South. Western governments, multilateral development banks, and investors need to engage more proactively in these regions to turn this enabling work into firm commitments and practical action.

It is the function of institutions like GLOBSEC and the Milken Institute, which annually convenes international investors worth nearly $30 trillion, to provide the platforms where leading thinkers from all regions can chart a new course for the future. If the message that global threats need truly global solutions hits home to those who gathered in Prague, it is clear that constructive engagement between the Global South and West to address humanity’s most pressing challenges is not simply a “nice-to-have” but a necessity.

Dr. Simon Radford is the Director for Policy and Programming for the Milken Institute in Europe.

Aidan Irwin-Singer is an Associate Director at the Milken Institute. 

Marie-Magdalena Bradova is an intern at the Milken Institute.

Image: Mahi.Freefly / Shutterstock.com.