19 May 2025, Addis Ababa — Celebrations commemorating the entry into force of the Constitutive Charter of the Organisation of Southern Cooperation (OSC) on 18 May 2021, were marked this year by two public lectures held across two continents, connecting Latin America and Africa within a shared horizon of critical thought and collective future.
In reference to this unique celebration, the Secretary-General of the OSC, Manssour Bin Mussallam, stated: “South-South cooperation will not be sustainable without agreements among our countries of the Greater South, without genuine integration. We must establish a framework for cooperation that enables the building of bridges to strengthen ties between countries of the South, allowing our peoples to get to know each other and exchange their cultural riches, to face challenges together and to project a shared horizon.”
Under the common title “Horizons of the South: Memories, Knowledge, and Shared Futures”, the lectures brought together prominent thinkers from the Greater South. Political scientist and pan-Africanist activist Aziz Salmone Fall delivered a lecture at the National University of Avellaneda (UNDAV) in Buenos Aires titled, “The Transnationalism of the Greater South as a Pillar of an Inclusive and Balanced World”. In his address, Prof.Fall critiqued dominant conceptions of development and proposed a new paradigm grounded in endogenous and emancipatory epistemologies.
In his presentation, he emphasized that: “It is up to us, at this exceptional moment in history when imperialism is redeploying itself in the 21st century, to contribute to completing the efforts of so many people who have fought for our freedoms and our development. I propose a trans-internationalism that starts first from the Greater South, so that once crystalised, and without sub-imperialisms, it radiates to the peoples of the world.”
Argentine philosopher Professor Ricardo Forster took the stage at the Ashenafi Kebede Performing Arts Center of Addis Ababa University (AAU), presenting his lecture titled, “Utopias and Memories in the Greater South”. He explored the transformative power of utopian traditions, historical memory, and political imagination as tools to forge just and collective futures from the perspective of the South.
In Addis Ababa, Prof. Ricardo said: “Stubbornly, from the south of the world, the “not-yet” of utopia continues to insist and reminds us that nothing of what was dreamed by the generations of our ancestors is lost in the wheel of history as long as we are capable, here and now, of sustaining the dialogue between the past and the present. As in many other circumstances of our long histories, today we are once again going against the established and normalized. Within those desiderative flows, both artistic imagination and the rebellious power of our peoples were forged.”
Both events were organised by the Organisation of Southern Cooperation (OSC) in collaboration with the Union of Latin American and Caribbean Universities (UDUALC)—an associate member of the OSC, the National University of Avellaneda, and Addis Ababa University (AAU).
These celebrations not only reaffirmed the OSC’s founding principles but also reinforced its commitment to critical thought, intercontinental dialogue, and the collective construction of a Third Way of Development – from and by the South, for Humanity.
