Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean have both the potential and the desire to transform their people's lives through Green Industrial Policy. Yet they have long been constrained by structural obstacles embedded in the international system. The current rupture in that system, which has eroded the legitimacy and functionality of international institutions, has further weakened collective responses to shared crises: climate instability, conflict, and economic insecurity.
Compounding this, policy volatility has surged. Swings in industrial subsidies, the rise of green protectionism, sanctions, and the securitisation of trade have deepened uncertainty, falling hardest on countries in the Global South. These dynamics further compress the policy space available to governments at precisely the moment when bold economic transformation is most needed. Yet the same crisis that narrows room for manoeuvre also creates openings. Disruption to existing international arrangements brings with it the possibility, and the necessity, of building something better.
In this context, there is huge potential in the fact that Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, which have long shared values and interests, are now increasingly strengthening their collaboration. In doing so they have started to lay a pathway to build collective agency in a fragmented global system. The growing strengthening of Afri–LAC ties represent an opportunity not only to deepen South–South cooperation, but to reshape global narratives, shift global policies and reorient global systems.
The question is no longer whether green industrial transformation is possible. It is how Africa and LAC can shape it together.
