The Global South: origins and significance

Contact Counsellor

Last Updated12/07/2023

The unwillingness of many leading countries to stand with NATO over the war in Ukraine has brought to the fore once again the term “Global South.”

The term refers to various countries around the world described as ‘developing’, ‘less developed’ or ‘underdeveloped’.
Many of these countries are in the Southern Hemisphere, largely in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In general, they are poorer, have higher levels of income inequality and suffer lower life expectancy and harsher living conditions than countries in the “Global North”
- Richer nations that are located mostly in North America and Europe, with some additions in Oceania and elsewhere.

The term Global South appears to have been first used in 1969 by political activist Carl Oglesby.
But it was only after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union the term gained momentum.
Until then, the more common term for developing nations i.e. countries that had yet to industrialise fully, was ‘Third World’.
The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the so-called Second World gave a convenient pretext for the term ‘Third World’ to disappear, too.
Meanwhile ‘developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘underdeveloped’ also faced criticism for holding up Western countries as the ideal, while portraying those outside that club as backwards.
Increasingly the term that was being used to replace them was the more neutral-sounding “Global South.”

The term ‘Global South’ is not geographical.
- The Global South’s two largest countries viz. China and India lie entirely in the Northern Hemisphere.
Rather, its usage denotes a mix of political, geopolitical and economic commonalities between nations.
Countries in the Global South were mostly at the receiving end of imperialism and colonial rule, with African countries as perhaps the most visible example of this.
But by 2030 it is projected that three of the four largest economies will be from the Global South, with the order being China, India, the U.S. and Indonesia.
Already the GDP in terms of purchasing power of the Global South-dominated BRICS nations surpasses that of the Global North’s G-7 club.
This economic shift has gone hand in hand with enhanced political visibility.

Countries in the Global South are increasingly asserting themselves on the global scene be it China’s brokering of Iran and Saudi Arabia’s rapprochement or Brazil’s attempt to push a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.
Undoubtedly, the Global South is flexing political and economic muscles that the ‘developing countries’ and the ‘Third World’ never had.