There has been some controversy in recent days about the fact that Nigeria was not invited to the 2019 G7 summit in France. Some people have made a crazy and hilarious claim that all important African countries are invited to G7 summits and the fact that Nigeria was not invited shows that it is not an important country on the African continent. I still don't understand Nigerians' obsession with the G7 summit. I don't know citizens of any other African country that go crazy whenever a G7 summit is being held.
Nigeria is not a member of the G7. The G7 is made up of countries with the 7 strongest economies in the world.
The G7 decided to invite some developing countries to their meetings. These invitations are not a right, neither are they a determinant of which country is more important than the other.
The G7 usually invite the immediate past chairman of the African Union (AU), the current chairman of the AU and the incoming chairman of the AU. Sometimes they invite one or two others that are chairmen of subregional organisations, but it's not a determinant of which country is the most important.
The G7 invited Nigeria in 2017, but did not invite South Africa that year. Does that mean that South Africa is unimportant?
List of countries that were invited to the 2017 G7 summit in Italy
The only African country that the G7 invited to their meeting in 2016 was Chad. Does that mean that Chad is more important than Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa??
List of countries that were invited to the 2016 G7 summit in Japan
Again, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya were not invited to the 2015 G7 summit. Does that mean that these countries are not important??
List of countries that were invited to the 2015 G7 summit in Germany
The truth of the matter is that invitation to G7 summits is not a determinant of which country is important and which is not, but instead it is a reflection of the agenda of that particular summit. The host country sets the agenda and guest countries are usually invited based on that agenda.
No African country was invited to the summit in 2012, 2013 and 2014 because issues affecting Africa were not on the agenda at those meetings.
Like I said earlier, it's usually the immediate past chairman of the AU, the current chairman of the AU, the next chairman of the AU and chairmen or a few subregional groups that are invited.
Rwanda was invited to the 2019 summit in its capacity as the former chair of the African Union, Egypt as the current chair, while South Africa was invited as the incoming chair. Senegal was invited as the current leader of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), while Burkina Faso was also invited to the G7 Summit as the chair of G5 Sahel.
Guest countries invited to the 2019 G7 summit in France
Here is a list of AU chairmen since 2014. You can see that it's usually the chairmen of the AU that are invited. Chad was the only African country that was invited to the 2016 G7 summit because President Idriss Deby was the incoming chairman of the AU at that time and not because it was the most important African country.
Chairmen of the African Union
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