After Bandung

Seventy years ago, in April 1955, newly independent countries from across Asia and Africa gathered in Bandung—the capital of the West Java province of Indonesia—to explore and assert their sovereignty, as well as to seek new development paths to enable economic and socio-political cooperation in the face of twentieth-century Cold War rivalries and imperialism. Apart from the main proponents of opposing ideologies—communism and capitalism—the ‘Cold War’ was anything but cold for the majority of countries in the ‘Global South’ (although the term denotes indirect hostilities, Global South countries quickly became proxy locations where ‘hot wars’ also took place extensively). It is in this context that the Bandung Conference was organized as a way to shake up international relations, and in the words of Indonesia’s then-president, Koesno Sosrodihardjo, mononymously known as President Sukarno, to ‘inject the voice of reason into world affairs.’

The significance of the Bandung Conference cannot be overstated, not least because at the time it occurred, the meeting represented 1.5 billion people—or about 54 per cent of the global population at the time. Its chief aim was to promote Afro-Asian cooperation. Another was to confront neocolonialism, structural economic inequity, underdevelopment, odious debt and other challenges obstructing the growth of ‘Global South’ countries. Although the geopolitical landscape has changed since the 1960s, the spirit of Bandung remains highly relevant today.