This organization has played significant roles throughout its history in nurturing and developing a grassroots, unofficial, and non-governmental movement for solidarity between the peoples of Africa and Asia for nearly seven decades.
At the same time, it has served as one of the pillars of Egypt’s soft power in both Africa and Asia, and even more broadly, across the Global South and the world at large, since its inception.
The organization has always been headquartered in Cairo, and several prominent Egyptian figures have successively held its presidency, as will be discussed in a later section of this article.
Its establishment was one of the outcomes of the famous Afro-Asian Bandung Summit, held from 18 to 24 April 1955 in Indonesia and attended by 304 participants representing 29 newly independent countries from Africa and Asia.
Participating prominent leaders included Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Zhou Enlai of China, Gamal Abdel-Nasser of Egypt, and Sukarno of Indonesia.
Egypt was invited due to its dual geographic affiliation as both an African and an Asian country, with the Sinai Peninsula located in Asia.
Initially founded in 1957 under the name of Council of Afro-Asian Solidarity, the organization's first conference was held in Cairo in late December 1957 and early January 1958.
The name was soon changed to the current one: Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization to emphasize its nature as a non-governmental international organization representing the peoples of Africa and Asia, not the governments. This name was officially adopted at the organization’s second conference held in Conakry, Guinea, in April 1960.
The first Egyptian president of the organization was the late President Anwar Sadat, who held that position until he was appointed vice president of Egypt by President Nasser in 1969. This role helped the late President Sadat forge strong ties with many leaders across Africa and Asia.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the organization played a pivotal and critical role in supporting national liberation movements across Africa against various forms of European colonialism, British, French, Italian, Belgian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
It served as a channel for aid and training, including military aid, to these movements. Moreover, it provided scholarships in Egypt and other relatively more advanced African and Asian countries to students from less developed or newly independent countries in both continents.
Several prominent Egyptian figures succeeded Sadat in leading the organization. Among them was the late Youssef El-Sebai, a writer, novelist, journalist, and member of the Free Officers Movement that led the 23 July 1952 Revolution.
He led the organization until his assassination in Cyprus in February 1978 during the 6th AAPSO conference, carried out by members of a radical Palestinian faction led by the late Abu Nidal.
This came amid a wave of attacks targeting Egyptian officials who supported late President Sadat’s November 1977 visit to Jerusalem (known as the Peace Initiative). At the time, El-Sebai was also serving as Egypt’s minister of culture and had accompanied Sadat to Jerusalem.
El-Sebai was succeeded by the renowned writer and intellectual Abdel-Rahman El-Sharqawi, who left an indelible mark on modern and contemporary Arab literature and theatre, particularly in relating modern literature to both Arab-Islamic history and Egyptian social reality from a progressive perspective.
An iconic figure of the Egyptian left, El-Sharqawi led the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization until his death in 1987.
Following him, the late Dr Mourad Ghaleb, Egypt’s former foreign minister, took over and served for almost two decades until his death in 2007. Dr Ghaleb courageously addressed one of the organization's most pressing challenges: a severe budget crisis caused by a sharp drop in financial contributions from African and Asian countries.
This was largely due to the end of the Cold War and a perception among some governments that the Afro-Asian solidarity movement, rooted in the spirit of Bandung and the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement, had become outdated in its approach to addressing certain topics.
I witnessed a particularly important example during Dr Ghaleb’s presidency. Under his leadership, and with the significant contribution of the late Egyptian philosopher and thinker Mahmoud Amin El-Alim, AAPSO held a major international conference in March 1997 in Cairo on the theme of intercivilizational and intercultural dialogue in the post–Cold War world.
The event gathered hundreds of outstanding participants from across the globe, including the late Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella and many high-level figures from Egypt, the Arab world, Africa, Asia, and beyond.
I was honoured to be invited to speak at the conference on the impact of international sanctions, whether imposed by international or regional organizations, or unilaterally by individual countries, on intercivilizational and intercultural relations. The conference’s outcome was an unprecedented success on the global stage.
After Dr Ghaleb’s passing, the presidency was assumed by Dr Helmy El-Hadidi, a prominent figure in Egypt’s Socialist Labour Party when it was founded in the 1970s, who later joined the ruling National Democratic Party and served as health minister under the late President Hosni Mubarak for a time.
His tenure was marked by serious funding challenges that hindered the organization’s activity, despite efforts to secure or enhance financial resources.
The recent selection of Ambassador Mohamed El-Orabi to lead AAPSO marks the beginning of a new and crucial chapter in the organization's history.
His rich and diverse global network, dynamic personality, practical mindset, and flexible approach to problem-solving promise a comprehensive revitalization of the organization. This revitalization is expected to address the wide-ranging and complex concerns and interests of today’s African and Asian peoples, whose challenges and aspirations have grown.
His leadership offers hope for renewed energy, outreach, and effectiveness in expressing the views of the peoples of Africa and Asia at the international level, making the organization more closely aligned with the hopes, ambitions, and frustrations of the peoples of Africa and Asia.
These hopes are numerous, but realistic, if met with political goodwill and active support from the countries of Africa and Asia for the noble and historic mission that Ambassador Mohamed El-Orabi is now entrusted with.
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