What Is the Global South? The Term, the Map, and the Politics
The Global South means the world's developing and formerly colonised countries, roughly 130 to 150 states across Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania. It is a political and economic grouping, not a strict geographic one, which is why Australia sits outside it and India sits inside it. This piece explains where the term came from, who counts, why it replaced 'Third World', and where the label breaks down.
The Global South means the world's developing and formerly colonised countries, roughly 130 to 150 states across Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania. It is a political and economic grouping, not a strict geographic one, which is why Australia sits outside it and India sits inside it. This piece explains where the term came from, who counts, why it replaced 'Third World', and where the label breaks down.
The short answer
The Global South refers to the developing and formerly colonised countries of the world, mostly in Africa, Latin America, Asia (excluding Japan, South Korea and Israel) and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand). It is a political and economic category, not a line of latitude. Depending on who is counting, it covers roughly 130 to 150 countries and about 85% of humanity.
The opposite term is the Global North: North America, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Australia, New Zealand. Rich, industrialised, historically the colonisers rather than the colonised. That is the whole divide in one sentence.
Notice what the geography does not do. Australia and New Zealand are as far south as land gets, and both sit in the North. China is in the northern hemisphere and counts as South. So does India. So the word 'South' is shorthand for a shared position in the world economy and a shared history of being ruled from somewhere else.
Where the term came from
Carl Oglesby, an American activist, used 'global south' in a 1969 essay in the Catholic magazine Commonweal, writing about the Vietnam War and what he called the North's dominance over the global south. That is the usual first citation. The phrase stayed marginal for a decade.
Then came the Brandt Report in 1980. Willy Brandt, the former West German Chancellor, chaired a commission on international development and drew a line across a world map separating rich countries from poor ones. It looped above Mexico, ran between the US and Latin America, crossed the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, went north of the Middle East and then dipped south of Asia to put Australia and New Zealand on the rich side. People still call it the Brandt Line. That map is why the term stuck.
Use really took off after 1990, when the Cold War ended and 'Third World' stopped making sense. Third World only meant anything as the third bloc: the First was the capitalist West, the Second was the Soviet bloc. Remove the Second and the numbering collapses. Global South was already sitting there as a replacement, and it carried less of the insult.
How the label actually gets used
Three different things travel under the same name, and mixing them up causes most of the confusion.
First, it works as a rough development category, close to what the World Bank calls low and middle income countries, or what the UN Conference on Trade and Development lists as developing economies. Second, it names an actual diplomatic bloc. The G77 was founded at UNCTAD in 1964 with 77 signatories and now has 134 members, and it negotiates as a group at the UN on climate finance, debt and trade. The Non-Aligned Movement, founded at Belgrade in 1961, overlaps heavily. Third, it is a claim about history. Scholars use it to group countries shaped by colonial extraction, whether or not they are poor now.
That third use explains the odd cases. Saudi Arabia has a higher GDP per head than Portugal and still calls itself part of the Global South. Singapore is richer than Britain per capita. Neither fits a poverty definition. Both fit a history and a diplomatic alignment.
| Term | Founded / origin | What it groups |
|---|---|---|
| Global South | Coined 1969, popularised after 1980 | Developing and formerly colonised countries, roughly 130 to 150 |
| Third World | Coined 1952 by Alfred Sauvy | Countries aligned with neither the US nor the USSR |
| G77 | 1964, at UNCTAD in Geneva | 134 UN member states negotiating as a bloc |
| Non-Aligned Movement | 1961, Belgrade summit | 120 members, formally outside great power blocs |
| Developing countries | UN and World Bank usage | Income-based classification, revised each year |
Why some people refuse to use it
The main objection is that it flattens enormous differences. Putting Chad and China in one box is not analysis, it is a filing error. China's economy is over 300 times the size of Chad's. India runs a space programme and lands on the Moon; Somalia has no functioning national tax system. Calling both 'South' tells you almost nothing about either.
There is also the problem of the North inside the South, and vice versa. Mumbai has more billionaires than most European capitals. Parts of Mississippi have infant mortality rates closer to Latin America's than to Sweden's. Development is not evenly spread inside borders, and a country-level label hides that entirely.
And the bloc is not unified in practice. At the WTO, Brazil and India have argued on opposite sides of farm subsidy talks for years. On climate, small island states pushing hard for emissions cuts are lined up against oil exporters who are not. When India hosted the G20 in 2023 and pushed the African Union into permanent membership, it was framed as Global South leadership. Not every member was pleased about who was doing the leading.
So the term is useful for one job and bad at another. It tells you which side of a negotiating table a country sits on. It does not tell you what life is like there. Keep it for the first purpose and reach for something more specific for the second.
FAQs
Is India part of the Global South?
Yes. India is a member of the G77 and the Non-Aligned Movement, and it has positioned itself as a spokesman for the Global South, most visibly during its 2023 G20 presidency when it pushed for African Union membership.
Why are Australia and New Zealand not in the Global South?
Because the label tracks wealth and colonial history, not latitude. Both are high-income countries that were settler colonies of Britain rather than extractive ones, and both were placed on the rich side of the 1980 Brandt Line.
Is China in the Global South?
China calls itself part of the Global South and is a G77 member, though it participates as 'G77 and China' rather than as an ordinary member. Many analysts dispute the claim given China's size, its lending to poorer countries, and its permanent UN Security Council seat.
What is the difference between Global South and Third World?
Third World originally meant countries aligned with neither the US nor the Soviet bloc, so it lost its logic when the USSR collapsed in 1991. Global South covers a similar set of countries but defines them by economic position and colonial history instead of Cold War alignment.
How many countries are in the Global South?
There is no official list, so counts range from about 130 to 150. The G77 is the closest thing to a formal roster, with 134 member states as of 2024.
Who invented the term Global South?
The earliest widely cited use is by American activist Carl Oglesby in a 1969 Commonweal essay on the Vietnam War. It only became common vocabulary after the 1980 Brandt Report mapped a rich-poor divide across the globe.