(Sept 21): Every Sept 12, the United Nations marks the International Day for South-South Cooperation. The language surrounding it centres on solidarity, mutual development, knowledge sharing, and cooperation among developing economies, presented as an aspiration. Some countries have taken this further, turning South-South cooperation into something decidedly commercial by bringing not just their products but also their capital, technology, expertise, and capabilities into new markets.
Malaysia is already deeply embedded in this changing geography of commerce. In 2025, Malaysia's merchandise trade exceeded RM3 trillion for the first time, reaching RM3.061 trillion. Asean alone accounted for RM777.61 billion, or 25.4% of that trade. China, Malaysia's largest trading partner for the 17th consecutive year, accounted for another RM542.2 billion. Together, Asean and China represented approximately 43% of Malaysia's trade last year.
South-South commerce is therefore hardly new to Malaysia. The more interesting question is whether we can take what we have learnt in Asia and build similarly durable commercial positions in the next generation of growth markets. Africa provides an interesting test.
In 2025, Malaysian exports to Kenya reached RM6.06 billion, up 9.9%. Nigeria rose 13.6% to RM2.85 billion, Tanzania 38.8% to RM2.02 billion, Togo 27.6% to RM1.82 billion and Angola 18.9% to RM1.06 billion. Individually, these remain relatively small markets for Malaysia, but the direction is worth watching.
Investment provides another signal. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, Africa emerged as the largest regional destination for Malaysia's direct investment abroad (DIA) flows in 2025, receiving RM7 billion, notably to Mauritius and Angola and largely concentrated in oil and gas. This remains small compared with Malaysia's total DIA position of RM589.3 billion, of which RM339 billion is in Asia. Africa has certainly not displaced Asia as the principal home of Malaysian overseas investment, but the movement of capital is noteworthy.
Other countries, however, are moving much more deliberately. The United Arab Emirates' (UAE) investments across Africa have reached around US$60 billion (RM245 billion), making it the continent's largest investor from the Gulf and, according to the UAE Ministry of Economy and Tourism, its fourth-largest foreign investor overall. Around US$4.5 billion has gone into clean and renewable energy. Its companies are investing across logistics, ports, infrastructure, energy, digital transformation, agriculture and food security.
Türkiye offers another model. Turkish contractors have undertaken more than 2,000 projects across Africa worth over US$100 billion. Türkiye's investments on the continent have exceeded US$15 billion, while its trade with Africa approached US$35 billion in 2025. It has also expanded its diplomatic footprint in Africa from 12 embassies to 44.
Indian exports to Africa reached approximately US$36.7 billion in 2025. Indian companies have established positions across sectors ranging from pharmaceuticals and automotive manufacturing to telecommunications, IT and banking.
The models differ, but they have something important in common. Trade is being accompanied by investment, physical presence, technology and long-term commercial positioning. Malaysia should not simply copy India, Türkiye or the UAE. Our scale, capital base and competitive strengths are different.
More importantly, Malaysia already knows how to do this. PETRONAS is perhaps the clearest example. In Brazil it has built an integrated presence spanning upstream production, maritime services, lubricants and fuel retail. Its Brazilian lubricants operation supplies more than 20 markets across Latin America and the Caribbean, effectively using one Global South market as a platform into a wider region.
Africa tells a similar, longer story. PETRONAS has operated across the continent for decades, with upstream activities spanning countries including Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, Mozambique, Mauritania and Gabon at different points in its history. Its current global directory retains upstream procurement operations in Gabon and South Sudan, while PETRONAS marine fuels are available in South Africa, Mauritius and Namibia. Through its former controlling stake in Engen, PETRONAS also spent decades building a substantial downstream African business before completing its exit from Engen in 2024.
Nor is PETRONAS the only example. SD Guthrie International has a wholly owned South African downstream operation with a refinery in Boksburg and a packing facility in Springs, producing industrial ingredients, margarines, shortenings and frying oils. Its products are present across a number of African markets. Top Glove, meanwhile, sells across 195 countries, and Africa currently accounts for around 3% of its global sales volume. These businesses are very different in scale and depth of presence, but together they demonstrate that Malaysian companies already possess experience operating, manufacturing and building distribution networks well beyond Southeast Asia.
So why have these successes not translated into a broader and more systematic pipeline of Malaysian companies building positions across the Global South? Malaysia has spent decades developing capabilities in manufacturing, infrastructure, utilities, agriculture, healthcare, digitalisation, Islamic finance, food processing and the halal economy. Malaysian companies have also been investing abroad for decades.
The bigger opportunity may therefore not simply be to export more Malaysian products. It may be to internationalise Malaysian capability and instead of asking “What can Malaysia export to this market?”, we should increasingly ask, “What can Malaysia build with this market?” The second approach is harder. But it creates deeper market positions, stronger local relationships and potentially much larger businesses.
It is also potentially more transformative for our partners. Simply increasing South-South trade is not enough if we recreate the old structure of global commerce where one developing economy supplies commodities while another manufactures the finished product. We would merely have changed trading partners without fundamentally changing the economic relationship. Building together is different.
Our trade agreements stretch from China and India to Türkiye and the UAE, and through the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to Mexico, Peru and Chile. Malaysia has 17 implemented free-trade agreements (FTAs), eight bilateral and nine regional. Trade with FTA partners surpassed RM2 trillion in 2025, accounting for 65.5% of Malaysia's total trade. But there is a gap, Africa.
Malaysia currently has no implemented FTA with an African country or regional bloc. An FTA is certainly not a prerequisite for doing business, but competitors are beginning to build preferential access into these markets. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim explicitly mentioned FTAs and deeper trade links with Africa and Latin America at the October 2025 Asean Summit but there have been no announcements of negotiations.
In August 2026, India and the five-member Southern African Customs Union (SACU — South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini) signed terms of reference to begin negotiations towards a preferential trade agreement. India is expected to seek improved access for products including automobiles and auto parts, pharmaceuticals, machinery, electrical equipment, chemicals and textiles, several areas in which Malaysian companies also compete internationally.
If other Global South competitors are negotiating preferential access to African markets, what is the cost to Malaysian companies of not doing the same? Where does Malaysia possess a capability that another market needs? Who are the right local partners? What prevents Malaysian companies from entering — tariffs, financing, payment mechanisms, certification, logistics, regulation, foreign-exchange risk or simply inadequate market intelligence?
This brings us back to September 12. South-South cooperation matters to Malaysian business not because the United Nations has given it a day on the calendar. It matters because a US$7.2 trillion shift in global commerce is already underway.
We are not starting from zero. We already trade extensively with developing economies. Our capital is moving into new markets, and Malaysian businesses have built manufacturing, distribution and commercial footprints of their own. The challenge is to turn these individual successes into a more deliberate Malaysian strategy.
It needs to identify where its capabilities provide an advantage, find partners who bring complementary strengths, and build around them. That may ultimately be the most commercially useful interpretation of South-South cooperation, not simply trading more with each other, but building businesses, capabilities and markets together.
Salim Abu Haniffa is the executive director of the Malaysian Chamber of Commerce — Southern Africa.