As the G-20 summit ended, leaders from over sixty African and South American countries gathered in Venezuela for the second South America-Africa summit. The summit pledged to increase hemispheric cooperation and called for reforming the UN Security Council to avoid domination by the five veto-holding states. Seven South American nations signed an agreement creating a Bank of the South to fund hemispheric development projects. The bank will launch with $20 billion in start-up capital. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said regional cooperation would help usher in a new “multipolar” global political system.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: “We can say that we are beginning this mechanism, this mechanism that seems vital, which is the union of South America with Africa. Within this newly born structure, the twenty-first century won’t be a bipolar world, it won’t be unipolar. It will be multipolar. Africa will be an important geographic, economic and social pole. And South America will be, too. We will become real powers.”