Apple did not invent the smartphone. Nor the personal computer. Not even the graphical user interface. What Apple perfected was something far more consequential: the art of taking what already existed, stripping it of unnecessary clutter, polishing the edges, and presenting it as inevitable. The result was not innovation ex nihilo, but execution with confidence.
Mark Carney appears to be attempting something similar with world affairs.
The policy solutions he now advances — a rebalanced global order, reduced dependency on a single hegemonic power, multilateral coordination outside traditional Western institutions — are not novel. They have been lying around the geopolitical garage for decades, gathering dust. What Carney has done is to take these old components, repackage them, and present them as a sleek operating system for a fractured world.
Old Ideas, New Packaging
At the heart of Carney’s vision is a quiet admission that the post–World War II economic architecture is no longer fit for purpose. Bretton Woods institutions creak like a Windows 95 laptop asked to run modern software. The IMF lectures debtor nations with the moral authority of a payday lender. The World Bank still speaks in the accent of 1944.
Enter BRICS.
BRICS is an intergovernmental organisation comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and several others now admitted to the club. Western commentary often treats it as an upstart or, worse, a geopolitical WhatsApp group with delusions of grandeur. This misses the point. BRICS is not trying to overthrow the global order in one dramatic coup; it is doing what Apple did to IBM — quietly rendering the old model less relevant.
Trade in local currencies. Development finance without moral sermons. Infrastructure funding without a 400-page appendix on governance reform. These ideas are not radical. They are pragmatic. Their real offence is that they work without asking permission.
The Non-Aligned Movement: The Beta Version
Long before BRICS, there was the Non-Aligned Movement of the 1960s. Newly independent states, weary of being pawns in a Cold War chess match, decided they would neither genuflect to Washington nor kneel before Moscow. Leaders like Nehru, Nasser, Tito, and Nkrumah imagined a third way — politically independent, economically cooperative, ideologically flexible.
The problem was not the idea. The problem was the execution.
The Non-Aligned Movement suffered from poor hardware: weak institutions, fragile economies, military coups, and the unfortunate habit of leaders overstaying their welcome. It was Android before optimisation — ambitious, open, but prone to crashing.
What Carney now does is to revisit that same impulse — strategic autonomy — but with better processors. Today’s emerging economies are not agrarian experiments; they are industrial, financial, and technological actors. India launches satellites. China builds railways at the speed of policy announcements. Brazil feeds half the planet. This is Non-Alignment with bandwidth.
The Apple Touch: Making Multipolarism Respectable
What distinguishes Carney’s intervention is tone. He does not sound like a revolutionary. He sounds like a central banker — which is precisely why the message lands.
By framing multipolarity not as rebellion but as risk management, Carney makes it palatable to markets, institutions, and policymakers who break out in hives at the word “new order.” He speaks of resilience, diversification, stability — the kind of language that calms bond traders and terrifies ideologues.
This is Apple’s genius applied to geopolitics: same phone, fewer buttons; same world, fewer dependencies.
The United States remains powerful, but no longer singular. Europe remains relevant, but no longer decisive. The Global South is no longer asking to be included; it is building parallel systems. Carney’s contribution is to acknowledge this reality without the theatrics, and to suggest that adapting early is better than resisting late.
Nigeria and the View from the Periphery
For countries like Nigeria, this shift is not academic. It is existential. A multipolar world offers optionality — the ability to negotiate, leverage, and align based on interest rather than historical loyalty. It offers development finance without ideological packaging, trade without moral condescension, and diplomacy without permanent subordination.
Of course, none of this works without domestic competence. No amount of BRICS membership can compensate for poor governance, fiscal recklessness, or elite predation. Apple still requires users to charge the device.
Conclusion: Same World, Better Interface
Mark Carney has not invented a new world order. He has done something more subtle and more effective: he has acknowledged that the old one is already deprecated.
Like Apple, he has taken existing ideas — non-alignment, multilateralism, economic diversification — and given them a cleaner interface, better marketing, and institutional credibility. Whether the system runs smoothly will depend not on the elegance of the design, but on the discipline of its users.
History suggests that those who cling too tightly to obsolete software eventually find themselves locked out of the future.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 