ABSTRACT The adoption of the Common African Position (CAP) by the African Union in 2014 marked a transformative shift in Africa's engagement with global development, shaping the post‐2015 development agenda and sustainable development goals (SDGs). Despite its significance, the CAP's contributions remain underacknowledged in mainstream narratives. This study addresses this epistemic gap by examining the CAP's emergence and influence through an elite interview with a key policymaker involved in its formulation and a detailed documentary analysis of AU and UN records. The findings show that via the CAP African countries made an important contribution to the SDG process. Evidence from the interview indicates that African negotiators used the CAP as a shared framework to articulate common priorities and strengthen Africa's collective bargaining position in global negotiations. A documentary analysis was also undertaken to validate these claims, and confirms that the CAP's principles emphasising social inclusion, environmental sustainability and equitable global partnerships influenced the framing and content of several SDG targets. The CAP presented a unified African voice and vision of development, highlighting the interaction between the social, economic and environmental aspects of development for future global agendas. We argue that, as equity, multilateralism and development face challenges, acknowledging African ideas and perspectives becomes crucial to redress epistemic inequalities and to envision alternative solutions for addressing the development challenges of the continent and the world in a context of contested multilateralism.