Africa in Post-Cold War World Politics (original) (raw)
Post-cold war international relations and foreign policies in Africa: new issues and new challenges
African Journal of International Affairs, 2009
This paper argues that international relations in Africa have changed especially in content since the abatement of the Cold War. These changes have been accelerated by the pressures unleashed by the international environment, including the reality of Africa's marginalisation and the forces of globalisation. These, along with domestic factors, including debt, internal conflicts, the impact of the ubiquitous structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), HIV/AIDS and human insecurity in general have combined to underscore foreign aid and economic assistance as key driving forces of the continent's foreign policies and diplomacy towards the North. Yet, the new thrust of foreign policies, informed by the need for foreign aid, has not occurred without a price. Among other things it has elevated technocrats in central or reserve banks and finance ministries to positions of prominence vis-à-vis officials from foreign ministries and in the process introduced extra-African actors into the foreign policy making process of the continent. This in turn has undermined Africa's increasingly tenuous economic sovereignty. But above all, it has led to the strengthening of ties with the North and international creditors in particular at the cost of intra-African relations. The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the African Union (AU) recently inaugurated, promise to open a new chapter in Africa's international relations. It is argued, however, that against a background of a confluence of factors, these new continental projects will make only a minimal impact in terms of mitigating the consequences of the aid-driven foreign policies and thus altering the donor-oriented postures of African states.
Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2010
In recent years, there has been a range of responses to the visible decline of interest in African area studies and the ongoing marginalization of Africa within the discipline of international relations. Some argue that there is no lack of scholarly interest in Africa (Bayart 2000; Taylor and Williams 2004), while others continue to suggest that the reverse is true: Africa is marginalized within the social sciences and within the study of IR in particular (Kitching 2000; Alpers and Roberts 2002; Hyden 2006). With a view to reframing the prevailing study of Africa in international relations theory, this chapter supports the latter view with a suggestion as to what scholars might do to alter present circumstances. The chapter argues that students and scholars of African affairs need to identify parallels of political experience and theory, rather than follow the prevailing forms of social science methodology, which stress the importance of identifying Africa as "different." As always, there will be some differences, but there are limits to those differences. Among recent trends in the literature is the suggestion that Africa is, in various ways, different from other regions, i.e., the language of IR theory is innappropriate for the African political context due, especially, to the ambiguity of the African state (Dunn and Shaw 2001). I believe that this mainstream position - supported by virtually all of the prevailing critical to conservative views that currently dominate Western institutions and scholarship - contributes to the process by which IR theory systematically marginalizes Africa. African states do exist and are well recognized as sovereign entities locally, regionally, and internationally. William Brown has rightly argued that the logic of sovereignty can be applied to African political contexts as elsewhere and that the limitations of application, if and when they exist, are not unique to Africa (Brown 2006). The notion that Africa is somehow isolated from human history and experience , or what social scientists prefer to identify as "different," can only lead us down the path of "essentializing" Africa, in much the same way Orientalists have done to the Middle East (Said 1979). Dunn and Shaw are right to say that African sovereignty is challenged but Brown is also right to say that there are limitations to presenting African affairs as entirely "unique." If we are to establish a reconstructed platform for IR analysis that includes Africa, we need to find ways to improve dialogue between Africanists and international relations theorists so that African political thought and experience can be better integrated into the main corpus of IR theory. Today, more than ever, the ongoing marginalization of Africa within the discipline of IR is simply a matter of choice. We can do better. For too long, the assumptions of mainstream IR theorists isolated Africa. For too long, Africa's sovereign states have been deemed too weak, too different, and generally not worthy of inclusion in IR theory. This chapter is an appeal to those who would like to challenge that long-established method of social science inquiry. Following a brief survey of the early intellectual debates with the field and the resulting "intellectual framework" of IR theory that Hans Morgenthau and E.H. Carr established, I argue that there are mainly two reasons why African political ideas have generally not been integrated into IR theory. Firstly, African theorists are forced to participate in already deeply entrenched, allegedly "global" social science debates, that view Western IR theory as the primary target of analysis (pro or con); and, secondly, the majority of IR theorists lack the professional motivation to include African political thought and experience in the debates. Moreover, political scientists, I suggest, are more fearful of looking naive than scholar of other social science disciplines. Accordingly, caution and pessimism prevail, with a seemingly entrenched focus on the interests of the powerful. In other words, African studies have fallen victim to a range of Foucauldian challenges that link established "knowledge" with the interests of "power." In this chapter I consider the more global approaches used in other social science disciplines as possible models for future change in IR study.
'In from the margins? The changing place of Africa in International Relations'
(with Will Brown) International Affairs 89(1): 69-87, 2013
This article surveys recent literature on Africa and International Relations (IR) and reviews the current place of Africa within the discipline. It notes that critical debates continue around claims of a mismatch between Africa and ‘mainstream’ IR theories and concepts. However, alongside this set of issues, there is in fact a burgeoning literature on many aspects of Africa’s international relations. While some of these studies utilize existing IR theories, and others explore empirical cases that could deliver important lessons for the wider discipline, much of this promise goes unfulfilled. The article reviews literature on China’s role and on HIV/AIDS governance in Africa to illustrate how the study of African international relations, the wider IR discipline and international policy could all benefit froma closer engagement between Africa and IR. The article concludes by setting out three challenges for a renewed agenda: a need to address the problematic relationship between universal analytical concepts and regional particularities; a need to give recognition to, and analyse, African agency in international politics; and a need to address inequalities in knowledge production in the field of Africa’s international relations.
The place of Africa in international relations: the centrality of the margins in Global IR
Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica
The Global IR research agenda lays emphasis on the marginalised, non-Western forms of power and knowledge that underpin today's international system. Focusing on Africa, this article questions two fundamental assumptions of this approach, arguing that they err by excess of realism – in two different ways. First, the claim that Africa is marginal to international relations (IR) thinking holds true only as long as one makes the whole of IR discipline coincide with the Realist school. Second, the Global IR commitment to better appreciate ‘non-Western’ contributions is ontologically realist, because it fails to recognise that the West and the non-West are dialectically constitutive of one another. To demonstrate this, the article first shows that Africa has moved from the periphery to the core of IR scholarship: in the post-paradigmatic phase, Africa is no longer a mere provider of deviant cases, but a laboratory for theory-building of general validity. In the second part, the Sahel...
Issues and Debates Surrounding the Cold War era in Africa
International Journal of Emerging Multidisciplinaries: Social Science, 2024
This paper argues that Cold War politics in Africa prioritised superpower geopolitical interests over local sovereignty which promoted corruption, political instability, and the entrenchment of authoritarian regimes. It examines how United States and Soviet Union support for dictatorial governments impacted state-building processes, governance, and human rights in post-colonial Africa. The primary objectives are to analyze the influence of U.S. and Soviet support on authoritarian regimes, assess the implications for human rights and democracy, and investigate the enduring legacy of these interventions in post-colonial Africa. Utilizing historical methodology, the study relies on secondary sources, including books, journals, and online resources, to provide analysis. The findings reveal that Cold War patronage not only entrenched dictatorial regimes but also hindered the development of independent political institutions, leading to persistent challenges in governance. The paper concludes that understanding the implications of Cold War for Africa is germane for addressing contemporary issues of democracy, human rights, and development, emphasizing the need for a reassessment of external influences in influencing African political trajectories.
Africa in international relations: agent, bystander or victim?
2015
Using a number of learning materials, including books and movies, MC324b provides students of international relations with an in depth analysis of the African continent’s agency and ‘play’ in global politics. Despite the apparent recentness of the globalization project, in taking a historical and structural perspective in the presentation of African affairs, the course’s content will begin its examination of Africa’s international relations by tracing the Continent’s initial European contact, setting off global events such as the ‘triangular trade’, colonialism, de-colonization, the establishment of modern independent African statehood during the post World War II era, and the Continent’s post-colonial ‘age of development’. The course will present these historical formations as the bases for the important current transformations in African affairs, including the continent’s economic challenges, its health crisis, neo-liberalism, 1990s conflict and resolution, democratization and reg...
Great Power Competition in Africa: Toward a New Cold War? Written by Pádraig Carmody
E-International Relations, 2025
Geopolitics is back as global competition and tensions mount, but what are the nature and impacts of the so-called ‘New Cold War’ in the developing world? The ‘first’ Cold War was largely fought in the global periphery and this also appears to be the case in what some see as a new iteration or continuation of this conflict. This has been partly driven by a resurgence in ‘domino’ thinking where developments and orientations in the periphery are thought to have potentially substantial implications for the ‘core’. Africa has in recent decades become, at times, a site of intense competition between ‘great’ powers – the US, Russia, and China as the latter’s presence on the continent has expanded economically and in terms of political and other engagements. Is this rivalry then indicative of a new Cold War on the continent which may result in emergence of new alignments or blocs, or can African actors leverage competition to balance external powers to their own, or their countries’ benefit?
Post-colonialism, Africa, and the Post-Cold War era
This paper reads recent African crises through the theories exposed in Albert Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized. Its aims are to discuss how Western European hegemonic thoughts are not foreign to the forces, which fueled them. Taking the examples of Cote d'Ivoire, the Arab spring, and especially the Libyan conflicts, the paper demonstrates that Eurocentrism and/or Euro-centered thoughts and values are still prevalent in the relations between African and Europe, especially between former colonial powers and the United States and former colonized nations. In order to elucidate European contemporary political thought, the discourses of La Baule in 1990, Sarkozy's Dakar speech of 2007, and Obama's Cairo and Accra speeches of 2009 are deciphered and paralleled to the methods that these world leaders resorted to for international peace. The paper reaches a set of conclusions. The first conclusion is that the mechanisms of oppression and colonialism have not faded away, despite more than fifty years of Africa's struggle to negotiate its autonomy. The second conclusion is that there is a huge discrepancy between the commemoration of African independences and the actual status of these independences. The third conclusion is that the events which characterized the year 2011 vindicate post-colonial theories in academia and in political circles, and in African political thoughts.
AFRICA AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ASSEMBLING AFRICA, STUDYING THE WORLD
This Research Note contributes to recent debates about Africa's place within the discipline of International Relations (IR). It argues that bringing Africa into IR cannot be simply a question of 'add Africa and stir', as the continent does not enter the discipline as a neutral object of study. Instead, it is already overdetermined and embedded within the politics and structure of values of the academe, which are in turn influenced in complex ways by changing geopolitics. The present combination of IR's increased awareness of its own Western-centrism and Africa's position as the new 'frontline in the war on terror' therefore harbours both opportunities and dangers, and bringing Africa into IR involves epistemological and methodological challenges relating to our object of study and political challenges relating to the contemporary securitization of Africa. The Research Note suggests that an assemblage approach offers a productive way of negotiating this encounter between IR and African Studies, making it possible to study Africa simultaneously as a place in the world and of the world, capturing the continent's politics and societies as both unique and global.
Africa in Contemporary World Politics: The Dynamics and Effects of Domination
Africa has always been part of global politics but majorly on the receiving end. After over five decades of independence, this situation has not changed and there is little reason to believe that positive change is to be expected under the prevailing configurations of power. Against, this background, this paper takes a critical look at the place of Africa in the contemporary world politics. It interrogates its politics of domination, examines the dynamics of that domination and its impacts which it summed under the rubrics of insecurity. Noting that under the established practices, rules and behavioral patterns of the global community that the vicious cycle of domination cannot be broken, the paper made radical recommendations on how best to escape domination
Editorial: New Directions in International Relations and Africa
The Round Table, 2009
This special issue provides a collection of new interpretations of Africa's international relations. Africa's place in the contemporary international system presents a series of challenges to scholars and practitioners alike. Not only, for example, must we try to understand the impact of rapid changes in the world economic and political landscapes such as the rapid development of China and the growing influence of developing countries in governance projects such as the G20, we must also seek to better understand changes within Africa. A series of transformations form the modern renaissance of Africa arising from the end of apartheid in South Africa to the emergence of new or reinvigorated institutional mechanisms of governance such as the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), multilateral lending, and democratisation in a number of African states. Vital issues like conflict and peacemaking, aid, health, migration and liberalisation, are given new form in Africa as a result of the continent's engagements with a range of other subregional, regional and systemic level actors including states, governmental and non-governmental organisations, multinational business, and civil society groups. The period since the end of the Cold War has seen a series of important studies of Africa's international relations. Some, such as Christopher Clapham's landmark Africa in the International System and Taylor and Williams' Africa in International Politics have provided critical analyses of the multiple dimensions of Africa's political and economic linkages with the world. Others, such as Dunn and Shaw's Africa's Challenge to International Relations Theory have focused on the theoretical implications that the study of Africa's international relations poses. The latter particularly raises a debate about to what extent, if any, existing theoretical traditions within the discipline of International Relations (IR) are adequate to meet the analytical problems faced. 1 This special issue arose out of a one-day workshop New Directions in International Relations and Africa held at the Open University in July 2008. The workshop was organised by the BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group and the editors would like to thank the British International Studies Association and the Politics and International Studies Department at the Open University who provided the funding for the workshop. Details of the BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group are available at: www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/bisa-africa. New research in the field picks up these substantive and theoretical debates. For some, received theory needs to be transcended in order to raise legitimate questions about the nature and boundaries of the study of Africa's international relations. For others, new directions mean exploring how new and emerging approaches within the discipline of IR, and within International Political Economy, can develop new insights that help us to theorise not only what the study of 'the international' tells us about Africa, but what the politics of Africa offers for theoretical conceptions of international relations. Others try to develop more state-centric discourses of international relations by exploring the role of different kinds of political actors and issues as central to the process of international relations. More substantively, research has begun to target key contemporary and longstanding issues such as education, the environment, health and HIV/AIDS; political issues of governance and the much contested 'African state', civil society and relationships with international organisations, as well as offering new conceptual approaches both
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE QUEST FOR AFRICAN VOICE
AFRICAN JOURNAL FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES, 2020
International Relations (IR), as a discipline, has European origins and a universal inclination, but it is the United States that largely determined its recent academic development. Several scholars have lamented the neglect of the developing world, especially Africa, in the study of IR. This paper examines the place of Africa in the IR discipline from the perspective of African scholars who argue that it is not a truly international discipline as it does not capture the full range of ideas, approaches and experiences of non-Western societies. It highlights the areas of perceived marginalization of Africa, the Western dominance in IR theorizing, various constraints to Africa's visibility in IR and shows that Africa continues to figure largely on the margins of the discipline. It builds on existing researches that situate African scholarship as a viable contributor to knowledge production and theorization in IR, and calls for an African-centered perspective of IR.
Africa and the World: Navigating Shifting Geopolitics
South African Journal of International Affairs, 2020
Africa's shifting geopolitics in a changing strategic landscape: Towards greater agency Geographically situated in the 'Global South' as the geological extension of the Afro-Eurasian land mass, Africa is centrally situated at the very intersection of global strategic dynamics. This raises a number of questions. Chiefly: How does Africa and its future, interlinked with the continent's encircling geopolitical, economic and security dynamics impinging on continental-maritime perimeters in proximity to Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the America's relate to the broader west-to-east shifting of the global political economy's center of gravity in a still evolving multipolar strategic landscape? This policy brief attempts to address this predicament from a uniquely Africa-centered vantage-point, highlighting key recommendations for enhancing African agency and strategic autonomy. It is a perspective informed by the continent's globally centered positioning relative to all other continents and continental-maritime interregional zones of political, security and geoeconomic intercourse. As such, the continent is configured in such a manner as to be suggestive of a mega-island or, if you will, 'Island Africa.' INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL DIALOGUE