III-VII - Africa in International System

Africa in International System
Week III - IIV

African Diplomacy: From Precolonial to Post-Colonial
Times
 Retrospective
 African diplomacy has a long history.

 As early as the 16th century many centralized states of pre-colonial
western and eastern Africa had developed sophisticated diplomatic
practices.
 These practices were based on customary law and, for some
historians, could be regarded as the first steps to a permanent or
continuous diplomacy.
African Diplomacy: From Precolonial to Post-Colonial Times
 Foundations of African Diplomacy
Historical Perspective from 1415 to 1884 and to 1960
 The European era of adventures beginning in the 15th century led to
European expansionism outside of Europe, and Africa became one
of the obvious destinations for various European adventures and
interests.
 Impact of European imperialism transformed Africa to Western
values which means that African diplomacy from that time had to
conform to Westernism.
 Africa became a by-product of Western values and civilization.
 Struggles of Africanism versus Westernism apparent in diplomatic
doctrine.
 Foundations of African Diplomacy
 Difference between African diplomacy based on African traditions
and African diplomacy based on Western traditions has prevailed
into post-colonial period.
 Africa was ignored for a long time and was described as a “Dark
Continent” in the 19th century.
 Post-colonial diplomacy and diplomatic practice is a mix of
precolonial, colonial, and post-colonial practices.
 Pre-colonial African diplomacy
 Pre-colonial African diplomacy linked the coastal and forest states

of West and East Africa with the savannah lands to the north.
 It also regulated contacts of these states with the Arab world and the
Ottoman Empire as well as with a variety of European traders,
missionaries, hunters and travelers.
 Diplomatic activity in pre-colonial Africa exhibits several
similarities to that developed in feudal Europe: in Africa ‘treaties
were negotiated, frontiers were delimited, past disputes were settled,
and potential crises argued away’.
 Nevertheless, and despite similarities with medieval Europe, African

pre-colonial diplomacy differed in two important aspects:
(1) there was neither a single religion as Christianity

(2) nor a powerful and respected institution comparable to the
pontificate that could help organize international relations at the highest
level.
 Thus, in contrast to medieval European rulers that met one another
frequently to settle disputes, African leaders ‘rarely if ever, met face
to face’.
Diplomacy in Africa: From Precolonial to Post-Colonial Times
 Despite a diplomacy that aimed at preventing conflict and promoting

cooperation, pre-colonial Africa was far from peaceful.
 Warfare was considered as a legitimate foreign policy tool to satisfy
both political and economic ends.
 For example, in the 18th century, the leaders of the Oyo Empire
(1608–1800) pursued war as an annual or bi-annual exercise.
 The Oyo Empire in West Africa was located in present-day eastern
Benin and western Nigeria.
 It was an empire of Yoruba – a West African ethnic group who
mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo.
 Pre-colonial African diplomacy was heavily influenced by Islam and

contacts with the Europeans.
 The first contributed literacy and led, at least in the Islamized states
of West and East Africa, to the evolution of chanceries (a court of
law). For example, the Bornu state of Nigeria maintained official
relations with the Ottoman Empire for almost three centuries.
 The second influence, though facilitating communication between
Africa and the rest of the world through the spread of European
languages, did not have an immediate impact on African diplomatic
practices.
 Thus, the resident embassy of 16th century Europe did not spread in
the continent until the 19th century.
 European penetration to Africa in the 19th century was initially slow.
 However, in the late 1870s it began to escalate into a fierce scramble
for territory.
 The Berlin Conference (1884–5) signified the beginning of Africa’s
partition.
 There had been a variety of motives for European colonialism.
 Geopolitical calculations and economic interests were among the
most important.
 However, European statesmen did not always control imperial

expansion.
 Private interests also played a role – for example, British
missionaries and traders pressurized their home governments to
extend the colonial boundaries inland.
 Resistance, negotiation, and adaptation were the means by which
Africans sought to defend their societies.
 Constrained by military inferiority, the leaders of the continent had
‘to decide whether to fight or negotiate with invaders seeking to
convert their partition into power on the ground’.
 Amidst complex calculations (ranging from domestic rivalries to

maintaining sources of income like slave trading) of how to react to
European conquest, African polities were deeply divided between
war and peace parties/supporters.
 However, it soon became clear that it was impossible to hold out
against the superior European forces.
 It was African military incapacity rather than poor diplomacy that
made the European partition possible.
 Colonialism in Africa lasted for less than a century.

 Throughout these years the representation of Africans was the
prerogative of European capitals.
 In this sense, there was much diplomacy about Africa but little
African diplomacy, at least at the official level.
 Only when the states of the continent became formally independent
– mainly in the 1960s – did the era of modern African state
diplomacy begin.
 A well-known exception is Ethiopian diplomacy in the League of

Nations.
 In April 1923, Tafari Makonnen, the successor to the throne of
Ethiopia, applied for his country’s membership to the League of
Nations.
 Britain opposed the application on the grounds that Ethiopia was not
yet ‘sufficiently civilized’ and politically cohesive to deserve it.
 However, thanks to the support of France, Ethiopia became a
member of the League.
 It was there that Tafari, subsequently Emperor Haile Selassie (Hayle
Salasi), delivered in 1936 his famous speech condemning the use of
chemical weapons by Italy in the second Italo-Ethiopian War.
 The attack on Ethiopia by Mussolini’s forces mobilized a new actor

in African diplomacy: the former slaves in the New World.
 For the African diaspora, Christian Ethiopia had become the ‘heart
of African civilization’, ‘the place, the symbol, the idea and the
promise’.
 In 1935 some 20,000 Afro-American protesters, some bearing
Ethiopian flags, marched in a 1935 rally to New York’s Madison
Square.
 It was the first sign of a politicization of the African diaspora that
would become an important actor in African diplomacy in the 1970s
and the 1980s.
 In Africa itself, throughout the colonial years, there were also

important non-state diplomatic actors.
 Traditional rulers in Nigeria, personalities in East Africa and tribal
leaders in Central Africa often enjoyed a high level of autonomy.
 Thus, they became masters in negotiating with colonial authorities.
 Church leaders, army commanders and trade unionists created a
‘bottom-up African diplomacy’ that was informal, elaborate and
flexible but which also remained largely unrecorded in the
continent’s history.
 As a result, its important successes are fragmented in hundreds of

individual stories, personal biographies and anthropological studies
and the full picture of its impact on colonialism but also on post-
colonial foreign policies (as many of these individuals occupied
government positions) remains rather unclear.
 However, this ‘hidden diplomacy’ was definitely more present in
British colonies where colonial rule was usually less direct.
 Post-Colonial African Diplomacy
 The diplomacy of most independent African countries in the post-
colonial period had two objectives:
 first, ensure state survival and
 second, safeguard domestic regimes.
 As the common experience in post-colonial Africa (with very few
exceptions) was that territories came first, and the state was
established inside them, securing territorial integrity became the
main priority.
 The problem was the arbitrariness of African boundaries inherited
from the colonial era: 44% were straight lines, most countries had
only a limited ability to defend them, and there were many groups
that would welcome wholesale challenges to them.
 To ensure their territorial integrity, African states formed the

Organization of African Unity and decided as early as 1964 to
respect the borders existing on their achievement of national
independence.
 In the decades that followed, African boundaries were more stable
than those of any other continent.
 The emergence of Eritrea in 1993 and – to a lesser extent – South
Sudan in 2011 did not seem to contravene the OAU boundary
doctrine. In fact, both cases were more a return to colonial
boundaries.
 Morocco and Somalia questioned the purity of colonial boundaries

in the 1970s by respectively invading Western Sahara and the
Ethiopian Ogaden.
 At different times, some African leaders supported secessionist
attempts in Congo, Ethiopia, Angola, Ghana, and Nigeria.
 However, most African governments rejected the possibility of
secession, and the territorial integrity norm was kept as a dogma.
 African diplomacy cherished the two aspects of ‘negative
sovereignty’: respect of existing frontiers and non-interference in
the internal affairs of other states.
 Quick summary
(1) African diplomacy has a long history that is recorded back to the
sixteenth century.
(2) Colonialism created new non-state diplomatic actors.
(3) The main challenge for African diplomacy at independence was
the arbitrariness of colonial boundaries.
 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War
 African foreign policies also reflected state elites’ desire to defend

their regimes against domestic opposition.
 Regime survival became the main objective of African diplomacy in
the Cold War era, a period which posed new challenges to African
security.
 At first glance, Africa had no reason to be caught in the superpower
rivalry. The continent was too poor and too peripheral to trouble
Cold War warriors.
 However, as the United States and the Soviet Union became locked
in a nuclear stalemate in Europe, Africa became a territory of
strategic competition.
 The critical question for Africans was whether to opt for alignment
or non-alignment.
 Post-independence African diplomacy reflected deep fears of
exploitation from both the West and East and emphasized the need
to reduce the penetration of both the superpowers and the former
colonial powers.
 Ideology played a crucial role. African foreign policies were often
overly discursive. References to the ‘slave trade’, the ‘crimes of
colonial powers’, ‘the plunder of African resources’ and ‘economic
exploitation’ were common themes in African leaders’ speeches in
multilateral fora.
 ‘Neocolonial attitudes’ and ‘neo-imperialism’ were criticized.

 In this regard, Ian Smith’s Rhodesia and South Africa’s white-
dominated regime was considered as ‘internal enemy’ that were
‘supported’ and ‘sustained’ by non-African powers.
 African diplomacy also regarded international developments through
a continental lens. For example, one of the reasons why Africans
supported the Palestinian cause was that they saw ‘significant
similarities’ between apartheid and Israeli policies in the occupied
territories.
 However, as the high expectations of the benefits that the end of

colonialism could bring faded and the Cold War rivalry escalated,
African leaders were forced to choose sides, forming alliances with
one of the two superpowers, or strengthening their ties with their
former colonial powers (especially France).
 Economic considerations (attracting investment and aid) were
crucial in African alignment decisions.
 Because resources were crucial in helping regimes stay in power.
 This led to a situation when gradually, an international patron–client

relationship emerged.
 Smaller and more vulnerable states were obviously more likely to
opt for a client role.
 But they were not alone: all African elites faced the same multiple
constraints of ‘poverty, disunity, domestic expectations and external
penetration’.
 Not unexpectedly, internal calculations affected the foreign policies
of every single country of the continent.
 Many African decision-makers, presiding over fragile regimes that

faced serious domestic opposition, were forced to ‘balance’ between
external and internal pressures. For example, the Emperor Haile-
Selassie of Ethiopia was firmly aligned with the United States but
also used contacts with the Soviet Union to weaken communist
support for Eritrean secessionists.
 Attempting to balance external and domestic needs, many African
elites faced potential contradictions.
 If the primary threat was internal, as was often the case, regimes
aligned with an external power to get resources and assistance.
 But governments were not the only actors.

 Various armed groups, usually originating in the countryside and
often attacking across state frontiers, were contesting incumbent
regimes.
 These groups largely relied on outside support.
 In the pre-independence period, insurgencies were associated with
the cause of ‘liberation’ and were supported by the Soviet Union and
its allies.
 In the Cold War era, several new types of insurgencies emerged:
separatist, reform and warlord groups searched for external support.
 In Southern Africa, right-wing insurgencies trying to destabilize

Soviet clients (e.g., Angola and Mozambique) found support in
South Africa and Rhodesia.
 In other cases, insurgencies were linked to pre-colonial fault lines
that were exacerbated by government policies (e.g., Sudan) and were
supported by other regional governments in a logic of tit-for-tat
(counteroffensive).
 In Central and later western Africa (e.g., Liberia and Sierra Leone)
rebels were involved in extensive looting of mineral resources which
they would sell abroad.
 The international connections of all these armed groups extended
from ‘neighboring states whose regimes were hostile to the
government of the “target state” against which the insurgency was
directed, to the global alliance structures which dominated
international politics’.
 Private interests including mercenaries, mining companies and
diasporic communities helped create a complex ‘insurgency
diplomacy’.
 External resources (ranging from illegal external trade to the control
of access to resources) were critical for rebel movements, giving rise
to a non-state economic diplomacy with insurgency leaders
controlling diamond sales and delivering stolen foreign aid.
 The African diplomacy of the bipolar era has rarely attracted more
than a passing reference in most histories of the Cold War that
usually focus on conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and the Cuban missile
crisis.
 Indeed, economic scarcity and political fragility made African
regimes extremely dependent on foreign support with limited ability
to influence local and regional developments.
 But this does not mean that African governments were necessarily or
always the ‘puppets’ of foreign powers.
 As the superpowers and their allies acted competitively, African

actors have been able to retain at least some margin for maneuver.
 In many cases, the obvious existence of patron–client relationships
did hide the often important role of African agency.
 African governments, in return to access to strategic sites and
minerals, demanded concessions from foreign powers.
 If the material resources given were considered inadequate, regimes
used their sovereign power to play one patron off against the other.
 For example, during his 30-year reign, Zaire’s President Mobutu
Sese Seko became an ‘expert’ in manipulating foreign patrons,
including the CIA, Belgium, France, West Germany, Saudi Arabia
and even China and the IMF.

 Even the smaller and weaker states found ways to manipulate their
patrons, securing military and development aid, cheap loans,
technical assistance and external military interventions to keep
incumbents in power.
 For example, the Major Mathieu Kerekou regime in Benin, one of
the poorest countries in Africa, first approached the Soviet Union,
but was later flexible enough to restore relations with Benin’s former
colonial master, France, receiving aid that allowed his regime to
remain in power for 18 years.
 And Congo-Brazzaville, even more surprisingly, was successful in
maintaining simultaneously excellent relations with both Moscow
and Paris, combining a ‘socialist state’ with a privatized economy.
 Quick summary
(1) African diplomacy in the post-independence era aimed at

securing regime survival.
(2) The proliferation of armed groups in the Cold War era led to
the development of an ‘insurgency diplomacy’.
(3) The obvious existence of patron–client relationships did hide
the important role of African agency as well.
…..
 Rising Africa: Africa in the Post-Cold War Era
 The end of the Cold War had a negative impact on the

geostrategic importance of Africa.
 For almost a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Africa
was a marginal region for international politics.
 Foreign embassies and military bases were closed, and aid
declined.
 The withdrawal of superpowers gave more freedom for maneuver
to African foreign policies.
 However, this freedom was distributed unequally.
 Regional powers, such as Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, found
more scope to develop a stronger regional presence.
 Rising Africa: Africa in The Post-Cold War Era
 Conversely, weaker states that previously had little influence

beyond their regions, had fewer opportunities for more
autonomous foreign policies in relation to their more powerful
neighbors.
 But this era of marginalization did not last for long.
 Since the turn of the century, global interest for developments in
Africa has considerably increased.
 Several factors explain this change of Africa’s role in global
politics, including higher economic growth rates, a
democratization trend and threats to international security
emanating from Africa (including terrorism, drugs trade and naval
piracy).
 However, probably the most important factor was China’s

involvement in African affairs.
 In the twenty-first century, the growth of Chinese–African
relations has been both unprecedented and impressive.
 Trying to secure raw materials and open new markets, China has
not only become Africa’s most significant trade partner, but also
an important investor and a generous donor.
 Chinese aid came with no political or economic conditionalities.
This gave African diplomacy greater freedom than it had before.
 After independence, the executive branches have maintained a

considerable amount of autonomy in foreign-policy decision
making in Africa.
 Even within the executives, it was the presidents and their
collaborators that have defined the national interest.
 These political settings basically continued patrimonialism as a
form of governance in which all power flows directly from the
ruler with no distinction between the public and private domains
(autocratic or oligarchic regimes)
 In many countries the legacy of neopatrimonialism led to a
diplomacy that privileged presidential rule with no competition
from countervailing institutions.
Rising Africa: Africa in The Post-Cold War Era
 Interest groups like big business, media, political parties and

legislatures had very limited influence.
 The publics remained largely uninterested in foreign policy even in
countries with democratically elected governments.
 In general, there was very little domestic pressure to change

foreign policy priorities.
 However, African diplomacy has evolved from its (1) initial
idealistic post-independence period to a (2) more security-
oriented agenda in the Cold War period and, finally, to (3)
complex objectives and elaborate tactics in the post-bipolar era.
 It has shifted in terms of actors (from states and presidents to
multiple players), issues (from strategic to economic themes) and
levels (from national and regional to global).
 For many African states the emphasis is now on ‘low’ and not on
‘high’ politics, (economics and the social affairs) with issues like
debt and conditionalities dominating foreign policy agendas.
 African foreign policies became less state- or strategic-centric.
 African diplomacy is not any more the monopoly of the state and
African foreign relations have become increasingly economic in
content and transnational in character.
 Foreign aid has shifted from a largely bilateral engagement with
the former colonial powers to increased multilateral interactions
with a wide array of donors, ranging from international financial
institutions to non-governmental organizations.
 From a post-colonial point of view, African diplomacy seemed to

‘internalize’ the West’s new views on development.
 In the early 1990s, multilateral institutions like the World Bank
started to promote the idea that ‘good governance’ is a necessary
condition for sustainable economic development.
 As most bilateral donors followed the new mantra, African
governments faced strong pressure to combine democratic
reforms with neo-liberal economic policies.
 The fact that many African institutions adopted the new discourse
could endanger the ‘structural’ idea that Africa’s problems
stemmed from ‘external’ rather than ‘internal’ deficiencies.
 However, African diplomacy proved more dynamic than many have

expected.
 In the United Nations, where Africa forms the largest regional block
of countries (one quarter of the General Assembly), African
diplomats were very active in promoting institutional reform
(especially in world trade).
 And in the WTO, Africans have moved from playing a relatively
passive role ‘to engaging in a concerted effort to increase influence,
build capacity to scrutinize proposals and to reject those who run
counter to the declared developmental goals WTO “Development”
Round’.
 In short, the ‘good governance’ agenda seemed to complement

African diplomacy and it gave new impetus into diplomatic relations
within Africa.
 Nevertheless, there is also continuity in African foreign policy
decision-making.
 In general, individual leaders still hold considerable sway over
policy decisions, though in a few countries like South Africa career
diplomats, various ministries and business interests increasingly
influence policy outcomes.
 Clientelism is probably the more persistent characteristic of almost

all African diplomatic services throughout the post-colonial period.
 In almost all countries, there is fierce competition and pressure on
political patrons for the best diplomatic jobs (London, Paris,
Washington, Brussels, Berlin, etc.).
 In many African countries, those who hold the highest diplomatic
ranks are not the best qualified – they are just the best
“connected”/networked.
 This continues to have an obviously negative impact on the
effectiveness and efficiency of African diplomacy.
 Quick summary
(1) In the post-Cold War era, Africa diplomacy faced the

marginalization of the continent in international affairs.
(2) However, higher economic growth rates and the rise of China-
Africa trade relations led to a renewed international interest for the
continent. This gave African diplomacy more freedom to
maneuver.
(3) Despite a new development discourse that emphasized domestic
politics, African diplomacy was active in fora like the UN and the
WTO, asking for reform of the international economic
architecture.

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Africa in International System

Week III - IIV

 African diplomacy has a long history.

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy linked the coastal and forest states

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 Nevertheless, and despite similarities with medieval Europe, African

(1) there was neither a single religion as Christianity

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 Despite a diplomacy that aimed at preventing conflict and promoting

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy was heavily influenced by Islam and

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 However, European statesmen did not always control imperial

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 Amidst complex calculations (ranging from domestic rivalries to

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 Colonialism in Africa lasted for less than a century.

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 A well-known exception is Ethiopian diplomacy in the League of

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 The attack on Ethiopia by Mussolini’s forces mobilized a new actor

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 In Africa itself, throughout the colonial years, there were also

 Pre-colonial African diplomacy

 As a result, its important successes are fragmented in hundreds of

 Post-Colonial African Diplomacy

 To ensure their territorial integrity, African states formed the

 Post-Colonial African Diplomacy

 Morocco and Somalia questioned the purity of colonial boundaries

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 African foreign policies also reflected state elites’ desire to defend

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 ‘Neocolonial attitudes’ and ‘neo-imperialism’ were criticized.

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 However, as the high expectations of the benefits that the end of

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 This led to a situation when gradually, an international patron–client

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 Many African decision-makers, presiding over fragile regimes that

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 But governments were not the only actors.

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 In Southern Africa, right-wing insurgencies trying to destabilize

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 As the superpowers and their allies acted competitively, African

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

 Taking Sides: Africa in The Cold War

(1) African diplomacy in the post-independence era aimed at

 Rising Africa: Africa in the Post-Cold War Era

 The end of the Cold War had a negative impact on the

 Rising Africa: Africa in The Post-Cold War Era

 Conversely, weaker states that previously had little influence

 Rising Africa: Africa in The Post-Cold War Era

 However, probably the most important factor was China’s

 Rising Africa: Africa in The Post-Cold War Era

 After independence, the executive branches have maintained a

Rising Africa: Africa in The Post-Cold War Era

 Interest groups like big business, media, political parties and

 Rising Africa: Africa in The Post-Cold War Era