The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order 3030774805, 9783030774806

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The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order Edited by Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba · Toyin Falola

The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order

Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba · Toyin Falola Editors

The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order

Editors Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba Institute of African Studies Carleton University Ottawa, ON, Canada

Toyin Falola Department of History University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX, USA

Thabo Mbeki School of Public and International Affairs University of South Africa Pretoria, South Africa

ISBN 978-3-030-77480-6 ISBN 978-3-030-77481-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Africa Monument on Africa Street, Khartoum, Northern Sudan, Africa Contributor: MJ Photography/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1

Africa in the Changing Global Order: The Past, the Present, and the Future Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba and Toyin Falola

Part I

1

Historical Foundations of Africa and the World

2

Africa’s Contributions to World Civilization George M. Bob-Milliar

25

3

Africa and the World Before the Second World War Toyin Falola

43

4

Africa and the World After the Second World War Toyin Falola

59

5

Colonialism, Coloniality, and Colonial Rule in Africa Bukola A. Oyeniyi

75

6

Africa and the Diaspora Toyin Falola

103

7

The African Diaspora in the United States Bessie House-Soremekun

117

Part II Africa and Global Knowledge Production 8

African Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the World Amidu Owolabi Ayeni and Adeshina Gbenga Aborisade

9

Coloniality of Being, Imperial Reason, and the Myth of African Futures Tendayi Sithole

155

175

v

vi

10

11

12

13

14

CONTENTS

African Voices and Black Spaces: Confronting Knowledge in White Man’s IR Cliff (Ubba) Kodero

195

Epistemologies of the South and Africa’s Marginalization in the Media Zvenyika Eckson Mugari

213

The Influence of Globalization in Positioning African Indigenous Knowledge and Learning System Andrew Enaifoghe

239

Ubuntu: The Political Paradigm Africa Should Endorse to Impact the Global Community Peter Genger

257

Ancient Knowledge and the Right to Development Mofihli Teleki and Serges Djoyou Kamga

279

Part III Africa in the Global Economy 15

The New Scramble for Africa Jobson Ewalefoh

16

Shifting Centers of Coloniality of Power: The Scramble for African Mines and Minerals Robert Maseko

17

18

It is Still Extractive Imperialism in Africa: Ghana’s Oil Rush, Extractivist Exploitation, and the Unpromising Prospects of Resources-Led Industrialization Jasper Abembia Ayelazuno and Emmanuel Graham Sub-Saharan Africa in the International Trading System: Understanding the Recent Trends Tola Amusan

309

323

345

367 393

19

Africa in Global Trade Yiagadeesen Samy

20

Africa in Global Trade: Tracking Performance and Mapping Future Pathways Theresa Moyo

409

Global Governance of Finance and African Relations with the World Tinuade Adekunbi Ojo and Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba

441

21

22

Aid-Dependence and the Emancipation of Africa Victor Fakoya, Bolaji Omitola, and Dayo Akintayo

465

CONTENTS

23

24

Between Heterochthonous Laissez-Faireism and Autochthonous Organic Farming: Africa’s Lazarus Global Food Security Challenges Lere Amusan Global Public Policy Paradigms and the Socio-Economic Transformation Trajectories of Africa Michael Kpessa-Whyte and Kafui Tsekpo

vii

489

515

Part IV Africa in International Relations 25

The African Union’s Pursuit of Pax Africana: From Continental Cadet to Globally Revered Generalissimo? Marcel Nagar

543 567

26

Seeking African Agency in Global Clubs Arina Muresan

27

The Monologue on Liberal Democracy: Africa in a Neocolonialized World Siphamandla Zondi

583

Environmental Diplomacy and the Fallacy of Climate Bandwagoning in Africa Bamidele Olajide

601

28

29

30

31

32

33

The European Union’s Emergency Trust Fund for Africa and Challenges of Addressing Irregular Migration in the Global South: The Nigerian Example Paul-Sewa Thovoethin

619

Europe After Brexit and Possible Implications for African Region Dickson Ajisafe and Seun Bamidele

635

Sino-African Relations and Trends for the Post-Covid-19 Global Order N. Oluwafemi ‘Femi’ Mimiko

649

“Look East” and Look Back: Lessons for Africa in the Changing Global Order Malami Buba

673

Changing Narratives of Human Rights Eteete Michael Adam

689

Part V Africa in Global Security Conflict and Peacebuilding 34

Africa and the Restructuring of the United Nations Security Council Tim Murithi

705

viii

CONTENTS

35

Africa in Peacekeeping Operations in a Changing Global Order Damilola Agbalajobi

36

The War on Terror and Securitization of Africa Vincent Eseoghene Efebeh

37

Africa’s Search for Sustainable Security in an Emergent Global Order G. S. Mmaduabuchi Okeke

38

39

40

41

42

The European Union and the African Regional Security Outlook in the Twenty-First Century: Gains, Challenges, and Future Prospects Mumo Nzau Piercing the Veil of Non-Interference Doctrine: China’s Expanding Military Footprint in Africa Gorden Moyo Africa’s Transitionssal Justice System in a Changing Global Order: The “Allure” of Rwanda’s Gacaca Transitional Justice System Tola Odubajo Reconstructing Global Security and Peacebuilding in Somalia’s Changing Context John Mary Kanyamurwa and Betty Nangira Unipolarity, Emerging Powers, African Security and the Place of Africa in the International System 1993–2017 Kadishi Ndudi Oliseh

Part VI 43

44

45

723 745

759

783

805

825

839

857

Africa and Global Religions and Creativity

Beyond the Assemblage of Rhythms and Tunes: Post-colonial African Music and the Struggle for Liberation Taiwo Oladeji Adefisoye and Tolu Elizabeth Ifedayo

875

Beyond Riots: Africa’s Fela Kuti and His One Man Political Protest in the Changing Global Order Olukayode Segun Eesuola

891

African Pentecostalism in a Changing Economic and Democratic Global Order James Kwateng-Yeboah

911

CONTENTS

46

47

48

49

50

Pentecostalism and the African Diaspora: A Case Study of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in North America Rotimi Williams Omotoye

ix

931

“Return My Power, or You Die!” Charismatic Church and Political Leaders Hankering for What in Africa? Leon Mwamba Tshimpaka and Christopher Changwe Nshimbi

945

Reimaging Women Ritual Space: Gender and Power Dynamics in African Religion Abosede Omowumi Babatunde

969

Spatial Navigation as a Hermeneutic Paradigm Ifa, Heidegger and Calvino Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

987

Opium or Elixir? How Adherence to Major World Religions Influence Africans’ Health-Related Behavior During a Pandemic: A Case Study of Nigeria Onah P. Thompson, Lilian O. Ademu, and Lawrence A. Ademu

1025

Part VII Africa and Global Leadership 51

Diplomacy and Politics Toyin Falola

1049

52

The World of Literary Writers Toyin Falola

1065

53

African Academic Leaders and Public Intellectuals Toyin Falola

1083

54

Global African Business Leaders Toyin Falola

1099

Index

1117

Notes on Contributors

Mr. Adeshina Gbenga Aborisade is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Geography University of Lagos, Nigeria. His work experience in the last thirteen years has been in the Geo-spatial, banking and the telecommunications industries. Eteete Michael Adam is Associate Professor of Law, Babcock University, Ilishan, Ogin State, Nigeria. Dr. Taiwo Oladeji Adefisoye holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Department of Political Science, Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. He was a member of the academic staff of the same Department between March 2016 and December 2019. Dr. Adefisoye is currently with the Department of History and International Relations of Elizade University, Ilara Mokin, Ondo State, Nigeria. His research interests are in Political/Public Policy Analysis, Emergency/Disaster Management and Geo-Politics, in which he has mostly published. Dr. Lawrence A. Ademu is a Senior Lecturer with a specialization in Aminal Physiology, Federal University of Wukari, Taraba State, Nigeria. Lilian O. Ademu is a Ph.D. Student, Public Policy Program, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States of America. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju is an Independent Researcher based in Lagos Nigeria. Dr. Damilola Agbalajobi is an Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. Dickson Ajisafe is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Political Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is an Alumnus of Konstanz University, Germany through the Erasmus+ International scholarship of the European

xi

xii

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Union. Dickson serves as an executive member of the European Studies Association of Sub-Saharan Africa (ESA-SSA) and an Advisory Board member of DIMES project (on Diversity, Inclusion and Multi-disciplinarity of European Studies) funded by the Jean Monnet Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. Dayo Akintayo is of the Department of Political Science, Osun State University, Okuku, Osun State, Nigeria. Lere Amusan is a Professor of International Relations at North-West University, Mahikeng, South Africa. Tola Amusan is a Doctoral Student, Department of Politics, University of Otago, New Zealand. Jasper Abembia Ayelazuno obtained Ph.D. in Politics from York University, Toronto, Canada. He works with the Department of Communication, Innovation and Technology, University of Development Studies, Ghana. Jasper does research in political Economy, Comparative Politics and Comparative Democratization. Dr. Amidu Owolabi Ayeni is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Lagos, Nigeria. He obtained Ph.D. Degree in the same University in 2010 and proceeded to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Pretoria, South Africa for his postdoctoral fellowship research in 2011/2012. His research focus is on Environment & Resource Analysis, Climate Change Adaptation, and Geo-information Sciences. Abosede Omowumi Babatunde holds a Ph.D. in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and currently lectures at the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. She is a member of the Society for Peace Studies and Practice, the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), and she was a Senior Research Fellow at the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA). She has also been awarded several academic fellowships and grants, including a 2016 Individual Research Grant from the African Peacebuilding Network of the Social Science Research Council (APN/SSRC). Most recently, she was awarded a 2017 fellowship at the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI) of Brown University, the United States of America. Seun Bamidele is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Political Science, University of Pretoria, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Dr. George M. Bob-Milliar is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Political Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, one of the most prestigious public universities in Ghana. He joined the faculty of KNUST in August 2013, and has been involved in research, teaching and mentoring of students, at all levels. He was

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

head of his Department for three terms. He is currently, the Director of the Centre for Cultural and African Studies (CeCASt) based in the same university. In 2012, he received his Ph.D. from the Institute of African Studies based at the University of Ghana; the oldest and one of the most prestigious centers of African Studies on the continent. He was trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, consequently, his research lies at the intersection of three disciplines—political science, historical & development studies. Malami Buba is a Professor Malami Buba. Division of African Studies. HUFS, Korea. Dr. Olukayode Segun Eesuola is Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Nigeria. Vincent Eseoghene Efebeh, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Delta State University, Abraka, Delta State, Nigeria. Andrew Enaifoghe is a Researcher in Public Administration and Governance at University of Zululand, South Africa. Dr. Jobson Ewalefoh holds a Ph.D. from the College of Graduate Studies, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. He is at the Directorate level at the Presidency, Federal Republic of Nigeria. His research interests are in refugee and internally displaced people, conflict and civil society. Dr. Victor Fakoya is an Instructor of Political Science at University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA. Dr. Fakoya was formerly Assistant Lecturer and previously taught Political Science courses at Olabisi Onabanjo University (formerly Ogun State University), Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria from 1999–2004. Dr. Fakoya’s areas of research interest include African Politics, International Relations, American Politics and Comparative Politics. Toyin Falola is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Dr. Peter Genger is the Founder/Director Center for Research on African Indigenous Knowledge and Peacemaking Approaches CRAIKPA, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. His research areas include Social Theory. Indigenous research, peacebuilding theories and peacemaking practice. Emmanuel Graham is a Natural Resource Governance Consultant. He is currently a Ph.D. student at York University Department of Politics in Toronto, Ontario Canada. He was a graduate student of Political Science and a Graduate Assistant at the Political Science Department University of Windsor in Canada. He was the Extractive Governance Policy Advisor consultant at the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP). He holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in Political Science from the University of Ghana.

xiv

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Bessie House-Soremekun is a Professor of Political Science at Jackson State University. She was previously, the Director of the Africana Studies Program at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. Her research interests include Gender and Development, African Politics, Globalization and Sustainable Development, African and African American Entrepreneurship. Dr. Tolu Elizabeth Ifedayo holds a Ph.D. in Peace and Strategic Studies from the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. She was a member of the academic staff at Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State from 2010 to 2014. She joined the Department of History and International Relations of Elizade University during the 2014/2015 Academic Session, where she is the current Acting Head of Department. Her research interests are in the areas of Conflict Management, Foreign Policy, Politics and Diplomacy. Serges Djoyou Kamga is a Professor at the Thabo Mbeki School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of The Right to Development in African Human Rights System, London: Routledge. His research areas include Right to Development, Human Rights and Natural Resource Governance. John Mary Kanyamurwa is a Senior Lecturer in the Political Science and Public Administration Department Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda. Dr. Cliff (Ubba) Kodero is a Ph.D. student in International Relations and M.A. candidate in Africa and African Diaspora Studies Teaching Assistant for School of International and Public Policy at Florida International University. Dr. Michael Kpessa-Whyte is a Research Fellow with the History and Politics Section at the Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana, Legon. He is a Political Scientist in the tradition of Comparative Public Policy and Political Institutions. He joined IAS in 2011 from Jonson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon where he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Post-Doctoral Fellow. James Kwateng-Yeboah is a Doctoral Candidate, School of Religion, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada. Dr. Robert Maseko Post-Doctoral Fellow Department of Development Studies, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. Gorden Moyo is a former Minister of State Enterprises and Parastals in Zimbabwe. He is currently a policy advisor to the public policy and research institute of Zimbabwe. He holds a Ph.D. in African Leadership Development from the National University of Science and Technology (Zimbabwe) and a Master of Arts degree in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford (UK). Theresa Moyo is a Professor in the Master of Development Planning and Management Programme at the Teraflop graduate school of leadership

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xv

(TGSL) appointed in 2004, Professor Moyo is one of the longest serving members of the school. Zvenyika Eckson Mugari is a Lecturer at the Midlands State University in Gweru, Zimbabwe. Arina Muresan is a Researcher at Institute for Global Dialogue, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. Tim Murithi is a Professor and Head of Peace Building Interventions, University of Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Marcel Nagar holds D.phil. in Politics from the Department of Politics, University of Johannesburg. Her research interest is in Developmental States and development in Africa. Betty Nangira is Assistant Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Kyambogo University, Uganda. Christopher Changwe Nshimbi is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Mumo Nzau is a Fulbright Scholar holding an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the state, University of New York at Buffalo, USA. He is a Lecturer at the Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies at the University of Nairobi. Dr. Tola Odubajo is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Nigeria. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) on African Diplomacy and Foreign-Policy at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Dr. Odubajo is a member of the Editorial Board of the UniLag Journal of Politics. Dr. Tinuade Adekunbi Ojo is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Politics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Dr. G. S. Mmaduabuchi Okeke is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Nigeria. Bamidele Olajide is a Doctoral Student at the North-West University, Mafikeng, South Africa and Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Nigeria. Dr. Kadishi Ndudi Oliseh is of the Department of History, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba is an Adjunct Research Professor, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada and Honorary

xvi

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Professor, Thabo Mbeki School of Public and International Affairs, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. N. Oluwafemi ‘Femi’ Mimiko is a Professor of International Relations and comparative political Economy at Obafemi Awolowo, Ile Ife, Nigeria. He was formerly the Vice Chancellor of Adekinle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria. He taught for the Spring Semester of 2004, at the Department of Social Sciences, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA, as a Fulbright Scholar. Bolaji Omitola is a Professor of Political Science, and former Dean, Faculty of Social Science, Osun State University, Okuku, Osun State, Nigeria. Rotimi Williams Omotoye is a Professor of Religious Studies, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. Dr. Bukola A. Oyeniyi teaches African history at the Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri, USA. He is a specialist in Africa’s social and cultural history in the early nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. His current research focuses on the place of Africa’s expressive culture, especially dress, in the construction of individual and group identity. His works include Dress in the Making of African Identity: A Social and Cultural History of the Yoruba People (New York, USA: Cambria Press, 2015), The History of Libya, (Santa Barbra, USA: Greenwood, 2019); Nigeria: Africa In Focus, (Co-authored with Toyin Falola) (Santa Barbra, USA: ABC-CLIO, February 2015). Yiagadeesen Samy is a Professor of Economics and Director, The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA), Carleton University. His research interests include State Fragility, Debt and Economic Development. Tendayi Sithole is a Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. He is the author of Steve Biko: A Decolonial Meditations of Black Consciousness, Lexington Books, 2018. Mofihli Teleki is a Ph.D. Candidate, School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa, His research areas include, Rights to Development, Cultural Relativism and Public Leadership. Onah P. Thompson is Doctoral Candidate in Public Policy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. His specializations include international security, climate security and migration. Dr. Paul-Sewa Thovoethin is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Lagos State Nigeria. Kafui Tsekpo is of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana. Leon Mwamba Tshimpaka is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xvii

Siphamandla Zondi is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He holds a Doctorate Degree in History from Cambridge University. He is also an Associate Lecturer at the Thabo Mbeki School of Public and International Affairs, University of South Africa.

List of Figures

Fig. 17.1

Fig. 18.1 Fig. 18.2 Fig. 18.3 Fig. 18.4 Fig. 18.5 Fig. 18.6 Fig. 18.7 Fig. 18.8 Fig. 19.1 Fig. 19.2 Fig. 20.1 Fig. 20.2 Fig. 20.3 Fig. 20.4 Fig. 20.5

Map showing the major oil fields of Ghana and exploratory activities (Source Ghana Petroleum Commission: https:// www.petrocom.gov.gh/maps/) Trade as a share of SSA countries GDP (Source World Bank [2020]) Share of world trade (2000–2018) (Source WorldBank [2020]) SSA exports, imports, and trade balance (Source World Bank [2020]) SSA share of international GDP and trade trends (Source World Bank [2020]) SSA aggregate import structure (2000–2018) (Source World Integrated Trade Solution [2020]) SSA aggregate export structure (2000–2018) (Source World Integrated Trade solution [2020]) Intra-SSA trade (2000–2018) (Source UNCTAD [2020]) Intra-SSA exports (2000–2018) (Source UNCTAD [2020]) Evolution of Merchandise Exports and Imports, 1995–2019 (Source Constructed using UNCTAD statistics) China–Africa Trade, 1995–2018 (Source Constructed using data from SAIS-CARI) Africa and global export trade 2013–2018 (billions of US$) (Source Author-based on data from United Nations) Annual export growth by region 2018 (per cent) (Source Author based on data from United Nations) Africa in global import trade 2013–2018 (billions US$) (Source United Nations) Africa in global import trade 2013–2018 (growth in per cent) (Source United Nations) Distribution of commodity and non-commodity dependent countries within each geographic region 2013–2017 (Source Author based on data from UNCTAD)

352 370 372 372 373 374 375 379 380 397 403 419 420 420 421

422 xix

xx

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 20.6

Fig. 20.7

Fig. 20.8

Fig. 20.9

Fig. 20.10

Fig. 20.11 Fig. 20.12

Fig. 20.13 Fig. 20.14 Fig. 20.15

Fig. 21.1 Fig. 22.1 Fig. 22.2 Fig. 22.3 Fig. 22.4 Fig. 22.5 Fig. 22.6 Fig. 50.1 Fig. 50.2 Fig. 50.3 Photo 7.1 Photo 7.2

Commodity export concentration for selected African countries: Herfindal-Hirschmann Index for selected African Countries 1995–2017 (Source Author, based on UNCTAD) Africa in global services trade: exports (billions of US$) 2013–2018 (Source Author calculation based on data from the United Nations) Africa in global services export trade (share in world trade and annual growth in per cent) (Source Author calculation based on data from the United Nations) Africa’s leading exporters in services trade (shares in world trade and annual growth rates) (Source Author calculation based on data from the United Nations) Africa’s services imports -share of total services imports (Source Author calculation based on data from the United Nations) Africa: share in world services imports and annual growth (per cent) (Source Based on data from the United Nations) Africa and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows (billions of US$) 2013–2018 (Source Based on data from the United Nations) Africa: Ratio of FDI inflows to GDP (per cent) 2013–2018 (Source Based on data from the United Nations) Africa and Foreign Direct Investment Outflows (billions of US$) 2013–2018 (Source Author based on United Nations) Developing economies: Annual growth in real GDP and real GDP per capita 2017–2018 (Source Author calculations based on data from United Nations) 2017 Government debt as a percent of the GDP in African Economies (Source IMF 2018. Regional Economic Outlook) African GDP growth annual percentage (1990–2018) African GDP per capita growth annual percentage (1990–2018) African States debt stocks percentage of Gross National Income (1990–2018) African debt service on external debt total (1990–2018) Total unemployment percentage of total labor force (1990–2018) Personal remittances received percentage of GDP (1990–2018) Graphs of response to health information by ethnicity Average marginal effects of the source of health advisory Confidence levels in various institutions/system Sections of a Slave Ship (Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) View of Chained African Slaves in cargo hold of slave ship, measuring 3 feet by 3 inches high (Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

423

424

425

426

427 427

428 428 429

430 450 475 476 478 479 480 481 1039 1040 1040

126

127

LIST OF FIGURES

Photo 7.3 Photo 7.4

Photo 7.5 Photo 7.6 Photo 7.7

Picking cotton on a southern plantation (Source Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) Slavery in America: Women and children from Africa in the Southern States (Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) Leap of a Fugitive Slave (Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) Photo of the Honorable President Barack Obama The Great Freedom March Rally Cobo Hall, June 1963 (Note Left to Right: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mrs. Rosa Parks, and Mr. David Boston. Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

xxi

130

130 131 141

144

List of Tables

Table 17.1 Table 17.2 Table 17.3 Table Table Table Table

18.1 20.1 20.2 23.1

Table Table Table Table

23.2 50.1 50.2 50.3

Inequality of ownership of three oil fields Summary of oil production and revenues accrued from Ghana’s oil sector from 2011 to 2018 A summary of taxation of some Petroleum Agreement (PA) from Ghana’s oil fields Relative weight of exports and imports to SSA GDP Africa’s share in global export trade (2013–2018) Africa and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows (2013–2018) Indigenous Forest Turned to Games Reserve in Selected Countries in Central Africa Hungry for land: Global distribution of agricultural land Summary statistics Health Advisory Source Regression results

353 354 356 371 420 428 497 497 1037 1037 1038

xxiii

CHAPTER 1

Africa in the Changing Global Order: The Past, the Present, and the Future Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba and Toyin Falola

Africa’s relations with other parts of the world date to the very beginning of time. Anthropological and historical studies have shown that Africa is the cradle of human civilization.1 There are various dimensions to the encounters between Africa and the rest of the world. The change in the pattern of relations from mutual trade and diplomatic exchanges to violent encounters permanently transformed Africa’s position in the world.2 In particular, the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic slave trade, as well as colonialism, reproduced long-lasting socio-economic and political changes from which Africa is yet to recover.3 The end of this series of violent encounters has done significantly altered the subservient pattern of relations that continue to define Africa’s relations with other parts of the world in our contemporary times.4 Decolonial scholars argue that the continuity of structure of neocolonial control in the areas of knowledge, power and reinforce the marginal position that the continent continues to occupy in the current global order.5 This chapter sets out the focus and theoretical underpinnings of this handbook. In what follows, S. O. Oloruntoba (B) Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Thabo Mbeki School of Public and International Affairs, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa T. Falola Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_1

1

2

S. O. OLORUNTOBA AND T. FALOLA

we analyze Africa’s position in global affairs in key areas such as knowledge production, economy, diplomacy, science and technology, performance arts and diaspora engagements. It also analyzes African agency in its relationship with other regions of the world and the ongoing advocacy for transforming the global order from its current hierarchical and unequal form to a more just, balanced, and equal one.

Knowledge Production One of the side effects of the violent encounters that Africa had with other regions of the world is the erasure of the continent’s knowledge. This erasure cuts across several disciplines. Whereas precolonial African societies developed and applied indigenous pieces of knowledge through which they built empires, ensured food sufficiency, addressed the medical needs of their populace, and maintained their environments, there were racist Anthropologist and historians who argued that Africa had no history beyond the history written by the Europeans.6 Several African scholars have responded to this deliberate erasure by highlighting the connection between Africa’s knowledges and the renaissance in Europe.7 In the years after gaining political independence, few universities were established, which served as sites of resistance to the dominant Eurocentric ideas that formed the bedrock of colonial knowledge about Africa. In this connection, the Ibadan School of History, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, University of Dares Salam, Tanzania, Makerere University, Uganda paraded scholars that produced knowledge that contended, falsified, and negated the ahistorical narratives about African forms of knowledge. For instance, the scholars like Kenneth Dike, Ade Ajayi and Obaro Ikime underscored the essence of orality as a source of knowledge, thus negating the false idea that Africa had no history before the colonial intrusion to the continent.8 Scholars like Walter Rodney, Claude Ake, Dani Nabudere, Issa Shivji and a host of other Marxist-oriented scholars also argued against the idea that capitalism can lead to structural transformation of the newly independent countries.9 From the 1980s, these intellectual sites of resistance fell under the weight of internal and external contradictions of the ruling elites who are became scared of radical ideas as well as the onslaught of neoliberal structural adjustment programs.10 In what Mamdani refers to as scholars in the market place in a book of the same title, the incipient neoliberal regimes of the 1980s and 1990s led to mass defunding of the university system, which faculty members either living in droves for the profitable non-governmental organization sector or being forced to do side business to survive.11 Although scholars of African origin continue to make their marks in different fields of human endeavor, including winning Nobel Prize in Literature and contributing to innovation in science and technology, the state neglect of education in general and higher education in particular has resulted in a situation in which Africa’s research output remains the lowest in the world.12 The challenges of knowledge production remain even more poignant when one considers what decolonial

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scholars call coloniality of knowledge, that is the continuity of Eurocentric epistemology in areas of curriculum design, theories, and methods of enquiry.13 The recent Rhodes Must Fall protests in South Africa were part of the symbolic resistance against the continuity of Eurocentric forms of knowledge in African universities. The knowledge produced under these forms of education continues to define the thought patterns of many Africans in terms of confidence in themselves, trust in their capacity and consumption, as well as application of knowledge produced in Africa. It is also ironic while curriculum has been changed in European countries to reflect the changes in the global economy. Many institutions in Africa are stuck with the old curricula, which are not reflective of modernity challenges. These contradictions continue to define Africa’s relations with other parts of the world.

Economy The colonial economic structure continues apace in postcolonial Africa. This has affected Africa’s relations with other parts of the world. Scholars of African political economy like Claude Ake, Sarmin Amin, and Walter Rodney14 have argued that extraction of minerals and metals and exports of raw materials were the main logic of colonization. In terms of the structure of trade and the composition of the economy, African countries remain a site of extraction and accumulation by the agents of the transnational capitalist class.15 The early industrialization efforts in the first decade of independence were stymied and frustrated due to the contradictions of domestic and external factors. Compared to other regions of the world, intra-African trade remains the lowest at about 14%.16 The recent narrative of Africa Rising, which was largely predicated on the growth in Gross Domestic Product, was largely fueled by exports of raw materials to China and other emerging economies. Although services contributed to this growth trajectory, it was not borne out of structural transformation17 ; rather, what Africa had was jobless growth.18 The vast mineral deposit of Africa has made the continent a site of competition to old and new trading partners like member countries of the European Union, Britain, United States of America, China as well as other emerging economies such as India, Brazil, Turkey, and Russia. Although the diversification of partnership could pose some possibilities for growth and development, the nature of this relationship demonstrates what Taylor19 refers to as diversification of dependency. Rather than engaging with these countries in ways that will lead to a fundamental change in the structure of trade and investment, African leaders continue to relish receiving technical and non-technical aid that would rather reinforce further dependency. In a bid to foster structural transformation, the African Union established the African Continental Free Trade Agreement in 2018. The agreement was in furtherance of the Abuja Treaty, which was aimed at establishing the African Economic Community. AfCTA took off on January 1, 2021, with 54 of the

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55 members of the African Union being members. In an era when multilateralism is under threat, and the World Trade Organization is faltering on managing the conclusion of the Doha Development Rounds of trade negotiation, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement could be Africa’s greatest contribution to the global economy. The success of this continental agreement will depend on several factors, not least institutions of governance, supply-side capacity constraints, manpower for implementation, harmonization of macroeconomic policies among African countries and mediating agreements with third countries.20

Politics and Diplomacy Africa’s involvement in global politics and diplomacy are at different levels. Under the defunct Organization of African Unity (now African Union), the continent has actively joined the train of decolonization after the Second World War. With roots in the Pan-Africanist movement that started in the United States of America in the early twentieth century, the call for decolonization became louder through the activities of soldiers who returned from fighting in the Second World War, educated Africans who returned from studying abroad, as well as progressive and international human rights organizations in the West.21 It is to the credit of the Organization for African Unity that official colonialism ended with the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994. In the context of the Cold War, African countries joined the Non-Aligned Movement involving countries in Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Notwithstanding, many countries on the continent were used as sites of competition and rivalry between the two superpowers, namely the United States of America and the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). The large membership of African countries in the United Nations is another channel of its relations with the world. Two Africans have served as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, namely, Boutros BoutrosGhali (1992–1996) and Kofi Annan (1997–2006). African countries have been at the forefront of championing the reform of the United Nations Security Council. Regional hegemons like Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt have expressed interest in becoming members of permanent members of the Security Council. African countries have also contributed to various peacekeeping operations in different parts of the world. Peace and Security constitute another critical area in relations with Africa in the changing global order. Africa remains a site of various conflicts, terrorist attacks, and insurgencies. From Nigeria to Somalia through Mozambique to Burkina Faso, Africa continues to be ravaged by the internecine conflict. Although the African Union has a Peace and Security Architecture,22 it has not been able to address these challenges. Ironically, Africa is currently highly securitized through the various security bases established by countries like the United States of America, 29 bases,23 France, six bases, China 1, Germany 4, and Britain 1. Other regional powers like India and Japan are

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also establishing military bases. According to Neethling,24 apart from the fight against terrorism, there are other motivations to establish military bases in Africa. These include protection of commercial interests, aligning with friendly regimes, and expressing dominance on a continent that is the focus of rising global competition. The increasing proliferation of military bases in Africa further demonstrates the weaknesses of the African Union Peace and Security Council to manage the multiple security challenges facing the continent. The weakness of this arm of the African Union and the institutional paralysis of this continental organization was partly responsible for the ease with which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members were able to topple Muammar Ghaddafi and the resultant ensuring crisis in that country. Despite the challenges that have defined Africa’s relations with the changing global order, there have been times when the agency of the continent was significantly projected in global affairs. According to Lala,25 The birth of the AU, NEPAD, and a few other successful African initiatives represent the pinnacle of this victorious decade for African diplomacy. While both were articulating a continental outlook, most importantly, there was a demand for an equal partnership with world powers; the strong leadership of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Working with other leaders on the continent, they foregrounded Africa’s solution to Africa’s problems. They also worked assiduously to transform the Organization for African Unity to African Union with more emphasis on accountable governance and protection of human rights. Lala also argued that ‘the AU has emerged as Africa’s preeminent platform to participate internationally, promoting unity among African nations in global negotiations. As the continent’s foremost multilateral institution, the AU is the main organizer, promoter, protector, and defender of the continent’s political, socio-economic, and environmental interests’.26 The high South-South Cooperation that started during the period 1998–2008 has been sustained to a reasonable degree. Although the change in government in Brazil affected that country’s relations with Africa, Cuba, China, India, and other countries are increasing collaboration with African countries on various issues. Although South Africa is the only country in Africa that belongs to the BRICS group of countries, there is a sense in which other African countries can benefit from the New Development Bank that BRICS countries have established. The importance attached to Africa countries in their relations with other regions and the wealth of their voices will be a function of economic prosperity, technological advancement, political stability, as well as the strategic alliances that the continent is able to forge with other countries.

Performance Arts, Religion, and Diaspora Engagements Africa’s relations with the world are being shaped by the arts and performance sector, especially the film industry. The Nigerian Nollywood has been rated as the second-largest film industry in the world, ranked only behind Hollywood

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in the United States of America. According to Price Water House Coopers,27 ‘the Industry is a significant part of the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation Sector which contributed 2.3% (NGN239biliion) to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2016’. Kenya, Ghana and South Africa also produce films that are watched in different parts of the world, especially the Caribbean Islands and South America, where there is a significant population of people of African descent. Countries such as Nigeria and Ghana have also been playing active roles in exporting African brands of Pentecostal and other forms of Christianity to different parts of the world. Although these churches are mainly attended by people of African descent, they are also making in-roads with non-Africans through their involvement in charity and evangelization. In the wake of the socio-economic and political crises facing Africa, there has been a wide dispersal of Africans to different continents. The diaspora population has been growing over the past four decades.28 According to Falola,29 the diaspora population is made up of different generations, including those who were taken away from Africa during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the post-independent diaspora population made up of students who went from Africa to study in the West but never returned, skilled professionals and increasingly those who are engaged in irregular migration. These populations are shaping the ways Africa is perceived by non-Africans. Africans are also involved in various sports activities. Apart from the participation of African countries in various sports competitions such as the Olympic games, international soccer competitions, there are young Africans who play for clubs in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world. These athletes and sportsmen and women serve as unofficial ambassadors whose display of talents helps to project Africa’s image in the world. The above indicate Africa’s agency and engagement in different spheres and phases with other regions of the world. Chapters in this handbook analyze different phases of Africa’s engagement with the world from the precolonial through the colonial to the contemporary times. The handbook contains seven sections, namely the historical foundation of Africa and the world, Africa and global knowledge production, Africa in the global economy, Africa in international relations, Africa in Global Security Conflict and Peacebuilding, Africa and Global Religions and Creativity, and Africa and Global Leadership. In Chapter 2 on Africa’s Contributions to World Civilization, George Bob-Milliar foregrounds the debates on world civilization and the contributions of Africans South of the Sahara to this. While acknowledging the deliberate falsehood of philosophers like Hegel and historians like Trevor Ruper, who had argued that Africa had no history, Milliar provides other historical accounts which showed that the first Europeans who came to Africa in the sixteenth century met well-developed cities in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa. He negates the western epistemic erasure of African knowledges and contributions to human civilization by centering the discourse around the historical evidence of great kingdoms and empires that existed on the continent before the violent European intrusions

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through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. The destruction of Carthage was a deliberate act of aggression by the Europeans against Africa. Rebuilding Carthage and restoring Africa’s pride is the fight of the present and succeeding generations. Falola’s contribution to Africa before the Second World War chronicles the series of Africa’s encounters with the rest of the world through various encounters such as the Arab and trans-Saharan slave trades and colonialism. The scramble for and the partition of Africa carried out by powerful European countries was a very definitive moment in African history. The effects of the partition continue to be felt in contemporary Africa as many of the states remain poor and dependent on the former colonial masters. In the fourth chapter, Falola explicates on the various dimensions of Africa’s relations with the world after the Second World War. In this regard, Falola identifies five areas through which Africa was affected by post-Second World War. The first was the increased demand for decolonization and the end of colonialism on the continent. Apart from this, Africa’s economy was also altered fundamentally to contribute toward the rebuilding of European countries. He argues that the colonial powers became so virulent in ensuring massive exports of primary products from Africa to Europe. Typical of colonial economic policies, the products were sold at cheap prices, processed and exported to different parts of the world at higher prices. Despite the demand for structural economic transformation, the colonialists did little or nothing to promote industrialization. Falola also identified the military impacts of the Second World War on Africa, noting that a large number of African soldiers were drafted to fight in the war. On their return to Africa, they joined the campaign for decolonization. The Cold War between the East and the West did not spare African countries as the two world powers sent weapons to their satellite states to fight proxy wars. Falola also notes that Africa’s engagement with the world after the Second World War includes political realignments and a drive toward continental unity and integration through the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). This period also saw African countries joining several international organizations. The conflict in different parts of the world and in Africa in particular also defined Africa’s relations with the world during this time. Lastly, Falola identifies Africa’s relations with the world in terms of culture. Despite the influence of colonial cultures on Africans, they have continued to project their own cultures in different parts of the world through music, art, and religion. In Chapter 5, Bukola A. Oyeniyi analyzes the relationship between colonialism, coloniality, and colonial rule in Africa. After providing a densely rich historical narrative of the genesis of colonialism, Oyeniyi foregrounds the economic interests of the colonialists as the main reason for Scramble for Africa. Besides, he argues that another rationale was the need to stop the spread of Islam in Africa; echoing emergent decolonial scholars like Mignolo, Groesfuel, and Ndlovu-Gatsheni.30 Oyeniyi concludes that colonial structures of power, being, and knowledge continue in Africa in contemporary

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times because African leaders have yielded the policy space to former colonial powers. Coloniality manifests in the uncritical adoption of liberal democracy, marketization of economic activities, state repression, and divide and rule tactics of postcolonial leaders. The continuity of these structures of power and economic relations continues to shape Africa’s relations with the world. In Chapter 6, Falola establishes a link between the current challenges in Africa and the forces that promoted massive dispersal of the population to the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean. His focus in this chapter was an analysis of the roots of the African diaspora population from the fourteen to sixteen centuries. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade created socio-economic and political disruptions that negatively affected the progressive evolution and transformation of African societies. At the political level, Falola argues that the Atlantic trade created a semi-feudal class in Africa that worked hand in hand with the Europeans to deepen the oppression of Africans. He also argues that overall, the slave economy greatly contributed to the growth and expansion of the British empire. Despite attempts at revisionist narratives of the impacts of slave on Africa, the loss of an estimated 12 million Africans to other parts of the world affected not only the population growth but created conditions that led to the current exodus of a new population of Africans who are running away from poverty, conflict, and wars. In the last chapter in this section, Bessie HouseSoremekun examines the historical trajectories that resulted in the emergence of a large African diaspora population in the United States of America. She connects this diaspora population to the centuries of Trans-Atlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans were carted away by European slave traders to work in cotton plantations in the America. In this chapter, Soremekun also focuses on the continuity of culture and religion of the Yoruba diaspora population in the United States of America. She concludes the chapter by linking the past to the current struggle for justice and equality by African Americans. The second part of the handbook contains papers that examined Africa and global knowledge production. Knowledge production is a very political issue that is largely determined by power asymmetry. Although indigenous knowledge systems contributed to the achievement of socio-economic development and the building of empires in precolonial Africa, these have been denied and subjugated by the many years of colonial rule on the continent. The current turn in decolonization discourses has ignited new interests in centering African knowledges. African knowledges have contributed to human civilization and advancement, not only in Africa but in the diaspora, where many Africans have been dispersed over the past five hundred years. Ayeni Amidu and Aborisade Adebayo foreground this in their contribution to this volume. They argue that Africa, like the rest of the world, has its own knowledge system, which sustained its people for centuries prior to colonialization. They also note that the indigenous knowledge system in Africa is enshrined in the boundaries of the culture of the people and exercised with dexterity, wisdom, conservation, and preservation, as well as sustainability and environmental harmony as its hallmark. While refuting the previous negation of African knowledges

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by non-African scholars, they conclude by re-emphasizing the deployment of indigenous knowledge to addressing the myriads of challenges facing African countries. Tendai Sithole’s paper follows by employing a decolonial approach to analyzing Africa’s position in global knowledge production. He argues that a decolonial interpretation of Africa’s condition in relations with other parts of the world is underpinned by coloniality. He concludes that the future of Africa and its relevance in the global order will be a function of how African knowledge production is owned by Africans, in other words, the imperial reason that has underpinned the interpretation of African knowledges from the colonial to the present time needs to be replaced with an indigenous African knowledge system that foreground the agency of Africans. Cliff Kodero’s contribution continues in this line of thought by pointing out the neglect of African voices in international relations. He argues that African and Afro-oriented scholars mushroomed during the decolonization and the postcolonial period. Yet, African people’s contribution to international relations (IR) has been understated, amplifying the continent’s ‘insignificance’ in international politics and IR. Part of the explanation for the marginalization of African voices in IR is racism. This manifests in the difficult access to publish in leading journals in the field as well as the likelihood of rejection of theories and perspectives that are considered inferior to western theories. The silencing of African voices is not limited to the field of international relations. As Zvenyika Eckson Mugari notes in his contribution to Epistemologies of the South and Africa’s Marginalization in the Media, the mainstream media in the west has contributed significantly to the erasure of positive news coming out of Africa. He argues that western news media played no small role in the colonial project of inventing Africa and all that passes as ‘African tradition’. Mugari’s argument remains pertinent in the way in which Africa is depicted in contemporary times. It can also be argued that the negative projection of Africa shapes the perception of the western public, including scholars, about Africa. The intrusive influence of foreign media on indigenous knowledge systems is reinforced by globalization, especially the revolution in information technology. How globalization affects learning and indigenous knowledge system is the focus of Osehi Andrew Enaifoghe’s paper. He argues that while internationalization as a critical part of globalization has become a vital part of higher education in Africa, there is the tendency that this can intensify the extraversion of knowledge production. Enaifoghe concludes that the recognition and promotion of indigenous knowledge systems can add to epistemic pluralism. The practical application of indigenous knowledge systems is the focus of the last two chapters in this section. Peter Genger explicates the importance of Ubuntu as an ideological and philosophical force for good that Africa can adopt to foster socio-economic and political development as well as to adapt while relating with other parts of the world. Rooted in what he calls nostalgia about precolonial African societies, Genger argues that Ubuntu is practiced in different parts of Africa. He

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notes that the adoption of Ubuntu will bring about the required liberatory and agential change to the continent and to Africans. While a practical application of Ubuntu can indeed foster a more harmonious relationship among Africans and facilitate development, its application in relations with other parts of the world must be put in the context of the rationale and philosophical underpinning of the global capitalist order. In his book, The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice, and the Politics of Life, Ndlovu-Gatsheni31 identifies what he refers to as paradigm of peace and paradigm of war. While Africa has been relating with the rest of the world on account of a paradigm of peace, the West had through various encounters with Africa related with the continent on the basis of paradigm of war. Thus, there is a need for a careful balancing of Ubuntu and protection of the interests of Africans when relating with other parts of the world, whose motif force relating with Africa is the consideration for the power, domination, and exploitation of the resources that are available on the continent. The pitfall of Africa’s relations with other regions of the world is the inability to craft a strategy that protects Africa’s interests and aspirations. The micro nature of the state in Africa and its week capacity have contributed to this problem. Mofihli Teleki and Serges Djoyou Kamga relate Africa’s indigenous knowledge system to human rights in precolonial times. They argue that the knowledge systems of Southern Africans have always held specific ideals of the right to development. Nor were the ideas of equality and fairness limited to Southern Africa. Throughout the continent, different societies had norms and values that protect the right to development. Although there were cases of abuse by traditional rulers, there were also checks and balances that prevented such abuse. In other words, the existence of equality, human rights, and fairness in the process of development was all part of African systems long before the adoption of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development. Given the salience and usefulness of the right to development in ancient Africa, the authors conclude that the thought process that informed this idea should be incorporated into international conventions and treaties on the right to development. Chapters in the third section examine Africa in the global economy. Africa’s integration into the global economy has gone through different phases. The first phase was the pre-slavery era, where coastal communities on the continent interacted with early European explorers and traders. As Nkrumah32 argues in his book on Neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism, Africans projected their hospitable nature and welcomed these Europeans with open arms. The same quality was also projected to Arabs who traded with Africans in the Northern part of the continent. The hospitality of Africans to these strangers was not reciprocated with kindness. Rather, trades in goods and ivory were replaced with goods in human skin. As Falola notes in one of his contributions to this volume, the growth of capitalist economies in Europe and similar expansions in the Arab world led to intense hunting for the black skin from

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Africa. Thus, both the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade constitute another era in the integration of Africans into the global trade networks. Trade-in human body was preceded by trade-in ivories, gold, spices, and other products found in different parts of Africa. The third phase was the period of imperialism and later colonialism. These periods led to the scramble for and partition of Africa. The current phase of integration started with the globalization era that followed the end of the Second World. This has been accentuated by the revolution in information technology and the hegemony of liberal economic ideas of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although key institutions of neoliberal economic globalization such as the IMF and the World Bank would claim that Africa is not well integrated into the global economy, Rugumanu33 has argued that Africa is indeed over-integrated into the global system. This is because of the extraversion of trade in which more than 70% of Africa’s trade is with other regions of the world. The new era of globalization has brought a new turn in a rush for land and commodities in Africa. From China to Arab countries and western-based institutions such as universities and corporations, there is new a new scramble going on in Africa in contemporary times. How this new mode of accumulation by dispossession is taking place on the continent is the focus of Jobson Ewalefoh’s argument in this volume. He notes, rather poignantly, that the present scramble for Africa extends beyond the European powers; the emerging economies such as India, South Korea, Brazil, Malaysia, India and China are involved in this competition. Although Africa’s relations with these countries have fostered some economic growth on the continent, there are concerns that these growths have not led to inclusive development.34 Taylor went further to argue that new relations with countries such as China, Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa (BRICS) are leading to the diversification of dependency.35 With a focus on China and the United States of America, Ewalefoh argues that the new scramble for Africa is more indirect and subtle. It utilizes soft power tactics like humanitarian aids, investments in infrastructure, and provision of benevolent economic and preferential trade agreements. Africa has therefore become a site of contestation for the revival of imperial powers like the US and now China. Although the latter has always claimed to be a developing partner without any imperial intent, the manner of debt deals that the country is having with many African countries underscores the possibility of a subtle attempt at future control of the receiving countries. Ewalefoh concludes that Pan-Africanism should be foregrounded as the underlying ideology in which African countries will craft a joint strategy to engage with China, the US, and other countries in ways that can best serve the interests of Africans. Robert Maseko takes Ewalefoh’s argument further by focusing his analysis on how the scramble for Africa’s minerals is playing out in the mineral and mines sectors. Using a decolonial logic of inquiry, Maseko argues that there is continuity of the colonial structure of power and domination, which gives

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the superpowers of the world a unique opportunity to continue to control the resources on the continent. Examples of the political economy of the mining sector in South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe that Maseko uses in his analysis are symptomatic of what obtains in other African countries. Both old and new neo-imperial forces continue to work with local elites to expropriate Africa’s resources for accumulation by corporate power and elites. Although Maseko ends his analysis on the tone of pessimism, the solution does not lie in apathy or mute indifference. Despite the challenges that civil society organizations are faced with, they continue to call attention to the large exploitation that is going on in the mining sector in Africa. Jasper Abembia Ayelazuno and Emmanuel Graham take Robert Maseko’s argument further by highlighting how neo-imperial forces continue to plunder Africa’s economies without any genuine attention toward structural transformation. In this connection, they argue that in the twenty-first-century neoliberal world order, it is still the thirst for natural resources that is the major driving force of the new scramble for Africa. In other words, the continent still serves as a quarry for drawing raw materials to feed industries in the advanced industrialized and newly industrializing countries such as China and India. Ayelazuno and Graham contend against the neoliberal idea that the new scramble for Africa’s resources holds any potential for transformation. Using Ghana as a case study, they conclude that despite the generous incentives provided by the state in Africa to foreign-based multinational companies, extraction of oil and other minerals in Africa only serve the interests of the members of the transnational capitalist class, represented by the ruling elites in Africa and the foreign-based companies. This, according to Ayelazuno and Graham, reinforce the unequal international division of labor that underpinned the first and the current scramble for Africa. The next three contributions by Yiagadeesen Samy, Omotola Amusan, and Theresa Moyo examine Africa’s position and performances in international trade. Samy examined the various dimensions of the growth trajectories that have taken place in African economies after independence. He notes the dominance of exports of primary commodities and how this has led to limited space for structural transformation and diversification of the economies. While underscoring the imperative of production and manufacturing, as well as regional trade, he highlights the prospects and challenges of the newly signed African Continental Free Trade Agreement in fostering economic development on the continent. Omotola Amusan adopted Emmanuel Wallerstein’s World System Theory to explain the marginal position that Africa has occupied in the international economy. Rather than seeing this as a natural phenomenon, Omotola traces the current subordinated position of Africa in the global economy to the past systems of exploitation such as the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, neocolonialism, and the forces of globalization. While highlighting the importance of international trade in achieving economic development in Africa, Omotola emphasizes the need for more

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intra-African trade. The recently signed African Continental Free Trade Agreement represents Africa’s best intention at using trade to foster socio-economic development. Theresa Moyo follows in Omotola’s line of argument on why Africa has been marginalized in international trade. Following the arguments of Marxist scholars like Sarmin Amin, she argued that the unequal power relations in the conduct of international trade had affected the performance of African countries in the global economy. Moyo concludes that the new turn in the promotion of regional integration, especially with the signing of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, can lead to an increase in the volumes of trade and the overall contribution of Africa to the global economy. Apart from global trade, Africa’s economy has also been affected by the global governance of finance. Tinuade Adekunbi Ojo and Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba examine how the global governance of finance has affected economic development in Africa. They argue that serial economic crises that African countries have experienced led to dependence on international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for loans. The interventions of these institutions have led to the loss of policy space, the shrinking role of the state, and dwindling economic fortunes. They conclude that though the African economy needs reforms, these should be carried out in ways that are consistent with the specific economic conditions of the countries involved. Victor Fakoya, Bolaji Omitola, and Akintayo Dayo argue in their paper that aid dependence has worsened the socio-economic conditions of African economies. This is because of the nature of the aid, the existing domestic conditions as well as weak institutions. They conclude that findings that aid cannot facilitate development where the political-institutional substructures are grossly deficient. Lere Amusan’s contribution focuses on the challenges of food security, mining, and land grab in Africa. He analyzes the domestic and external conditions that have led to the commodification of land and water in Africa. The involvement of large multinational corporations in this new wave of marketization is as worrisome as concerning. Despite the challenges of food security in different parts of the continent, the large companies from the West and other parts of the world produce food crops that are largely exported to developed countries rather than meeting domestic needs. Amusan also notes the promotion of inorganic food as against natural food. He notes that inorganic foods have implications for the health of Africans who consume them. He concludes that to ensure food sovereignty, and there is a need for women’s empowerment in farming, as well as small-scale farming that is anchored on not only food security but food safety. Michael Kpessa-Whyte and Kafuj Tsekpo examine Global Public Policy Paradigms and the Socio-Economic Transformation Trajectories of Africa. They provide an analytical discussion of Africa’s development trajectories in the postcolonial era in the context of major ideational paradigms. It shows that Africa’s place in the changing global order is partly manifested in how its socio-economic transformation processes have been shaped by an interface of ideas inspired by Keynesian modernization ideas in the early postcolonial

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era (the 1950s–1970s), and later by an ideational paradigm based on neoliberal ethos since the 1980s. These two ideational orientations have affected Africa’s development trajectories since independence. Whereas the Keynesian ideas ascribe more power to the state in terms of formulation and implementation of policies, the neoliberal economic ideas have limited the power of the state. The role of the international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund was clearly highlighted. They also pointed out the multiplication of policy think tanks and consultants who have been spreading neoliberal ideas on the continent. Part four of the book contains papers that examine the location and agency of Africa in international relations. From the time of gaining political independence in the late 1950s, African countries have been active in the international environment either singly in collaboration with other African countries or other countries in the Global South. For instance, in the context of the Cold War, African countries joined with Asian countries to form the NonAligned Movement, with a commitment to maintaining a neutral position in the context of the Cold War between the United States of America and the defunct Union of Soviet Social Republic (USSR). African countries were also actively involved in the decolonization movements that flourished after the Second World War. The formation of the Organization of African Unity and its successor, the African Union, represented the most significant continental attempt at having African countries speak with one voice at the international level. To a significant extent, the continental organization has also served as the platform for international engagement. It was in the context of the role of the African Union in designing a Pan-African identity for Africa. Tracing the call for Pa-x Africana to the work of Ali Marui, Marcel Nagar argues that this ideology has informed the changes that have taken place on the continent, especially in security. She notes that the establishment of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) in 2002 was a milestone in the desire of African countries to take charge of their own destiny. This consciousness and the deliberate plans to solve Africa’s problem through Africa’s led solution were informed by the changes in the global system, the lethargy of the United Nations in meaningfully intervening in crisis spots such as Rwanda during the genocide. She concludes that despite the huge need for this approach in handling the multiple challenges in Africa, it has not been fully operationalized successfully. Naggar also underscores the imperative of political unity among Africans both home and abroad to ensuring the success of Pax-Africana. Arina Muresan’s contribution follows Naggar’s line of argument in her paper on Seeking Africa’s agency in global clubs. Using South Africa as the entry point of analysis, Muresan identifies various international organizations, especially from the Global South, where African countries are playing one role or the other to shape global politics. These include the BRICS countries made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and the G20, among others. She argues that the clubs in international relations are elitist in nature and determined by the level of development that a country has

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achieved. Despite the calls for Africa to exercise its agency in global affairs and the increasing attempts at doing so, there is a sense in which the continent has been marginalized in global affairs. Given the limitations of clubs to help African countries project their interests in international affairs, she concludes that there is a need for more engagement with civil society organizations as well as party to party engagements. One of the fallouts of the end of the Cold War is the promotion of liberal democracy as the most ideal form of government. Led by the United States of America, the western dominated world has presented adherence to democratic values as a necessary condition for securing development aid by African countries. In his contribution to this volume, Siphamandla Zondi argues that the imposition of liberal democracy is a sheer expression of coloniality of power through which African agency in designing an appropriate political system is subjugated. He contends that liberal democracy replaced various discourses that pre-occupied critical African voices and activists in the 1990s when North Americans announced what they termed a wave of democratization that was consistent with trends in the rest of the global south. The core of Zondi’s argument is the hegemonic tendencies of western scholars of democracy to universalize the idea as if democracy is original or limited to the west. Democracy varies across societies across regions. Thus, Africa needs negation of the epistemic monologue on democracy to ensure that discourses on democracy reflect its local peculiarities and practice in Africa. Climate change has remained a very thorny issue in the global system in our contemporary times. Countries in developed and developing countries are working on various pacts and agreements to mitigate the effects of climate change. Bamidele Olajide’s contribution to Environmental Diplomacy and the Fallacy of Climate Bandwagoning in Africa makes the important point that African countries need to build capacity for negotiations. The need to build such capacity is fundamental to securing better deals from negotiations on climate change and its management. Whereas the developed countries achieved development through industrialization and the resultant carbon emissions, African countries are in the process of building capacity toward achieving industrial development. In this respect, Olajide notes that climate bandwagoning is a two-way street; that is, it is not just only desirable to link development imperatives to environmental diplomacy but that the latter also has important lessons and offerings that must be inculcated and tailored to their reality by African states. To do climate bandwagoning in a one-way fashion only amounts to a fallacy of climate bandwagoning. He concludes that Africa must embrace full environmental governance offerings in important areas such as financing, participation, accountability, and the political will to see environmental diplomacy in the right perspective. Another important area of Africa’s engagement with the world is Migration. Regular and irregular migration to Europe from Africa has become an issue of international concern and policy. Paul-Sewa Thovoethin’s paper

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focuses on how the European Union has been addressing irregular migration from Africa. Using Nigeria as a case study, he argues that the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa was aimed at strengthening the capacities of the national and local authorities in respect of migration management, assisting the voluntary return of migrants on the migration route, and promoting awareness-raising activities on the risks of irregular migration. Despite this program, irregular migration to Europe continues in Nigeria. The author concludes that it is important to address the supply-side factors that contribute to irregular migration. Issues such as poverty, conflict, and other social deprivation require a multi-stakeholder approach. Many countries in Africa were colonized by Britain. Expectedly, the withdrawal of British membership from the European Union would have implications for relations with African countries. Dickson Ajisafe and Seun Bamidele examine Brexit and the Implications for Euro-African Relations. They argue that given the long durée of relationship that African countries have with both Britain and European Union states, Brexit posits a unique opportunity for diversification of partners. The abundant natural resources that are available in Africa and the large market potential inherent in its over a billion population make this argument pertinent. However, taking advantage of opportunities in engagements with post-Brexit Britain and European Union would require crafting appropriate strategies that mainstream Africa’s interests and development aspirations. China has become an increasingly important player in various sectors in Africa. From economy to education, military, and cultural exchanges, the return of China to Africa over the past three decades has diverse ramifications for the continent. N. Oluwafemi ‘Femi’ Mimiko contributions on Critical Currents in Sino-African Relations focuses on this dynamic relationship. After a dense explication of the changing nature of the global system, Mimiko analyzes the various dimensions of Sino-African relations. He also places Africa’s relations with China and other parts of the world in the context of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic. He argues that despite the concerns over the Chinese neocolonial agenda and operations through the exploitation of the abundant natural resources, the country presents a credible alternative to the Western countries that have been exploiting Africa for centuries. Mimiko concludes that the important role of China in Africa provides a unique opportunity to the continent to derive more benefits from China and other parts of the world. Malami Buba echoes Mimiko’s argument for Africa to develop more collaboration with the countries in the East. This reference to Asia is rooted in the great achievements of Southeast Asian countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore over the past half of a century. Malami uses South Korea to illustrate how a country without natural resources such as oil has used learning to achieve great socio-economic development. Malami identifies several issues from which African countries can learn. These include

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technology, learning, trust and character, culture, identity profiling, adaptation, and innovation. He concludes that different aspects of these practices were present in precolonial African societies and should be reignited in contemporary times to achieve socio-economic and political development. This section concludes with a paper on the changing narratives of human rights in the world and how this affects African countries. Eteete Michael Adam traces the discourses on human rights in Europe to the Enlightenment. Thus, the history of human rights in the world has often taken the shape of a Western narrative, and this has often led to the assumption that the formal discussion of human rights was alien to the African epistemological system. However, in postcolonial times, African countries have developed both national and regional frameworks for the protection of human rights on the continent. Despite the existence of these frameworks, instances of human rights abuses remain in different parts of Africa. It is thus incumbent on African citizens to demand the protection of their rights through the use of the Internet and physical protests as allowed within the law. Part five of the handbook is focused on Africa in Global Security Conflict and Peacebuilding. From the United Nations to the African Union, papers in this section examine the past and present trajectories of African countries in global and continental security architectures. Tim Murithi’s contribution examines the need for a fundamental restructuring of the United Nations Security Council. This position is premised on geopolitical consideration, fairness, and justice. Given the undue influence of the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and the roles they have continued to play in destabilizing regions of the world such as Syria and Libya, Murithi argues that the Council should be dismantled. A reconfigured Security Council should not only reflect the geopolitical changes and alignment in the world but give a more prominent position for Africa. The large membership of Africa in the United Nations and the high level of insecurity on the continent make this argument more compelling. Damilola Agbalajobi’s contribution to Africa in Peacekeeping operation in a changing global order takes Murithi’s argument forward. She traces the history of challenges with security in Africa to the genocide in Rwanda and how the lackluster attitude of western powers forced a rethink on handling security among African leaders. The lack of commitment to maintaining peace and security when it mattered most in Africa led to the formation of the African Peace Security Architecture under the auspices of the African Union. APSA roadmap is built around five thematic priorities covering the conflict prevention, management, and resolution cycle, which are: conflict prevention; crisis/conflict management; post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding; strategic security issues and coordination and partnership. Although the African Union is faced with challenges of funding the peace architecture, there is a sense of ownership of the initiative geared toward ensuring peace and security on the continent. Agbalajobi concludes that it is imperative to address the political and other challenges affecting peace and security in Africa. Also, other challenges such as the sexuality of female

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troops should be addressed while ensuring African leaders continue to fund the African Peace and Security Architecture. The War on Terror and Securitization of Africa is the focus of the contribution of Vincent Eseoghene Efebeh. He provides a historical analysis of the war on terror and how this has led to the securitization of Africa. He narrates the efforts by African nations and their foreign allies to rid the continent of terrorist groups and how such collaborative efforts have led to the securitization of Africa. Effebeh argues that an increase in security spending has impacted the development of other areas of life and, indeed, the entire economy of the continent. He concludes that there is a need for more collaborative efforts and the deployment of the latest technology in warfare to put ting an end to the terrorists’ attacks and the fight against terrorism on the continent. Godwin Okeke’s paper explicates the liberal international order that came into force after the Cold War and how Africa’s security architecture has been designed to fit into the norms of peace predicated on this principle. He argues that despite various efforts at promoting peace and security based on this principle, conflict is still prevalent in Africa. African leaders have made efforts to address security through the adoption of the concept of African solution to an African problem. Okeke also establishes a nexus between development and security. Hence, he concludes that African leaders should make efforts to ensure the success of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement as a way of fostering socio-economic development on the continent. The next two chapters by Mumo Nzau and Gorden Moyo examine the role of two powerful global actors in managing security in Africa. In this regard, Mumo Nzau explicates how the Euro-Africa relations have emerged in the light of the new dynamics of violent extremism and general insecurity in Africa. After a brief analysis of the history of the relations between the two continents, Nzau concludes that emergent patterns of reconfiguration of power in the EU, such as Brexit and the rise of nationalism, could have implications for the management of security between Europe and Africa. Gorden Moyo examines the role of China in the emergent configuration of security architecture in Africa. With China building a military base in Djibouti and ongoing engagement in the training of African security personnel, the argument that China is not interring in the internal affairs of African countries is skeptical. Behind the increased securitization programs of China in Africa is the need to protect Chinese investment and citizens. It is also informed by geostrategic interests and increased assertion of Chinese power as against other powers such as the United States of America, Europe, and Russia. Kadishi Ndudi Oliseh’s contribution to Unipolarity. Emerging Powers, Africa’s Security and the Place of African in the International System: 1993–2017 examines the engagement of powerful and emerging countries in Africa. The analysis shows that both old powers, such as the United States of America and Russia, as well as emerging powers such as China, are contributing to the securitization of Africa. The intervention of these countries in the security sector in Africa is geared toward achieving their strategic interests. It is therefore imperative for Africa to design

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a security strategy that can advance its interest in the international system. The last paper in this section by Tola Odubajo examines Africa’s Transitional Justice System in a Changing Global Order: Rwanda’s Gacaca Transitional Justice System. He argues that contrary to the conventional justice system, which is focused on the punishment of offenders, Rwanda’s Gacaca Transitional Justice System, which is like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, focuses on reconciliation and healing. This approach to justice is recommended for fostering peace in post-conflict societies in Africa. Given its rootedness in Africa, it is an example that other countries outside the continent can adapt to resolving conflict situations. The next section focuses on Africa’s contribution to global religions and creativity. Taiwo Oladeji Adefisoye and Tolu Elizabeth Oladayo’s contribution examines the role of music in Africa’s liberation. Drawing from historical and contemporary experiences, they argue that music has been used as a means of agitating for freedom in Africa. Using the case of Fela Anikulapo Kuti as a point of departure, Kayode Olusegun Eesuola emphasizes the importance of music as a means of pointing out the ills of society. Despite the repression from the successive military government in Nigeria, Fela Kuti uses his Afrobeat to protest maladministration, corruption, and misgovernance. Religion is one of the most important areas in which Africa has made an important contribution to the world in contemporary times. Religion not only shapes politics, but it has also become an item of exports for many denominations that started in Africa. In his contribution, James Kwateng-Yeboah examines African Pentecostalism: Multiple Modernities and the Changing Global Order. He argues that the Pentecostal brand of Christianity has so much defining influence in African countries. Pastors and Prophets make prophesies and predictions on election outcomes. Because of the large followership that many Pastors command, they have also become the dialing of politicians who count their blessings and members, especially during elections. He sees religion as a source of transformation and adaption to the changing global order. He concludes that in terms of structural transformation, African Pentecostalism apparently offers learning avenues for African governments on how best to mobilize funds from their own populations through taxes using the principles of reciprocity, accountability, and a sense of belonging. Rotimi Omotoye builds on this line of argument. He uses the Redeemed Christian Church of God, which was founded in Nigeria, as a classic example of how Africa is contributing to global revival. Christopher Changwe Nshimbi and Leon Mwamba Tshimpaka examine the increasing influence of Pentecostal pastors in politics in Africa. They argue that many pentecostal pastors in Africa have moved beyond their original call to preach to being active in politics through engagement with politicians. In her contribution, Abosede Omowumi Babatunde argues that women have occupied spiritual spaces in Africa, especially in precolonial times. Despite the prevalence of patriarchy in African societies, women have demonstrated spiritual powers and, through this, wielded much influence. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju’s contribution on

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Spatial Navigation as a Hermeneutic Paradigm: Ifa, Heidegger, and Calvino explicates Ifa as a form of knowledge that originated in Yoruba in Southwest Nigeria but is now practiced in different parts of the world. The last paper in this section by Thompson and Lilian O. Ademu examines how Islam and Christianity, which originated from the Middle East, shape the belief and perception of Africans on the management of their health. They argue that adherence to any of the two main religions, namely Islam and Christianity, affects the ways in which people respond to orthodox medicine. The last section of the handbook is on Africa and Global leadership. Chapters in this section provide insights into how Africans have contributed to various aspects of global leaders such as diplomacy and politics, literary works, academics and public intellectualism, as well as business leadership. In each of these thematic issues, Toyin Falola presents the creativity, resilience, and versatility of Africans in shaping global affairs. Apart from the role of various African countries at the United Nations through contribution to peacekeeping operations, African citizens like Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe of Nigeria, Ngugi wa Thiong’o of Kenya, among others, have made global impacts in literature, with Wole Soyinka being the first Black African Nobel Prize Winner in Literature. Africa has also produced intellectual giants that made a significant contribution to knowledge in various fields of human endeavors. Among the people in this category are Ali Mazrui, Kenneth Dike, Cheik Anta Diop, Ade Ajayi, Paul Zeleza, Archie Majefe, Ado Boahen, Mahmood Mamdani, and so on. While some of the leading African intellectuals performed the role of organic intellectuals who speak truth to power, others were content to work with the political establishments in their countries to further the agenda of the ruling elites. The achievements of Africans in business were also put into analytical perspectives. Contrary to the Eurocentric idea that capitalism is alien to Africa, Falola shows that both in the past and in contemporary times, Africans have engaged in businesses that generate capital and employ millions of Africans. In the category of leading African business owners in the twenty-first century are Patrice Mosepo, Aliko Dangote, Mo Ibrahim, and James Mwangi, among others. As Africa forges into the future, its relevance in the changing global order will be determined by a lot of factors. These include building capacity for political stability and nation-building, putting an end to the various conflicts, building nuclear power, enhancing structural transformation of the economy, creating jobs, building skills and technology, and promoting a higher level of integration. The achievement of socio-economic transformation will provide Africa with a stronger voice in international affairs. Lastly, Africa will need to develop a coherent strategy of engagement with other countries in different parts of the world in ways that trade, investment, and political relations serve the aspirations and development agenda of the continent. For too long, Africa has related with the other parts of the world in a subordinated position. As a continent with over a 1.3billion people, which is projected to be well above 2billion by 2050, the human and natural resources of the continent predispose

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it to set the tone and tenor of engagement with other countries. In doing this, the continent will need to maximize its interests and those of its peoples. The natural endowment of Africa also predisposed it to play a more important role in global affairs; in the changing global order.

Notes 1. Cheik Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (Toronto: Lawrence Hills Book: Lawrence Hill Book). 2. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Verso, 1981). 3. Rodney Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Verso, 1981). 4. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Verso, 1981). 5. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (London and New York: Routledge, 2018, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Genealogies of Coloniality and Implications for Africa’s Development.’ (Africa Development, XL (3), 2015, pp. 13–40), Cheikh Anta Diop’s book Towards the African Renaissance: Essays in Culture and Development, 1946–1960 (New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 2000). 6. Fredrik Hegel, Philosophy of History, Trans J. Sibree, with Precfaces Charkas Hegel (Ontario: Batoche Books, 2001). 7. Bernard Magubane, ‘The African Renaissance in Historical Perspective,’ in W. Makgoba (ed.), African Renaissance (Sandton and Cape Town: Mafebe and Tafelberg Publishing. 1999, 10–36) Samuel Oloruntoba, ‘Pan-Africanism, Knowledge Production and the Third Liberation of Africa.’ (International Journal of African Renaissance Studies, 10 (1), 2015, pp. 7–24). 8. Samuel Oloruntoba, ‘Social Sciences as Dependency: State apathy and the Crisis of knowledge Production in Nigerian universities.’ (Social Dynamics, 40 (2), 2014, pp. 338–352). 9. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Claude Ade, The Political Economy of Africa (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2000). 10. Thandika Mkandawire, African Intellectuals Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2005). 11. Mahmood Mamdani, The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989–2005 (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2006). 12. Swapar Kumar Patra and Mammo Muche, ‘Science and Technological Building in the Global South: India and South Africa in Comparative Perspectives,’ in Samuel Oloruntoba and Mammo Muchie (eds) Innovation, Regional Integration and Development in Africa (Cham: Springer, 2019, pp. 303–336). 13. Ake 1979. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Global Coloniality and the Challenges of Creating African Futures,’ in (Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 36 (2), 2014, pp. 181–202, Claude Ake, Social Science as Imperialism: The Theory of Political Development, Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1979). 14. Ake Claude, The Political Economy of Africa (London: Longman, 1981). 15. Robinson, William, The Theory of Global Capitalism, Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World (Baltmore and London. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). 16. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Assessing Regional Integration in Africa VIII , Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa,

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17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

2017). Robert Gibb, ‘Regional Integration and Development Trajectory: Metatheories, Expectations and Reality.’ (Third World Quarterly, 30 (4) (21), 2009, pp. 701–721). Ian Taylor, African Diversifying Dependence (London: James Curey, 2014). Okonjo-Iweala, Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). Ian Taylor, Africa Rising? BRICS - Diversifying Dependency (London: James Curey, 2014). Oloruntoba, Samuel Ojo & Tsowou Komi, Afro-continental Free Trade Areas and Industrialisation in Africa: Exploring Afro-Canadian Partnership for Economic Development (Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 25 (3), 2019, pp. 237–240). Toyin Falola, Nationalism and the African Intellectuals (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2004). African Union. Turse Nick, Pentagon Own Map of US Bases in Africa Contradicts Its Claim of ‘Light’ Footprint„ The Intercept, February 27. Available at: https://theinterc ept.com/2020/02/27/africa-us-military-bases-africom/, accessed January 28, 2021. Neethling Theo, September 15, 2020. Why Foreign Countries Are Scrambling to Set Up Bases in Africa, The Conversation, available at: https://thecon versation.com/why-foreign-countries-are-scrambling-to-set-up-bases-in-africa146032#:~:text=But%20there%20are%20other%20motivations,focus%20of%20r ising%20global%20competition, accessed January 28, 2021. Lala, p. 2. Lala, p. 3. PricewaterHouseCoopers n.d. Spotlight: The Nigerian Film Industry, available at: https://www.pwc.com/ng/en/publications/spotlight-the-nigerianfilm-industry.html, accessed January 29, 2021. Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. ‘African Diasporas: Toward a Global History.’ (African Studies Review, 53 (1), 2010, pp. 1–19). Accessed March 26, 2021. http:// doi.org/10.2307/40863100., Oloruntoba, Samuel 2017. Falola Toyin, The African Diaspora: Slavery, Modernity, and Globalization (Boydell & Brewer, 2013). Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘The Entrapment of Africa within Global Colonial Matrices of Power: Eurocentrism, Coloniality and Deimperialization in the Twenty-First Century.’ (Journal of Developing Societies, 29 (4), 2013, pp. 331–353). Sabelo Ndlobu-Gasheni, The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life (London: Benghan Books, 2016). Nkrumah Kwame, Neocolonialism: The Lat stage of Imperialism (London: Humanities Press Intl Inc, 1965). Rugumanu Severine Globalisation and Development in Africa (Harare: African Political Science Association Working Paper Series, 1999). Okonjo-Iweala, Ngozi Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). Ian Taylor, Africa Rising? BRICS—Diversifying Dependency (London: James Currey, 2014).

Part I

Historical Foundations of Africa and the World

CHAPTER 2

Africa’s Contributions to World Civilization George M. Bob-Milliar

Introduction In everyday discourses, the word ‘civilization’ is invoked to measure a community’s level of scientific and technological innovations and inventions. Nevertheless, a Euro-American conceptualization of civilization has come to dominate the world. In its contemporary version, world civilization is presented as being created and sustained by a particular superior human race. All through human history, political, economic, technological and the scientific superiority of communities has allowed them to claim a superior civilization. This is problematic because there is no one world civilization, but the amalgamation of several civilizations that have emerged and declined in the course of human evolution. As a concept, civilization has been a subject of different definitions and interpretations. Robert Cox traced the etymology of civilization to eighteenthcentury France. The concept of civilization emerged “as a process generating the civilité associated initially with the status norms of the noblesse de robe in the court of the monarchy; and later that particular development in French society was expanded into a universalistic concept by the Revolution.”1 In the French society a higher behavioural character different from the general population was a character trait of the nobility. According to Alfred Kroeber and G. M. Bob-Milliar (B) Department of History and Political Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_2

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Clyde Kluckhohn, the “word ‘civilization’ is derived from the Roman word for ‘city’, which implies a society involving cities, and cities involve people living and acting together, jointly, cooperatively, interactively.”2 The authors, therefore, went further to define civilization as the “state of condition of persons living and functioning together, jointly, cooperatively so that they produce and experience the benefits of so living and functioning jointly and cooperatively.”3 Ruan Wei noted that in its organic sense, a “civilization is a way of thinking, a set of beliefs, or a way of life.”4 The author sees “it is a spatio-temporal continuum and a long-term dynamic structure.”5 Civilization “is the product of the evolutionary process of humanity or a new phase in human evolution, in which cities emerge, and urban ways of life begin to prevail.”6 An important marker of a civilization in its early stage is the presence of a large population and substantial land territory.7 In its growth trajectory, a civilization will capture territories with significant populations and different socio-cultural habits.8 Writing about the Shang civilization, Kwang-chih Chang stated that a “civilization possesses a particular set of values” and “usually commands a developed economy and fairly advanced sciences and technologies.”9 The concept of civilization in every sense denotes an advanced state in the development of human society. Contributions to world civilization, therefore, connote the efforts put up by the different human races towards making the world moving from a primitive society to a more advanced human community. Therefore, the natural progression of society suggests that every human race on planet earth has at one point developed a sophisticated civilization of its own which has contributed to world civilization. Nevertheless, black Africans contributions to world civilization have been underplayed, ignored and even denied by some western scholars because of the lack of inventiveness of its communities.10 Yet, the accounts of early Europeans in Africa attested to the existence of great civilizations. In 1502, the Portuguese traveler, Vasco de Gama described a Swahili community as follows: “the city is large and is of good buildings of stones and mortar with terraces…”11 In 1507, Duarte Pacheco Pereira, the Portuguese Governor of São Jorge da Mina, described the Yoruba kingdom of Ijebu as “a very large city.”12 The several accounts of black African cities with innovations and inventions would change radically in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. European achievements in the emerging fields of science and technology became a yardstick to measure civilization. European writers such as the German philosopher, G. W. F. Hegel and the British historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper, claimed that Africans had no history before the advent of Europeans on the continent in the fifteenth century. They referred to the land of the blacks as the “dark continent.” Hegel, for instance in developing the philosophy of history contended that “the history of the world only travels from East to West with Asia being the beginning of history and Europe being the end of history,” and “that Africa is no historical part of the world because it has no movement or development to exhibit.”13

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Another conservative European academic became famous for claiming that black Africans did not contribute to world civilization. In the early 1960s, Hugh Trevor-Roper, a professor of history based at the University of Oxford claimed: “there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness.”14 Trevor-Roper’s narrow and selective reading of historical sources told him African history emerged with its contact with white travelers/explorers beginning in the fifteenth century. The denial of the existence of precolonial African history provoked progressive intellectuals to reveal the rich histories that were created through Black African agency.15 There seemed to be a general acknowledgement among some European scholars that Africa has not contributed anything or much if anything, to world civilization. This notion of Africa not contributing to world civilization is further heightened by the socalled Hamitic hypothesis, which attributes any form of cultural advancement and attainment to white people’s ingenuity. This impression is erroneous as Africa has a vibrant history and culture that indicate that, several great civilizations emerged in what is now known as subSaharan Africa.16 The land between the Sahara and the Kalahari deserts was home to sophisticated civilizations.17 The Euro-American conceptualization of world civilization is narrow and it privileges western history over other histories. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that world civilization is made up of the contributions of the civilizations of all human races. Indeed, through interactions, either peacefully (trade) or violently (wars of conquest) cultures, ideas of state-building, and beliefs systems moved around the earth. It is therefore against this background that this chapter seeks to not only identify some of the intriguing contributions of Black Africans to world civilization, but also to examine the same. It is imperative that Africa’s contribution to world civilization is discussed objectively and broadly in critical areas such as science and technology, education, arts, and music among others. This would not only help correct individual apparent erroneous perceptions, but it would also contribute to bridging the knowledge gap with regard to Africa’s contribution to world civilization. The rest of the chapter is divided into five main sections. The first section discusses non-black human civilizations that emerged in the course of human evolution. The second section discusses great black African civilizations that emerged in West Africa, East, Central and Southern Africa. The making of colonial civilization is the focus of the third section. The fourth section examines Africa’s contributions in the modern world. The fifth section discusses the twenty-first century and beyond. The sixth section concludes the chapter.

Older Civilizations Across the world, people have managed to attain high levels of cultural sophistication in several dimensions. All human races contributed to world civilizations at all levels. The Greek civilization, for example, was not only prominent in terms of governance and political systems, but it also had

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complex religious systems. Ancient Greek birthed the concept of democracy—rule of the people. Greek citizens were allowed to take part in making significant decisions by having the right to vote and elect their leaders to represent them. It was this civilization that was copied by other races that had contact with ancient Greek. However, it must be emphasized that ideas imbedded within the political system called democracy were not uniquely Greek; other traditional political systems contained principles of election, separation of power, and checks and balances. The Romans also evolved a civilization of their own and it dominated western Europe and parts of the Middle East including North Africa. The Romans were very prominent in military organizations and they used military organizations to conquer and ruled much of the ancient world. The civilization that emerged in the Indus valley contributed to world civilization. The Indian civilization made excellent use of the water and the fertile lands that existed in the Indus valley to embark on agricultural production very early in history. This resulted in the building of a very sophisticated civilization. Their cultural and religious attainment was also remarkable as they rise to become one of the suppliers of spices and other adornment items in the world. They also developed a state religion known as Hinduism, which is practiced by the majority of Indians. The Mesopotamian civilization, which flourished very early, produced some of the first unique developments that were copied by many races. The hanging gardens of Babylon, the rise of powerful kings, established belief systems, beautiful courts and justice systems as well as advanced knowledge in architecture and constructions, characterized the civilization of Mesopotamia. Islamic civilization has also contributed much to world civilization. According to Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, the mass of mankind has remained completely ignorant of the contributions that Islam has made to world civilization.18 Furthermore, Ahmed Essa and Othman Ali have shown how Islamic civilization produced outstanding achievements and “the intellectual legacy of a faith that transformed the world.”19 Muslims in the contemporary world are being viewed through a lens that mostly depicts Muslim society as backward culture. However, Ahmed Essa and Othman Ali argue that the popular historical account is excluded from the authentic history that shows that “Islamic civilization at its pinnacle was the archetypal of human progress and development.”20 In short, all human races have contributed to world civilization.

Great African Civilizations The region referred to as sub-Saharan Africa has been habitable to black populations for a very long time.21 There is no doubt, therefore, that black Africa has contributed so significantly to world civilization. Remarkable African civilizations such as ancient Egypt and Ethiopia in the North-Eastern part of Africa, the Western Sudanese Empires (Ghana, Mali and Songhai), the Kongo

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kingdom of Central Africa, the Swahili civilization of East Africa, the Shona civilization of Great Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, among others made significant contributions to world history. In the area of arts, ancient Ife, Nok, and Igbo-Ukwu were the exclusive creation of Black Africans.22 The evidence of Africa attaining cultural development, in several aspects of life was seen in the construction of buildings, politics and governance, architectural designs and the artistic skills, science and technology, trade and other sophisticated activities in Africa.23 In precolonial Africa, several civilizations were created by Africans without external influence. In Southern Africa, Great Zimbabwe emerged as one of the most complex civilizations. In other locations on the continent, states, empires and kingdoms emerged throughout the precolonial era. And all of these empires, states and kingdoms independently developed various civilizations that were in competitions with other parts of the world, like Europe and Asia. In ancient Egypt, for example, a unique civilization was developed, after they traded with Arabs, Greeks and the Romans. The civilization of ancient Egyptians reflected in areas such as sophisticated bureaucratic government, high-level technology, complex religious systems and a high standard of art and architecture.24 In terms of literacy, the new and unique form of writing known as the hieroglyphics which was very different from other forms of writing especially those in Mesopotamia was one of the earliest forms of writing to have been developed before 3000 BC. The Egyptians also created one of the earliest alphabets which constituted about twenty-four symbols, each of which represented a consonant sound.25 These were the alphabets that became one of the earliest forms of letters in the world. A great civilization emerged in ancient Ethiopia. One of the notable features of the Ethiopian civilization was the development of the famous giants’ ‘stelae’ also known as the Obelisks. These sophisticated giant stones were constructed between the second and fourth century AD. The Obelisk of Axum is the most famous of the Ethiopian Obelisk. The Bantu civilizations dominated eastern and southern Africa. The Bantu speaking people discovered and developed fire, iron and copper very early. They used them to build powerful weapons and tools that played significant roles in building and expanding great empires. One of the things that made Bantu civilization unique was the knowledge of architecture and construction. The Great Zimbabwe, for example, was a Bantu civilization and it was famous for its complex knowledge of architectural designs. These ancient civilizations do not only demonstrate African precolonial civilizations, but they also indicate the extent to which Africa contributed to world civilizations. In the fields of religion, politics and the economy, precolonial African civilizations contributed significantly to world civilization. African traditional religion is one of the earliest and most sophisticated forms of worship to have ever existed on earth. Traditional African religion varied across the territories and it was widely practiced in all communities. Its full development was

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hampered by the introduction of Christianity and Islam. Christianity, being the earlier of the two, was first introduced into the Maghreb and the Nile valley several centuries before Islam was founded in the seventh century A.D. Islam became the state religion in the western Sudanese empires.26 In the area of political economy, the trans-Saharan trade provided the world with trade in goods. One of the significant effects of the trade across the Saharan was the establishment of more robust political units that could influence the balance of the trade to their advantage.27 Among such political units were: Ancient Ghana, Songhai, Kanem-Bornu, which were located along the line of communication with the Maghreb.28 These states became wealthier through the profits they derived from their operations as middlemen, as well as the taxes generated from the trade.29 The expansion of the trade resulted in greater prosperity for participants in the trade. For example, during the reign of Mansa Musa, Ancient Mali “accounted for almost half of the World’s gold.” The Berber town of Aoudaghost in Ancient Ghana was one of the important ports of exchange along the trans-Saharan route.30 In the eastern part of Africa, the trading activities with Asia were a major factor in the emergence of such towns like Kilwa and Zanzibar that enjoyed such great prosperity and fame for over three centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese at the end of the fourteenth century. In the area of architecture, precolonial African states developed complex building designs and the construction of structures that were of high quality and served several purposes. Kilwa, for example, has been described as “most beautiful and well-constructed town.” Archaeological research has also revealed that Swahili civilization had fine buildings with courtyards, good washing arrangements and a big eight-sided bathing pool. A significant impact of the arrival of the Portuguese in East Africa was the destruction of the Swahili civilization.

Making of Colonial Civilization Africa had contact and interacted with Europeans on equal terms in the area of trade for many centuries. The export of black Africans as slaves to the new world in the fifteenth century laid the foundation for the invalidation of African inventiveness.31 The exploitation of African labour in the slave plantations in the Caribbean and North America stimulated western capitalism.32 The slave trade laid the groundwork for the black race to be devalued and its precolonial achievements unacknowledged in western scholarship. After the Euro-American slave trade became unprofitable, a so-called legitimate trade was introduced to promote the further exploitation of African labour on the continent. Europeans were interested in exploiting African cash crops and mineral resources and finding new markets for their manufactured products.33 In the early twentieth century, much of Africa lost its independence after European nations partitioned the continent.34 The formal introduction of colonialism was preceded by missionary activities. Europe-based Mission

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societies send preachers into the interior of Africa to win souls for Christ. Nevertheless, the early 1900s marked the beginning of the creation of colonial civilization. Western colonialism in Africa was pursued with the so-called 3Cs—‘Christianity, Civilization and Commerce.’ The precolonial African civilizations discussed above were augmented by the colonial civilization. The European colonizers imposed their cultural superiority on their colonies. The African culture was described as “primitive.” The ‘civilizing mission’ of the colonizers was to be achieved through the introduction of western education. Education became a significant social marker of civilization as it transformed Africans who consumed it. The precolonial African people were used to other forms of education, such as oral transmissions of information from generation to generation, informal learning, apprenticeship and different undocumented ways of obtaining knowledge.35 The introduction of classroom-based education, where reading, writing and arithmetic were taught on a large scale in colonized Africa, was very instrumental in making the colonial civilization. Soon many Africans were willing to be formally educated. Africans began to move away from precolonial lifestyles to adopting lifestyles prescribed by colonial authorities. Access to education in the colonial economy was very influential in the making of colonial civilization in Africa. Colonial civilization was complemented with colonial modernity in the mid-twentieth century. Many African countries were introduced to cash crop farming as well as crop rotations and other new farming techniques that were better than the shifting cultivation that was mostly and widely used by African farmers during precolonial days.36 The provision of European styled infrastructure in the cities and towns; introduction of railways, and other modern means of transport and communication transformed the living spaces of Africans. Many of these structures were built with new and contemporary materials. Colonial modernity in a sense also contributed significantly to the making of the colonial civilization. The technologies introduced by the European colonizers in several areas of life, like the introduction of motor cars, and other vehicles to replace African horses and donkeys, also represented a significant step in the making of colonial civilization.37 In sum, the point must be made that, even though it is clear that, during the colonial period, many developmental projects and new things were introduced into Africa; it was mostly done to make life comfortable for the colonizers. Consequently, Walter Rodney has described colonialism as a “one-armed bandit.” The introduction of formal education and the building of formal schools were aimed at training people to support the activities of the Christian missions and the traders. The construction of roads to mining and cash crops sites was to enable the colonial authorities to safely convey these products back to the ports for export. This notwithstanding, colonialism and all its policies contributed to the creation of a hybrid civilization: colonial civilization was imposed on precolonial African civilizations.

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Africa in the Modern World Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Just like in any other field, black Africa has made some strides in science, technology and innovation in the modern world.38 Though Africa obtained scientific and technological knowledge since time immemorial, such as the creation of fire by sparking two stones together, critical problems such as conflicts, increased diseases in the continent, high poverty levels and other socio-economic and political challenges have undoubtedly slowed the progress of science, technology and innovation in the continent.39 This has been worsened by the triple forces of colonialism, neo-colonialism and neoliberalism. Paul Lovejoy has argued that “any examination of African contributions to science and technology is hampered by the problem arising from racialized views of history and the relegation of Africa to an underdeveloped or undeveloped stereotype.”40 Nevertheless, as pointed out by Lovejoy, Africans and the descendants of Black Africans are gainfully employed as professionals across the globe. This, according to Lovejoy, shows the significant roles Africans have played in global development.41 Nevertheless, the field of science, technology and innovation has received much attention from African governments and their ‘development partners’ in the modern world. After independence, almost all African governments took it upon themselves to rapidly develop their countries, using science and technology.42 Africa’s contribution to science and technology in the modern world, especially in the field of medicine, botany, zoology and pharmacology is something that cannot be denied. Lovejoy referred to an over 700 pages botanical vocabulary in Yoruba based on advanced scientific knowledge, which was compiled by Pierre Verger in Bahia (Brazil) and not in Nigeria.43 Even though this contribution has not received the needed recognition, its relevance in the field of pharmacology and botany is highly immeasurable. Immediately after independence in the 1960s, African governments took it upon themselves to embark on rapid technological and scientific development having experienced lots of setbacks during the colonial period.44 Modern science, technology and innovation part of which was introduced in Africa by the colonial authorities were expanded after independence. Efforts were made by various African governments to expand technology in critical sectors like the energy, transportation, education and the mining sector. For instance, the Akosombo dam was built in Ghana to support the industrialization of the country. Similar projects were established in countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, Mali and South Africa. The point must also be made that people of African descent living and working in America, Europe and Asia have made significant contributions to science and technology. Africans, for example, have made their mark in the field of aeronautics working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the US. Recently, 29-years old, Dr Fadji Maina, from Niger, joined the long list of Africans to work at NASA. Africans have inventions that

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have impacted the modern world. Senegalese, Souleymane Moboup’s research contributed to the discovery of HIV-2 Virus and Nigerian Oviemo Ovadje’s work has contributed to blood auto-transfusion. These and many other inventions and innovations of Africans in the area of science and technology in modern world are therefore very encouraging. Contributions in Higher Education After independence in the 1960s, African countries took it upon themselves to change the colonial education systems and infuse African elements in the education system that reflect the socio-cultural dynamics of the African continent. In terms of curriculum development, Africa has succeeded in localizing its educational content at all levels in such a way that each country has developed content that reflects its historical, cultural, economic and religious elements. This makes African educational system very unique. In the area of science, technology, mathematics and engineering subjects, efforts have been made by many African countries to make it more practical using local examples in their textbooks so as to make it African. This notwithstanding, linking African curriculums with practical industrial demands in the modern world, remains a huge challenge to many African countries. This has created a disconnect between educational institutions and the job market, where graduates are graduating with skills that are not needed or demanded by the job market. Echoing neoliberal sentiments, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda underplayed the significance of humanities and social sciences programmes. He said it was “unfortunate that many universities continue teaching very useless courses at degree level rendering their graduates jobless after graduation.”45 Nevertheless, African academics in the modern world have also contributed to world knowledge and research output. Africa is said to contribute less than 1 per cent of global research output.46 This is highly contestable as the tools and sources used to measure global research outputs are exclusively Euro-American. Indeed, African-based academic journals and other scholarly publications are usually not factored into the calculations of research output in these global metrics. Several higher educational institutions found across the continent have been producing not only graduates with higher capacity to compete with their counterparts across the world but also researchers with skills comparable to their colleagues elsewhere in the world. African countries in the contemporary world have produced brilliant and excellent scholars that have contributed to knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences: Cheikh Anta Diop, Claude Ake, Ng˜ ug˜ı wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Kwabena Nketia, Ifi Amadiume, Paulin Houtoundji, Takyiwaa Manuh, Ali Mazrui, Mahmood Mamdani, Wangari Maathai, Toyin Falola, and Thandika Mkandawire, among others.47 Nevertheless, the intellectual contributions of African academics tend to be marginalized in so-called mainstream scholarship.48

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Arts and Music (Blues, Reggae, Jazz, Afrobeat) Arts and music have formed part of life in Africa since time immemorial. Black Africans created arts for various purposes before contact with Europeans. The ideas that undergirded these African creations were sophisticated and could not be understood by the colonizers. During the colonial era, thousands of African art works were stolen by European administrators and taken away to their various countries. Holdings in the various European museums vary: Musee Royale de l’Afrique Centrale in Belgium (no. 180,000), Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac in France (no. 70,000) and British Museum (no. 69,000).49 These historic art works were described as “primitive” or “tribal” arts by collectors and academics. However, Europeans have refused to return African arts to their countries of origin. Africans invented several genres of music which have made significant contributions to world civilization. Highlife music originated from Ghana and spread to other parts of Africa and Europe. Osibisa, a musical group formed by Ghanaians based in London dominated the music scene in the 1970s in Europe with their energetic performances. In the 1980s, there were crossovers of highlife music with disco which birthed a sub-genre of highlife music called burger highlife. Other genres of modern music such as Blues, Jazz, Reggae, and Afrobeat had black Africa influences. The reggae music which originated from Jamaica and popularized by Bob Marley has African roots as Ethiopian cultural elements are usually infused in reggae music. Jazz is another form of musical genre that has been enormously influenced by African music artists in the modern world. The literature has made the point that almost every Jazz music has its inspiration and original thoughts from West African musical forms.50 Descendants of African slaves in New Orleans developed a distinctive jazz style. Black musicians elsewhere in the US played jazz. Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis played jazz in Europe, Asia and Africa. In a similar vein, the African origins of blues music are well documented. African slaves and their descendants on the US Southern plantations invented blues music. “It is generally accepted that the music evolved from African spirituals, African chants, work songs, field hollers, rural fife and drum music, revivalist hymns, and country dance music.”51 The Afrobeat genre was a unique music form that evolved in the twentieth century. Nigerian, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti invented Afrobeat in the 1970s. For over three decades Fela and his Afrika 70, and later Afrika 80 synthesized this unique musical form which was anti-establishment and provided energy “for popular political dissent and a type of counter-cultural expression rarely seen in West Africa.”52 Afrobeat has now attained global recognition and its influence continues to spread to all corners of the globe. Africans have contributed significantly to the music and the arts and thereby building a modern civilization in the world.

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Twenty-First Century and Beyond Every continent in the twenty-first century has contributed in several ways in making life easy for not only its people but also every person in the globe. Africa has, therefore, been very active in making sure that its role in shaping the world is well played. This section discusses Africa’s level of advancement in the twenty-first century as well as its contribution to world development in the twenty-first century. In terms of Information Communication Technology (ICT), postcolonial African countries have adopted the application of ICT in almost every part of governance to ensure that effectiveness and efficiency are brought into the delivery of government programmes. Prominent among these programmes are e-governance, e-tax, e-procurement and other critical sectors where electronic programmes have been introduced. In countries like Ghana, for instance, the government has introduced digitization in almost every part of governance. The government of Ghana is synchronizing all identity cards into one single document and database known as the Ghana Card. This is expected to not only enhance the way of life in the country but also to improve revenue generation. The use of mobile phone technology for financial services in Kenya is “one example of world-class technological innovation.” Over 90% of Kenyans have access to a mobile phone and close to 98% of Kenyan households use the popular mobile money platform (M-Pesa) to buy consumables and pay utility bills. Similarly, Ghana is currently the only country in Africa to have implemented mobile money interoperability technology which makes it possible for anyone with a mobile money account to move money across all networks to bank accounts and from bank accounts to mobile phones.53 Other major mobile technology innovations are happening in countries such as Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya and other African countries. In the area of submarine cable manufacturing and related technology, Africa has made its mark. It has contributed significantly to the growth of such technology in the world. Some commentators have observed that “the number of submarine cables with landing points in sub-Saharan Africa has a total design capacity of 14.0 terabytes per second and this was expected to double by the end of 2012.”54 Today, this has quadrupled, making Africa a major player in the submarine technology area. Similar gains have been made in the field of terrestrial transmission networks. As noted by Williams, et al., “in 2009, Africa had only 465,659 km of terrestrial high capacity transmission networks, but his figure has increased to 676,739 km by September 2011.”55 Africa in the twenty-first century has cut its place in terms of its contribution to world development as well as its readiness to advance rapidly in technology. African countries have contributed significantly to the development of satellite technology. Africa is therefore claiming its place in not only satellite ownership but also its application. For instance, among the pioneers, South Africa launched its first satellite, known as the “SUNSAT” in 1999, and the second one, called “SumbandilaSat,” in 2009. In September 2003,

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Nigerian satellite, NigeriaSat-1 was launched. Two other satellites known as “NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X,” were launched in 2011. In the area of pharmaceutics, Africa has played a huge role in contributing to the development of the industry. In 2011, the pharmaceutical industry had a global market value of about $880 billion and was expected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2014. The point must be made that though the pharmaceutical industry in Africa is relatively not significant as compared with other continents like Europe, America and Asia as it accounted for “only about 1 per cent of the global market; and much of this is dominated by South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria.”56 However, in 2006, “the pharmaceutical market in subSaharan Africa grew up to $3.8 billion, as the sector is growing rapidly at an annual average rate of between 10 to 20 per cent.” According to the data, “Africa’s exports of pharmaceuticals grew from about $287 million to roughly $800 million from 2000 to 2009, before falling slightly to $798 million in 2010 and Egypt and South Africa account for more than 59 percent of Africa’s total pharmaceutical exports.”57 Other major countries like Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Mauritius and eSwatini include some of the exporting countries of pharmaceutical products. These countries, together, “account for an additional 30 per cent of Africa’s total pharmaceutical exports and pharmaceutical exports make up more than 1 per cent of total merchandise exports for Kenya and eSwatini.”58 Another area worth mentioning as far as Africa’s contribution to global advancement in the twenty-first century is in the higher educational sector. Apart from the significant progress made in expanding access to basic education across Africa, the continent’s contribution to knowledge through research output by its intellectuals in the twenty-first century is also worth noting.

Conclusion Modern civilization emerged out of the contributions of all human races. Throughout the course of human history, different races built communities and some of these communities grew in population. The emergence of cities and states birthed the concept of civilization. Conceptually, the main ingredients for understanding what constitutes a civilization includes cities, population, and innovation, among others. These ingredients were not unique to particular human races but were common in all the human civilizations that emerged in the course of human evolution. But civilization also connotes power and its application within a particular political community. The rise and fall of political communities resulted in the creation of different civilizations. Ideas moved through time and space as new civilizations were imposed on older ones. The aim of this chapter was to provide snapshots of Africa’s contributions to world civilization. Africans have contributed significantly to global history, however, much of it has been denied or suppressed

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by western gatekeepers. Africa’s precolonial history showed the existence of several civilizations. In the areas of science, technology and innovation, Africans have made their mark. And Africa continues to contribute to world civilization in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Notes 1. Robert W. Cox, “Thinking About Civilizations,” Review of International Studies 26 (2000): 217–18; see also, Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, trans. Richard Mayne (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 3–8. 2. Alfred Louis Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (New York: Vintage Books, 1952), 15–25. 3. Ibid. 4. Ruan Wei, “‘Civilization’ and ‘Culture’,” International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities 1, no. 1 (2011): 1–14. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Kwang-chih Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); also see, Robert L. Thorp, China in the Early Bronze Age: Shang Civilization (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 10. Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, “Africa and the Discourse of Inventiveness: Deep Historical and Archaeological Perspectives,” Seminar Paper presented at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, 15 October 2020. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. George Wilhem Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Dover Publications, 1956). 14. John Edward Philips, “What’s New About African History?” History News Network, 6 April 2006. 15. Basil Davidson, Old Africa Rediscovered (London: Gollancz, 1959). 16. Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Molefi Kete Asante, The History of Africa: The Quest for Eternal Harmony (New York: Routlede, 2007); Philip Curtin, Steven Feierman, Leonard Thompson and Jan Vansina, African History: From Earliest Times to Independence, 2nd edition (London: Longman, 1995). 17. Ibid. 18. Imad-ad-Dean Ahmed, “Keynote Address to the Conference on: Islamic Contributions to Civilization, India,” 2001. Availablehttp://www.minaret. org/Islamic%20Contributions%20to%20Civilization.pdf (accessed 19 October 2020). 19. Ahmed Essa and Othman Ali, Studies in Islamic Civilization: The Muslim Contribution to the Renaissance (Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2010). 20. Ibid. 21. J. B. Webster, A. A. Boahen and H. O. Idowu, The Growth of African Civilization: The Revolutionary Years, West Africa since 1800 (London: Longman

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22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

Group Ltd, 1967); Graham Connah, African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective 3rd Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Basil Davidson, The Growth of African Civilization: A History of West Africa 1000–1800 (London: Longman Group Ltd, 1965); Peter Garlake, Early Art and Architecture of Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Frank Willett, African Art, Third Edition (Thames & Hudson, 2003). Gloria T. Emeagwali, Science and Technology in African History with Case Studies from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and Zambia (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992). Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002). Ibid. See, for example, Mauro Nobili, Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith: Ah.mad Lobbo, the T¯ ar¯ıkh al-fatt¯ ash and the Making of an Islamic State in West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Nehemia Levtzion, Islam in West Africa: Religion, Society and Politics to 1800 (London: Routledge, 2017); Mervyn Hiskett, The Development of Islam in West Africa (London and New York: Longman, 1984); Basil Davidson, A History of West Africa, 1000– 1800: The Growth of African Civilization (London: Addison-Wesley Longman Ltd, 1978). A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman Group Ltd, 1973); Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origins of Civilizations: Myth or Reality, trans. Mercer Cook (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1974). Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore, Africa Since 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 15–29. Ibid. Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (London: Methuen, 1973); Ann E. McDougall, “The View from Awdaghust: War, Trade and Social Change in the Southwestern Sahara, from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century,” Journal of African History 26, no. 1 (1985): 1–31. David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (North Carolina Press, 1944). Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1982). A. Adu Boahen, African Perspective on Colonialism (Baltimore/MD: The John Hopkins University Press). Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). John Parker and Richard Rathbone, African History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 67–8. A. Adu Boahen, Ghana: Evolution and Change in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Accra: Sankofa Educational Publishers Ltd, 2000). Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017). Gloria Thomas-Emeagwali, Science and Technology in African History with Case Studies from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and Zambia (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992).

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40. Paul E. Lovejoy, “African Contributions to Science, Technology and Development,” Collective Volume the (Slave Route Project, UNSECO 2012). 41. Ibid. 42. Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa After Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 43. Lovejoy, “African Contributions to Science, Technology and Development.”. 44. David Kubebea Wafula and Norman Clark, “Science and Governance of Modern Biotechnology in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Uganda,” Journal of International Development 17, no. 5 (2005): 679–694. 45. The Independent, “Mak Dons Bitter over Museveni Comments on Arts Courses,” 15 January 2020. 46. Sharon Fonn, et al., “Repositioning Africa in Global Knowledge Production,” https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31068-7; Isaac Kamola, “The African University as “Global” University,” PS (2014): 604–7. 47. Bjorn Beckman and Gbemisola Adeoti, Intellectuals and African Development (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2006). 48. Franklin Obeng-Odoom, “The Intellectual Marginalisation of Africa,” African Identities (2019), pp. 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2019.166 7223; Peace A. Medie and Alice J. Kang, “Power, Knowledge and the Politics of Gender in the Global South,” European Journal of Politics and Gender 1, nos. 1–2 (2018): 37–53. 49. Ciku Kimeria, “The Battle to Get Europe to Return Thousands of Africa’s Stolen Artifacts Is Getting Complicated,” Quartz Africa, https://qz.com/afr ica/1758619/europes-museums-are-fighting-to-keep-africas-stolen-artifacts/ (29 November 2019). 50. Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (NY: Oxford University Press, 1968); Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 51. Ed Kopp, ‘A Brief History of the Blues,’ 16 August 2005. https://www.allabo utjazz.com. 52. John Collins, Fela: Kalakuta Notes (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2009); Michael Veal, Fela: The Life and times of an African Musical Icon (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 2000). 53. Ali Y. Nyaaba, Mariama M. Kuusaana and Daniel Owusu-Ansah, “The Political Economy of Mobile Money Interoperability and Transactions in Ghana,” Journal of African Political Economy and Development 3 (2018): 68–84. 54. Farid Gasmi, Alexis Maingard, Paul Noumba Um, and Laura Recuero Virto, “The Privatization of the Fixed-line Telecommunications Operator in OECD, Latin America, Asia, and Africa: One Size Does Not Fit All,” World Development 45, (2013): 189–208. 55. Mark D. J. Williams, Rebecca Mayer and Michael Minges, Africa’s ICT Infrastructure: Building on the Mobile Revolution (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2011). 56. Contextweb, Pharmaceutical Digital Marketing: Go Beyond Traditional Targeting, Contextweb Intelligence Report. Available from http://www.iab. net/media/file/CONTEXTWEBpharmastudyposting_6-1-1_final.pdf (2011). 57. Ibid. 58. Eugene J. Davidov, Joanne M. Holland, Edward W. Marple, and Stephen Naylor, “Advancing Drug Discovery Through Systems Biology,” Drug Discovery Today 8, no. 4 (2003): 175–83.

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Cited Works Ahmed, Imad-ad-Dean. “Keynote Address to the Conference on: Islamic Contributions to Civilization, India,” 2001. Available http://www.minaret.org/Islamic%20C ontributions%20to%20Civilization.pdf (accessed 19 October 2020). Asante, Molefi Kete. The History of Africa: The Quest for Eternal Harmony. New York: Routlede, 2007. Babalola, Abidemi Babatunde. “Africa and the Discourse of Inventiveness: Deep Historical and Archaeological Perspectives,” Seminar Paper presented at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, 15 October, 2020. Boahen, Adu A. African Perspective on Colonialism. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1987. Boahen, Adu A. Ghana: Evolution and Change in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Accra: Sankofa Educational Publishers Ltd, 2000. Braudel, Fernand. A History of Civilizations. Translated by Richard Mayne. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Chang, Kwang-chih. Shang Civilization. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Connah, Graham. African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective, 3rd Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Contextweb, Pharmaceutical digital marketing: Go beyond traditional targeting, Contextweb Intelligence. Report. Available from http://www.iab.net/media/file/ CONTEXTWEBpharmastudyposting_6-1-1_final.pdf, 2011. Cox, Robert W. “Thinking About Civilizations.” Review of International Studies 26 2000: 217–18. Curtin, Philip, Steven Feierman, Leonard Thompson and Jan Vansina. African History: From Earliest Times to Independence, 2nd edition. London: Longman, 1995. Davidov, Eugene J., Joanne M. Holland, Edward W. Marple and Stephen Naylor. “Advancing Drug Discovery Through Systems Biology.” Drug Discovery Today 8, no. 4 (2003):175–83. Davidson, Basil. Old Africa Rediscovered. London: Gollancz, 1959. Davidson, Basil. The Growth of African Civilization: A History of West Africa 1000– 1800. London: Lonngman Group Ltd, 1965. Diop, Cheikh Anta. The African Origins of Civilizations: Myth or Reality. Translated by Mercer Cook. New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1974. Ehret, Christopher. The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002. Eltis, David. The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Emeagwali, Gloria T. Science and Technology in African History with Case Studies from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. Essa, Ahmed and Othman Ali. Studies in Islamic Civilization: The Muslim Contribution to the Renaissance. Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2010. Garlake, Peter. Early Art and Architecture of Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Gasmi, Farid, Alexis Maingard, Paul Noumba Um and Laura Recuero Virto. “The Privatization of the Fixed-line Telecommunications Operator in OECD, Latin

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America, Asia, and Africa: One Size Does Not Fit All.” World Development 45 (2013): 189–208. Hegel, George W. F. The Philosophy of History. New York, Dover, Publications, 1956. Hopkins, Anthony G. An Economic History of West Africa. London: Longman Group Ltd, 1973. Kane, Ousmane Oumar. Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Kimeria, Ciku. “The Battle to Get Europe to Return Thousands of Africa’s Stolen Artifacts Is Getting Complicated.” Quartz Africa, https://qz.com/ africa/1758619/europes-museums-are-fighting-to-keep-africas-stolen-artifacts/ (29 November 2019). Kroeber, Alfred L. and Clyde Kluckhohn. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. New York: Vintage Books, 1952. Levtzion, Nehemia. Ancient Ghana and Mali. London: Methuen, 1973. Lovejoy, Paul E. “African Contributions to Science, Technology and Development,” Collective Volume the (Slave Route Project, UNSECO 2012). Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa. What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017. McDougall, Ann E. “The View from Awdaghust: War, Trade and Social Change in the Southwestern Sahara, from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century.” Journal of African History 26, no.1 (1985): 1–31. Nyaaba, Ali Y, Mariama M. Kuusaana and Daniel Owusu-Ansah. “The Political Economy of Mobile Money Interoperability and Transactions in Ghana.” Journal of African Political Economy and Development 3 (2018): 68–84. Oliver, Roland and Anthony Atmore. Africa Since 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Osseo-Asare, Abena Dove. Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa After Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Parker, John and Richard Rathbone. African History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Philips, John Edward. “What’s New About African History?.” History News Network 6 April 2006. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1982. Smallwood, Stephanie. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Thorp, Robert L. China in the Early Bronze Age: Shang Civilization. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Wafula, David Kubebea and Norman Clark. “Science and Governance of Modern Biotechnology in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Uganda.” Journal of International Development 17, no. 5 (2005): 679–94. Webster, B., A. A. Boahen, and H. O. Idowu. The Growth of African Civilization: The Revolutionary Years West Africa Since 1800. London: Longman Group Ltd, 1967. Wei, Ruan. “‘Civilization’ and ‘Culture’.” International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities 1, no. 1 (2011): 1–14. Willett, Frank. African Art, Third Edition. Thames & Hudson, 2003. Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. North Carolina Press, 1944.

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Williams, Mark D. J, Rebecca Mayer and Michael Minges. Africa’s ICT Infrastructure: Building on the Mobile Revolution. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2011. Young, Crawford. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.

CHAPTER 3

Africa and the World Before the Second World War Toyin Falola

Background The previous chapter detailed the forced sojourn of Africans on foreign soil, especially from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Three important events define Africa in the Diaspora in the nineteenth century: the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the subsequent abolition of slavery in 1833, and the later liberation of slaves during the American Civil War of 1861–1865. With these three, one might be forced to think Europe and the United States of America were done with Africa for good. While it might be true of the latter, the same cannot be said of the former as powers such as Great Britain, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and later Germany all took an interest, now not in the people of Africa, but in the continent itself and the goodies available therein. As a matter of fact, it was this hovering over Africa, headed for a major conflict, that necessitated the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. The continent of Africa was cast in the middle, and the Europeans carved countries for themselves (in ways that suited them, of course, according to their might). As is already known, it was a success for them, mainly due to their superior firepower and the inability of African countries to rally together to combat the common enemy. A thorough analysis of the First World War would reveal that the colonial question brought about by Germany’s interference in the British and French claimants, resulting in the Tangier and Agadir crises, was also a T. Falola (B) Department of History, University of Texas At Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_3

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causality. What more? Africans were recruited for the war to fight on behalf of their colonial rulers. These events, among many others, in thematic order, will be examined in this chapter.

European Scramble for Africa From the 1860s, Europe’s interest in the Africa continent grew, and the focus of engagement changed from enslaving Africans abroad to enslaving them on their indigenous soil for several reasons, which will be examined here briefly. It is also worthy of note that until the beginning of the 1880s, Europe held just about 10% of the African continent, with France holding firm to Algeria, Britain colonizing Natal and the Cape, and Portugal taking Angola.1 Indeed, by 1900, the opposite is the case, with Europe controlling 90% of Africa.2 This is because European activities around this period were limited to the coast and between European merchants and African middlemen or, in some cases, the traditional rulers. However, as hitherto hinted, these dynamics changed from the 1880s and at an unprecedentedly fast pace. This change in the economic dynamics in Europe—as argued by many scholars—informed the end of the slave trade and slavery. Following the industrialization of Europe, there existed lesser needs for heavy manpower—the sole purpose African slaves served to Europeans. With the dawn of industrialization and the consequent need for raw materials such as gold, rubber, timber, cotton, and palm oil, there arose the need for Africans in Africa, and no longer Africans in Europe. These raw materials also invited the preying eyes of the eventual colonialists. For instance, the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley, Cape Coast, in South Africa by Erasmus Stephanus Jacobs in 18673 had led to the famous diamonds rush in and around the area. With the increased number of diggers and prospectors, gold was eventually discovered at Vogelstruisfontein in Witwatersrand, South Africa, by one Jan Gerrit Bantjes in June 1884.4 His discovery was soon followed by a similar one called the Confidence Reef mine at a Wilgespruit farm in September of the same year by the Struben brothers.5 Significantly, Martin Meredith was of the opinion (backed with facts) that Britain hitherto had no interest in the formal colonization of South Africa but had a change of heart with the enormity of these vast resources.6 These resources (gold and diamonds) were also the major factor responsible for the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902,7 in which the British army fought with the Dutch who had hitherto been residents in the region for control of the resource-filled South Africa on her soil. It is worth recollecting that the search for gold in an unknown place in Africa had been one of the major factors that brought the Portuguese in contact with Africa during the voyage of exploration era. Thus, because of the news of discovery like this—in an era of the industrial revolution, militarism, and expansionism—the prospect of gold, diamonds, and similar raw materials was a good lure for Europeans. Given that gold and diamonds were already discovered in one part of Africa,

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what eliminates the prospect of similar or better raw materials being discovered elsewhere in the continent? The industrialization of Europe not only engendered the necessity for raw materials. It also created the need for markets in Africa for exports and the investment of surplus capital. With the outbreak and spread of industrialization, coming off centuries of wars, as usual, European countries rivaled one another to the point of overproducing. The consequence of overproducing is best appreciated in the underconsumption of these products owing to relatively low population and consequent minimal markets. Hence, European countries sought alternatives in Africa—vast in population—to export some of these products. This is reflected in Lugard’s work as thus: It is sufficient to reiterate here that, as long as our policy is one of free trade, we are compelled to seek new markets; To allow other nations to develop new fields, and to refuse to do so ourselves, is to go backward … We owe to the instincts of colonial expansion of our ancestors those vast and noble dependencies which are our pride and the outlets of our trade today; and we are accountable to posterity that opportunities which now present themselves of extending the sphere of our industrial enterprise are not neglected.8

Otto Von Bismark, the German Chancellor who would later summon the Berlin conference to determine the fate of Africa, agreed with the above but with a different perspective, saying: Colonies would mean the wining of new markets for German industry, the expansion of trade, and a new field for German activity, civilization and capital. Consider what it would mean if part of the cotton and coffee which we must import could be grown on German territory overseas. Would that not bring an increase in national wealth?9

Indeed, Britain and Germany (as epitomized above) are not alone in this thinking as Jules Ferry, the French Premier during the period of study, in corroboration asserts that: Colonial policy is the off-spring of Industrial policy for rich states in which capital is abundant and is rapidly accumulating, in which the manufacturing system is continually growing … European consumption is saturated: It is necessary to raise new masses of consumers in other parts of the globe….10

Following the above narrative trajectory, the boom that came with the industrial revolution also meant surplus capital available for reinvestment for the European powers. Jules Ferry again gave voice to this factor when he said: Colonies are for rich countries one of the most lucrative methods of investing capital ... I say that France which is glutted with capital and which has exported

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considerable quantities has an interest in looking at this side of the question ... It is the same question as that of outlets for our manufacturing.11

Besides the economic factor detailed above, there are the political factors too, considering, as severally iterated, it was an era of imperial expansion of Europe. Acquiring new territories became a source of national power and prestige, and in the growing web of alliances in Europe, a means to maintain a balance of power. With the emergence of unified Italy through Giuseppe Mazzini’s activism, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Camillo Cavour unified Germany by Otto Von Bismarck, and existing superpowers Russia, France, and Great Britain felt the challenge. While Russia turned to Asia for foreign territories, Great Britain (aborting her splendid isolation) and France—who perhaps became more desperate after the emergence of Germany, bigger and stronger, and her subsequent loss of Alsace Lorraine—turned to Africa. The desperation of France could not be hidden as epitomized by Paul Leroy Beaulieu: Colonisation is for France a question of life and death: either France will become a great African Power, or in a century or two, she will be no more than a secondary European power; she will count for about as much in the world as Greece and Rumania in Europe.12

The resultant summary of the above was the invasion of Africa. As earlier discussed, the Berlin Conference formalized the partition of Africa as a means to prevent major conflict among European nations. Bismarck was particularly wary of France’s quest for revenge. Thus, with Leopold having secretly secured treaties with many African chiefs and by 1882 forming the Congo Free State, and with Pierre de Brazza also acquiring the western part of the Congo basin for France around 1881 while Portugal invoked around 1884 the old treaties signed with the Kingdom of Kongo,13 Bismarck sensed war. Among other factors and considerations, he then called the infamous Berlin Conference.

Renewed Encounter with the World and Resistance to Foreign Domination In recent times, scholars have disputed the significance of the word “partition” concerning the Berlin Conference. Indeed, it is a false narrative to believe that once the conference was held, all was done. As against partitioning Africa, it is more believed to have laid the foundation for Africa’s conquest in a way that would ensure the exercise would not trigger a major outbreak between European parties. Put differently, the major significance of the Berlin Conference was that it accelerated the conquest of Africa as summarized below: For example, Britain started to push into the hinterland from the Cape Province in South Africa. It acquired Bechuanaland in 1885 and Nyasaland in 1893. It

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seized control of Mashonaland and the whole territory occupied by the Matabelle people through the agency of Cecil Rhodes. Between 1899 and 1902 Britain fought the Boers in its bid for territorial acquisition in South Africa. France conquered Dahomey and a number of territories in West Africa and planned to link its territory from Senegal across the continent to Somaliland part of which it acquired in 1896. Germany annexed Tanganyika in 1885 and by 1890 had reached agreement with Great Britain on the partition of East Africa. Italy became ruthless in pursuing its territorial ambition. For instance it acquired Eriteria in 1885, Asmara and part of Somalia in 1889. It unsuccessfully attacked Ethiopia in 1896 and invaded Libya in 1911. The examples cited above show the extent to which the Berlin conference stimulated renewed vigour for European invasion of Africa after 1885.14

The exceptional case of Ethiopia not falling under colonial rule would serve to underscore this sentiment better. When the Europeans invaded Africa, it is worth noting that African countries resisted the invasion, although they capitulated eventually—not for lack of resilience, fighting spirit, or tactics, but that of superior firepower. According to English poet Hillaire Belloc: “Whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not.”15 This is not to say some parts of Africa were not taken over easily with the signing of dubious treaties, but that bloody warfare was deployed in beating the fierce resistance of certain African countries into submission. For instance, Uzoigwe notes in the example of France that: For whatever reason, the French were the most active in pursuing this policy of military conquest. Advancing from the upper to the lower Niger, they promptly defeated the Darnel of Cayor, Lat Dior, who fought to the death in 1886; they beat Mamadou Lamine at the battle of Touba-Kouta (1887), thus ending the Soninke empire he had founded in Senegambia; they succeeded in breaking the prolonged and celebrated resistance of the great Samory Toure when they finally captured him (1898) and exiled him to Gabon (1900); and by a series of victories – Koundian (1889), Segu (1890), and Youri (1891) – Major Louis Archinard brought to an end the Segu Tukulor empire although its ruler, Ahmadu, continued a stubborn resistance until his death in Sokoto in 1898. Elsewhere in West Africa the French conquered the Ivory Coast and the future French Guinea where they set up colonies in 1893. And between 1890 and 1894 the conquest and occupation of the kingdom of Dahomey was accomplished. By the late 1890s, the French had completed the conquest of Gabon, consolidated their position in North Africa, completed the conquest of Madagascar (exiling Queen Rana valona III in 1897 to Algiers), and in the eastern Sahara-Sahel borderlands ended the obstinate resistance of Rabih of Sennar when he was killed in battle in 1900.16

In truth, and as would be seen, the conquest of some parts of Africa was aided by superior weaponry against Africa’s heavy reliance on unskilled and unarmed/poorly armed men and women who rallied together against unfavorable odds to resist colonial invasion. Smith et al. echo this sentiment by

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citing Adu Boahen that “virtually all African societies were intent on defending their sovereignty: It is in the strategies and the tactics that they adopted to achieve this universal objective that they differed.”17 According to him, Africans were coerced into submitting their land and sovereignty, and it was not willingly as Eurocentric scholars presented the narrative. Although, as earlier hinted, not all African societies or nations responded with violence or armed struggle. In their varying manners of resistance, while some African rulers went confrontational, deploying either military or diplomatic tools or the usage of both, others (perhaps for lack of the means or wherewithal) decided against confrontation but instead opted for cooperation or alliance.18 According to Smith et al., Boahen was unyielding that the most significant issue at stake on the list of African rulers’ priorities within the last two decades of the twentieth century was the uncompromised desire for sovereignty. Furthermore, those African rulers who were erroneously seen as compromised allies or collaborators were those who had thought the best way of preserving and upholding their sovereignty was by allying with these European countries. A classic example is seen in the Fulani emirs, who, by allying with the British officials, could retain their powers. Few case studies of this resistance would be given to further buttress and highlight this point.

Samori Toure and Mandinka (Present-Day Guinea) Resistance to French Rule Samori Toure had acquired relatively substantial yet local military training from the 1850s on his quest to release his mother, who had been captured during a raid.19 With his impressive military skills often exhibited in military campaigns, he built an empire: Mandinka by 1874, which stretched from Bamako in Mali to the north and bounded by the frontiers of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast to the east and south.20 With an army of 40,000– 65,000 at his behest and import of weapons such as breech-loading rifles from Sierra Leone, which was already under British colonialism, he repelled France’s invasion from 1881 to 1885, which earned him the nickname “the Napoleon of Africa.”21 However, his empire’s instability—due to his stubborn resolve to enforce his Islamization agenda on people he had conquered in the course of his expansion and was incorporating into his empire—proved to be one of his major undoings. Eventually, the difficulties and socio-religious unrest he was facing made it war on two fronts—against the invading marauders with the French flag and the rebelling subjects of his shaky empire. Prioritizing the enforcement of Islamization or perhaps coming to the reality that he would not be able to withstand the French’s continuous assault and incursion into the region at that point, Samory signed series of treaties with France from 1886 to 1889 renouncing control over territories “north of the Tinkisso branch of the Niger” and others, hoping the alliance being forged would prevent any French attack and also allow him to concentrate on dealing with his local

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rebels.22 Yet, from then onward, he had to struggle to cope with French superior and modern artilleries, especially as the British traders in Sierra Leone had stopped selling him weapons in respect of the 1890 Brussels Convention where all participating European countries agreed not to sell weapons to Africa.23 As one of his last resorts, he tried to involve the British (perceived as colonial foes in Africa) in Ghana to counter the French threat, but Britain was unwilling to directly engage France.24 Indeed, Smith argued in his work that Samori Toure was the “greatest of the military resisters” who adopted mobile guerrilla warfare, especially when he could no longer withstand the French rampage from the late 1880s owing to his technical backwardness.25

Al-Sayyid, Somali Land, and the Religious Motivation for Resistance Between 1885 and 1888, France, Great Britain, Italy, and even Ethiopia all took over parts of Somali land and tried to carve territories for differing reasons.26 When the European invaders’ political objective started becoming apparent to the local chiefs, they employed diplomatic means of concluding treaties with either of these powers independently to serve as a counter to one another. It is worthy of note that Somali land around this period, like almost every other part of Africa, was not yet a united nation but fragments of independent societies. They have various local chiefs, and they signed these treaties independently, however cautiously according to Ibrahim. According to him, the preface to each of these treaties had clauses that stressed the integrity and preservation of their independence, maintenance of order, and attached goodies unknown to them yet desired.27 However, hoping these treaties would prevent any onslaught on them, they erred as these four predators found peaceful means of colonial engagement; and certainly when your enemies find peaceful resolution on matters of utmost concern about you, then there is little to protect you from their collective goal. Still not giving up, the Somali clans armed themselves with what they had—spears and daggers—and confronted the invaders by defending their land, prompting the British to send in four different expeditions in 1886, 1890, 1893, and 1895 while the Italians on their part suffered heavy military casualties with two notable massacres of Italian officials at Harar and Bimal in 1887 and 1896, respectively.28 Despite the crushing harassment from the British forces, “Somalians” kept hope alive and in came Sayyid Muhammad, who upon his return from Mecca, found everything wrong with the religious situation of things. In 1899, in his writing to a Somali clan, and reflective of what is to come, he strictly wrote in reaction to the Christian schools he found, “Do you not see that the infidels (Christians) have destroyed our religion and have made our children their own?”29 Seeing this as a threat to the Islamic faith and taking inspiration from the Mahdist revolution in Sudan, al-Sayyid rallied 12,000 men in a standing army that cut across all Somali Clan to defend their faith and their land, although more of the former. Commencing offensive in August 1899,

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he continuously harassed the British, thereby prompting a reply with four successive defensive expeditions between 1900 and 1904 to which al-Sayyid scored several victories before his army grew weary and worn out, forcing him to sign the Treaty of Illing with the Italians (where he had taken cover) in March 1905.30 Al-Sayyid was not done as he regrouped and took up arms again against the British imperialists three years later. As a matter of fact, he compelled the British to evacuate the hinterland to the coast by November 1909, which al-Sayyid followed up to and bestowed upon them an annihilating disaster in August 1913, forcing the British to seek an alliance with Ethiopia which kept the struggle on until al-Sayyid died in 1920.31 The significance of Somali land resistance is multifaceted. First, as seen in the narrative, the clans who had been warring against one another in preEuropean encounter could unite to fight a common enemy, which tells a lot about their dread for foreign disruption. Second, Islam served as a uniting factor to bring the people together and inspire a “jihad” where they fought bravely until the very end. Third, it took the British over two decades, an alliance with Ethiopia, and the death of al-Sayyid to eventually have peace (that spanned throughout World War I) in Somali land. These go a long way in rewriting the narrative that conquest was easy or that Africans welcomed European colonialism with open arms and were easily deceived and stripped of their territories. Ibrahim and Ali, when reflecting on the above narrative scenario, and similar ones in Egypt and Sudan, concluded on the importance of religion in the north-eastern part of the continent in resisting colonial rule: Perhaps no part of Africa resisted European conquest and occupation in the period 1880-1914 so forcefully as the north-eastern part of the continent ... The strength of this resistance was due to the fact that besides the patriotic sentiment which inspired it, there was an even more fundamental sentiment at work, namely an intense religious faith. The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan and Somaliland were not fighting in defence of home alone, but also in defence of religion. Muslims there, like their fellow adherents in other parts of the Islamic world, were conscious of the social and religious disruption that would be caused by alien encroachment on hitherto Muslim territories …32

Further Examples Several other examples abound of stiff resistance to European conquest, not even in mild quantity or quality. A careful study of African responses to European invasion would reveal very daring responses that depict or represent responses expected from a so-called inferior race of people in no way. An interesting one was occasioned between Chief Machemba from Yao and Hermann von Wissman, a German commander in 1890 when the former authoritatively declined the latter responding as follows: I have listened to your words but can find no reason why I should obey you. I would rather die first … I do not fall at your feet, for you are God’s creature

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just as I am … I am Sultan here in my land. You are Sultan there in yours. Yet listen, I do not say to you that you should obey me; for I know that you are a free man … As for me, I will not come to you, and if you are strong enough, then come and fetch me.33

The above statement serves to contradict the popularly held belief in Africans’ backwardness—the Eurocentric belief and agenda that Africans do not and cannot think. Another example which explains better the instance of some of the African states that entered alliances with European nations with the belief of mutual benefit is the chief of Barue of Central Mozambique, Makombe Hanga in 1895: I see how you white men advance more and more in Africa, on all sides of my country companies are at work ... My country will also have to take up these reforms, and I am quite prepared to open it up … I should also like to have good roads and railways … But I will remain the Makombe my fathers have been.34

Other examples of strong resistance to European incursion include but are not limited to the following: Egypt (‘Urabi rebellion 1881/1882), Sudan (Mahdi revolution 1881–1899), Zambia (Bemba), Southern Rhodesia (1896), Tanganyika coastal resistance (1888–1891), Maji-Maji revolt (1905), Ivory Coast and Dahomey (1889–1898), the Maghrib countries in North Africa (centuries running into the 1900s which started centuries before the Berlin Conference against the Spaniards and continued into the 1900s with France and Italy), Asante—Ghana (longest sustained from the 1760s till 1896), Niger Delta and Nigeria (1895–1903), Ethiopia (1896—the only successful one), Kenya (Nandi resistance from 1890s to 1905), Uganda (Bunyoro v Lugard 1891–1899), and the Central Africa region (Cuamato, Cuanhama, Chikunda, Yao in Nyasaland, Swahili-Makua alliance).35 M’baye Gueye and A. Adu Boahen provide justice to another common but false narrative of the British’s favor of Northern Nigeria over the “unyielding Southern part of Nigeria”. Put differently, when the discourse of resistance to colonial rule springs up, much is made of Eastern Nigeria’s protest and uprisings and Western Nigeria’s “unsubmissiveness” while the Northern part of the country is painted as the part that embraced colonial rule; hence the reason for the utilization of their oligarchic system of administration and full success of indirect rule there. However, according to the narrative of the two scholars: On the contrary, apart from that of Zaria, all the other emirs, spurred on by their implacable hatred for the infidels, were determined to die rather than surrender their land and faith. As the Sultan of Sokoto informed Lugard in May 1902, ‘Between us and you there are no dealings except as between musulmans and unbelievers … War as God Almighty has enjoined on us.’ The British therefore had to launch a series of campaigns – against Kontagora in 1900, Adamawa

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in 1901, Bauchi in 1902, Kano, Sokoto and Burwuri in 1903. The rulers of all these emirates rose to the occasion but they had no effective answer to their enemies’ Maxim guns, rifles and muzzle-loading 7-pounder cannon and therefore suffered defeat.36

Factors that Facilitated the Conquests Having enumerated, explained, and discussed how the Europeans subdued Africans despite their military resistance, it is pertinent to examine factors that worked against Africa’s resistance to the foreign incursion. First and most apparent is the Europeans’ inferior weaponry, which had been industrialized and was even gravitating toward World War I (WWI). At this point, Africa did not have “these modern weapons” but was not prepared for the foreign military incursion, as the second point would serve to elaborate on. Smith et al. captured this better when he wrote that “in the late 1870s and early 1880s African rulers had no sense of doom; for the most part, they did not feel threatened by the Europeans among them and felt quite capable of meeting any military threat.”37 Not only that, but many of them either welcomed them with open arms (in trade partnership) or invited them (to fight their enemies as in the case of Kosoko of Lagos) unsuspecting. Similarly, minority groups hitherto under unsatisfying African overlords and desperate for freedom allied with the Europeans to gain/assert their freedom (as in the Hausas against their Fulani “usurper”). Third, among other factors recognized by Uzoigwe is the significance of the fact they had a basic knowledge of the interior and terrains in and around Africa thanks to their explorers and missionaries. Thus, they knew Africa well enough, including her economy and the strengths and weaknesses of target African societies. While Europe knew what they were going to meet, Africa knew not what was coming for them. Fourth, Africa was plagued by devastatingly prolonged internecine wars, and those that were not at war could not ally with one another. For example, there was the “Mandingo against the Tukulor, the Asante against the Fante, the Baganda against the Banyoro, the Batoro against the Banyoro, the Mashona against the Ndebele etc.”38 This is seen in how Samori Toure could not concentrate on his offensives against the French and consolidate his earlier wins. For those that could not ally, Samory, for example, reached out to the Tukulor Empire (a neighboring empire) for a joint alliance to rout the French, which the latter refused. The worst dimension to this episode was that not only were African states disunited and lacking in solidarity, but they also allied with the marauding “common enemy” to vanquish their neighbor like Tieba of Sikaso, who provided military assistance to the French to defeat Samory, perceived as a threat. As recorded by Uzoigwe, “Baganda allied with the British against the Banyoro, and the Barotse with the British against the Ndebele, while the Bambara teamed up with the French against the Tukulor.”39

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Africa and World War I (WWI) The war to end all wars—WWI—had several causes, with historians tracing it to have its root in the 1870/1871 Franco-Prussian War and its casus belli being the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. For this context, the important causality not to glide over, besides the scramble40 for Africa, is the Tangier and Agadir crises.41 The Tangier Crisis—First Moroccan Crisis of 1905—should be noted not as much about the country of Morocco but as a direct result of a growing intense rivalry between Britain and France, both seeking to establish strategic influence in the region (and Morocco being a major focus at the time) and Germany who sought to exploit the situation to further isolate France, and befriend the British. Given France and Britain had gone head to head in Egypt, Britain allowed France’s influence and “control” in Morocco (in exchange for France’s recognition of British’s interest in Egypt), which Germany initially supported, hoping the enterprise “would drain French resources and distract them from more volatile European issues.”42 However, France’s swift movement to exert economic and political control over Morocco met stiff resistance from Germany, who feared being encircled by enemies and called for the Algeciras Conference after forcing France’s Foreign Minister, Delcasse, to resign and starting to make moves with the Sultan.43 Not only did the above happened, but Germany also threatened war and summoned the Algeciras conference, for she was rather diplomatically given the humble pie. The Agadir crisis—the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911—was more aggressive, and it more directly involved Moroccans. The Moroccans had stood up in revolt against the Sultan, and the French had responded to his pleas by sending troops to Fez to help him calm the situation.44 However, upon seeing this, the German government sent the German gunboat, the Panther, to Agadir to pressure the French government into compensating her for actions taken in Morocco. The first situation was another diplomatic catastrophe for Germany, although she got two strips of territory in French Congo—another part of Africa—as compensation.

The Outbreak of the WWI Following the outbreak of the First World War, its immediate impact on Africa was the trooping in of the Allies into German colonies for albeit different reasons. According to Crowther, some Europeans were of the opinion that Africa should be kept neutral and outside of the theatre of war so as not to give the impression of Europeans being at war with one another.45 However, British military intelligence could not agree because they were a naval power themselves and had understanding of the havoc the German navy could wreak on their colonial possessions in Africa and beyond if they were allowed to gain control. It would also represent colonial victory if the Allies won the war

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as African territories hitherto under the Germans would turn to war spoils. Crowther lucidly argues this point in detail: Not only did Botha and Smuts covet South West Africa as a potential fifth province but they hoped that if they assisted a British victory in German East Africa, parts of conquered German territory might be offered to the Portuguese in exchange for Delagoa Bay – the natural port for the Transvaal – going to South Africa. In Britain, it was considered that the involvement of South Africa and her loyalty would be ensured by the prospect of South West Africa becoming hers. For the French, invasion of Cameroon would retrieve the territory reluctantly ceded in 1911 to Germany in the aftermath of the Agadir crisis.46

Sequel to the first reason given above, Allied powers hurriedly occupied “Lome in Togo, Duala in Cameroon, and Swakopmund and Lüderitz Bay in South West Africa” while British forces attacked Dar es Salaam and Tanga to prevent their usage by Germany as offensive ports.47 As soon as Turkey joined the Central Powers, Britain strengthened defenses in Egypt around the Suez Canal to the point that Egypt became the official base for Britain’s offensive to fend off Turkey and her allies in the Middle East, thereby establishing its powers finally in the region for over three more decades.48 In narrating or analyzing African’s involvement in WWI, it is important to note that the countries were invaded for the reasons above-stated, and Africans were drafted into these wars on the African continent except for the South West Africa campaign, which lasted six months.49 Large troops consisting of Africans on both sides were deployed to fight colonial wars amidst the First World War. Other than the above, the other major significance of WWI on Africa during its course is the mass exodus of Europeans who had to sign up to participate in the war, leaving behind fewer foreign personnel to maintain things in Africa. As captured by Crowder, “in some parts the European presence, already thinly spread, was diminished by more than half.”50 Not leaving things to chance, Africans who were found trustworthy and loyal were trained and used to occupy the vacuum left behind by the exiting foreign personnel. Also, it is pertinent to note that Africans were not only deployed in colonial battles. Interestingly, despite Europeans’ racist prejudice and the initial rejection of many, Africans were imported in large numbers to the European battlefields and armed to the teeth. The British introduced conscription into Egypt for its defense and launched its offensive, while France and Belgium imported Africans in large numbers mostly to be used for more dangerous tasks and stationed at dangerous locations during the war.51 After the war ended and peace treaties were discussed and signed, there was little said about Africa. Indeed, the League of Nations, which ironically was formed afterward with principles such as that of self-determination, still placed African countries such as Rwanda, Namibia, Burundi, Tanzania, Togo, and Cameroon52 as trust

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Territories under the victors, thereby systematically keeping them under colonial rule. Also, colonialism of Africa continued except that the continent felt the economic impact negatively before the Great Depression set in. It was not a victory for Africa. It was a battle for the allies—one condemned, but with little, if any, in return as a reward.

Conclusion The dawn of the nineteenth century brought relief in the sense of abolitions and freedoms. By dusk, it was warfare, one with untold impunity, genocide, and massacres, as Europeans forced their way into African territories to commence their colonization of the continent. This chapter examines the reason behind it (focusing on the economic factor). It then examines the course of the conquest, Africa’s brave resistance and capitulation, and the factors that aided European victory. Lastly, attention was also given to the first World War and Africa’s role in it for perspective.

Notes 1. Saul David, “Slavery and the ‘Scramble for Africa’,” BBC, February 17, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/scramble_for_afr ica_article_01.shtml. 2. David, “Slavery and the ‘Scramble for Africa’.”. 3. Experience Northern Cape, “Diamond History in Kimberley,” Experience Northern Cape, n.d., https://www.experiencenortherncape.com/visitor/experi ences/diamond-history-in-kimberley. 4. See: South African History Online, “Discovery of the Gold in 1884,” South African History Online, n.d., https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/discoverygold-1884. 5. South African History Online, “Discovery of the Gold in 1884.”. 6. Martin Meredith, Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa (Great Britain: Simon & Schuster, 2008). 7. Meredith, Diamonds, Gold, and War. 8. F. D. Lugard, The Rise of Our East African Empire (London: Cass, 1968); F. D. Lugard, The Story of the Uganda Protectorate (London: H. Marshall & Son, 1900). 9. Nicholas Tarling, Imperialism in Southeast Asia, vol. 10 (London: Routledge, 2003), 206. 10. Festus Ugboaja Ohaegbulam, Towards an Understanding of the African Experience from Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Lanham: University Press of America, 1990), 34. 11. Ohaegbulam, Towards an Understanding of the African Experience. 12. See: Distance Learning Center, HDS 201: African Response to European Invasion (Ibadan: Distance Learning Center, n.d.), http://dlc.ui.edu.ng/oer.dlc.ui. edu.ng/app/upload/HDS%20201_201,505,828,067.pdf. 13. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999), 281. 14. See: Distance Learning Center, HDS 201.

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15. See: A. A. Boahen, ed., UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. 7, Africa Under Foreign Domination, 1880–1935 (Paris: UNSECO, 1985), 4. 16. G. N. Uzoigwe, “European Partition and Conquest of Africa: An Overview,” in Boahen, ed., UNESCO General History of Africa, 19–44. 17. D. Robinson, D. Smith, and D. K. Smith, Sources of the African Past: Case Studies of Five Nineteenth-Century African Societies (Bloomington: iUniverse, 1999), 252. 18. Robinson, Smith, and Smith, Sources of the African Past. 19. M. Toure, “Samory Toure (1830–1900),” Black Past, February 22, 2009, https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/toure-Samory-18301900/. 20. Toure, “Samory Toure (1830–1900).”. 21. Ufuk Necat Tasci, “Samory Toure: A Legendary African Muslim King Who Fought French Colonialism,” TRT World, January 13, 2020, https://www.trt world.com/magazine/samory-toure-a-legendary-african-muslim-king-who-fou ght-french-colonialism-32909. 22. Robinson, Smith, and Smith, Sources of the African Past, 254. 23. M. C. Bassiouni, ed., A Draft International Criminal Code and Draft Statute for an International Criminal Tribunal (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987). 24. E. K. Akyeampong and H. L. Gates, Dictionary of African Biography, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 55. 25. D. Robinson, D. Smith, and D. K. Smith. Sources of the African Past, 255. 26. H. A. Ibrahim and A. I. Ali, African Initiatives and Resistance in North-East Africa (1880). 27. Ibrahim and Ali, African Initiatives. The treaty reads: “for the maintenance of our independence, the preservation of order, and other good and sufficient reasons”. 28. Ibrahim and Ali, African Initiatives. 29. Ibrahim and Ali, African Initiatives. 30. Ibrahim and Ali, African Initiatives. 31. Ibrahim and Ali, African Initiatives. 32. Ibrahim and Ali, African Initiatives. 33. T. O. Ranger, African Initiatives and Resistance in the Face of Partition and Conquest (1880). 34. Ranger, African Initiatives and Resistance in the Face of Partition and Conquest. 35. See chapters 3–8 of Boahen, UNESCO General History of Africa, 45–169. 36. M’Baye Gueye and A. A. Boahen, African Initiatives and Resistance in West Africa, 1880–1914 (1880). 37. Robinson, Smith, and Smith, Sources of the African Past, 251. 38. Uzoigwe, “European Partition.”. 39. Uzoigwe, “European Partition.”. 40. Z. S. Steiner and K. Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1977). 41. Other materials refer to them as the (first and second) Moroccan crises. 42. F. C. Zagare, “The Moroccan Crisis of 1905–1906: An Analytic Narrative,” Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy 21, no. 3 (2015): 327–350. 43. Zafare, “The Moroccan Crisis,” 14–15.

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44. M. Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of the First World War (London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014). 45. Michael Crowder, The First World War and Its Consequences (1880), 284. 46. Crowder, The First World War, 285. 47. Crowder, The First World War. 48. Crowder, The First World War. 49. Crowder, The First World War. 50. Crowder, The First World War. 51. Christian Koller, “Colonial Military Participation in Europe (Africa),” International Encyclopedia of the First World War, October 8, 2014, https://enc yclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/colonial_military_participation_in_e urope_africa. 52. See: Article 22, Covenant of the League of Nations of June 28, 1919.

CHAPTER 4

Africa and the World After the Second World War Toyin Falola

After the First World War, there was still political instability in Europe. The defeated countries during the First World War were dissatisfied with the outcome of the war. Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet captured the overall interests of all the parties involved in the war with the explanation that: The peace of 1919 collapsed because the allies whose interest demanded that they defended it, did not, while defeated powers had no intention of abiding the results. The United States, weary of European troubles, withdrew into isolationism, and Britain followed the extent geography allowed. Only France, vulnerable in its continental position, attempted to maintain the peace. From the first, the Germans dreamed of overturning the Treaty of Versailles, which had codified their humiliation. The Italians and then the Japanese, both disappointed by their share in the spoils, displayed little interest in supporting the post-World War I order, while the revolutionaries in Russia focused on winning their own civil war and then on establishing socialism in the new nation.1

Asides from the countries mentioned above, Africa also had its interest to protect in the war. Thus, the subject of discontent regarding the outcome of the Second World War is not limited to the Europeans. Africa, as a continent, had compelling reasons to also participate in the war. Due to reports about T. Falola (B) Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_4

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the German imperialism movement led by Adolf Hitler, Africans were drafted to join the Allied forces made up of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Britain, the United States, and China to fight the axis countries, one of which was Germany. All these interests2 led to the Second World War, which took place between 1939 and 1945. This war is the deadliest and most destructive war among nations in the history of the world, taking the lives of over 70 million people.3 The figure above explains how devastatingly the Second World War ended, and this brought about the need to have an institution that upholds peace and security across the globe. Following the end of the war in 1945, new eras began with the formation of the United Nations, the rise of the United States as the new superpower in terms of the economy, and the rise of decolonization movements in Asia and Africa. The war has had astronomical impacts on countries worldwide, most especially Africa, up till this moment. These impacts have been in various forms, ranging from African nations’ decolonization, the socio-economic impact on Africa, and Africa’s relationship with the world.

Impacts of Second World War in Africa Decolonization Movements in Africa Post-1945 The most notable impact of the Second World War on Africa is that it gave rise to states’ independence and autonomy in Africa. This whole process was often described with the term “Decolonization.” Although there is no consensus as regards the meaning of this term, Helen made an excellent attempt at defining it when she described decolonization “as a process by which legally dependent territories obtained their constitutional independence and entered the world stage of international relations as sovereign states.”4 The Second World War brought about a rapid rate of decolonization movements in Africa. The war was the impetus for Africa’s political autonomy and independence. It assisted Africa to strengthen its resolve for African nationalism and independence. It is reported that “between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers.”5 This shows the rapid impact the war had on both the colonial powers and the colonies. Hence, the Second World War paved the way for Africans to seek their independence from colonial rule and have a “right to self-determination”—a principle used to describe the “right of a people to determine their destiny. In particular, the principle allows the people of a particular state to choose its political status and determine its form of economic, cultural and social development.”6 This rapid increase in decolonization movements in Africa can be traced to three core reasons. First, the Second World War gave rise to the emergence of new superpowers in world politics. The outcome of the war led to the rise of the United States and Russia. This brought about a huge change in the status quo. These superpowers (Russia and the United States) were against

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the prevalent issue of colonialism, which was the prevalent practice at the time; hence, they campaigned against it. Thus, colonial powers (France, Britain, and Belgium among others) were persuaded to prepare the countries under their rule for the government of their states and decolonize them by giving them the right to “self-determination.”7 Erin Myrice described the position of these two world powers: Both the United States and The Soviet Union held no interest in helping to strengthen Britain and France’s colonial rule in Africa. The US and USSR had very different political agendas, but both were more or less anti-colonial. It is clear that views of colonialism were changing at the internationally political level, and these newfound views were not in favor of European countries.8

Another rationale behind the rapid rate of the decolonization movement in Africa was the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.9 The act of encouragement of the two new superpowers for decolonization was further strengthened with the emergence of the United Nations, formerly known as the League of Nations. The United Nations contributed toward the decolonization movements in these ways: First, is through its charter, which was signed on 26th June 1945, in San Francisco, following the end of the United Nations Conference on International Organization. This charter went into effect on 24th October 1945. With this, African nations under colonialism were able to assert their right to self-determination based on the charter’s principles and purpose.10 The second way is through the establishment of the United Nations Trusteeship Council.11 The United Nations Trusteeship Council pressurized the colonialists to relinquish power and grant political independence to Africa nations. It is reported that “when the United Nations was founded in 1945, some 750 million people, nearly a third of the world’s population, lived in Territories that were dependent on colonial Powers. Today, fewer than 2 million people live under colonial rule in the 17 remaining non-self-governing territories. The wave of decolonization, which changed the planet’s face, was born with the UN and represented the world body’s first great success. As a result of decolonization, many countries became independent and joined the UN.”12 This shows the extent to which the United Nations has succeeded in bringing decolonization to Africa. Donald F. Mchenry also gave a remarkable opinion about the United Nations’ influence on bringing out decolonization in the African continent. He remarked that “the United Nations Resolution on colonialism provided the political framework for the decolonization process which swept across the African continent in the late 1950s and early 1960s and revolutionized the international political arena.”13 Thus, the United Nations pressurized colonial powers to give up the colonies under their control. And with this, African states were able gradually to assert their rights to self-determination as the colonial powers were under pressure.14

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The third factor behind the decolonization movement in Africa following the Second World War is the experience garnered by soldiers who fought side by side with Europeans during the war.15 A lot of Africans were recruited to fight the axis countries during the Second World War.16 Fighting alongside the Europeans made these soldiers know the European soldiers’ strengths and believe in the essence of independence for their states. In the words of Vincent Khapoya: The Second World War imposed psychological changes that aided in the decolonization of Africa. War changes the way people view everyday life, themselves, and the people around them. This war changed and shaped the way Africans viewed Europeans. The Africans noticed that, in war, the white man bled, cried, was scared, and, when shot, died just like anyone else ... It dawned on the African that beneath the skin, there was no difference between him and the European.17

Thus, with the experience garnered by fighting overseas, the soldiers from Africa were opportune to have acquired the orientation and confidence necessary to challenge the colonial powers when they got back to their countries. They realized that the colonial powers were actually humans like them and could also be defeated once there was a proper strategy. Hence, the whites were not as powerful as they claimed to be. The defeats of Holland’s likes in Indonesia’s hands, France’s loss in Vietnam, and Britain losing its control over South East Asia were reports they needed to boost their morale. Examples of such soldiers are Ben Bella of Algeria, who led the revolution against France. Also, Jean-Bedel Bokassa is another good example of a soldier who imbibed the spirit of nationalism and ruled his country. Economic Impact of the Second World War on Africa Aside from giving rise to the decolonization movements across Africa, the Second World War had tremendous impacts on states’ economies in the African continent. Firstly, there was an increase in the exploitation of raw materials and cash crop production in Africa. This started before the war ended. Due to the need to meet up with the needs of the war, the colonial powers had no other viable option but to tap into the abundant resources available in the African continent. Thus, the colonial powers depended heavily on Africa, most especially for its cash crops, which were mostly exported to Europe for a cheap price for Europeans’ benefit. This can be traced to the colonial powers’ knowledge about the huge deposits of natural resources, huge population, and unused territories in Africa used as routes for transportation.18 However, efforts were not made toward developing the economy in Africa. This would have made the agricultural produce and raw material to be utilized within the continent if industries were created in Africa for the processing.

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Secondly, the condition of living was made to be unbearable for Africans. This can be linked to demand by Africans for creating industries in their countries, thereby causing an increase in the importation and a decrease in the cost of exportation, which was a strategy that favored the Europeans, to the detriment of African states. Stephen Ocheni and Basil Okonkwo aptly discussed this in their paper19 in which they tagged the situation “disarticulation of the African economy.” In their exact words: There was disarticulation in the production of goods, markets, traders, transport, provision of social amenities and pattern of urbanization etc., the colonialists introduced a pattern of the international division of labor, which was to the disadvantage of Africans. They assigned to Africa the role of producing raw materials and primary products for use by their industries at home. Africans were not allowed nor encouraged to go into manufacturing. The only industries Africans were encouraged to build were those that would facilitate in the processing the raw materials for export. The African raw materials were bought at a very low price while manufactured goods from abroad were sold at an expensive price. This situation accounted for the impoverishment of most Africans.20

Military Impact of the Second World War on Africa The Second World War had a major influence on the military structure in Africa. About a million Africans were drafted into the military to fight the war. The military in Africa was under the control of the colonial powers that controlled them during that period. For instance, it was reported that “during the Second World War over half-a-million African troops served with the British army as combatants and non-combatants in campaigns in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Italy, and Burma – the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade.”21 With the military training received during the war, African soldiers had already acquired the experiential knowledge of war and administration needed to fight for their independence. With the knowledge acquired, African soldiers realized that there is power in unity. They got to know the importance of being united to get their independence from the colonial powers. Thus, after the Second World War, the soldiers were united. This unity and cooperation among African nations made them more encouraged to fight for the independence of their states. In the words of Erin Myrice: After World War II, this lack of unification was no longer an issue. This bondage formed a common goal to fight for freedom and independence. This unification strengthened African nationalism. The larger a group is, the more likely they are to be heard. African nationalists made sure their voices were heard around the world, and this helped tear down European colonialism in Africa.22

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Africa in the Cold War Although the First and Second World Wars had ended, some issues were still unsolved in these wars. This resulted in the Cold War, which was a war between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) who were the countries that emerged as the new superpowers in international politics after 1945. It was a war between the West led by the United States and the East led by Russia.23 The two parties involved fought over ideologies on which States’ social, political, and economic systems should be run. However, their fight never resulted in a military war between the two blocs. The fact is that the Cold War impacted almost all the continents even after it ended in 1991. On the one hand, this can be viewed from the perspective of ideological casualties of these battles. This was expatiated more by scholars in history and global affairs like Odd Arne Westad and James Scott. According to these political scientists, “an even greater number of Africans might be considered casualties of the Cold War’s ideological battles.”24 Jeffrey J. Byrne went further by stating that: Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of African peasants became collateral damage in colonial counter-insurgency campaigns masquerading as anticommunist crusades or subjected to the postcolonial state’s ruthless and misguided efforts at social and economic transformation (as had so many Ukrainian and Chinese peasants before them). Thus, while not all of the continent’s miseries over the past half-century are attributable to the Cold War, it is certainly a central concern in the history of modern Africa.25

This statement by Byrne succinctly captures the way Africa has suffered as a result of the political and economic ideology that was injected into its political system by the superpowers in international politics. These ideologies, capitalism and communism, contributed a lot to the worldview of the nationalists in Africa. Thus, African States were turned to battlegrounds to settle political scores regarding superpowers’ ideologies in the world. On the other hand, there are the physical casualties the continent suffered as a result of the war. This can be seen in how Byrne described some African states as “notorious exemplars” of the war. He posited further that “in the 1970s, countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, and Eritrea became notorious exemplars of the ‘proxy war,’ whereby Washington and Moscow channeled their rivalry into some of the world’s poorest – and remotest.”26 Washington and Moscow above refer to the United States and the Union of Soviet States Republic. Furthermore, Souleyman Saleh Souleyman wrote that: Caught in the middle of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Congo would become not only the epicenter of the East-West competition in Africa but also one of the most dangerous battlegrounds in the world.27

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Africa’s Economic Relations with the World Post-1945 African states have continually aimed at fostering economic development and growth in the continent—hence the need for the various multilateral cooperation it has reached with developed nations over the years. In most cases, the objectives of this economic relation since 1945 are to promote trade, enhance foreign direct investment in the continent, receive foreign aids from developed nations for specific areas of the economy, get loans, and seek debt reduction or forgiveness. It is noteworthy to mention that Africa’s economic troubles have been on since the end of the Second World War. As discussed above, Africa’s economic troubles started when the cost of exportation of cash crops and raw materials produced in Africa increased, thus making it difficult to boost the economy of the states in the continent. Ocheni and Nwankwo described this situation with the term “accelerator and multiplier effect,” which refers to the fact that there was “no organic linkage between agricultural and industrial sector in Africa.”28 Africa’s economic relations with the world can be viewed from four perspectives. The first has to be based on its relationship with its former colonial masters who, after decolonizing the continent, still made plans and set up structures to make the continent keep up with the global economy’s realities. According to Anna Katharina Stahl: Due to its colonial past, Europe has traditionally considered the African continent as its own backyard. Moreover, with many African colonies gaining independence, the United States (US) has increased its economic and diplomatic relations with this region. It comes as no surprise that the US and the European Union (EU) are the most important providers of aid to African developing countries and are commonly referred to as so-called traditional donors.29

Thus, colonial masters (most of which are European nations such as Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal), even after colonizing African states, still made policies and established organizations that organized funds for African states to help African countries establish infrastructures, schools, and roads. A good example is the foreign aid to Africa, which is done via the Development Assistance Committee. This committee was created as a body under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1961. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a unique forum where the governments of 36 member states with market economies work with each other as well as with more than 70 non-member economies to promote economic growth, prosperity, and sustainable development.30

The major countries in the Development Assistance Committee include the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the European Union. According to reports, “OECD member countries account for 63

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percent of world GDP, three-quarters of world trade, 95 percent of world official development assistance, over half of the world’s energy consumption, and 18 percent of the world’s population.”31 Secondly, aside from creating a relationship with its colonial masters to boost its economy, relationships have also been established with other developed nations who, in most situations, serve as donors to the African continent. The major donors to the African continent are China and America. These countries keep creating strategic partnerships with different African countries. In its desire to cement its position as a superpower, the United States has been interested in the economic affairs of African states for decades. This was furthered through J. F. Kennedy’s campaign for the office of the president of the United States of America. Kennedy was famously known to be interested in supporting Africa. In an essay by Anne-Marie Angelo and Tom Adam Davies, the writers after a close examination of President John Kennedy’s administration opined that “the Kennedy administration fostered an approach to sub-Saharan African economic development that forged a robust relationship between government aid and American business investment.”32 The writer’s view is foregrounded with the number of US investments in Africa during and after President Kennedy’s administration. The relationship is still on in the twenty-first century. For instance, in the year 2000, the United States created the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which is a means of sustaining economic relations with African countries. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a United States Trade Act, enacted on 18 May 2000 as Public Law 106 of the 200th Congress. AGOA has since been renewed to 2025. The legislation significantly enhances market access to the US for qualifying Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Qualification for AGOA preferences is based on a set of conditions contained in the AGOA legislation.33

This law allows for the exportation of products with duty and stamp exemption to the United States from African states eligible based on the law’s requirements. The most dominant economic partnership Africa has currently is that of China-Africa economic relations. To strengthen the political and economic ties between the continent and China, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation34 was created in 2000 to this effect. This led to the first meeting of the forum held in October 2000. In the words of Taylor,35 “the increase in China’s economic and political involvement in Africa is arguably the most momentous development on the continent since the end of the Cold War.” Also, two policies were made to that effect, and these are the White Paper on China’s Africa Policy, and Foreign Aid publicized in 2006 and 2011, respectively. The China-Africa Policy aims to continue with the existing relationship between the continent and Africa and create a partnership that will entail a win–win situation for both parties involved in their economic relations.36

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Economic relations between Africa and the world are often created through the investment treaties signed between the African States and countries outside the continent. Some of these notable treaties include the treaties between America and Africa, Chinese-African Treaties, East Africa Community-European Union Economic Partnership Agreement, East and Southern Africa-European Union Interim Economic Partnership Agreement, and Southern African Development Community-European Union Economic Partnership Agreement.37 Africa and the World After the Second World War: Political Scene Africa also made its contributions in the sphere of international political relations by forming the Organization of African Union (OAU) in 1963. The OAU was the African structure states needed to carry out some of its plans. One of their plans is the non-alignment policy. With this policy, African states reiterated their commitments not to participate in the Cold War, which occurred between the USSR and the United States. This was further strengthened by the states’ decision in the continent to join the Non-Aligned Movement with the first meeting—the Asia-Africa Conference in Indonesia, where the Havana Declaration of 1979 was made.38 Today, Africa’s relationship with the world is commonly seen with its association with major international organizations in the world to get assistance regarding security challenges, peace resolution, and governance. African states belong to organizations like the United Nations; the World Health Organization; the Commonwealth (which includes Ghana, Nigeria, Gambia, and Sierra Leone); and G20 Developing nations (which consist of African states like Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Tanzania). Africa also has taken up key positions in these international organizations several times.

Africa and the World After the Second World War: Peace and Security Africa keeps receiving assistance from the world when there are incidences of chaos and disorder that have gone beyond the control of the particular state’s security force. This often brings about the need for other member states to render assistance through the United Nations. The United Nations has contributed immensely to peacekeeping operations in Africa in numerous ways. This is in line with the first purpose of the United Nations’ charter, which as provided for in Chapter I, Article I of the charter is: To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and

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international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.39

Perhaps, the positive in this is that countries like Nigeria and other African countries are major contributors to peacekeeping efforts in the continent. Some of the relationships that have been established in regard to peacekeeping between Africa and the world following the Second World War are the United Nations Operations in Congo, which took place between 1960 and 1964; the United Nations Angola Verification Mission I (1990–1991); the United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (1993–1997); the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic (1998–2000); the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea; the United Nations Operations in Burundi (2004–2006); and the United Nations Mission in Sudan, among others.40 Africa has contributed its part to the peacekeeping operations in other countries outside Africa. Examples are the peacekeeping operations in countries like Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq, among others in which African soldiers also participated in fighting the wars necessary for stability. Besides these peacekeeping operations, the United Nations has taken steps to assist the continent by creating the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa in 2013. According to the United Nations, this is to “enhance international support for African development and security and improve UN system support coordination.”41 In addition to this, the United Nations is determined to facilitate discussions over Africa’s political and economic development as seen in its contribution to the “New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a socio-economic flagship Program of the African Union.”42 NEPAD objectives are “to eradicate poverty, promote sustainable growth and development, integrate Africa in the world economy and accelerate the empowerment of women.”43 Also, the United Nations has helped reduce the rate of criminal acts in Africa by creating the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which was established to try the popular cases of those who committed genocide in Rwanda.

Africa’s Cultural Relations with the World Africa, over the years, has established strong cultural relationships with the world. The culture here refers to the way of life of a particular group of people (Africa in this context). It refers to the set of beliefs and ideologies of people. According to renowned anthropologist Burnett Tylor, the term “culture” means “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities acquired by human beings in a society.”44 The colonial ties between the African states and their former colonial powers hugely influenced Africa and the world’s cultural relations. This is because most states colonized by Europeans started incorporating Europeans’

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lifestyle gradually into the indigenous culture. For instance, the French colonial government principle of assimilation is a good example of how the French culture has affected some African states to date, most especially in terms of food, music, language, and dressing. Africa’s cultural relations with the world often revolve around factors like African literature, arts, festivals, media, fashion, religion, music, and entertainment in general. This has brought about prestige for the continent on different occasions and created a basis through which Africa relates to the world. Africa relates with the outside through art when art exhibitions are organized and promoted for people from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and America (North and South) to view the beautiful designs and cultural heritage in the continent. These exhibitions have played a huge role in making outsiders see the aesthetic nature of the continent. According to Rebecca Anne Proctor, these African cities—Accra, Addis Ababa, Cape Town, Dakar, Lagos, and Marrakech—are regarded as the emerging art capital of the continent.45 Some of these exhibition centers46 in Africa include: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Stevenson Gallery, located in Cape Town, South Africa Abderrahim Iqbi, which is situated in Morocco B’Chira Art Center, located in Tunisia Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa Cape Gallery, which is situated in Cape Town, South Africa Autour de la Terre II, which is situated in Tunisia Safar Khan Art Gallery in Cairo, Egypt Windhoek Triennial, which is situated in Namibia Gallery 1957 in Accra, Ghana ANO Ghana Artists Alliance Gallery, which is situated in Ghana. Afriart Gallery, which is situated in Kampala, Uganda First Floor Gallery, which is situated in Harare, Zimbabwe Banana Hill Art Gallery, which is situated in Nairobi, Kenya Omenka Gallery, which is situated in Lagos, Nigeria47 Eureka Galerie, which is situated in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.48

Also, certain exhibition centers are not based in Africa. These centers present the opportunity for the world to see the arts in their regions too. They serve as platforms for the expression of African culture to the world. Such exhibition centers outside Africa are: 1. The Smithsonian: National Museum of African Art 2. The Bode Museum based in Germany 3. Museum of the African Diaspora based in San Francisco, California 4. Out of Africa Gallery, in Barcelona, Spain49

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Furthermore, African festivals have been a good means through which the continent has created a relationship with the world following the Second World War. Examples of such festivals after the war which captures the attention of people across the world include the First World Festival of Negro Arts; The First Pan-African Cultural Festival, which took place in Algeria in the year 1969; and the Second World Festival of Black Arts and Culture, popularly known as FESTAC, which took place in Lagos in 1977.50 These events have been taken over by the entertainment industry in Africa, which keeps showcasing the African culture throughout the world through Afrobeats and Nollywood plays. Hence, this has also contributed immensely to Africa’s cultural relationship with the world, as seen in the rate at which the numerous African plays and video songs are watched. Apart from Afrobeats, the music in North Africa has a connection with that of the Middle East. This displays Africa’s culture to the external world. Also, the mass media platforms’ role in creating and cementing Africa’s cultural relations cannot be downplayed. This is because Africa’s culture is often linked with a mass media platform. These platforms include the radio, newspapers, magazines, television, and the internet (social media)—the last of these things has recently taken a huge role in presenting the continent’s culture to the world. After the Second World War, the media was a great tool for people of other cultures outside the African continent to watch and hear African theatrical practices that entail storytelling, dancing, and drama (rituals). A recent article by the New York Times further shows how African culture has gained prominence in the world. This article written by Adenike Olanrewaju describes the emergence of Genevieve Magazine, Exquisite Magazine, Today’s Woman, and Glam Africa—all of which are Nigerian magazines based on the lifestyle and culture of the people of Nigeria.51

Conclusion The end of the Second World War resulted in so many decolonization movements in Africa. It is one of the dominant factors that necessitated granting the right to self-determination to African states. This right hereby gave those who became leaders of African states the freedom to act out (without interference or control by external states) their preferred means of governance, economic systems, and military structure. They also had the free will to create a relationship either unilateral, regional, or on a continental level with states outsides the continent, as well as vital international organizations. Indeed, 70 years after the end of the Second World War, Africa has successfully established numerous cultural, political, military, social, and economic relations with developed nations of the world. It is common to see African leaders travel to developed nations to establish a relationship with these nations, all in their bid to seek help from these nations.

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Notes 1. W. Murray and A. R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). 2. LCPS, “World War II: Causes (1919–1939),” LCPS, n.d., https://www.lcps. org/cms/lib/VA01000195/Centricity/Domain/10599/Causes%20of%20W WII.pdf. 3. Lumen Learning, “Casualties of World War II,” Lumen Learning, n.d., https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/ casualties-of-world-war-ii/. 4. Helen von Bismarck, “Defining Decolonization,” The British Scholar Society 27 (2012). 5. Office of the Historian, “Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960,” Office of the Historian, n.d., https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/asiaand-africa. 6. Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization, “Self-Determination,” Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization, n.d., https://unpo.org/article/ 4957. 7. Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization, “Self-Determination.” 8. E. Myrice, “The Impact of the Second World War on the Decolonization of Africa” (paper, 17th Annual Africana Studies Student Research Conference and Luncheon, 2015). 9. See United Nations, “History of the United Nations,” United Nations, n.d., https://www.un.org/en/model-united-nations/history-united-nations. 10. United Nations, “History of the United Nations.”. 11. United Nations, “Trusteeship Council,” United Nations, n.d., https://www. un.org/en/ccoi/trusteeship-council. 12. United Nations, “Decolonization,” United Nations, n.d., https://www.un. org/en/sections/issues-depth/decolonization/. 13. D. F. McHenry, “The United Nations and Decolonization,” Africa Report 30, no. 5 (1985): 4. 14. South African History Online, “The Effects of WW2 in Africa,” South African History Online, n.d., https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/effects-ww2-africa. 15. D. Killingray, “The Colonial Army in the Gold Coast: Official Policy and Local Response 1890–1947” (Ph.d dissertation, University of London, London, England, 1982). 16. L. Grundlingh, “The Recruitment of South African Blacks for Participation in the Second World War,” in Africa and the Second World War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1986), 181–203. 17. V. Khapoya, “African Nationalism and the Struggle for Freedom,” in The African Experience (New York: Pearson Education, 2013), 150. 18. Office of the Historian, “Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960.”. 19. S. Ocheni and B. C. Nwankwo, “Analysis of Colonialism and Its Impact in Africa,” Cross-Cultural Communication 8, no. 3 (2012): 46–54. 20. Ocheni and Nwankwo, “Analysis of Colonialism.”. 21. D. Killingray and M. Plaut, Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War (Wooridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd., 2010). 22. Killingray and Plaut, Fighting for Britain. 23. Rug, “The Cold War,” Rug, n.d., https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= web&rct=j&url=

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24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/9817310/c1.pdf&ved=2ah UKEwjq3_ngz_XrAhUzmVwKHfmPADsQFjAEegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw 2nOemuCi03T6HPIs2AV_Zn&cshid=1600537245578. R. A. Goldberg, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. By Odd Arne Westad (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 484. Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Craig Daigle, The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2014). Kalinovsky and Daigle, The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War. S. S. Souleyman, “Cold War Battleground in Africa: American Foreign Policy and the Congo Crisis, January 1959-January 1961” (Master’s thesis, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2013). Souleyman, “Cold War.”. A. K. Stahl, “Fostering African Development, Governance and Security Through Multilateral Cooperation Between China and Western Donors: The Case of the China-DAC Study Group,” in China-Africa Relations: Governance, Peace and Security, eds. G. B. Mulugeta and H. Liu (Addis Adaba: Institute for Peace and Security Studies, 2013), 74–96. See: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “What is the OECD?” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, n.d., https://www.oecd.org/about/. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “What is the OECD?”. A. Angelo and T. A. Davies. “‘American Business Can Assist [African] Hands:’ The Kennedy Administration, US Corporations, and the Cold War Struggle for Africa,” The Sixties 8, no. 2 (2015): 156–178. Angelo and Davies, “‘American Business.’”. Ian Taylor, The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) (London: Routledge, 2010). Taylor, The Forum. O. Ajakaiye, “China and Africa–Opportunities and Challenges” (2006). See: Trade Law Centre, “Africa’s External Relations,” Trade Law Centre, n.d., https://www.tralac.org/resources/by-region/africa-s-external-relations.html. See: Jatin Verma’s IAS Academy, “A Brief Overview of Non-Alignment Movement,” Jatin Verma’s IAS Academy, October 26, 2019, https://www.jatinv erma.org/a-brief-overview-of-non-alignment-movement-nam. United Nations, “Chapter 1: Purposes and Principles,” United Nations, n.d., https://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/index.html. See: United Nations Peacekeeping, “List of Past Peacekeeping Operations,” United Nations Peacekeeping, n.d., https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/list-ofpast-peacekeeping-operations. United Nations Peacekeeping, “List of Past Peacekeeping Operations.”. See: United Nations General Assembly, November 20, 2002, Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly—Final Review and Appraisal of the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s and Support for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, fifty-seventh session, A/57/468/Add., https://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol= a/res/57/7. See: African Union Development Agency, NEPAD in Brief (South Africa: AUDA, n.d.), https://www.nepad.org/publication/nepad-brief.

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44. E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom, vol. 2 (London: J. Murray, 1871). 45. See: Lilian Diarra, “Africa’s 10 Best Contemporary Art Galleries,” Culture Trip, October 27, 2016, https://theculturetrip.com/africa/articles/the-ult imate-guide-to-africa-s-10-best-contemporary-art-galleries/. 46. Diarra, “Africa’s 10 Best Contemporary Art Galleries.”. 47. See: Becky Maschke, “West Africa’s 10 Best Contemporary Art Galleries,” Culture Trip, December 7, 2016, https://theculturetrip.com/africa/nigeria/ articles/west-africa-s-10-best-contemporary-art-galleries/. 48. See: Rebecca Anne Proctor, “Contemporary Art from Africa Is Seizing Global Attention: Here’s Your Guide to Six Emergent Art Markets Making It Happen,” Art Net, October 2, 2019, https://www.google.com/amp/s/ news.artnet.com/exhibitions/intelligence-report-african-art-market-1665166/ amp-page. 49. See: World Travel Information, “African Art All Over the World: Current Exhibitions,” World Travel Information, March 5, 2018, https://www.worldtravel-info.net/country/article/1638/african-art-all-over-the-world-currentexhibitions%20on%20September%2021. 50. David Murphy, “Performing Global African Culture and Citizenship: Major Pan-African Cultural Festivals from Dakar 1966 to FESTAC 1977,” Tate, August 2018, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-pap ers/30/performing-global-african-culture-and-citizenship. 51. A. Olanrewaju, “Nigerians’ Growing Cultural Influence Around the World,” Council on Foreign Relations, November 7, 2018, https://www.cfr.org/blog/ nigerians-growing-cultural-influence-around-world.

CHAPTER 5

Colonialism, Coloniality, and Colonial Rule in Africa Bukola A. Oyeniyi

Introduction In February 2005, France’s National Assembly, the Assemblée Nationale, passed into law a bill that mandated schoolteachers to teach schoolchildren about the ‘positive presentation of French colonialism’ and to assert ‘the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in North Africa’.1 The bill met with an uproar in former French colonies, most especially in Algeria. Benjamin Stora, a French historian and an expert on North Africa history, described France’s intention as tantamount to waging a ‘dangerous war of memories’ and therefore lent his voice for the abrogation of the bill.2 In order to preserve diplomatic relations between France and its former settler colonies, most especially Algeria, President Jacques Chirac of France repealed the law in 2006. Prior to 2005, no less debates have assailed the question of the use of memory, most especially the historical memory, in African history. For example, writing on colonialism and colonial rule in Africa, Roland Oliver, and John Donnelly Fage noted the benign nature of colonialism, suggesting that colonial administration aimed at the maintenance of ‘peace and the rule of law’ and the fulfilment of the ‘moral obligation’ to develop Africa. Adu Boahen, the Ghanaian historian, challenged this notion of a benevolent Europe, arguing, in the main, that the end of colonialism was ‘… the ruthless exploitation of the

B. A. Oyeniyi (B) Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_5

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resources of Africa for the sole benefit of colonial powers and their mercantile, mining, and financial companies in the metropolitan countries’.3 Undoubtedly, the above illustrates the importance of history and the historical memories in national development, however, one cannot but ask: what is important with remembering the past in a certain or specific way? The differences between Adu Boahen’s views and those held by both the French National Assembly and the duo of Roland Oliver and John Donnelly Fage showed that the dust has yet to be settled on the history of colonialism and coloniality in Africa. Therefore, as more and new evidence is coming to light on African history, there is the constant need to review and rewrite the history of Africa. This chapter is an effort in this regard. As previous studies on colonial rule in Africa have shown, the years 1880– 1935 were watershed moments in African history. While the literature showed the importance of the speed of change that occurred in their conclusions, their key arguments were that the consolidation of both European rule and Christianity, and the exploitation of African resources and labor had shortterm, medium-term, and long-term impacts that shaped Europe and defined Africa and Africans. These years can be bifurcated into the shorter, 1880– 1910, and the longer, 1910–1935 periods. The shorter period was the period of imperial conquest and occupation while the longer period was dominated by consolidation of European control and exploitation of African resources and labor. As of 1880, not a single European nation controlled any part of East Africa. However, the same cannot be said of West Africa, as different European powers had seized, controlled, and colonized islands and coastal cities in Senegal and Sierra Leone, Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Ivory Coast, Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin) and Nigeria—all in West Africa. In Central Africa, the Portuguese had taken control of coastal Mozambique and Angola while, in Southern Africa, Europeans had established themselves along both the coastal areas and the hinterlands. In North Africa, Algeria was colonized by the French while Egypt did not come under British control until 1882. Notwithstanding the above, about 80% of African continent was under their respective kings and queens, existing as either empires or kingdoms, centralized or acephalous communities. By 1914, what started out modestly as an era of ‘Legitimate Trade’ in the late 1880s had transformed into a full-blown colonial rule and hitherto independent African empires and kingdoms, centralized and acephalous communities, had yielded place to European colonial holdings of varying sizes and shapes. Only Liberia, America’s sphere of influence in West Africa, and Ethiopia, which defeated Italy and thereby preserved its independence in East Africa, was uncolonized. The resultant change was quick-fire, and the pace of the transformation that followed was frenetic. This development was not only a veritable revolution, but it was also an overthrowing of a whole world, an uprooting of beliefs and ideas, and a replacement of an immemorial way of life with a new and unknown one. Africa and Africans had to either perish or

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adapt and re-orient themselves to this new global socio-economic and political change for which they were unprepared and untrained for. Africa’s relationship with Europe dated back to over three hundred years before the 1800s. If this age-old relation between Europe and Africa did not lead to conquest, partition and colonization for over three hundred years, why then did the relationship transform into colonization between the 1880 and 1935? In other words, why was Africa, a continent of over 28 million square kilometers, conquered and partitioned, divided and colonized by European nations as at the period it was? What were the nature, structure, and characteristics of the colonial system that was introduced? How did Africans react to colonial rule? What coping mechanisms were developed and what accommodations were made? Given its impacts, did the colonial system undermine African institutions and structures, societies, and peoples? How has colonialism shaped and continue to shape the history of Africa today? The colonial period has been described both as an episode4 and an epoch5 in African history. What is the importance of these views to our understanding of colonialism, coloniality, and colonial rule in Africa? These are some of the questions that this chapter provides answers to.

The Scramble for Africa and Colonial Rule in Africa: A Provenance The Scramble for Africa described series of events that happened in both Europe and Africa between the ending of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the onset of European conquest and partitioning of Africa. Given Africa’s long history of relationship with Europe, the Scramble shocked everyone, including two of its most ardent supporters, Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany. What gave rise to the Scramble and how did it begin? In what way(s) did it lead to outright colonization? There is a huge tome of literature on the Scramble for Africa; hence, this is not an appropriate place to pull together all available reasons. However, notable explanations given ranged from economic and socio-religious explanations to psychological and diplomatic explanations. Notwithstanding a huge volume of literature explaining the Scramble, the historiography of the partition continues to grow as the controversies associated with the subject remain emotive. A better starting point in explaining the Scramble for Africa is the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (TST), which was enacted into law by the British parliament in 1807. Despite its abolition in 1807, slavery did not end in most of British Empire, including the Cape Colony, until the 1830s. The abolition of the slave trade reflected the humanitarian currents that followed the enlightenment in the West. Key individuals in this respect include Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglas, T. Fowell Buxton, and William Lloyd Garrison who fought for emancipation and abolition of the TST. Convinced both by

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ideological and moral arguments, these and other men and women fought tirelessly for the ending of chattel slavery. Unarguably, the period of abolition was also the period of the Industrial Revolution, when mercantile capitalism yielded place to industrial capitalism with its specific emphasis on wage labor as opposed to chattel slave labor. Who needs the enslaved Africans when you can use machines? In other words, without the advent of machines, there would have been no end to the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. This development brought about different things in different places. Europe, as at this time, was witnessing the Great Depression and its warehouses were over-flowing with mountains of unsold Manchester cottons, Lyons silk, Hamburg gin, etc. Given this, European economy was in dire need of new markets otherwise it risked an uncertain economic downturn. Africa, as a new market, was a lottery: in Africa’s tropical groove were not only enormous forest products, but also willing Africans who could be used in producing these agricultural products. So, using African labor, agricultural products were transferred to Europe where they were converted into finished goods and shipped back to Africa for sale. Besides being a lottery, Africa was also a winning ticket. It not only served Europe as sources of raw materials and markets for European manufactures, but also provided Europe with overseas holdings where restive European youths, many of whom were faced with unemployment and had become a social malaise, were dumped. European bankers and other creditors soon began to receive returns, as European merchants began to offset hitherto unpaid loans and re-investing gains from overseas enterprises. Besides trade, the holding of overseas empire also soothed European egos, bolster their pride, as a political card drawn in overseas’ holding in Africa could be played out in the chancelleries of Europe. In Africa, industrialization in Europe, which necessitated a frenzied demand for West African forest products, most especially palm oil, had serious impact on domestic slavery and trade, politics, and religion. The Legitimate Trade, as Europeans termed the demand for products of African forests and their acceptance of guilt over three hundred years of the ignoble trade in slaves, involved products such as palm oil, peanuts, and gum Arabic—a dye fixer for the textile industry. In addition to replacing the trade in slaves, the Legitimate Trade also showed the shift in European political economy. Palm oil, for instance, which was originally used for lubricating industrial machines, found more usages in the new industrial and capitalist Europe. No longer was palm oil crucial only to the operation of the technology of the industrial revolution, it was also used in the making of soap. Palmolive, a popular soap made from a combination of palm oil and olive, which started during the period, is still in use globally today. The most fundamental change brought about by the Legitimate Trade was not only in increasing demands for products of West African forests, remarkable changes were also occurring in other areas of African lives. One of the

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most significant impacts of the Legitimate Trade on Africa was increase in demand for slaves for domestic usage. This is paradoxical, as one of the arguments behind the Legitimate Trade was the need to replace the trade in slaves with trade in African forest products. While the Legitimate Trade truly ended the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, it however deepened the demand for slaves for domestic use in Africa, as the European and American abolitionists made no provisions for Africans slave catchers, supervisors, merchants, etc. whose sociopolitical and economic lives had revolved around the trade for more than three hundred years. This absolute lack of considerations for major players in the TST, especially in Africa, played dramatic roles in how the Legitimate Trade contributed to the rise in domestic demand for slaves. As noted in the literature, in its efforts to abolish the slave trade from its source in Africa, Great Britain stationed a squadron of British Navy off from the West African coast and slaves intercepted from slave ships were resettled at Freetown, located along the Atlantic coast of what today is the West African country of Sierra Leone. While this effort led to a total stoppage of the smuggling of human cargoes from Africa into Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South America, it however left African slave catchers, supervisors, and merchants with a huge number of unsold stocks of slaves. Unable to sell their stocks, many resorted into using them in the new trading vistas made possible by the Legitimate Trade. The utilization of slaves in the domestic production of palm oil, peanuts, gum Arabic, and other products that were in higher demands in Europe means that the so-called abolition of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade was only applicable to European holdings in the Americas and what effectively happened in Africa was the reinvention of the slave trade. It was on record that, for many Europeans, this development—reinvention of slavery, was very good for the Legitimate Trade and they therefore did little to stop it. Another transformation brought about by the Legitimate Trade was the emergence of African entrepreneurs, many of whom began to organize trading enterprises in products of African forests in ways never seen before. A notable example was Jubo Jubogha, popularly known as Jaja of Opobo. Jaja was a merchant prince, who was kidnapped by Obua Ajukwu of Oguta and sold into slavery in Bonny. He was just a twelve-year-old boy. Jaja, after many years of serving as a slave in the domestic trade, earned his freedom and became the head of one of the most important merchant factions of Bonny Island, the Anna Pepple House. Jaja was not only remarkable for his trade in palm oil along the oil rivers region or oil rivers area, but also for his being savvy in trade. For instance, having risen to head the Anna Pepple House, he bought more trading houses and, eventually, broke away from Bonny in 1869 to establish Opobo as a city-state. Besides the emergence of men like Jaja, new communities, such as Opobo, emerged who owed their importance to the Legitimate Trade. Like Opobo, these new communities, unlike previous ones that were slave markets, became the new markets for both agricultural products and European finished goods.

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Their sudden rise into prominence underscores the importance of the Legitimate Trade. Equally important in the consideration of European trade interest in Africa is the extent to which this interest was threatened by indigenous African authorities, producers, and traders. The discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa in 1886 and 1867, the opening of the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1869, the exportation of vegetable oils and oilseeds—palm oil and kernels, and groundnuts from West Africa between 1874 and 1896 made the Legitimate Trade another pseudonym for Africa’s role as a source for cheap, if not free, raw materials for industries in Europe. The frenzied way with which different European traders and merchants descended on Africa soon produced its own problem—a general collapse in global trade for these products. This situation led to a situation whereby different European traders, in a bid to maximize profits/gains, began to cut African traditional authorities, middleman traders, and also to eliminate other European competitors, began to seek direct access into Africa’s interior. In addition, they began to argue for the establishment of European model of trading and monetary system, weight and measurement, administration and transportation system, most especially, the railways, as ways to improve profitability. As the Europeans argued, only these would facilitate a quick and efficient bulking of African forest products from the hinterlands to the coast and, eventually, to Europe. Buttressing the importance of trade and commerce in the Europeans’ Scramble for Africa and the eventual partitioning of the continent, David Livingstone, a British missionary-explorer, who, in 1873, called for a worldwide crusade to open up Africa and to end the Swahili and Arab slave trade in East Africa, noted that underlying the post-1880’s European relations with Africa were ‘the 3 Cs’: Commerce, Christianity and Civilization’.6 Livingstone described these further as ‘a triple alliance of Mammon, God and social progress’.7 As Thomas Pakenham described what followed Livingstone’s clarion call, the men who followed the advice of Livingstone and scrambled for their shares of Africa, included entrepreneur-kings, journalist-explorers, sailorexplorers, soldier-explorers, pedagogue-explorers, gold-and-diamond tycoons, who brought race-nationalism and missionary zeal into ‘saving Africa for itself while Africa also would be the saving of their countries’.8 Although many of these men and women were not initially supported by their governments, it was realized from the outset that trade, not the gun, would avail Europe the resources of Africa and therefore no sooner the Legitimate Trade commenced than European powers rallied behind these merchants, adventurers, and explorers. European rivalries generated by this new development were by no means small. During this time, the cynosure of all European eyes was not only King Leopold II of Belgium, but also Great Britain, the primus maritime power of the period. From the foregoing, there is no gainsaying the fact that commercial and trading interests cannot be dissociated from the underlying reasons for the Scramble, however, given the dated nature of Euro-African relations, one

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wonders why it took Europeans this long to establish this type of relation with Africa. In addition, the above cannot alone explain the Scramble. Another important factor mentioned in the literature is the need to curb the growth of Islam and to recover European territories that were hitherto lost to the Arab Muslims. In addition to recovering these conquered territories, there was also the need to spread Christianity to other parts of Africa, a development that received more impetus with the Martin Luther-led Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter-reformation. As Livingstone noted, the desire to spread Christianity and European civilization were two other important factors behind the Scramble. As previous studies have shown, rivalry between European Christians and Arab Muslims dated back to the seventh Century CE when Arab Muslims, led by Prophet Muhammed, invaded and conquered areas that were hitherto owned by or under the control of European Christians. Under Prophet Muhammed, the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates, different territories ranging from the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent, Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, and parts of Europe, most especially the Pyrenees, Sicily and the entire Iberian Peninsula were brought under the banner of Islam and Arab control. This had implications not only for trade and religion, but also power relations across Europe. With Arab Muslims’ control of these territories, European Christians lost all land access to India and had to depend on Arab Muslims, as middlemen, in their trade relations with the Indian sub-continents. Given that spices were the sinew of trade and commerce in Europe at this time, the control of land access to India by Arab Muslims meant that Europeans had to rely on Arab Muslims, as middlemen, a position that expressed Europe’s inferiority and also with serious implications for European economy as a whole. Understood in this way, it could be argued that each day that the Arab Muslims dominated and controlled those territories, European Christians faced uncertain economic future. So, basking from defeat and loss of territories, the Latin Church embarked on a series of religious wars with Arab Muslims between the eleventh and thirteenth Centuries CE. The wars, generally called the Crusades, aimed at clawing back those territories hitherto owned or controlled by European Christians in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and the Holy Land from Arab control. The emergence of Islam in the Near East, North Africa, and the southern peripheries of Europe therefore created unease across Europe. The rise of Islamic civilization, especially under the Ayyubids and Mamluks, not only led to Africa playing a major part in the military and political defeat of Europe, but also the revival of knowledge and learning in Europe. Moslems’ occupation of Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula made the rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophical traditions possible and subsequently the placing of Islamic and Arabic intellectual heritage, most especially advances in science and mathematics, before Europe.

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Unlike the Church, others in Europe turned to scientists and explorers for solution. Using Arab Muslims’ science and technology, Christopher Columbus sailed westward and arrived in the Americas. Although Columbus did not reach India, Vasco Da Gama, the 1st Count of Vidigueira, did so. Da Gama linked Europe and Asia by sea and, by so doing, linked the West with the Orient by sea route for the first time. By circumnavigating Africa, European Christians reached India and, in the process, successfully eliminated Arab Muslims in trade and commerce with not only the Indians, but the whole of Asia. By the fourteenth century, European men, most especially, of Jewish extraction, in cities like Genoa, Venice, and Pisa where they learnt from Islamic scholars, drew charts of the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts, designed navigation sketches of the Atlantic Ocean, and therefore made possible knowledge hitherto unknown. With their new acquisition of Moslems’ technologies, most especially the compass, astrolabe, and astronomic knowledge, Europeans not only surged out into the Americas, but also, with confidence and purpose, embarked on the Crusades, a series of religious wars, which started in 1095 CE and ended in 1492 CE, organized in the medieval period by the Latin Church to recover the Holy Land from Islamic rule. Beginning in 1415 CE therefore, the Portuguese took the fortress-town of Ceuta from the Moroccans and, thus began the exploration of the Atlantic Ocean and, later, the Indian Ocean coasts. In North Africa, the Italian citystates and other southern Europeans entered into trade relations with Libya while in the Americas, Europeans invested the labor of stolen and enslaved Africans on equally stolen American lands, realizing enormous wealth, with which they inserted themselves into the Asian trading networks. The Europeans, now armed with enormous wealth, great technologies, and boundless economic and political power, sent Crusaders into the Levant and Christian fleets regained control of the Mediterranean Sea. Trading stations owned and manned by Italians sprang up in different parts of the Near East, Egypt, and North Africa. European timber and metalware, arms and ammunitions were exchanged for spices and perfumes, drugs and silks, sugar and ivory, gold and silver as Europe, led by Great Britain, became the master of global trade and power. Europe not only conquered and imposed itself on the Arab world, but also returned to Africa in a great ‘colonial whirl’, as Bismarck sardonically called it. From Ilala, Central Africa, on April 21, 1873, David Livingstone wrote: I beg to direct your attention to Africa; I know that in a few years I shall be cut off in the country, which is now open: Do not let it shut again! I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity; do you carry out the work which I have begun. I leave it with you!

As both a continuation of efforts at curbing the spread of Islam and ending the slave trade, Christian Missionary societies from different parts of Great

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Britain sent men and women to Central and West Africa for evangelization. Some of these evangelists not only played dramatic roles in the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, but also in the British efforts at stemming the illegal trafficking of enslaved Africans to Brazil when Britain stationed a squadron of its navy on the West African portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The thousands of enslaved Africans that were rescued from enslavers’ ships were released to these missionaries in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where many converted to Christianity, received Western education, and learnt new skills. European Christians, working through different Christian missionary societies, contributed money and resources, including labor, to aid in these efforts. A critical part for achieving success in this enterprise was the need to know the people, their lands, and culture. So, many missionaries compiled records of different things, ranging from nature and characteristics of both African lands and people, culture and languages, crops and mineral resources, etc. These records were not only useful to the missions, but also to merchants. While the missions used these reports to raise funds for their different overseas evangelization schemes, European merchants, hunting after Africa’s agricultural products, trooped to Africa in search of commercial opportunities. The popular argument in most European cities was that only trade in Africa’s products could stop the ignoble trade in slaves. Buoyed by their successes and the new wealth they acquired from the Americas and Asia, European Christians won not only the battle, but also the war. The retreat of Christianity and its replacement with Islam when Arab Muslims dominated North Africa was therefore reversed in the 1800s, as part of efforts to stop the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Christianity came to sub-Saharan Africa. From North Africa to Central and West Africa, British commercial and religious interests competed side-by-side with traders and merchants as well as evangelists and missionaries from other parts of Europe, as Great Britain France, Germany, Portugal, etc. strived among one another to prevent intrusion into each other’s trading activities. Unhealthy rivalries arising from the monopoly trading system sometimes snowballed into open warfare, a development that Otto von Bismarck hoped to resolve by calling a concert of European powers at Berlin, Germany between 1884 and 1885. At this concert, variously called the Congo Conference (Kongokonferenz) or West Africa Conference (Westafrika-Konferenz) or the Berlin Conference, the kings or queens of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, SwedenNorway, and the Ottoman Empire were either present or represented by their representatives. It is axiomatic to note that no African head of government and states (or their representatives) was invited or present at the conference. On agenda at this conference were five important issues. The first was Portugal and Great Britain’s ‘Pink Map’ project through which they coopted Angola and Mozambique—areas corresponding to today’s Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi as their respective spheres of

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influences. The second was France and Great Britain’s claims over areas corresponding to modern day’s Republic of Niger, Republic of Benin, and Lake Chad, which were, on the one hand, ceded to France, and areas corresponding to modern-day Nigeria, Sudan, and Egypt that were, on the other hand, ceded to Great Britain. Separating the two European powers’ land grab in West Africa were what was considered ‘a no man’s land’, a 125-miles-wide expanse of land between the 21st and 23rd meridians east. The third agenda was France and Germany’s claims to the land areas that formed by the intersection of the 14th meridian east and Miltou, which was ceded to France and the area to the south—modern day Cameroon, that was later ceded to Germany. The last two agendas were those between Britain and Germany, on one hand, and France and Italy, on the other hand. While the fourth ceded northern Nigeria to as far as Yola to Britain, the lands from Benoue and Dikoa to as far as the extremity of Lake Chad were ceded to Germany. The fifth gave the intersection of the Tropic of Cancer and the 17th meridian east to Italy while France got the remaining land to the north along the lines from the 15th parallel north and the 21st meridian east. In this way, the continent of Africa was shared among Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and Spain without any recourse to Africans and their leaders and without any consideration of the impact of such ignoble act on Africans, their culture, or their interests. Belgium controlled the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi while France controlled Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Burkina Faso, Republic of Benin, Togo, Gabon, French Cameroun (1922– 1960), Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt (1798–1801), Madagascar, Comoros, Djibouti, and Mauritius. Germany controlled Cameroon and part of Nigeria (1884–1916), Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania (1885–1919), Namibia (1884–1915), Togo, and eastern part of Ghana (1884–1914) while Italy controlled Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia. On its part, Portugal controlled Angola, Mozambique, GuineaBissau, Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe while Spain controlled Spanish Morocco, Western Sahara, Equatorial Guinea, and Fernando Po. Great Britain had the largest colonial holdings in Africa. It controlled Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Mauritius, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Seychelles, South Africa, Namibia, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Part of Cameroon (1884–1960), Ghana, Malawi, Lesotho, and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). In addition to the partitioning of Africa among themselves, the great powers of Europe also arrived at the following at the end of the Berlin Conference: freedom of trade in the Congo basin, ending the slave trade, neutrality of the territories in the Congo basin, freedom to navigate the Congo and Niger rivers and rules were set concerning future occupation of the coast of the African continent. By these rules, European nations presumed ownerships of African states and kingdoms and agreed among themselves that each power must exercise effective control within its spheres. Where one power

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had effective control, the other powers must yield possession to that country. Commenting on the sharing of Africa among the various European powers like a piece of cake, Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister, noted: ‘We have been engaged in drawing lines upon maps where no white man’s foot has ever trod … God will we have been giving away mountains, rivers, and lakes to each other. Only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew where the mountains, rivers, or lakes were’.9

Colonial Conquest of Africa The climax of the European partition of Africa was the Fashoda debacle of 1898, which pitched Britain against France. The incident was more than just a threat of war between France and Great Britain, among its other outcomes was the sealing of Great Britain’s position as the foremost European colonial power in Africa. Great Britain not only gained control of Egypt, but also asserted its predominance over other European powers. Although France failed in its main goals, it however gained control of Tunisia while sharing Morocco with Spain. Germany got a large share from French Congo while Italy gained Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. Great Britain sets up colonies and protectorates, territories, and mandates across Africa. It must be emphasized that at its height, Great Britain built the largest empire in history. In fact, its emergence as the foremost world economic, political, and military power cannot be dissociated from the enormous resources accruable to Great Britain from these overseas colonies and protectorates, territories, and mandates. Among other things, the epithet, ‘the empire on which the sun never sets’ underscores the enormous number of people—about 412 million or 25% of world population and land areas—about 13,700,000 square miles that came under the British Empire during this time. English language, which is spoken widely across the world today, spread due only to the extensive nature of the British Empire. The same can also be said of the widespread influence of the British on global politics, law, and culture. Like Britain, France, having lost its overseas colonies, protectorates, and mandate territories in the Americas, shifted its attention to Africa, Indochina and the South Pacific. Using the Mission Civilisatrice (The Civilizing Mission) as a pretext, France attacked and conquered Algiers in 1830. As Jules Francois Camille Ferry, a Third Republic French statesman who was famous for his love of colonialism, empire-building and anticlerical education policy, noted: ‘The higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilize the inferior races’.10 To French citizens like Ferry, masquerading European culture as a civilizing mission, especially the spreading of the French language and Catholic Christianity were enough justifications for the military invasion, outright decimation of population, and racism that European colonialism meant to African peoples from Algeria and Senegal to Mali and Cameroon. As part of this civilizing mission, Africans under French colonial rule were offered full French citizenship rights, not minding that the much-touted assimilation

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was, in reality, a subterfuge that allowed France to import cheap raw materials from the colonies and export manufactured items from France into the colonies. The colonized people whose blood allowed France to rebuild and recover both its empire and (French) prestige among other European powers were as subjects not citizens. Prior to the Berlin Conference, Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and other European powers adopted different measures in acquiring and maintaining spheres of trade. These include settlement and exploration, the establishment of commercial posts and missionary settlements, as well as the occupation of strategic areas, and the signing of treaties of friendship and commerce with African rulers. By 1902, Europe and the world had accepted that the whole of Africa, except Liberia and Ethiopia, was the property of one or other of the European colonial powers. With Africa portioned among Europeans in Europe, how did European determine their boundaries on the ground in Africa? In other words, how did colonialism and colonial rule translate into concrete form in Africa? Between the first ten and twenty years, no European colonial powers took effective control of their respective colonies. The establishment of effective administration was rarely completed before 1914. Many, if not all of them, were content with leaving these territories to their merchants and traders who went on carrying out trading activities as before. To effect the paper partitioning therefore, treaty-making, which spanned between 1885 and 1902, was the most significant means adopted by the different European powers. In general, two types of treaties were adopted: bilateral agreements between Europeans themselves and those between Africans and Europeans. The Afro-European treaties were of two kinds. On the one hand were treaties dealing with slave trade and other commercial interests. On the other hand, were treaties through which African leaders surrendered their sovereignty in return for protection, or not to enter into any treaty obligations with other European powers. For the most part, these treaties were not made directly with the kings and queens of the different European nations; rather they were made with their representatives or private organizations emanating from those European countries. Where such treaties were accepted by the European governments, such areas were either annexed or declared a protectorate. Different African governments signed treaties for different reasons. Sometimes, a weak African government shored up its reputation among powerful neighbors by entering into treaties with European powers and, by so doing, gained more power and trade relations. There were some who entered into these treaties in order to renounce allegiance to other powerful African states and to regain their freedom. For some more, it helped in keeping errant subjects in line. A notable example in this regard was the call by the Kabaka Mwanga II of the Buganda kingdom to the Imperial British East African Company (IBEAC) to ‘be good enough to come and put me on my throne’. In lieu of ensuring peace with his citizens, the king promised IBEAC ‘plenty of ivory and you may do any

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trade in Uganda and all you like in the country under me’. The king went further to note ‘if they want to help us … what repayment should we make them? Because I do not want to give them my land. I want all Europeans of all nations to come to Uganda, to build and to trade as they like’.11 Under Lord Lugard and, later, H.E. Colvile, the Kabaka was not only restored to his throne, but also offered protection. In the resulting treaty, the ‘control of foreign affairs and revenue and taxes’ passed from Mwanga ‘to H.M Govt., whose representative should also be the supreme court of appeal on all civil cases’.12 A similar request was made to the Royal Niger Company and the outcomes were the same as that of the Mwanga.13 In general, entering into treaties with European powers either brought commercial advantages to some African states or freedom from other powerful African states or other European nations. Notwithstanding whatever the advantage to Africans, Lord Lugard wrote concerning these treaties: No man if he understood would sign it, and to say that a savage chief has been told that he cedes all rights to the company in exchange for nothing is an obvious untruth. If he has been told that the company will protect him against his enemies, and share in his wars as an ally, he has been told a lie, for the company have no idea of doing any such thing and no force to do it with if they wished.14

Unlike the above, bilateral treaties between the various European nations differed remarkably from the unequal treaties made with African leaders. In these treaties, Europeans treated themselves as equals, respecting each other’s rights to unilaterally declare any areas as their areas or spheres of influence. Where no contest arose over spheres of interests, such areas were generally recognized, approved, and the monopoly rights of the European nation asserting its claims were respected. Through this, the Anglo-German Treaty, Anglo-French Treaty, Anglo-Italian Treaty, Franco-Portuguese Treaty, German-Portuguese Treaty, Anglo-Congo Free State Treaty, Say-Barruwa Agreement, Niger Convention, Peace of Vereeniging, and various other treaties entered into by the different European powers among themselves fractured the Yoruba, Ngoni, Ndebele, Kikuyu, and many other African ethnic groups and lumped them with other ethnic groups under the same spheres of influence and later colonies and protectorates, which were established and controlled by the British, French, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, etc. In other words, the different ethno-cultural groups that dotted the pre-colonial African landscape were effectively balkanized and brought together with others and ruled for different purposes by their new European colonial overlords without any care, respect, and recognition of such peculiarities as cultural and ethnic, historical, and linguistic differences. To say the least, most of these treaties were unequal and indefensible— legally and morally. Notwithstanding their illegality, African leaders signed them. Given the unequal nature of the treaties, why did African kings sign

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them? The case of King Otumfuo Nana Prempeh I of the Asante Kingdom and of King Ovonramwen Nogbaisi of Benin Kingdom were illustrative examples of what developed during the period. Prempeh I was the thirteenth head of the Ashanti Kingdom who ruled between 1888 and 1931 when he died. The Fante and Ga, two ethnolinguistic groups bordering the Ashanti Kingdom, allied with the British against the Ashanti, their Akan ethno-linguistic overlord who dominated trade, politics, and power in the interior of the Gold Coast. The Fante and Ga hoped that the British would protect them from their powerful neighbor, the Ashanti. Despite its superior military power, the British found the Ashanti a worthy competitor and lost in series of wars between 1824 and 1898, as the Ashanti continued to assert their powers over their neighbors and prevented the British from effectively inserting itself into the coastal trade. Between 1824 and 1898, the British negotiated several truces with the Ashanti, however, their relationship changed when a 16-year-old King Asantehene Prempeh I ascended the throne. Unlike what obtained under his predecessor, the British asked Prempeh I to accept a protectorate over the Kingdom of Ashanti or prepare for war. Undeterred by British might, the young king declined, sending emissaries to William Maxwell, the British Governor that: The suggestion that Asante in its present state should come and enjoy the protection of Her Majesty the Queen and Empress of India is a matter of very serious consideration. I am happy to say we have arrived at this conclusion, that my Kingdom of Asante will never commit itself to any such policy. Asante must remain as of old, at the same time to remain friendly with all White men. I do not write this in a boastful spirit, but in the clear sense of its meaning. The cause of Asante is progressing and there is no reason for any Asante man to feel alarm at the prospects or to believe for a single instant that our cause has been driven back by the events of past hostilities.15

Under the command of Robert Baden-Powell, a British expeditionary force of the Telegraph Battalion of the Royal Engineers invaded Kumasi in January 1896 and, after a long-drawn battle, defeated King Prempeh, sending him into exile in the Seychelles. The case of King Ovonramwen Nogbaisi who ruled the Benin Kingdom between 1888 and 1897 was like that of Prempeh I. When Ovonramwen came into power, Benin was a hub of trade, most especially palm oil, rubber, and ivory. Owing to his influence on trade, many Europeans, most especially James Robert Phillips and Captain Galloway, both British vice-Consuls of Oil Rivers Protectorate, were desirous of bringing Benin under British control. In 1896, Phillips led a British force to overthrow the Oba, disguising as treaty negotiators. Phillip and his men were however ambushed and a few of his men were killed. As a punishment, Harry Rawson led the Benin Punitive Expedition in 1897, which led to the burning down and looting of Benin City. The gold, ivory, and bronze figures decorating the royal palaces were looted,

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huge numbers of inhabitants were killed, and Ovonramwen, who had earlier escaped but returned to Benin, was arrested, and sent on exile to Calabar where he died in 1914. In the case of the Mossi (now Burkina Faso), King Wobogo replied Captain Restenave, the French officer in 1895: I know the Whites wish to kill me in order to take my country, and yet you claim that they will help me to organize my country. But I find my country good just as it is. I have no need of them. I know what is necessary for me and what I want. I have my own merchants. Consider yourself fortunate that I do not order your head to be cut off. Go away now, and above all, never come back.16

Similarly, King Menelik of Ethiopia wrote to Queen Victoria of Great Britain in April of 1891 that: I have no intention of being an indifferent spectator, if the distant powers hold the idea of dividing up Africa. Ethiopia has been for the past fourteen centuries an island of Christians in a sea of Pagans. Since the All-Powerful has protected Ethiopia up until now, I am hopeful that He will keep and enlarge it in the future. I do not think for a moment that He will divide Ethiopia among other powers.17

The above is not in any way different from the words of King Hendrik Wittboi, the Nama leader in South West Africa, to the Germans in 1894—The Lord has established various kingdoms in the world. Therefore, I know and believe that it is no sin or crime that I should wish to remain the independent chief of my land and people. In the case of Mozambique, King Makombe Hanga noted in 1895 that: ‘I see how you White men advance more and more in Africa, on all sides of my country companies are at work. My country will also have to take up these reforms and I am quite prepared to open it up. I should like to have good roads and railways, but I will always remain the Makombe my fathers have been’.18 In his rejection of French colonial intervention, Lat Joor Ngoone Latiir Joop who ruled of Cayor, a Wolof state that is today in south-central Senegal until his defeat in the hands of the French on October 26, 1868, noted bluntly: ‘As long as I live, be assured, I shall oppose, with all my might the construction of this railway’.19 From the Ashanti Kingdom to Benin City, from the Matabele war to the 1898 Battle of Omdurman, failure to sign the treaties of Friendship and Commerce brought similar fate that befell both Prempeh and Ovonramwen to Cetshwayo of the Zulu, while Lobengula of the Ndebele died in flight. Only Menelik of Ethiopia, who fought back and defeated the Italian invaders, maintained his sovereignty and independence. Realizing the futility of refusing to sign Treaties of Friendship and Commerce, many Africans resorted to diplomacy to avoid war. Prempeh I of the Ashanti Kingdom wrote to Great Britain, seeking to avoid a war with

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Britain. Similarly, King Lobengula in his effort to stave off Cecil Rhodes’ occupation of the Ndebeleland, also wrote to Britain while King Menelik of Ethiopia wrote to different world leaders including those of Great Britain, Russia, France, United States of America, etc. on September 17, 1895, noting, among other things, that: Formerly the boundary of Ethiopia was the sea. Failing the use of force and failing the aid of the Christians, our boundary on the sea fell into the hands of the Muslims. Today we do not pretend to be able to recover our seacoast by force; but we hope that the Christian Powers, advised by our Saviour, Jesus Christ, will restore our seacoast boundary to us, or that they will give us at least a few. Enemies have now come upon us to ruin our country and to change our religion. Our enemies have begun the affair by advancing and digging into the country like moles. With the help of God, I will not deliver up my country to them. Today, you who are strong, give me of your strength, and you who are weak, help me by prayer.20

As these different examples have shown, while some African leaders welcome European rule, others did whatever they could—either by signing lopsided and unequal treaties or by waging actual wars—to prevent a colonial occupation of their lands. European powers were able to maintain their own in their dealings with African leaders due to the advantages that accrued to them following the Industrial Revolution. The technological progress associated with the Industrial Revolution was not limited to the emergence of industrial complexes that were churning out goods in ways never seen before, it also brought about progress in rail and sea transportation and, most fundamentally, in warfare. Unlike African leaders and their stock of muzzle-loading muskets, the Europeans were many years ahead in weaponry. Europeans, as at this time, had the first machine gun, the Maxim gun, and the breech-loading rifles. The combination of these two new weapons heralded a new phase in European engagements with Africa, as Europe now had new weapons that were ten times powerful than whatever existed anywhere at this time. Hilaire Belloc, the English poet summed up the situation aptly: Whatever happens we have got / The maxim-gun and they have not.21 So, either the actual use of the Maxim guns, breach-loading rifles, and repeater rifles or the threat of their usages ensured that African leaders surrendered their sovereignty, trade networks, and their resources to these Europeans.

Nature and Characteristics of Colonial Administration in Africa Europeans established two types of colonies in Africa—Settler and Non-Settler colonies where socio-economic and political administration runs on two broad policies—a policy of assimilation and a policy of association. Below, we will

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look at these two colonial systems and the two policies—the Direct Rule System and Indirect Rule System—that Europeans foisted on these colonies. It is important to assert from the beginning that no two colonial administrations were the same. In other words, the different European colonial powers adopted whatever systems that were deemed expedient. As was the case with European colonization of the Americas, many Europeans relocated to Africa on permanent basis while some limited themselves to taking up missionary works, economic, and colonial administrative appointments in Africa. Those who relocated to Africa on permanent basis established settler colonies in different parts of Africa. In settler colonies, mass immigration of Europeans was used to eliminate indigenous African population. As can be seen in the cases of the Dutch in South Africa, Cecil Rhode and the British in Zimbabwe, British in Kenya, Italians in Libya, violence, and warfare were also deployed in securing footholds and ensuring European permanence on African soil. After the European conquests, lands were taken away from Africans and new laws were put in place to ensure legal assimilation and recognition of African indigenous identity within the new colonial framework. Colonial administration in settler colonies was tangentially different from what was obtained in non-settler ones. For example, in non-settler colonies, an admixture of direct and indirect rule where Africans were incorporated into local administration developed. Although cases such as in the French colonies, where native population was denied any participation in government and administration, abound, they however cannot compare with what obtained in settler colonies. Consequently, over the long run, settler colonies offered Europeans unbounded wealth, including control of lands. While native population was regarded as racially inferior across all European colonies, the case of settler colonies like South Africa under the Dutch where color bar, racism, etc. were some of the common features of European-African relations, differed remarkably from, say British in Nigeria or in Ghana. Settler colonies were predominantly established in Southern Africa where settlers from Holland, Britain, Germany, and Portugal established themselves as owners of South Africa, Northern and Southern Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), Mozambique, Angola, and South West Africa (Namibia). In addition, the British also established a settler colony in Kenya, East Africa while the French did the same in Algeria, North Africa. The French, Belgians, and Germans practiced the Direct Rule System in their colonies. Under this system, European colonial powers assumed a direct socio-economic and political control and administration of their African colonies. In addition, the colonies were considered as parts or units of the European imperial countries. Consequently, European imperial countries made all laws and implement all policies for the colonies. In line with the Policy of Assimilation—a policy that aims at ‘civilizing’ African societies to make them more like European societies—Europeans’ direct administration means the exclusions of local agencies in socio-economic and political control and administration. In other words, there was a centralized administration, usually

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based in the urban centers, which stressed a Policy of Assimilation that wanted to make Africans French, English, Germans, etc. in language and culture, in thoughts and education, etc. except in their skin color. Under this policy, Europeans were not ready to negotiate governance with African rulers and therefore imposed a European-style government on African societies. Because native agencies were discouraged, there was a huge military presence in the colonies to forestall rebellion. Under the Indirect Rule System, European colonial overlords accepted that a principle of decentralization of power would ease socio-economic and political control and administration of African societies. So, they cultivated local agencies of the paramount chiefs such as kings, chiefs, priests, age-grades, etc. and incorporated them into government and administration. Indirect Rule System also allowed for continuity and was cheap. Europeans argued that since native agents existed before the colonial intrusion, African people would regard and obey them easily. It also allowed for continuity with the past while laying a foundation for a new (progressive) society. Given a paucity of qualified Europeans, the Indirect Rule System was a cheaper way of running overseas administration. Under the Indirect Rule System, European colonial powers appointed European governors and other European officials who served in different capacities in the control and administration of the colonies. While the top echelon of government and administration were staffed by appointed European officials, at the lower rung of the ladder, African kings and chiefs were allowed to implement European policies. The roles of these African native administrators were limited to collection of taxes and levies, policing, and maintenance of peace and order. It must be noted that these local administrators were prohibited from making any decisions that were inimical to the interests of the mother country. Not minding the arguments in support of the Indirect Rule System, a significant drawdown of the system was that it was of no use in non-centralized societies. To ameliorate this, European colonialists appointed Africans who were amenable to their policies and programs as kings and chiefs (called the Warrant Chief System). Great Britain operated the Indirect Rule System in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, etc. Whether under Direct Rule or Indirect Rule, Europeans used the divide and rule tactics to control Africans. This policy not only created divisions, but also increased competitions among various ethno-linguistic groups. While the introduction of mission education led to the emergence of a corps of African educated elites, these highly educated Africans were denied a place in government and administration. Colonial administrations across Africa considered them irritants whose main preoccupation was to foster protests against colonial rule. To this end, African traditional rulers and a few big men, many of whom never uneducated and therefore amenable to manipulations, were empowered. Under the different colonial administrations, relatively large areas were lumped with smaller ethnic groups and governed under a single authority.

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The resultant mutual ethnic suspicions, jealousy, and rivalry are still very much with us today in Africa. Besides promoting division among Africans, colonial administrations also weakened traditional institutions while fostering and sustaining tyrannical and corrupt governments. Under Indirect Rule, the incorporation of traditional paramount rulers into government and administration at the local level did not translate to mean that these African heads had any real powers. Their powers, such as to obtain compulsory labor and impose taxation, as well as enlistment in the military, were subservient to those of the Europeans. Traditional African leaders were merely stooges made to implement Europeans’ unpopular measures. In other words, African traditional rulers were treated as government employees under the supervision and direction of European Regional Governor, Resident Officer, District Commissioners, Technical Officers, and different layers of European administrative officials. Irrespective of its flaws, Indirect Rule cannot be compared to the Direct Rule system. For instance, while Britain allowed for native agency’s incorporation, French colonies were highly centralized and authoritarian. Between 1896 and 1904, the entire eight West African colonies of France were bundled together to form the Federation of French West Africa (FFWA). These colonies were administered from Dakar, the administrative headquarters of the FFWA. Under this system, erstwhile African traditional rulers were denuded of all authorities and turned into mere colonial functionaries, under the supervision of French administrative and political officers. Like France, Portugal, Germany, Italy, and other European colonialists in Africa used this type of colonial socio-economic and political systems across Africa. The system’s economic system was closed and welded the economies of the colonies with those of the mother countries. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, a major driving force behind colonialism is Europe’s need for raw materials and markets for its finished goods. The different colonial administrations therefore embarked on policies and programs that transformed African socio-political and economic lives from subsistence farming characterized by food crop production to cash crop production. The new cash crops were coffee and cocoa, rubber and cotton, corn and gun Arabic, etc. which were required mainly in Europe. By prioritizing the production of these crops over food production, Africa becomes a major exporter of raw materials to Europe. To further maximize gain, Europeans also encouraged importation of finished goods for sale in the colonies, a step which made African economy doubly subservient to European economies. There was also the adoption of European currencies and weights and measures, which tied ‘African markets’ to the various money markets (stock exchanges) in Europe. In addition, Commodity Boards were established as imperial monopolies whose main purpose was to determine prices of African commodities. The Commodity Boards not only set prices to the African producer below the levels obtained on the world market, but they also procured commodities and sell them at highly exorbitant prices on the world

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market. The different European colonialists used the Commodity Boards to exploit colonial producers to shore up their crumbling currencies and their economies. Underlying the setting up of the Commodity Boards is the position that African producers would benefit from a regulated marketing system in which the government fixed crop prices for each season and licensed buyers to protect farmers from ‘abuses’. It was also argued that whatever fund realized by the Boards could be used to cushion future price fluctuations. Using these excuses, colonial governments instituted a structure that economically exploited the colonies for the benefits of the European metropoles. As ancillaries to trade, European colonial powers expanded old roads and build new ones. They also constructed rail lines and harbors to bring raw materials from the hinterlands to coasts for shipment to Europe and built Posts and Telegraphs to facilitate ease of communications between the colonial establishments on the coasts and those in the hinterlands. To ensure the primacy of European economy and protect it from ‘local’ competition, European colonialists adopted the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) trade and economic system, which advocates for the replacing of imports with domestic production. The policy is premised on the fact that a country must attempt to reduce its dependency on foreign import with local production. So, rather than setting up industries in Africa where it obtained raw materials, European colonialists made it a deliberate policy to establish industries only in Europe while finished goods were shipped to Africa for sale. In this way, this colonial economic policy killed all existing domestic African industries or production centers, replacing them with European imports. This invariably fostered Africa’s dependency on European imports. From the above, it can be said that colonialism left indelible marks on Africa and Africans. Some of its impacts are short term while others are both medium term and long term. Due to the emotive nature of the debates on the impact of colonial rule on Africa, this chapter shall now turn to examine this issue.

Impacts of Colonial Rule on Africa From the structure and nature of the different African states to intra- and inter-Africa relations, colonial rule affected Africa in different ways. Given its impacts, it could be argued that modern Africa is a colonial creation. Given the broad nature of colonial impacts on Africa, this section shall examine how colonialism affected Africa under the following headings: nature and structure, power and politics, economy and social relations, intra-Africa, and international relations.

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Nature and Structure of African States Just as the different European spheres of trade and influence transformed into colonies and protectorates, colonies and protectorates transformed into modern African states at independence. In their making, different ethnolinguistic groups were arbitrarily lumped together without any respect for their socio-cultural and historical differences. While colonial rule lasted, no effort was made to eliminate these differences, rather, colonial overlords capitalized on them, using them in attaining their goals. Among other consequences of the above is the fact that each of African states of today is not only a ‘house divided against itself’, but also a bundle of contradictions. Yoruba people of Nigeria, for instance, were divided into chunks, with the bigger chunk becoming a critical part of contemporary Nigeria, while other smaller chunks were parceled away, as minority groups, and distributed among the Benin Republic, Togo, and Ghana. The Hausa states that were critical parts of the old Songhai Empire before colonial rule were also fractured and distributed between Nigeria, Chad, and Niger Republic while several Igbo communities are in modern-day Cameroon. This is not peculiar to West Africa, similar situations pervaded North Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa. Configured in this way, African states were made of arbitrary boundaries, which served in dividing the people rather than in uniting them. Given this, the need to constantly balance parochial interests of competing ethnolinguistic groups characterized nation-building and national development in Africa. Nothing illustrates the damaging effects of this like the ease with which many of these African states devolved into civil war shortly after independence. Nigeria, for instance, got its independence on October 1st, 1960 and, by February 1966, ethnic rivalries between the North and South-East had degenerated into a crisis that resulted in a civil war between 1967 and 1971. In the case of Rwanda, Hutu and Tutsi relations that predated the existence of nation-states in Europe, was destroyed under Belgian colonial control, as Belgian colonial authorities favored the minority Tutsis to the detriment of the majority Hutus who, after colonial rule, saw the minority Tutsis as a ‘new colonialists’ that must be exterminated at all costs. No thanks to colonial arbitrary boundaries and state creation, the Tutsis were fractured and parceled away among three countries—Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo where they exist as minority groups. The different ethno-linguistic groups in Sudan had always existed before the British intrusion between 1899 and 1956. While British colonialism lasted, Sudan was balkanized into a predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking north that was governed separately from a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multilingual south. By so doing, Britain exploited the resources of Sudan and efforts since independence to unite the people and to forge a common identity have resulted in warfare where thousands of Sudanese have been killed while

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millions have been displaced. Today, although further fractured into Sudan and South Sudan, peace and development continue to elude Sudan. The medium-term impact of colonialism is not only these civil wars, but also ethnic suspicions and jealousies that continue to characterize socio-political and economic relations within Africa today. European colonial rule, most especially the use of artificial boundaries in establishing arbitrary states remains one of the most pernicious impacts of colonialism on Africa. This affected ethnic arrangements within the different African states and relationships within and between African states.

Power and Politics Besides loss of control over land, traditional rulers across Africa also lost political control over their people. European colonialism introduced a new system of government that derived legitimacy not from the will of the governed, their culture, or any of the known African values; rather the new government was accountable to lords, kings, and queens in chancelleries and palaces of Europe. Under the new government, African kings and chiefs were reduced to mere government workers and placed under the supervision of European officials. This lack of real power was not just a humiliation, it was a demotion. The establishment of mission schools in the colonies led to the emergence of a new class of educated elites—many of whom were teachers, pastors, nurses, lawyers, doctors, architects, etc. Given that a great majority of these elites were either as equally educated as or were more educated than the Europeans, they attracted more respects than African kings and chiefs. These educated Africans were not interested in the humiliation and demotion of African kings and chiefs, rather, they were only interested in agitating for inclusion in colonial administration. They were not only hated and despised by the Europeans, but also by the traditional African kings and chiefs. Rather than cultivating and incorporating them into colonial administration, the colonial powers were content with the uneducated traditional rulers and chiefs and therefore cultivated and incorporated them into governance and administration. In addition, these kings and chiefs were, oftentimes, set in opposition to the educated elites. The ensuing competition not only served in the overall interests of the European colonialists, but also ensured that Africans were never united in their opposition to colonialism. The politics of land tenure is another area where the impact of colonial rule was seriously felt in Africa. Prior to colonial rule, land was not regarded as a commodity that could be exchanged or transferred among Africans. Family lands belonged to the family and the conception of a family comprised not only of the living members of a particular family, but also of both the dead and the unborn. So, each family head held family lands in trust and assigned land to individual family members based on their needs. This system is diametrically opposed to what obtained in Europe. Both Christian missionaries and their European colonialists needed a change in African land tenure system for

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them to attain their respective objectives. Consequently, the different colonial administration embarked on massive land grabbing, sometimes, using force in their bids to turn African land into a commodity that could be sold and bought. Whether in Kenya or Libya and South Africa, European land grabbing tore apart the very fabric of Africa’s socio-cultural and economic existence. As more and more lands were taken away from Africans, African people were made poorer and disconnected from their ancestors who were buried on these lands. As more and more Africans lost their land, rural–urban migration became intensified and food scarcity and famine set in. What was the reaction of Africans to this? In Kenya, a group of mainly Kikuyu farmers who were dispossessed of ‘some of the richest agricultural soils in the world, mostly in districts where the elevation and climate make it possible for Europeans to reside permanently’22 formed the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), otherwise known as the Mau-Mau, to confront the European colonial land grabbers. During the revolt, Dedan Kimathi led members of the Mau-Mau in a war against white European settlers, including the British Army and their local Kenya Regiment between 1952 and 1960. In South Africa, European settlers enacted different laws, including the Homelands Act, which established separate locations, called ‘homelands’ or Bantustans for native South Africans. The Act divided lands in South Africa into ‘white’ and ‘black’ areas and native South Africans—about 80% of the total population of South Africa—were forbade from living in ‘white’ areas. Despite that native South Africans were many, they were only allocated less than 13% of the total land in South Africa. Under these obnoxious laws, native South Africans were stripped of their citizenships and apartheid was institutionalized. Italians adopted similar methods in Libya. In Kenya, South Africa, Libya, and other parts of Africa, European settlers murdered thousands of Africans and displaced millions in their efforts to take over and expel Africans from their lands.

African Economy and Social Relations European demand for cash crops and the resultant substitution of food crop with cash crop caused food shortages and famines at different times in most of the colonies. Combined with import substitution industrialization economic policy, cash crop agriculture ensured that Europeans did not build industries in Africa while colonial rule lasted. Import substitution industrialization economic policy not only prevented industrialization of Africa, it also ensured that the various processes, often called value-added, which include services such as advertising and packaging, shipping and haulage, transportation and insurance, warehousing and other trade ancillaries that were involved in turning raw materials into finished products were lost to Africa. Another important consideration on the economic impact of colonialism was the new pattern of colonial land ownership that European colonial powers

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foisted on Africa. In settler colonies, plantation agriculture where European settlers had the best land while native African populations were limited to baren lands that were often inadequate, were intorduced. In South Africa, Kenya, Libya, etc. the best arable lands were taken away from the native population and redistributed to European settlers. Native populations were therefore limited to either eking out a living from their small barren plots or were forced to seek menial work on European settlers’ plantations. This new land tenure system facilitated a situation whereby most men were forced to leave their villages for towns and cities in search for material supports for themselves and their families. No sooner colonial economic system took roots than two internal economic systems emerged across Africa—a white economy and African economy. While white economy thrived on cash crops and mining, African economy largely focused for production for export. Coupled with import substitution industrialization, African economies suddenly become mono-cultural, as economic policies focused on products that were useful only in Europe. In addition, African economy focused on raw material production. Taking together with imposition of European currencies, weight, and measurements, these ensured that African economies become strongly tied to the economies of the European colonial powers. European efforts to improve the colonies resulted in improved sanitation while efforts by the Christian missions with the introduction of Western education produced not only a corps of Bible readers and interpreters, but also a class of African educated elites who led the way in bringing education, health care, etc. to the native population. Although the establishment of hospitals and clinics aimed at providing healthcare for the Europeans, this however transformed healthcare services in Africa, decreasing maternal and infant mortality, increasing life expectancy, and living standard, etc. Like schools and churches, hospitals and clinics also provided new job opportunities for Africans. As literacy rates rose, standard of living also improved and, as maternal and infant mortality rates decreased, human population grew in Africa. A critical component of the Treaties of Friendship and Commerce that were forced on African kings and chiefs was an end to intestinal wars and the abolition of slavery. Despite that the aim was to remove all impediments to trade and commerce, it also helped in bringing about peace and tranquility in Africa, especially in areas where local warfare was commonplace. The introduction of European laws and legal systems of courts also brought order, a necessary situation for economic expansion, to the colonies. Post Office, Telephone, and Telegraph, which were introduced to aid trade and commerce, brought about increased communication and unity among different African communities. The same could be said of hospitals, schools, and churches, especially in relations to new class of African elites. However, the adoption of Christianity, European languages, dress culture, including food and mannerism, Western education and values, etc. played roles in how African traditions and customs broke down. While an immediate impact of

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colonial economic system was famine and food shortage, loss of holdings by small-scale farmers led to rural–urban drift, while import substitution industrialization combined with all of the aforementioned issues in how colonial rule institutionalized poverty, dependency, and underdevelopment in Africa.

Intra-Africa and the Wider World As noted in beginning of this chapter, besides the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the insertion of Africa into the vortex of global trade and politics cannot be dissociated from development associated with the Industrial Revolution in Europe, which hiked the demands for products of African forests and mines. For a fact, Africa hardly recovered from the over three hundred years of slavery when Europeans began to vie for control and the eventual colonialism of Africa. The resultant European control of African colonies and exploration of resources of Africa inserted Africa into the vortex of global trade and politics. While it lasted, colonialism not only brought about improved economic relations between African colonies and their different European metropoles, colonial rule also tied African colonies to the socio-cultural, economic, and political apron strings of European imperialists. Today, not only were these European imperialists Africa’s major trading partners, Africa remained an unimportant player in global trade and politics. In addition to the wanton destructions of lives and properties that were associated with colonialism, the lumping together of different ethno-linguistic groups in the formation of colonies and later African states continue to have serious implications for nation-building, national development, and regional integration within the different African states. Given that the different European colonial powers adopted different colonial systems and used different methods to attain their goals, French Africa, British Africa, Portuguese Africa, Italian Africa, etc. emerged differently. Besides economic and political differences that followed, cultural differences, most especially in language, coupled with being at different stages of economic growth ensured that regional cooperation among African states is fraught. Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal are the three economic giants in West Africa, except for Nigeria and Ghana that were English-speaking countries, a great number of states in West Africa are French-speaking states. Nigeria is separated from Ghana by two French-speaking states while a coterie of eight states, majority of whom are French-speaking states separated Ghana from Senegal. The case of Cameroon deserves a special mention, as the country is divided into French-speaking and English-speaking portions. What are the impacts of the composition of African states on intra-African trade and commerce? In what way or ways does this composition structure affect regional integration, politics, and diplomacy? Unfortunately, studies on these important issues are thin on the ground.

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By Way of Conclusion: Coloniality of Power on Colonialism in Africa Although colonialism ended in Africa more than sixty years ago, its impacts however continue to shape social and cultural, economic, and political relations in contemporary Africa. Knowledge about colonialism and colonial rule, which started early in the 1950s and matured after independence in most African countries, showed that the interrelationship between the practice of European colonialism and the living legacies it left behind on Africa, otherwise known as coloniality, can be seen in different facets of African lives, most especially in contemporary Africa’s social order, politics, knowledge forms, race relations, etc. During the colonial period, European racial, political, and social relation was hierarchical, normative, and prescriptive. The colonial system, as a form of caste system, arranged people in ways that placed the Europeans at the top, making only them the superior, while presuming the colonized as inferiors. Under colonialism, Africans, no matter how educated, were treated as inferiors, even to a dim-witted European. Not only were European values, especially in government and administration, education and religion, morality and manners, etc., set as evaluative standards, they were also imposed as a rule. So, only European political system was good, other forms of government and administration were bad. Only Europeans had civilization, others were barbarians whose cultures and manners were akin only to those of apes and baboons. Christianity was the only religion, others, including Islam, were paganism. Only Europeans were good, others were half-animals, half-children, etc. These agenda-setting categorizations, which powered a racial division of labor and created serfdom for Africans, helped European colonialists in creating race and racial structure, such as superiority and inferiority, based on phenotypes and skin colors. Backed by pseudo-science and religious bias, Europeans ascribed their creations to non-existing innate biological traits—a subterfuge to hide European domination and international division of labor. Just as European colonial administrators imposed different values and expectations on African men and women that ranked women as inferior to men, the different values and expectations that are now being imposed on contemporary Africa have continued to reinforce the perspective of Africans as inferiors. Even after many years of independence and the failure of different European socio-economic and political systems, African nations continue to look toward Europe and America for direction on culture and politics, education and economy, etc. Europe (and America) continue to define what could be known about Africa and Africans, as Africans yielded space for Europe and America as models. This is a self-opposition that future studies on Africa need to address, as this relation between Africa and the European ‘other’ continues to impose boundaries on knowledge and practices, culture, and relationship about Africa on Africans.

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Notes 1. See Texte 2 sur 113, Journal Officiel De la Republique Française, 24 février 2005 accessed November 12, 2020 and available at https://www.legifrance. gouv.fr/eli/loi/2005/2/23/2005-158/jo/texteJORF n°0046 du 24 février 2005. 2. Cohen B. William, “The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 28, no. 2 (2002): 219–39. 3. Adu A. Boahen, “Africa and the Colonial Challenge,” in General History of Africa: Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935 (London: Heinemann Educational Books and UNESCO, 1985), 14. 4. The episodic view to colonial rule in Africa was championed by pioneer African historians like Kenneth Dike, Jacob F. Ade-Ajayi, and Betwell Ogot of the Ibadan School of History which, in the early fifties, emphasized that Africa, prior to colonial rule, had a glorious past and challenged colonial view to Africa as a ‘dark continent’ devoid of civilization. Besides challenging Europeans’ claim of being a master race, they described the colonial experience as merely an episode in the long history of the continent. 5. The pioneer advocate of the epochal view to colonialism and colonial rule in African history remains Peter Ekeh who argued forcefully that colonialism was not a mere episode in African history, but an epochal event whose supraindividual consequences lingered on in Africa in fundamental ways many years after colonial rule and that colonial rule disconnected Africa’s pre-colonial’s past from its post-colonial systems. He therefore argued that the impact of colonial rule on Africa is synonymous with the impact of both the industrial revolution and French revolution on Europe. 6. In most literature, the concept is adduced to David Livingstone, however, it was truly that of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton of the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and for the Civilization of Africa. Livingstone was in attendance as a public meeting on 1 June 1840 where Buxton argued that to resolve the problem of slave trading in Africa, it would be necessary to replace the trade in slaves with trade in commodities that Africans could produce or grow. Livingstone was later to summarized Buxton’s arguments as bringing the three Cs of Christianity, Commerce, and Civilization to the continent. 7. As cited in Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (London: Abbacus, 2014), xxiv. 8. Thomas Pakenham, Op. Cit., xxv. 9. Lord Salisbury, quoted in, J.C. Anene, “The International Boundaries of Nigeria, 1885–1960,” in The Geographical Journal, vol. xxciii, Proceedings, (March 9, 1914). 10. The Editors, “Jules Ferry,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed November 3, 2020 available at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jules-Francois-Cam ille-Ferry. 11. PRO FO 84/2061, Mwanga to Jackson, 15 June 1889, see also PRO FO 84/2061, Mwanga to Euam-Smith, 25 April 1890. 12. PRO FO 2/72, Colvile to Hardinge, 28 August 1894 (encl. the text of the treaty). 13. R.A. Adeleye, Power and Diplomacy in Northern Nigeria 1804–1906: The Sokoto Caliphate and its Enemies (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), 89.

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14. Perham M. and M. Bull (eds.), The Diaries of Lord Lugard, Vol. I (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963), 318. 15. Cited in A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. BBC World Service, The Story of Africa: Africa and Europe (1800–1914). Accessed November 10, 2020 at https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/ features/storyofafrica/11chapter12.shtml. 20. Cited in A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). 21. Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveler (London: Edward Arnold, 1889), 41. 22. William Ormsby-Gore, Church, F.C. Linfield and J.A. Calder, Report of the East Africa Commission (London: Government Printer, 1925), 149.

References Adeleye, R.A. Power and Diplomacy in Northern Nigeria 1804–1906: The Sokoto Caliphate and its Enemies, New York: Humanities Press, 1971. Boahen, Adu A. General History of Africa: Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880– 1935, London: Heinemann Educational Books and UNESCO, 1985. Boahen, Adu A. African Perspectives on Colonialism, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Hilaire Belloc. The Modern Traveler, London: Edward Arnold, 1889. Ormsby-Gore, William, Church, F.C. Linfield and Calder, J.A. Report of the East Africa Commission, London: Government Printer, 1925. Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa, London, Abbacus, 2014. Perham M. and Bull, M. (eds.), The Diaries of Lord Lugard, Vol. I , Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963. William B. Cohen. “The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 28, no. 2, 2002.

CHAPTER 6

Africa and the Diaspora Toyin Falola

Introduction The sixteenth through nineteenth centuries represent a period where millions of Africans were forcefully transported into Europe and the Americas as enslaved peoples to be used for innumerable commercial, economic, and domestic purposes. The Atlantic slave trade was a global economic enterprise between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries. This commerce covered the African western coast, from the islands of Goree and Saint-Louis (in current Senegal) to Quelimane, in modern Mozambique.1 The trade affected the lives of millions of people, in particular those located in the Senegambia, Sierra Leone, West-Central Africa, South-East Africa, the Bight of Benin, the Gold Coast, and the Bight of Biafra. While it is noteworthy that the effects of the trade on enslaved Africans have received notable documentation, the same cannot be said for non-enslaved Africans who, despite being non-enslaved, suffered many consequences resulting from the Atlantic trade. As a result of the Atlantic trade, an era of insecurities, economic calamities, and political disorders heralded in Africa. Consequently, these occurrences stifled development discourses in Africa by exploiting its technological, cultural, and agricultural skills for the purpose of the West only. This started the systemic economic exploitation in Africa, impeding the African mercantilist economy from transforming into a capitalist economy and further T. Falola (B) Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_6

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subjecting Africa to years of institutionalized exploitation, colonization, and neo-colonization. The Atlantic trade disrupted the social, political, and economic structure in several African societies, thereby causing a shortage of skilled manpower, industry, and innovative capacities to drive development. The disruption has since then accounted for several challenges barraging Africa. Although some scholars noted the role of Africans in facilitating the Atlantic trade and profiting from their fellow Africans’ transportation, the fact remains that Europeans dominated the slave trade, and the benefits accrued mainly to their economy and countries. Consequently, a good part of Africa’s discourse and the diaspora has been shaped by the model of the Atlantic trade since it formed a significant basis of Africans getting transported from the continent and dispersed across several parts of the world. The extensive Atlantic slave trade was linked to racialization and the scattering of black people in the Americas. Yet, it is necessary to trace the roots of several Africans in diaspora and observe their linkages to Africa. The dispersal saw Africans being transported to the Americas, Asia, Brazil, and several other parts of the world. To this end, this paper discusses the historical dispersal of Africans to the diaspora, as well as the Atlantic slave trade’s contributions to the dispersal, and its impacts on Africa at large. Defining Diaspora and Africa The concept of African diasporas has been in existence for a long time. After all, the idea connotes Africans’ existence in other parts of the world that are not Africa. However, as noted by George Shepperson, the term “African diaspora” emerged in the 1950s and 1960s.2 Similarly, African and Black internationalism’s ideas and movements had also existed as captured by the concept and ideology of Pan-Africanism. The scholarship of Shepperson and Joseph Harris advance the project of African diaspora studies.3 Today, premised on the works of several scholars, the term “African diaspora” has secured a place of pride in the increasingly robust catalog of diaspora studies. Studies point attention to points of origins, enslavement, and forceful relocation. Also, attention is not paid to the obtainable consciousness in the movements or the lack of this consciousness. It is also noteworthy that a diaspora does not live in perpetuity, as certain diasporas eventually disappear. As Zeleza suggested: Diaspora, I would suggest, simultaneously refers to a process, a condition, space, and discourse; the continuous processes by which a diaspora is made, unmade and remade, the changing conditions in which it lives and expresses itself, the places where it is molded and imagined, and the contentious ways in which it is studied and discussed. It entails a culture and a consciousness, sometimes diffuse and sometimes concentrated of a ‘here’ separate from a ‘there’, a ‘here’ that is often characterized by a regime of marginalization and a ‘there’ that is invoked as a rhetoric of self-affirmation, of belonging to ‘here’ differently. The emotional

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and experiential investment in ‘here’ and ‘there’ and the points in between, indeed in the very configurations and imaginings of ‘here’ and ‘there’ and their complex intersections obviously change in response to the shifting materialities, mentalities, and moralities of social existence. Diaspora is simultaneously a state of being and a process of becoming, a kind of voyage that encompasses the possibility of never arriving or returning, navigation of multiple belongings, of networks of affiliation. It is a mode of naming, remembering, living and feeling group identity molded out of experiences, positionings, struggles, and imaginings of the past and the present, and at times the unfolding, unpredictable future, which is shared or seen to be shared across the boundaries of time and space that frame ‘indigenous’ identities in the contested and constructed locations of ‘there’ and ‘here’ and the passages and points in between.4

A diasporic identity is also used to understand collective consciousness, and the waves of migrants from Africa. These people have been constituted into the African diaspora. It is noteworthy that the keywords here are “historic times” and “constituted.” A Workshop by the African Union in 2004 defined the African diaspora in the following words: The AU has committed itself to providing representation to the African Diaspora in its policy process. For this purpose, we recommend that the definition of African Diaspora refer to the geographic dispersal of peoples whose ancestors, within historical memory, originally came from Africa but who are currently domiciled, or claim residence or citizenship, outside the continent of Africa.5

Kim Butler points out that “conceptualizations of the diaspora must accommodate the reality of multiple identities and phases of diasporization over time.”6 Butler divides the field into five dimensions: “(1) reasons for, and conditions of, the dispersal; (2) relationship with homeland; (3) relationship with host-lands; (4) interrelationships within diasporan groups; (5) comparative study of different diaspora.”7 Darlene Clark Hine, in her solid contributions, notes that the field must have three key components: “a transatlantic framework, an interdisciplinary methodology, and a comparative perspective.”8

The Historic Dispersal and Diasporas One of the fundamental parts of the diaspora is the issue of dispersal. African peoples have been generally associated with numerous dispersals over time. As rightly stated by Colin Palmer, “at least six dispersals can be identified: three in prehistoric and ancient times (beginning with the great exodus that began about 100,000 years ago from the continent to other continents) and three in modern times, including those associated with the Indian Ocean trade to Asia, the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas, and the contemporary movement of Africans and peoples of African descent to various parts of the globe.”9 This lends credence to the voluminous status of the African diaspora and shows

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how broad the categorization can be. Regardless of the broadness, however, most scholars have tried to focus on the global African diasporas’ historical streams. If we are to use the parameter of dispersal by population, it can be broadly categorized into four movements: intra-African, trans-Indian Ocean, transMediterranean, and trans-Atlantic.10 However, it is noteworthy that the first does not exactly fall within the context of the African diaspora since it is more of a national or ethnic diaspora. As such, the last three only are constitutive of the term “diaspora.” The tricky result of reliance on the Atlantic model is that it tends to reduce all historic African diasporas to slavery and Blacks’ dispersals. To Robin Cohen’s “African diasporas are often seen as victim diasporas (in Cohen’s schema, the others are labor, trade, and cultural diasporas).”11 There is a long history to the insertion of Africa into other parts of the world. The region between Mozambique and Egypt was part of the Indian Ocean world before the rise of the Atlantic economy. Thus, there were Africans in Asia,12 representing various settled communities.13 Anouar Majid, a Moroccan scholar, has even insisted that Andalusian Spain was an “African kingdom in Europe”.14 Africans had also been located in Europe for a long time.15 When carefully examined, the process of Africans getting dispersed into the diaspora is intertwined. Zeleza thus argued: The extent to which the various dispersed Africans became constituted into diasporas is extraordinarily complicated. In some cases, they disappeared; that is, they were eventually absorbed into the host populations. In others, they have survived to the present as a distinct community, as is the case with the Sidis of India. In yet other cases, new African diasporas are emerging from cultural memories rekindled by recent African migrations and the current circuits of global racial ideologies and solidarities. The transition from dispersal to diaspora depends, in part, on the regimes of integration, representation, and repression in the host society, as well as gestures and impulses of connectivity from the homeland. In this context, there is a lot of debate, for example, on the integrative mechanisms of Islam in western Asia and Islamic Africa. Hunwick and Powell have argued that in the Mediterranean lands of Islam religious precepts prevented the emergence of the racialized voice of ’black consciousness’ even among enslaved Africans.16

Large African communities can be found in Brazil and the United States17 and various African groups emerged in various locations in the Americas.18

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africa Discussing the dispersal of Africans into several diaspora calls to question the place of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade started as a small commercial system to exchange African material and human resources such as gold and slaves. This will be in return for a few European materials such

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as guns and silk. Gradually, this trading system manumitted into a barbaric culture of transporting several millions of Africans to the Americas.19 It is often argued that the Atlantic trade did not exactly start with the Europeans and that the Europeans merely tapped into an existing form of trade in Africa. However, while certain domestic forms of slavery existed in Africa prior to the coming of the Europeans, they had lesser impacts on the continent and were not as intensive and disruptive as the Atlantic trade.20 While Africans had practiced slavery, the form was different from that of the Atlantic.21 Slavery in the European world was not ended by the fact of religious conversion.22 While it could be argued that there is a fundamental difference between these two trades, the fact remains that the trades complemented one another. The slave markets the Europeans established in Africa developed from their early system of trade with the Arabs and Africans. The Portuguese also trade with Africans in productions such as gold, ivory, gum, hide, wax, and slaves, dominated by the Arabs before that time. As Basil Davidson documents: “By about 1506, Duarte Pacheco Pereira is writing that the goods exchanged at Arguim and elsewhere consist of gold, black slaves, oryx leather for shields, and other items, against Portuguese red and blue stuffs and various textiles, both poor and good quality, as well as horses.23 This anticipates Philip D. Curtin’s argument that the Africans received from European traders nothing more than “worthless goods such as cheap gewgaws, beads, rums and firearms.”24 As Philip Curtin explained, “African importation of European textile increased from 28.2% in 1730 to 58.9% in 1830 before plummeting to 4% in 1860,” perhaps minimizing the role of Africans in European development of export products during this time.25 Joseph Inikori, however, questions the credibility of the Inspector General’s Ledgers of Imports and Exports of Great Britain, on which Curtin based his study of the yearly value of commodity exports from Britain to the African coast from 1797 to 1808: Any calculations of British slave exports based on these figures of commodity exports will, of necessity, understate the quantity of slaves exported because, in the first place, a large proportion of the goods employed in the purchase of slaves on the African coast by British citizens were taken from ports outside Britain and were therefore not included in the Inspector General’s accounts; in the second place, the latter accounts have been found seriously to understate both the volume and value of goods exported from Britain to Africa and elsewhere.26

As suggested by Inikori, Britain’s economy made an enormous profit from the Atlantic trade and, specifically, from the importation and use of African slaves.27 In anticipation of Inikori’s thesis, Eric Williams noted that England was devastated by the 13 American colonies’ announcement in 1783 regarding their withdrawal from the control of Britain.28 Britain rightly feared that such independence would lead to the collapse of her economy by grossly reducing its access to the American markets. In July 1783, the British decreed

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a Treaty that made it possible for England to import slaves from its previous US colonies.29 There followed a 50% increase in British imports from North America from 1784 to 1790.30 The English secured the importation of slaves from Africa at favorable prices.31 As Williams notes: With free trade and the increasing demands of the sugar plantations, the British slave trade volume rose enormously. The Royal African Company, between 1680 and 1686, transported an annual average of 5,000 slaves. In the first nine years of free trade, Bristol alone shipped 160,950 Negroes to the sugar plantations. In 1760, 146 ships sailed from British ports for Africa, with a capacity for 36,000 slaves; in 1771, the number of ships had increased to 190 and the number of slaves to 47,000. The importation into Jamaica from 1700 to 1786 was 610,000, and it has been estimated that the total import of slaves into all the British colonies between 1680 and 1786 was over two million.32

These statistics represent some of the most quoted estimates on the numbers of slaves brought into the United States and the Caribbean from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. As provided by Curtin, the numbers can be seen as follows: “Caribbean. Slaves embarked from Africa: 4,084,565. Slaves disembarked in the Caribbean: 3,446,600. United States. Slaves embarked from Africa: 317,748; Slaves disembarked in the United States: 270,976. Brazil Slaves embarked from Africa: 1,308,479; Slaves disembarked in Brazil: 1,165,366.”33

Curtin argues that nearly “9.4 million Africans were enslaved in the Americas while about 175,000 were brought to Europe and the African Atlantic islands.”34 Supporting Curtin’s assessment, Postma concludes that “allowing for an estimated 12 to 15 percent mortality rate during the Atlantic crossing, approximately eleven million must have been shipped from Africa. Some scholars believed that Curtin’s figures were too low, but when more and more data were collected, new estimations deviated only slightly.”35 Inikori, one of Curtin’s critics, argues “that they resulted from some unspecified bias on Curtin’s part and that a more accurate count would be just over 15 million.”36 Inikori admits that “the ultimate figure is unlikely to be less than 12 million or more than 20 million captives exported from Africa in the transatlantic slave trade.”37 Another scholar with arguments relevant to this discourse is Diop, who argues that “the slave trade involved a loss on the order of 100,000,000 persons,”38 putting her estimates above Inikori’s estimates.39 To make this argument, of course, we have to remove the capitalist view of what constitutes

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development. To Walter Rodney, a capitalistic framework correlates with “economic development” and “factors of production” such as “land, population, capital, technology, specialization, and large-scale production.”40 Economic Impacts Prior to the European arrival, Africans had dominated the trade in such products as resin, orchil, gold, spices, cattle, and people. Africans had high purchasing power and even an existing trade structure. Thornton notes the purchasing power of West Africans by: “1.5 million Senegambians imported 1,200 tons of iron for 300,000 households, and, in 1680, needed 300 tons of iron a year just for their households.”41 Yet, regardless of how dominant Africans were in their market, within less than a year of trading with the Western world, Africa lost its economic autonomy and social peace, thereby becoming a land where local states and chiefs allied with insatiable European leaders to oppress their vulnerable populations. As Inikori states: The European demand for more and more captives soon gave rise to the formation of groups of bandits all over western Africa. In places where the foundations already laid had not yet given rise to firmly established large political organizations, the process was hijacked by these bandits. ... Overall, the conditions created by the large-scale European demand for captives over a period of more than three hundred years severely retarded the long-term process of socio-economic development in western Africa.42

The disruption of Africa’s political and social structure impeded the continent’s contribution toward its technological progress. The slave trade affected Africa by causing a loss of industry, skills, and ability to innovate. To Inikori, “In Africa, the trading groups could make no contribution to technological improvement because their role and preoccupation took their minds and energies away from production.”43 Furthermore, due to the persistent export of millions of Africans, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Atlantic commerce had profound effects on local African economies. To this end, Inikori states: It is generally accepted that the export centers on the African coast benefited economically and demographically from the trade. Where they succeeded in insulating themselves from the socio-political upheavals provoked by the tradein their hinterlands, these port towns (or city-states) realized short-term benefits that have been equated with private gains. Market production of agricultural commodities to meet the limited needs of the slave ships for foodstuffs was stimulated, their populations expanded as the coastal traders retained some of the captives for their business needs and for the production of their subsistence products, and so on. These port towns or city-states typically grew as enclave economies.44

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Klein asked one fundamental question, which goes to the roots of Africa’s participation in the Atlantic trade. Klein confirms that “long-term contact with the Islamic states in North Africa and the Near East, and even long-distance trade between Asia and East Africa prior to the arrival of the Europeans, meant that Africans could negotiate from a reasonable knowledge of international markets what items of European or even Asian production most appealed to them.”45 This statement promotes a troubling but valid notion that Africans profited from the trade in human beings. This is centered on Klein’s question that: “If Africans were not passive economic actors, what about the price they received for their slaves?”46 While this, however, underscores Africa’s passive participation in the slave trade, it ultimately strengthens the fact that Europeans dominated the trade and that the slave trade was intensively detrimental to Africa. Political Impacts The disruption occasioned by the Atlantic trade was very visible on the political structures of traditional African societies. The trade upset the structures and caused political upheavals across different societies. Since the slave trade became a dominant source of revenue, personal wealth became measured by how many of your neighbors you could facilitate their sale into slavery. This replicated the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. James Searing argues that in the 1770s, “the King of the Geej Dynasty organized several grand pillages in the Kajoor and Bawol Kingdoms in north-western and central Senegal, kidnapping slaves who were later sold to the Europeans on the Goree Island.”47 The new form of social and economic relationship resulted in violence, classism, chauvinism, and various forms of vices that continue to impede the societies’ political structures. In Senegambia, slave ownership had a political function that added to the peasantry’s African kings’ dominance. It allowed kings to impose their hegemony on surrounding kings and provided them with ways to procure individuals to sell to Europeans. On the impact of slave raiding in Kajoor, Senegal, in the 1770s, Searing writes: State violence served the interests of the monarchy in several ways. Slave sales paid for military expeditions by providing revenues to purchase guns and horses, which were needed to defend dynastic interests, to intimidate villagers enough to ensure tribute payments, and to keep foreign military predators at bay. If slave raids eliminated or weakened independent populations who refused to pay tribute, they also contributed to the state’s broader effort to tax the population. ... In spite of its brutality, the state was weak and used naked force to support its authority.48

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Social Impacts The social impacts of the Atlantic trade represent a sensitive and emotional part of the entire discourse. This is because several misconceptions abound in this area, blaming Africans for the results of slavery. Curtin remarks thus on the denigration of Africans: Some historians have been too willing to accept, and to interweave into their specific research, some of the assumptions earlier Europeans had made about Africa—usually without research. Among these was the belief that African economies must have been static. It follows from the myth of a savage, which led to the assumption of African weakness and perhaps inherent inferiority.49

The greatest insult resulting from the misconceptions is found with Ransford, who was misinformed and failed to carry out objective analytical research. It is as follows: The man-hunt which raged through Africa bred and sustained inter-tribal hostility, contributing to the present-day instability of the continent’s internal relationships. The wars fomented by slavers also unmasked the demon of brutality which lurks in the background of the Negro soul no less than it haunts the white men’s; for centuries, it knew no moral censor and burst out of control. The Africans’ dark obsession with death and evil spirits, their grotesque and awful superstitions, the macabre humor and relish with which they explore the depths of other people’s fears and torments, were all now released and given full rein. Even today, one sometimes senses among Africans a feeling that they regard such evil passions as meritorious and healing, and in this context, we may recall the screaming theme of the modern black militants whose flavors was so clearly projected by Franz Fanon when he preached that Violence is a cleansing force.50

Clearly, Ransford speaks from a misinformed position: the present political and social problems bedeviling Africa has nothing to do with biological or climatic composition; rather, it has everything to do with the structural, economic, and political disruptions caused by the slave trade.

Conclusion Africans today are spread across different parts of the world, and when we refer to this set of people, we call them Africans in the diaspora. This diaspora has its roots traced back to the dispersals that took place during the Atlantic trade. The period between the fifteenth and nineteenth century stands for Africans transported from their continent to different parts of the world. The Atlantic trade created a semi-feudal class in Africa that worked hand in hand with the Europeans to deepen Africans’ oppression. These semi-feudal classes constituted aristocrats of Africa and middlemen who facilitated their own people’s sale to foreign lands for economic gains. Yet, as has been argued in parts of

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this paper, regardless of the substantial gains made by these Africans, Europeans and other foreigners gained the most from the trade. They received unprecedented human labor and economic capital, which fast-tracked their development at Africa’s expense. Hence, the discourse of Africa and the diaspora is largely premised on the Atlantic trade model. However, it is notable that scholars have attempted to explore the concept of diaspora through other models, which will not reduce the entirety of Africans in the diaspora to the slave trade. This works to rewrite Africans’ notion as “victim diaspora,” without denying the existence of the Atlantic trade. With such literature, appropriate recognition is given to other forms of dispersals such as education, which have taken Africans to several parts of the world. While the first “diasporan” generation mainly resulted from the Atlantic slave trade, the second resulted in a difficult decolonization process. In the late days of the colonial period and early post-independence period in Africa, starting from the 1950s, the rate at which Africans began to migrate to Europe significantly increased, thereby heralding another set of active and long-standing African diaspora. Regardless of gaining independence, the ties between Europe and several colonized African countries remained strong, especially regarding economic and cultural terms. Without being forced, many Africans left the continent to Europe and other parts of America such as North America in order to search for better working conditions and educational opportunities. This diaspora, which is mainly a product of “voluntary migrations,” symbolized an important increase in emigration, primarily based on seeking greener pastures and education. However, the ties between these migrants and their homeland have been fluctuating, which has further necessitated the need for discourse on bridging Africa’s gap and the modern-day African diaspora. The problem perhaps resulted from the fact that asides from education and a better work life, several reasons accounted for voluntary migration such as political persecution and socioeconomic background issues. As a result, from the 1980s onward, the reasons Africans flee the continent started shifting to more intense reasons such as war, broken states, and poverty, as these were the occurrences that marked this period in Africa. Thus, for these reasons, Africans are found across different societies in a foreign land, across different age groups, occupations, communities. For many, the ties with the homeland are feeble, and there are no prospects of returning to the deplorable conditions. In essence, these two periods of migration, both the slave trade and the more recent voluntary migration, constitute the crux of why Africans are spread across diasporas in different places. Today, the African diaspora constitutes one of the strongest and active communities of citizens outside their own countries.

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Notes 1. S. Amin, “Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa: Origins and Contemporary Forms,” The Journal of Modern African Studies (1972): 505. 2. G. Shepperson, “African Diaspora: Concept and Context,” in Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, ed. Joseph E. Harris (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1993), 41–49. 3. Joseph E. Harris, Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1993). 4. P. T. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas,” African Sociological Review (2008): 4–21. 5. African Union, Technical Workshop on the Relationship with the Diaspora (Port of Spain, Trinidad, and Tobago: African Union, June 2–5, 2005), http://www. democracy-africa.org/Reports/AUTWreport.pdf. 6. K. Butler, “Brazilian Abolition in Afro-Atlantic Context,” African Studies Review 43 (2000): 125–139. 7. Butler, “Brazilian Abolition in Afro-Atlantic Context.” 8. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.” 9. C. Palmer, “The African Diaspora,” Black Scholar (2000): 56–59. 10. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.” 11. R. Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997). 12. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.” 13. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.” 14. M. Anouar, Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000). 15. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.” 16. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.” 17. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.” 18. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.” 19. P. Johannes, The Atlantic Slave Trade: Greenwood Guides to Historic Events, 1500–1900 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003), 5. 20. James A. Rawley and S. D. Behrendt, The Transatlantic Slave Trade (Nebraska: Nebraska Paperback, 1999). 21. For a discussion of the differences between European and African concepts of slavery, see Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, “African ‘Slavery’ as an Institution of Marginality,” in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977); and Wyatt MacGaffey, “Economic and Social Dimensions of Kongo Slavery,” in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 35–57. 22. For a discussion of instances of flexibility within Arab forms of slavery, see J. O. Hunwick, “African Slaves in the Mediterranean World: A Neglected Aspect of the African Diaspora,” in Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora (Washington, DC: Harvard University Press, 1993), 289–323; Pekka Masonen, “Trans-Saharan Trade and the West African Discovery of the Mediterranean,” in Ethnic Encounter and Culture Change, eds. M’hammed Sabour and Knut S. Vikør (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1997), 116–142.

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23. B. Davidson, The African Slave Trade: Pre-colonial History, 1450–1850 (Boston: Brown and Company, 1961), 39. 24. P. D. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), 309. 25. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa. 26. J. E. Inikori, “Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade: An Assessment of Curtin and Ansey,” Journal of African History (1976): 205–206. 27. Inikori, “Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade.”. 28. B. M’baye, “The Economic, Political, and Social Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa,” The European Legacy 11, no. 6 (2006): 607–622. 29. M’baye, “The Economic, Political, and Social Impact.” 30. E. E. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944; repr. New York: Capricorn Books, 1966), 124. 31. In addition to these figures, Herbert Klein argues that between 1680 and 1760, the price of a slave in Africa increased from 1,000 shells to 8,000 shells. See Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 110, 113–114. 32. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 32–33. 33. M’baye, “The Economic, Political, and Social Impact.” 34. P. D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 268. 35. J. Postma, The Atlantic Slave Trade: Greenwood Guides to Historic Events, 1500–1900 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003), 5. 36. Inikori, “Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade,” 197–223; Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley Engerman, “Introduction: Gainers and Loosers,” in The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe, eds. Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley Engerman (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), 5–6; Postma, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 35– 36; Mohamed Mbodj and Charles Becker, “A Propos de l’histoire et des populations de l’Afrique Noire: Propositions Pour de Nouvelles Approches,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 23, no. 1 (1989): 42–43. 37. Inikori and Engerman, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 6. 38. D. Henige, “Measuring the Immeasurable: The Atlantic Slave Trade, West African Population and the Pyrrhonian Critic,” The Journal of African History (1986): 307–308. 39. Henige, “Measuring the Immeasurable.” 40. W. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1982), 13. 41. M’baye, “The Economic, Political, and Social Impact.” 42. J. E. Inikori, “Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” in African History Before 1885, vol. 1., ed. Toyin Falola (Durham: North Carolina Academic Press, 2000), 393–394. 43. Rodney,How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 105–106. 44. Inikori and Engerman, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 2. 45. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 107. 46. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade. 47. J. F. Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700–1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 35. 48. Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce.

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49. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa, 310. 50. O. Ransford, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Transatlantic Slavery (London: Fakenham and Reading, 1971), 73–74.

CHAPTER 7

The African Diaspora in the United States Bessie House-Soremekun

Introduction The importance of the African Diaspora and the Yoruba in the Atlantic World has constituted major themes in the writings of several prominent scholars in recent years.1 Consequently, the literature on the African Diaspora has grown with amazing rapidity. Some of the major foci areas of interest have been the large-scale movement and displacement of black bodies from Africa to other

This chapter is a revised and greatly enhanced version of parts of several book chapters that I have written titled, “The Power of Words: Scoundrel, Values and Meaning in the Context of the Historiography of the African Diaspora,” in Beyond the Boundaries: Toyin Falola and the Art of Genre-Bending, ed. Nana Akua Amponsah (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2014), 135–152; “Rethinking the African Diaspora in the Context of Globalization: Building Economic Capacity for the 21st Century and Beyond,” in Ethnicities, Nationalities, and Cross-Cultural Representations in Africa and the African Diaspora, ed. Gloria Chuku (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2015), 63-79; and “The Quest for Human and Civil Rights in Africa and the African Diaspora,” The Long Struggle: Discourses on Human and Civil Rights in Africa and the African Diaspora, eds. Adebayo Oyebade and Gashawbeza Bekele (Austin, TX: Pan African University Press, 2017), 1–20. B. House-Soremekun (B) Jackson State University, Jackson, MS, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_7

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regions of the world and the various methods which transplanted Africans have used to create new identities and realities for themselves in the Atlantic world. Significant attention has been placed on the physical, psychological, political, and economic consequences of their enslavement and servitude in the New World. Less attention has been placed on the role of culture as a major factor in the development of a common sense of identity that allowed the Yoruba to develop important strategies to ensure their individual and collective survival. Less attention has also been placed on the role of Yoruba descendants who have morphed into the African American population in North America with regard to their struggle for citizenship rights and their development of social movements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is in this area that this chapter will make a significant contribution by focusing more attention on the cultural values and belief systems which survived the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the methods utilized by the Yoruba and their descendants through the use of assimilation, adaptation, as well as strategies of resistance and rebellion. In this way, I will examine some of the ways in which Africans have tried to mesh with the existent communities to which they were transported on one hand, while also discussing strategies that they have used to exercise agency in their everyday lives to overthrow the inequitable status quo in which they found themselves. Thus, this chapter seeks to broaden the examination of the African Diaspora beyond some of the earlier discourses that focused on the Back to Africa movement promulgated by Marcus Garvey, the Pan African perspective, the Black Nationalist movements, and the establishment of Afro-centric paradigms and programs. As Paul Zeleza has argued, Much of the scholarly attention has gone towards the political flows as manifested, for example, in the role that the Trans-Atlantic Pan Africanist Movement played in engendering territorial nationalisms across Africa and how continental nationalism and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States reinforced each other and how in post-colonial times the various diasporas have engaged political processes and projects from conflict to democratization. In studies of the historic diasporas there has been an analytical tendency to privilege the political connections represented by the Pan-African Movement, while in studies of the contemporary diasporas, focus concentrates on the economic impact: flows of remittances and investment.2

As stated above, the topic of the African diaspora has been a popular one, most particularly in recent decades. In some universities, scholars have begun to carve academic niches for themselves by integrating successfully analyses of the African Diaspora into curricular models and pedagogical activities in their respective academic institutions, departments, as well as in their scholarly research agendas. With regard to studies of the African Diaspora in the Americas, some scholars have been “committed to (re) writing and righting the story of the African presence in the Americas and to discovering and revealing old and new truths with which to replace old and new omissions, misrepresentations, and myths. A major intention is to help correct the partial, hence

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inaccurate version that has been told of the story of the Americas; partial because the contributions of the Americas’ now second-largest population have been consistently and systematically minimized, distorted, or ignored.”3 These efforts have also emerged to examine the various ways in which the African Diaspora has been described as empirical, social, and geographical constructs, as well as a viable community of participants that continue to have tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic significance across time and space. The African Diaspora has been historicized and understood as a process that started many centuries ago. Nevertheless, it is still being recreated in a variety of ways with different results, outcomes, and modalities of expression in various regions of the world. The African Diaspora, therefore, is not a static phenomenon, but is constantly being reshaped by a constellation of forces. As Judith Byfield and colleagues have asserted: Diasporas are the product of articulated linkages that connect the disparate parts. Furthermore, the linkages that tie diasporas together are not inevitable; they are always “historically constituted.”4 Thus “diaspora is both a process and a condition. As a process it is constantly being remade through movement, migration, and travel, as well as imagined through thought, cultural production, and political struggle.”5 As a condition, the African diaspora exists within a global context shaped by hierarchies of class, race, and gender. These hierarchies that manifest in different formulations and compositions within imperial and national boundaries inflect the ways in which diasporic linkages were made and remade.6

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role of the Yoruba in the Atlantic World by examining their role in the formation of the African Diaspora which has been described as an analytical concept, a global phenomenon, a movement, and an ongoing process that is never fully completed. My own definition of the African Diaspora focuses simultaneously on the large-scale dispersal of millions of Africans to other regions of the world, but views the dispersal and its outgrowths as a phenomenon which is filled with fluidity, change, and motion. My definition also emphasizes the various ways in which the Diaspora can reconnect itself to the continent of Africa. Although the African Diaspora today encompasses several distinct regions of the world, including North America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,7 particular attention will be placed in this chapter on the development of the North and South American African diaspora. My goal here is to interrogate the scholarly and literary work of Toyin Falola, a distinguished Yoruba scholar of global repute and significance, and situate it within the much broader literature that has been published on the Yoruba and on the African Diaspora. In part one of this chapter, I analyze Falola’s work on several interlocking layers to explicate the historical development of the African Diaspora, as well as its contemporary configurations and challenges. In part two, I examine the role of the Yoruba in the Atlantic world by discussing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade era in which Yoruba and other African ethnic groups were brought

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to the Americas, the utilization of their immense cultural and social capital, and the establishment of their community and familial networks for survival. In particular, I discuss the ways in which the Yoruba and their descendants, as well as other African populations, have used different modes of survival, which include assimilation, adaptation, as well as rebellion and resistance. I also look at the important contribution of African peoples generally and the Yoruba ethnic group in particular with regard to the making of the modern Atlantic World. These contributions not only included the provision of physical labor, but also the inculcation of important African cultural values and traditions that some scholars believe successfully survived the Middle Passage and were later incorporated into American society. I also discuss issues of cultural and racial marginality, which have taken place through involuntary movements of African people and the challenges that Africans and Africandescended people have faced and continue to face in the important process of reinventing themselves to survive the onset of political, economic, racial, and cultural domination. In the final section of this chapter, I also examine the ongoing challenges that Yoruba descendants and descendants of other African slaves have faced in the United States with regard to the attainment of citizenship rights and legal equality under the law, and the development of more recent Social Movements.

Toyin Falola and the De [Construction] of the African Diaspora A large and expanding literature has emerged over the past few decades that examines the African Diaspora from various perspectives. These studies have examined both the historical development of the African Diaspora and the multitudinous ways in which it has changed voices. Edward Alpers has emphasized that the use of the term “diaspora” prior to the decade of the 1960s was mostly associated with the Jewish and Christian religions.8 According to Alpers, George Shepperson is responsible for coining the term African Diaspora in 1965. Shepperson acknowledged, that the African Diaspora also included the migration of African slaves before the onset of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the subsequent enslavement processes that were perpetrated on Africans, as well as Muslim leaders.9 Well-known scholar and professor, Joseph E. Harris defined the African Diaspora as a relationship which served to connect African people to their original homeland on one hand, while also connecting them to their host countries, on the other hand.10 To some extent, the historical development of diasporas involved the creation and reinforcement of images of people and their homeland areas and consequently exerted salient impacts on the political, economic, and social arenas of society. In this way, diasporas can be considered as important forces at the national and international levels of analysis. Robin Cohn introduced several criteria to help define the presence of Diasporas. These include the movement of people from an original homeland to

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two or more foreign areas either through participation in a life-altering experience, natural disaster, the quest for employment or commercial activities, or in further pursuit of the goals of the colonial powers.11 It also encompasses beliefs held by those who are dispersed, that sometimes may include memories or myths about the achievements or development of their homeland areas, and in some cases, a romanticization about the need to maintain and build up the homeland area in some possible manner. Diasporas also exist in the development of a movement whose major aim is to repatriate those who have been dispersed back to their original homeland areas. Dispersed people can develop a sense of empathy with individuals who have experienced similar situations and it can also be acknowledged that it is possible for dispersed people to lead meaningful lives in areas in which a respect for pluralism exists12 In the compelling article, “Of Dubois and Diaspora: The Challenge of African American Studies,” Michael A. Gomez emphasized that the African Diaspora can perhaps best be understood as the penultimate imagined community in which it exists simultaneously both as an academic rubric on one hand and as a viable social agenda or project, on the other hand. Moreover, the precise location of the diaspora is somewhat close to the halls of the academy and is thus integrally connected to the demands of political needs and realities. It can also be understood as a conversation that has persisted for many years in a variety of different contexts, languages, and cultural systems. These cultural systems have been propelled forward by African-descended people within particular countries and between nation states over the twin issues of loss and displacement experienced by members of the African Diaspora.13 In The Power of African Cultures, Falola discusses the various ways in which culture is inexorably linked to the diaspora. He uses the metaphor of Africa as both the origination point of African descendants, as well as their ancestral homeland to which they may return that ultimately becomes the cultural space that belongs to Africans and African-descended people around the world. For Falola, it is one’s cultural values and belief systems that ultimately enable and empower individuals to survive, develop their own sense of racial pride, and subsequently hold on to precious memories and their various belief systems as part of their historical development processes as well.14 As Falola has specified, The diaspora is a historic creation (migrations and dispersal), a mental and cultural idea (consciousness), a metaphor (to explain racial and economic injustice), a pilgrimage (the idea of a return to the homeland), an economic. world system (the exploitation of black labor and a sense of academic loss), a political agenda (Pan Africanism), an intellectual concern (academic courses and seminars), and a constructed identity (invented traditions, identity politics), Irrespective of how it is viewed, the diaspora is tied to culture in many ways: Africa is regarded as the homeland, the cultural space that belongs to all members; diaspora’s boundaries are marked by culture and race, and its language is also defined by culture.15

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Falola’s definition of the African diaspora puts great emphasis on the importance of culture and shared identity as one of the drivers for the subsequent amalgamation of different African ethnic groups around issues of survival and the development of common strategies to enhance their economic and political statuses in the new environments in which they found themselves. While emphasizing that Pan Africanism as an ideology was deeply concerned with the belief that individuals who comprised the African Diaspora had shared cultural values, he also stressed that the physical appearance of African Diasporas is also an important aspect of their connection point with each other, as well as a vital cultural marker. Thus, some of the common experiences of members of the diasporic community such as being forced into slavery, became determinative and constitutive aspects of their collective identity as well. In other words, although the individual circumstances may have differed greatly among members of the African Diaspora, Falola identified at least four important elements that provide the cornerstone for the achievement of their cultural unity. First, black skin is one vital manifestation of Black culture. Second , our historical experiences ultimately become interwoven with our racial identity in marked ways and include instances in which we experience slavery, economic marginalization, political exclusion, and a host of other similar scenarios. Third, many cultural ideas and belief systems that are connected to Africa ultimately become bearers of African culture as well. Fourth, there is the role of our own imagination that may lead to individuals pursuing studies about the African culture or deciding to self-identify as an African American. According to Falola, “….Africans in the diaspora, while not claiming to be part of the routines of African culture in Africa, base their claims on the following: (1) their affirmation of an African heritage; (2) their participation in the diasporic aspects of Pan African political struggles; (3) their continuing concern with the status of Africa and their efforts to improve it; and (4) their relationship to other hyphenated Africans in the Diaspora.”16 Falola’s views on the African Diaspora can be enhanced in the following ways: He places an emphasis on the salient role of culture and skin color in providing a basis for African solidarity in the diaspora. Greater discussion could be provided regarding the various ways in which people of African descent in the North American African diaspora had a divergence of responses to their lives in the New World which led to disagreements about the methodologies to be used to achieve equality. For example, while Dr. King advocated non-violent political protests to achieve equal rights in America, the end goal that he advocated was one of African Americans assimilating into the American society to achieve their own version of the American dream. This was in vivid contradistinction to the route advocated by Malcolm X, the Reverend Elijah Muhammed, and the members of the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and others who did not rule out the use of violence, if necessary, and unlike the model of assimilation, they wanted to have self-autonomy by being given a specific region in the United States which would be designated for African Americans. Individuals who were advocating a more assimilationist

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route were sometimes accused of being sell-outs by other more radical groups in America.17 Secondly, in his scholarly work on the African Diaspora, Falola discussed various instances in which slave rebellions occurred as Africans developed ways to exercise agency in their everyday lives. It would be helpful if Falola would discuss fully other responses to captivity and oppression such as the adoption of various forms of assimilation such as passing which was used by some members of the African-descended population who were of mixed ancestry that possessed very fair skin color or of Africans who were of lighter skin tones who were brought to the Americas. Third, as Africans moved from slavery to freedom, some of them and their descendants also acquired higher levels of education and status that allowed them to become more assimilated in American society and to achieve upward social, economic, and political mobility. This was also a form of assimilation which is still being advocated today as we have witnessed the rise in the size of the Black Middle Class in America and one of the ways they have achieved this goal is through the attainment of higher education and training in conjunction with the passage of Civil Rights Laws and various other types of legislation, which shall be addressed more fully later in this chapter. My own definition of the African diaspora puts greater emphasis on the more contemporary methods of assimilation and adaptation. My own views on the diaspora are similar to Falola’s with regard to his efforts to balance his discussions with an awareness of the forces of rebellion and resistance with that of forms of assimilation to survive.18 I place greater emphasis in my work on more recent contemporary developments, such as the Black Lives Matter Movement, which is a form of resistance to the inequitable status quo, with particular regard to the continuing loss of Black lives because of police brutality. Interestingly, beyond the geographical, spatial, cultural, economic, and political attributes that are often associated with the conceptual and physical formation of the African Diaspora(s), Toyin Falola and Christine Chivallon emphasized the importance of the development of a shared consciousness among African descendants who were dispersed to various parts of the world. This is sometimes achieved through the development of a shared sense of community in which individuals from particular ethnic groups share things in common such as a history, culture, or in the case of diasporic Africans, the additional shared and often traumatic experiences of being sold as human cargo in a dehumanizing way to fuel the ongoing demands of the international slave trade and global capitalism.19 My own definition of collective memory emphasizes the development of a world view of historical experiences that bind people together even if they do not see themselves as a common community. This situation certainly exists today in the North American African diaspora as African-descended people do not always work together in a cohesive way to further their own best interests but sometimes work to undercut each other in order to get promotions on their jobs, achieve economic and political mobility, and to try to survive and compete with each for advancement in a world

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in which blackness is not valued. As Christine Chivallon has so eloquently articulated, The concept of ‘collective memory’ is often put forward to signify symbolic work on the homeland through the perpetuation of the sense of a common destiny derived from roots in a land that is almost holy or considered as such. Despite dispersion, the concept ‘diaspora’ is formed around the triptych ‘territory-community-memory.’ Although these approaches sometimes affirm that the formation of diaspora groups is the result of ‘strategies,’ they leave us with the impression that diaspora as a notion “is fixed, in particular because it is never defined in reference to the members themselves. It remains an entity which goes beyond them, one to which they seem fated to belong as soon as they are dispersed from their territory of origin.20

As Peter Schraeder has demonstrated, four major slave networks were in operation historically that focused on the exportation of African slaves. These included the Atlantic Slave Trade, which consisted of a network designed for the shipping of slaves to the Western Hemisphere (especially to North and South America and the Caribbean); the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade that provided slaves for the Mediterranean region; the Red Sea Slave Trade in which slaves were sold to countries located in the Middle East and South Asia; as well as the Swahili Coast Slave Trade, which provided slave labor to islands along the Indian Ocean, as well as to the regions of South and South East Asia.21 The Atlantic Slave Trade that lasted from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries was significant for a number of salient reasons: First, it was largely controlled by European colonial powers and existed during the period when there “was a global perception of slavery as a legitimate and necessary tool of political-military and economic expansion.”22 Second, there was a tremendous demand from the plantations of the Americas in fueling capitalist expansion and its’ economic development processes in which cheap labor power was needed to harvest crops and further develop the agricultural sector of the southern states in America and countries in South America and the Caribbean. Third, several scholars have argued that between 10 and 25 million slaves were transported out of Africa as part of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade and that about 91% of them ended up in the Caribbean and South America, while 4.5% ended up in the United States.23 Fourth, although the Islamic Slave Trade (also referred to as the Arab trade, Red Sea, Swahili, and transSaharan trade networks) actually started in the ninth century, it predated the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade by at least 6 centuries, and lasted about 750 years longer than the European-based slave system. Available data suggests that the Atlantic Slave Trade was greater than the Islamic trade in both its geographical scope and in its overall impact.24 The forcible removal of Africans against their will from African societies had far-reaching consequences for the subsequent development of their nations. These impacts devastated the basis of African life and culture, which

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included the disruption of the traditional institutions of governance, the balance between men and women, the African extended family units, and viability of various ethnic groups and communities. It also led to a subsequent brain drain as many talented individuals were taken from their communities, destined never to return. Many of the slaves who were taken to the Americas were farmers and from the lower echelons of African society. Some of the captives had been domestic slaves in African societies, prior to the onset of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, while others were artisans and individuals who had previously worked for wages. For a variety of reasons, few individuals of higher class statuses were taken on the slave ships. Additionally, a severe gender imbalance existed with regard to the actual number of male and female slaves taken aboard the slave ships, with the vast majority of the captives consisting of males, most particularly young men, while a smaller number of women and children were taken. Some of the men forced into slavery had previously served in the military units of their respective societies and hence, knew the elements of waging war.25 According to Marcus Rediker in his compelling book, The Slave Ship: A Human History, The long, slow purchase of the enslaved was conducted within a “warlike peace” on the coast of West Africa. Slaves spent six months and more on the ship while the purchase was being completed and six to ten weeks aboard during the Middle Passage. A few captains tried to randomize their “cargo,” mixing peoples of different African cultures and languages to minimize their ability to communicate, cooperate, and resist, but this was difficult, costly, and in the end, impractical. Given the competitiveness of the slave trade and the nature of its’ organization on the African side, captains had very little control over which slaves they could buy, so they took what they could get … If the captain decided to purchase a given person, he offered a combination of goods to the traders and haggled until they closed the deal. From that moment forward, the enslaved person, whether man, woman, boy, or girl, would be known to the captain as a number. The first purchased was Number 1, and so on, until the ship was fully “slaved” and ready to sail to the Americas26 (Photo 7.1 and 7.2).

If it is indeed true that the slave trade made the African presence global, as Joseph Harris and colleagues have postulated,27 then it can certainly be argued that it was the slave ship itself, the physical vessel that actually transported human cargo to various regions of the world, that also had a pivotal role to play in the formation of a sense of shared identity for those who subsequently became a part of the African Diaspora. As Christine Chivallon has posited, of necessity, Africans bonded together and formed closely knit relationships as a result of the interwoven processes of deportation and enslavement. Moreover, in spite of tangible differences which existed between them based on varying ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and African languages, they were nonetheless able to develop notable connections and ties of attachment with each other to the extent that when they finally reached their destination points, significant levels of affinity existed between them that were commensurate to some

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degree with earlier forms of kinship that they were accustomed to in their respective homeland areas. In a real sense, they were similar to “brothers” or “sisters.” This reality made it difficult for them to even explore as an option the possibility of having sexual intercourse because it would have been culturally unacceptable or a form of incest. Moreover, in the country of Jamaica, they were referred to as shipmates. In this way, they began to help each other and look out for each other’s interests initially on the various plantations that they were taken to.28 The significance, therefore, of the slave ships cannot be over-emphasized because they played a symbolic and prescient roles in the slavery experience from beginning to end, and in conjunction with the ocean itself, became “symbolic markers of the African Diaspora.”29 The harsh and inhumane treatment that Africans endured on board the ships that transported them to other regions of the world became extremely vital in the subsequent development of a feeling of being part of a larger community of people with shared experiences and outcomes. The physical and psychological tortures that they experienced were almost unbearable. As the editors and contributors of African Americans: Voices of Triumph have surmised, The captives chained hand to hand and foot to foot, were held below decks, with men, women, and children occupying separate areas. In what was called tight packing, the captives were wedged together with little room to sit up or even to shift their bodies. So-called loose packing which allowed each slave a bit more room saved lives and profits. But for those crammed onto the slave decks, the two systems differed only in degree. During the journey, which lasted between five and 12 weeks, the slaves saw daylight only when they were taken on deck and forced by the lash to dance for exercise. Then it was back to the filthy decks, which were ripe for smallpox, dysentery and other diseases. On average about 13% of all African captives died en route. The total death toll is estimated at one to two million people.30

Photo 7.1 Sections of a Slave Ship (Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

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Photo 7.2 View of Chained African Slaves in cargo hold of slave ship, measuring 3 feet by 3 inches high (Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

Understanding some of the gendered dimensions of the Middle Passage and the details of African women’s subsequent transition into slavery helps us to shed light on the rather deplorable conditions of diasporic women, who were often victimized sexually while on board the ships that transported them to the Americas and later on when they reached their destination points in the Americas. In “Prematurely Knowing of Evil Things: The Sexual Abuse of African American Girls and Young Women in Slavery and Freedom,” Wilma King’s insightful research confirmed that it was very common for unhygienic sailors to force themselves upon the bodies of African women on board the slave ships. In some cases, slaves were forced to dance on the ship decks without their clothes.31 African women were also coopted by the ship captains to acquiesce in their own physical and sexual subjugation. While some scholars have emphasized that the deals made by the captains of the slave ships with some of the women who were deemed to be special to them led to a situation where some women received less miserable outcomes than other women who were not singled out in this way for favors from the captain, such as special food and less physically abusive episodes with the men, Rediker rightfully stresses that these conditions were virtually tantamount to the rape and sexual degradation of African women on board the ships.32 According to Rediker, Captains, and less frequently officers, took “favorites” from among the enslaved women, moving them from the lower deck to the captain’s cabin, which meant more room, more and better food, greater freedom, and perhaps in some cases less-violent discipline. Such appears to have been the case with a slave woman on board John Fox’s slave schooner who was known as Amba to the Africans and as Betsey to the captain and other Europeans.33

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The Yoruba in the Atlantic World The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was one of the most consequential phenomenon in history that still has tremendous impacts on the populations that were affected by it even into the twenty-first century. With regard to the imperatives of imperialism and colonialism, it is accurate to say that the British colonialists viewed Nigeria with an avid interest for a variety of reasons, which included among others, commercial and economic imperatives to expand trade activities in West Africa, most particularly with regard to the trade and competition over human cargo or slaves.34 Scholars such as David Eltis and Paul Lovejoy, in particular have written about the movement of the Yoruba into the Atlantic World during the period of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and have estimated that slightly more than 2 million slaves were probably exported from the areas in close geographical proximity to the Bight of Benin in the time period between 1650 and 1865. Of this group of exported slaves, they argue that the Yoruba constituted the largest group of slightly less than 1 million of the total number of African slaves transported to the Americas. Although the number of Yoruba in North and South America was not large during the seventeenth century, it did increase over time.35 According to Paul Lovejoy, Yoruba came largely in the century after 1750, when the total number of slaves exported from the Bight of Benin was over one million individuals, divided almost equally between 1751 and 1800 and between 1801 and 1805. The number of slaves being deported fell substantial during the European wars from the 1790s through 1815. Although British and French ships from the high seas was the major reason for the collapse of trade after 1793…Export volume rebounded after 1815, and especially from the late 1820s to the 1840s, with trade directed primarily toward Cuba and Bahia..36

The year 1807 was especially important in global history because it was at this time that the Parliament in Great Britain made a progressive decision to vote for an end to the slave trade. Within the United States, slaves and members of the abolitionist movement held various types of rallies in peaceful ways to challenge the institution of slavery. Members of the Anti-Slavery Movement, in particular, spearheaded some of the efforts made to exercise their civic engagement and civil disobedience strategies by specifically deciding not to abide by existing government policies or laws that were antithetical to the principles of equality for Africans and their descendants. They were also able to expand their support base by acquiring support from some individuals in the Northern part of the country as well that greatly aided the movement for the eventual abolition of slavery which would come in the future. Although much of the literature has highlighted the important role of white Abolitionists in working to eradicate slavery in the United States, some scholars believe that this emphasis has obscured the tremendous level of activism generated by African American abolitionists.37 As Leon Litwack has reminded us:

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The antislavery movement was not solely a white man’s movement. Through their own newspapers, conventions, tracts, orations, and legislative petitions, Negroes agitated for an end to southern bondage and northern repression. The white abolitionist encountered strong and often violent public opposition, but the Negro abolitionist risked even greater hostility, for his very presence on the antislavery platform challenged these popular notions which stereotyped his people as passive, meek, and docile. As a common laborer, the Negro might be tolerated, even valued, for his services; as an antislavery agitator, he was frequently mobbed.38

Armed rebellions occurred during the latter part of the 18th eighteenth and early 19th nineteenth centuries as well. As a result of these realities, the slave trade was officially banned by the Congress of the United States in 1808.39 Nevertheless, the slave trade continued without abatement for several more decades until the mid-part of the 19th nineteenth century, around 1850 and some of the states of the Northern United States had discontinued the use of slavery by the year 1860. Slavery continued without abatement at this time in the South.40 By the year 1820, people of African descent comprised roughly 25 % of the population of the United States. In some southern states such as Mississippi, Florida, and South Carolina, their numbers were so significant that they comprised the majority of the populations or close to the majority.41 Yoruba slaves were dispersed to various parts of North and South America, Central America, as well as to various islands that are part of the West Indies. Moreover, some of the Yoruba slaves were taken to various states in the southern region of the United States such as Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina to serve as forced laborers on the plantation economies.42 In three areas, namely Cuba, the Bahia Province in Brazil, and Saint-Domingue, the Yoruba constituted a large part of the total number of slaves that resided there.43 Other non-Yoruba ethnic groups of slaves, often referred to as Gullah people, were also brought to North America and originally were settled into North Carolina and parts of Florida. At the present time, they reside in Georgia and some parts of South Carolina. These slaves were brought from a number of different African countries, which included Sierra Leone, Senegambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Angola, Ghana, the Bight of Benin, and Mozambique. It is important to note that as the international fervency and efficacy of the slave trade was being challenged over time at the international level, efforts inside the United States also existed to compensate for the cost of exporting slaves and the needs of the plantation owners constantly to have new forms of labor. Consequently, the slave supply was increased on some plantations through the use of breeding techniques, which meant that male and female slaves were forced to have sexual activities that were designed solely for the purpose of procreating new slaves for labor in the plantation economies of the South. These newborn slaves were also a part of the growing dynamic that developed between those who tried to assimilate into the existent inequitable status quo versus those who were involved in

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exercising various forms of agency in their everyday lives to flee the realities of plantation life44 (Photos 7.3, 7.4. and 7.5). One of the notable efforts to free slaves from bondage was undertaken by Harriet Tubman, one of the participants of the Underground Railroad. She operated in alliance with numerous other individuals and groups (members of the Abolitionist Organizations, the Americano Anti-Slavery Society established by William Garrison, the editor of a white newspaper in collaboration with Arthur Tappan, Frederick Douglass, and others) and they offered safe houses

Photo 7.3 Picking cotton on a southern plantation (Source Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

Photo 7.4 Slavery in America: Women and children from Africa in the Southern States (Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

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Photo 7.5 Leap of a Fugitive Slave (Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

and havens for the escaped fugitive slaves to rest in during their long journey northward into freedom as they fled the repression and violence that they experienced on the plantations of the American South. Harriet Tubman, born during the decade of the 1820s as a slave in Maryland, was the quintessential agent for the emancipation of numerous slaves. Often beaten by the slave owners, she was able to flee plantation life under extreme duress in 1849 and attained her freedom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after which she immediately planned and implemented 13 escape trips for numerous relatives and friends. Remarkably, all of the men, women, and children that she started out with were accounted for the end of her journeys. During her lifetime, she would lead numerous other escape trips under the ambit of the Underground Railroad.45 According to Karen O’Connor and Larry Sabato, “Flyers went up all over the nation offering huge rewards for the capture of the 5-foot-tall ‘conductor’ on the Underground Railroad. Noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison began referring to Tubman as ‘Moses.’”46 Partly in efforts to forestall greater numbers of slaves from seeking freedom either individually or collectively, to enhance efforts to capture individuals such as Tubman and others who were actively aiding the slaves, and to impede the process of southern states from seceding from the Union, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in 1850 known as the Fugitive Slave Law which placed severe prohibitions on Blacks escaping from the plantations. Federal marshals were asked to capture

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and return slaves who had escaped or to have a fine imposed on them of $1,000. Individuals who were found to have aided slaves in their pursuit of freedom or who provided safe passage for them would face fines of $1,000 and imprisonment for a period of six months. In spite of the existence of the Fugitive Slave Law and other efforts to keep slaves in bondage, it should be noted that the Underground Railroad was very successful because approximately 100,000 individuals were able to flee slavery between the years of 1810 and 1850.47 For her noteworthy efforts, the U.S. Government has decided to put her photograph on the cover of the 20 dollar bill in place of that of Andrew Jackson, who served as President from 1829 to 1837.48 The issue of historical memory was extremely important to the development and subsequent maturation of the African diaspora given that many countries to which the slaves were shipped were antithetical to the interests and wellbeing of people of color and were consequently extremely hostile to the ideas that Africans would want to communicate with each other and build networks to support solidarity among themselves. Moreover, most information about Africa provided by the colonizers to the world was pejorative in nature and characterized African people as primitive and savages. Therefore, of necessity, the subsequent survival of positive and authentic African cultural values and traditions became essential for the development of the African Diaspora. As Harvard University scholar, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has articulated in his interesting book, The Signifying Monkey: Common sense, in retrospect, argues that these retained elements of cultures should have survived, that their complete annihilation would have been far more remarkable than their preservation … The notion that the Middle Passage was so traumatic that it functioned to create in the African a tabula rasa of consciousness is as odd as it is a fiction, a fiction that has served several economic orders and their attendant ideologies. The full erasure of traces of cultures as splendid, as ancient, and as shared by the slave traveler as the classic cultures of traditional West Africa would have been extraordinarily difficult … Inadvertently, African slavery in the New World satisfied the preconditions for the emergence of a new African culture, a truly Pan-African culture fashioned as a colorful weave of linguistic, institutional, metaphysical, and formal threads. What survived this fascinating process was the most useful and the most compelling of the fragments at hand. Afro-American culture is an African culture with a difference as signified by the catalysts of English, Dutch, French, Portuguese, or Spanish languages or cultures, which formed the precise structures that each discrete New World Pan-African culture assumed.49

The global phenomenon known as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade set in motion a series of events and activities that would subsequently shape and help to define the Black experience in the Americas. The year 1619 looms large in our historical narrative as it was during this year that the first Africans were brought to the state of Virginia in the capacity of indentured servants and subsequently slavery was institutionalized as a result of the Trans-Atlantic

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Slave Trade.50 From this point forward, Africans operated essentially as a cheap form of labor to fuel the needs of capitalist economic development processes in which they were deemed less than human. The vast majority of the slaves in the Southern region of the United States performed arduous labor on cotton, rice, and tobacco plantations. Others persevered and worked long hours respectively in the rope works, salt mines, and cotton mills of Kentucky, Louisiana, and North Carolina.51 Without legal protection of the law, devoid of any real citizenship rights, and accorded virtually no political, economic, social, or civil rights, they were victims of numerous atrocities including the forced rapes and sexual brutalization experienced by female slaves, which was discussed earlier in this chapter, hangings of male and female slaves, castrations, beatings by whips, and numerous other barbarous acts. Africans were prohibited from learning how to read and write and had to do so secretly because if they were caught doing so, they would be beaten or in some cases killed.52 It should never be forgotten that there was a tremendous power differential that existed between the plantation owners and their slaves. Slave masters desired to control every aspect of the lives of the slaves, including their innermost thoughts and desires. As Ira Berlin has skillfully asserted in Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves: The contest between master and slave proceeded on uneven terrain. By definition, relations between masters and slaves were profoundly asymmetrical, with slave owners holding a disproportion of power and slaveshaving hardly any. For 3 centuries, slave masters mobilized enormous resources that stretched across continents and oceans and employed them with great ferocity in an effort to subdue their human property Slaves, for their part, had little to depend upon butthemselves. Yet even when this power was reduced to a mere trifle, slaves still had enough to threaten their owners—a last card, which, as their owners well understood, they might play at any time.53

But Africans did not stand passively by and accept their fate. As has been stated earlier in this chapter, some slaves developed strategies through which they could exercise agency in their everyday lives. Of necessity then, African culture underwent a significant metamorphosis on American soil as some cultural values were preserved and passed on inter-generationally from the slaves to their children and grandchildren. One of these traditions that Africans in the Americas held onto was their propensity for and work in the area of entrepreneurship that had also existed in Africa. According to Juliet E.K. Walker, the prolific scholar and founder of the field of Black Business History in America, the cultural survival of entrepreneurial activities as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade can be traced back to the commercial activities in which Africans participated in within the societies that existed during the precolonial era in West and West Central Africa. Walker has emphasized that slaves that worked on the plantations were able to use their situations as unpaid workers in order to use the market conditions, which prevailed, in their various

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locales for their own needs. Within this context, slaves were able to provide a response that emerged as demand increased for their products. More importantly, they were also able to use their ingenuity to create a demand for their products and services as well. By far, the largest number of the businesses owned by slaves were illegal and, consequently, had to exist as part of the hidden economy. Free Blacks also owned businesses and provided services to a variety of customers. A number of successful Black entrepreneurs, for example, owned impressive businesses and generated great wealth and many assets during the period of 1820–65. Some of these included entrepreneurs in the areas of real estate and lumber, groceries, sugar planters, merchandising, cotton planters, barbers, and others.54 Another important aspect of African culture that survived the shipment of slaves to the Americas was the emphasis on collective assistance and self-help. The existence of savings organizations and various types of self-help organizations such as mutual aid entities were also prevalent among a number of different ethnic groups and communities such as the Yoruba, Weme, Fon, and others in Africa. The main objective of these types of organizations was to provide a mechanism and infrastructure for the collection of funds put in place by members of the various organizations which would be available for use by the members at a future point in time. These types of organizations were also developed by the Yoruba and others after they reached the New World in the Americas.55 With regard to Black entrepreneurial activities, Manning Marable has noted that: Under the slavery regime, black entrepreneurial activities, were difficult in the South but not impossible. In 1860, there were 348 free blacks in Baltimore whose total property was worth $449,000. In New Orleans, in 1836, 855 free blacks owned 620 slaves as well as real estate worth $2,462,470. The majority of blacks engaged in activities that provided goods and services to white patrons—tailoring establishments, saloons, eating houses, barbering, and stables. The total value of all establishments owned by free blacks and all personal wealth in the United States in 1860 was at least $50 million dollars—half of which was based in the slave South.56

Similar to the findings of the research performed by Juliet Walker and Manning Marable, my own research on black businesses in Cleveland, Ohio has unearthed the tremendous talent, resiliency, and ingenuity that they had in developing business enterprises to promote higher levels of collective selfempowerment and the attainment of human dignity. Blacks also developed their own schools, banks, libraries, and other types of facilities under the umbrella of the principle of self-help and collective self-empowerment which can also be traced back to the cultural ethos that existed in some West African societies, most particularly among some of the Yoruba and other African communities.57 The slaves also had to adapt to the new ways of life and new rules of engagement as articulated by the slave masters and those in charge of the

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political and economic systems in the United States. Asata Jalata has postulated that Africans forged connections between each other with regard to their need to achieve freedom and independence from the slave catchers and slave masters by organizing more than 250 slave revolts from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries. According to Jalata, thousands of slaves who ran away from the plantations were also able to successfully establish about 50 Maroon communities between 1672 and 1864 in some of the mountainous areas and forests in the South. Africans had to develop strong psychological shields to deflect the challenges of their everyday treatment. In doing so, they were able to hold on to precious memories of an African past while simultaneously developing new strategies of adaptation and assimilation to their new homeland.58 Africans were of necessity involved in the complex processes of recreating their own identities and adapting their everyday behaviors to suit the basic necessity of sheer survival. Basic survival necessitated having the ability to make subservient their own anger and hostility against their oppressors for a while in order to forge a modus vivendi among members of their own ethnic group and to consolidate their efforts over time with Africans from other ethnic communities who shared the similar fate of being held as slaves. Yoruba slaves and others soon realized that in order to survive in the New World in the Americas, they would need to make a quick adaptation to the lifestyle that existed on the plantation economies of the South, while simultaneously holding on to their memories of their African homeland. In doing so, many of the values and beliefs of the Yoruba and other ethnic groups were gradually assimilated into that of the Euro-American traditions and indigenous communities.59 As Howard Dodson has noted, Africans had to virtually reinvent themselves in order to survive in the new world. The various cultural traditions of the Yoruba, Akan, Bakongo, and other groups became interspersed with cultural experiences and bases of knowledge held by other groups of Africans. Modes of communication were established as well as new cultural, social, and political organizations. Various manifestations of food, spiritual and religious styles, newly created forms of music such as the blues and jazz, varying types of dances such as the tango in Argentina, the samba in Brazil, the cumbia in Colombia, and the guaguanco in Cuba, also emerged. Masking ceremonies and traditions were also popularized in New Orleans and Buenos Aires.60 Toyin Falola, when describing the metamorphosis that the Yoruba people had to undergo in order to survive in the New World, has characterized the process in the following way: The enslaved Yoruba, cognizant of the value of their past and the link between that past and nationalism, kept their memories alive, identified with Yorubaness, told stories of origin, and used their ethnicity to forge an identity. The formation of associations, savings clubs, and mobilization for resistance vividly reveal their groundings in identity. Within the various associations, the people kept memory alive. They discussed their past, and also their present condition of enslave-ment,

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racial inequality, and more. In the Aponte rebellion, the connections between the past of the people, the formation of associations, and uses to which such associations were put showed a great deal of intentionality.61

Other means also existed for the Yoruba to survive the conditions of the New World. Religion has often offered opportunities for individuals to develop spiritual methods to forge common agendas and ideologies as well. Religious value systems and beliefs served as a form of upliftment for slave communities in the Americas. Yoruba slaves, in particular, invariably called upon their strong religious beliefs and spirituality to develop survival strategies. The Yoruba Religion has historically encompassed the veneration of several different Gods over time such as Esu, Sango, Osun, and Ogun, as well as the God of Egba. Through the years, numerous individuals in various regions of the world have paid homage to orisha and it has shown itself to be amenable to survival in different types of socio-political and economic contexts which were found in the Americas. Sizeable numbers of Yoruba were taken to countries such as Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti.62 Olukoya Ogen, for example, has argued that the Yoruba slaves that were transported to Haiti exercised a significant role in advancing the cause for revolution to achieve freedom while using Yoruba religion as a major force to help them to achieve their political goals. In particular, he gives great credit to a Yoruba slave named Dutty Boukman, whom he believes played a quintessentially important role in the development of the revolutionary surge that encompassed the country and in ensuring that the revolution would ultimately be successful.63 According to Ogen, Boukman used religion and culture to organize virtually all the Yoruba slaves on the plantations. He had his greatest success with newly armed slaves who had not adjusted to the slave condition. Soon he had an island wide movement against slavery. The great revolutionary leader successfully used Voodoo to make Haiti the first Black Republic in the world and the second nation to achieve independence in the Western hemisphere….According to Laguerre, ‘Voodoo evolved as a political-religious phenomenon and served, during the Haitian revolution, as a vehicle for the expression of a separatist political ideology.’64

The Struggle for Citizenship Rights and Equality in the African Diaspora Although some individuals in the United States and the Western world more broadly speaking continue to refer to Africans and their descendants as outsiders in the insider–outsider debates65 about the settlement of North and South America and the Caribbean islands, while continuing to challenge the veracity of their citizenship rights and claims, the arrival of Africans in the Americas actually predates that of some European groups who arrived at a later point in time.66 According to Paul Zeleza,

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By the beginning of the nineteenth century, more Africans had come to the Americas than Europeans, which has led Shelia Walker (2001) to contest the conceptualization of America as a European creation, and to restore the African and African diasporic contributions to their rightful place.67 ‘For more than 300 years of the five-hundred year modern history of the Americas, she writes, ‘Africans and their descendants were the America’s largest population. Therefore, the demographic foundation of the Americas was Africa, not European.’68

With regard to the attainment of equality and citizenship rights in the North American diaspora in the United States, it is fair to say that for much of the past 400 years (1619–2019) African Americans were virtually devoid of the rights of equality and citizenship, which were accorded to descendants of Europeans who resided in the United States. As major precepts in international relations theory have affirmed, nation states are still considered to be the most important actors in the global arena and citizenship rights must be granted and guaranteed by individual countries. Within this context, constitutions and other legal documents usually set forth the political parameters, stipulations, and criterion to be utilized when providing citizenship rights to individuals, as well as the duties and responsibilities associated with that process.69 Africandescended people, in contrast to other immigrant groups who came to the United States over the past few centuries, did not do so of their own volition, but were rather forced to come by the European powers that created and controlled the slave trade. Offspring of the African slaves who were born in the United States should have been provided with citizenship rights, as were other immigrant communities. Instead, both the slaves and their heirs were relegated to be the property of the plantation owners and were thus considered to be both devoid and undeserving of political rights and freedom. Even though the Declaration of Independence, which was written in 1776, articulated the idea that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”70 these ideals did not apply to people of African descent. Although from a legal point of view, individuals who were born in the United States (and this included children of slave men and women) were supposed to be considered as citizens and accorded voting and other political and economic rights. The reality is that the struggle for citizenship rights has taken place over time and has been fraught with numerous setbacks, frustrations, and forms of humiliation. The historical data demonstrates repeatedly that as Blacks would make some gains either in the legislative arena or when various Amendments were added to the Constitution to provide them with various types of liberties, whites would invariably strike back and develop strategies to take away these rights.71 In a real sense, the notions of independence, equality, and freedom for Africans transported to the Americas under the aegis of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade were philosophically, economically, and politically incompatible

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with the values and beliefs of the American colonists. The Declaration of Independence as well as the ideas that were articulated in the American Constitution of 1787 underscored the importance of capitalism, private property, and the goals of achieving the economic advancement of the United States. What this really meant was the advancement of the members of the majority community. Juliet E.K. Walker has reminded us that the expressed purposes of the framers of the Constitution were to “form a more perfect union….Yet, almost one-fifth of the nation’s population, Black Americans, were excluded from securing either their freedom or liberty.”72 Slave labor was vitally important to advance the goals of capitalist economic development processes. Manning Marable described the situation in his book, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, when he argued: The U.S. apparatus was created to facilitate the expansion and entrenchment of institutional racism in both slave and non-slave-holding states. The solidly bourgeois delegates at the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787 were unconcerned about the “inalienable rights” of Afro-Americans. Their chief concern was the creation of a strong national government that would guarantee property rights—slavery being among them. Thus, the result was the drafting of a racist manifesto which avoided the use of the words “slave” or “slavery” while protecting the institution itself. This was accomplished by three specific points: Article One, Section Two, which counted slaves for purposes of representation and direct taxation as three-fifths of a human being; Article One, Section Nine, which mandated that Federal Authorities could not interfere with the transatlantic slave trade for two decades; and Article Four, Section Two, which declared that all fugitive slaves had to be returned to their rightful owners….The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, signed by the Virginia slaveholder and plantation master, George Washington, strengthened the rights of slaveowners to capture runaways in the North and to remove them by force back to the South.73

The Civil War which was fought in the United States from April 1861 to May of 1865 pitted the Northern states against the slave-holding states of the South. Although a number of issues precipitated the Civil War such as issues over state rights, the concern voiced by some southern states of their desire to leave the union and the political, economic, and moral issues surrounding slavery, the war had devastating impacts on the entire country at that time.74 Interestingly, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 to provide freedom to slaves who labored on plantation economies in the Southern part of the United States, it provided freedom only to slaves who resided in the states that were in war against the Union. Consequently, all slaves were not really free. The complete abolition of slavery did not take place until the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. Nevertheless, the Emancipation Proclamation became the precursor to a renewed attack on the small gains of Blacks as a result of his symbolic efforts. As the Reconstruction period emerged in the aftermath of

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the Civil War, members of Congress in alliance with some Republicans from the Northern part of the country introduced strategies in 1865 that were designed by the federal government to check the negative activities aimed at Blacks to take away their rights in the South. Some African Americans were elected to serve in politics and blacks were able to vote. Nevertheless, renewed efforts were undertaken by whites to dispossess African-descended people of the meager gains that had been advanced to them under the auspices of the Freedman’s Bureau. Unfortunately, President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded President Lincoln into office after President Lincoln was tragically assassinated, did not sympathize with the plight of African-descended people and a period of intensified white hostility and violence emerged.75 As Alphonso Pinkney had elaborated: The President [Andrew Johnson] was indifferent to the treatment of black people because his conception of democracy did not include the blacks. The Southerners who had waged a war to keep blacks enslaved proceeded to pass a series of laws which became known as Black Codes. These laws were specifically designed to restrict the rights of blacks. As DuBois has written, they represented an attempt “… on the part of the Southern states to make Negroes slaves in everything but name … The Black Codes varied from state to state, but, in general, they dealt with virtually every aspect of the lives of ex-slaves, and were designed to take advantage of the precarious position of the ex-slaves. These codes covered such diverse features as whether blacks could enter certain states, the conditions under which they were allowed to work, their rights to own and dispose of property, conditions under which they could hold public assemblies, the ownership of firearms, vagrancy, and a variety of other matters. In some states any white person could arrest an Afro-American.76

The history of the African American efforts to secure and maintain citizenship rights has been a historical battle of wills and perseverance. As soon as legislative remedies were instituted in one area of society, other efforts would be utilized to roll back these rights and privileges. It was a constant battle of wills. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 provided a legislative remedy regarding the issue of citizenship by officially granting African Americans these rights and the federal courts and Congress were empowered to ensure that these rights were sustained over time. As O’Connor and Sobato have emphasized: Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment simultaneously with the Civil Rights Act to guarantee, among other things, citizenship to freed slaves. Other key provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment barred states from abridging ‘the privileges or immunities of citizenship’ or depriving ‘any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’77

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a very important piece of legislation that had specified that equal rights should be granted to all citizens of the United States,

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including Blacks, most especially with regard to the right to go to public facilities such as theaters, hotels, and other places. The famous Supreme Court Case of Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 legally institutionalized the principle of separate versus equal in the United States and upheld the constitutional basis of state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities. This law provided the legal cornerstone and justification for the subsequent development of Jim Crow policies in America, which further diminished the rights and status of African-descended people.78 The contemporary challenges of African-descended people for citizenship rights and the privileges that should emanate from them has continued into the twenty-first century. One example of this ongoing dilemma revolved around the decision made by Barack Obama to run for the office of President of the United States as he officially launched his political campaign in 2008.79 According to the Constitution, Obama met the qualifications to run for the Presidency as he was at least 35 years of age, was a natural born citizen, and had resided in the United States for a period of at least 14 years.80 Nevertheless, in spite of the above facts, a new movement was born in 2008 as President Obama’s campaign gained momentum that was known as the Birther Movement. The purpose of the movement and its proponents was to challenge Obama’s rights to both run for and to be elected as President as various individuals challenged the veracity of his claims that he was a U.S. citizen who had been born in the United States. These efforts were designed principally to delegitimize his ability to run for this political office and to denigrate his racial background as his father (Barack Obama, Sr.) was from Kenya and his mother (Ann Dunham) was a Caucasian woman who had grown up in the state of Kansas (United States.)81 Donald Trump was one of the key vocal leaders of the Birther Movement. President Obama, who was elected to office in November of 2008 and who subsequently served as President from January 2009 to January of 2017, eventually produced a copy of his birth certificate which was made public in 2011. Donald Trump continued to denigrate President Obama even after the birth certificate was released and publicly challenged whether the birth certificate was authentic. This birth certificate confirmed that President Obama had been born in Hawaii, which is a part of the United States. It took more than five years after President Obama publicly released his birth certificate, for Donald Trump to announce on television that he finally believed that President Obama was born in the United States although he has never issued an official apology to him.82 The fact that President Obama was the very first African American to be elected president, the highest office in the United States, became extremely significant given the backdrop of the various ways that individuals tried to prevent him from attaining this office. The pain and humiliation heaped upon President Obama during this birther controversy had far-reaching impacts on his wife, Former First Lady Michelle Obama, their children, other family members, and the country as a whole As Mrs. Obama clarified in her poignant memoir, Becoming:

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Photo 7.6 Photo of the Honorable President Barack Obama The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, it’s underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wing nuts and kooks. What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendoes, was putting my family’s.

The Impact of Social Movements: The Modern Civil Rights Movement and # Black Lives Matter According to Stephen Orvis and Carol Ann Drogus, “social movements ….have a loosely defined organizational structure and represent people who perceive themselves to be outside formal institutions, seek major socioeconomic or political changes, or employ non-institutional forms of collective action.”83 Two of the most important social movements during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that have sought to ameliorate the plight of Africandescended people are the Modern Civil Rights Movement that began in 1955 and the Black Lives Matter Social Movement that was in place by 2015 in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri by a white police officer on August 8, 2014. The Modern Civil Rights Movement

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had significant impacts on the plight of African American people in the United States. Although Rosa Parks was not the first person of African descent to protest her undignified treatment on the Montgomery buses, her singular act of refusing to give up her seat for a white man in December of 1955 and her subsequent arrest served as the match that subsequently ignited the flames of the Modern Civil Rights Movement in America. Rosa Parks’ act of resistance and civic disobedience served as the important catalytic agent that unleashed the fury and anger of generations of African Americans.84 With this important act, the movement to acquire basic civil rights and human dignities for people of color took on epic proportions as a young and gifted black Baptist preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had just recently been appointed to serve as the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, came face to face with his destiny as he became the Father of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Alabama, the former seat of the Confederacy, was a fitting location for the development of the movement because as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., argued in his famous book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, the South at this time period was virtually synonymous with racism because “prejudice, discrimination, and bigotry had been intricately embedded in all institutions of Southern life, political, social, and economic.”85 He became a central figure in the implementation of the successful boycotts of the buses in Montgomery and became known for his borrowing of the principles of non-violent protests that had earlier been popularized by Mohandas Gandhi in India during its independence struggles with the British colonial power. Under Dr. King’s able leadership, numerous sit-ins took place across the South as freedom riders of different racial, gender, age, and religious backgrounds, boarded buses to make sure that public facilities would become integrated so that African Americans could enjoy the fruits of liberty in America. But the movement also encompassed efforts to change public attitudes about the immoral issues associated with bigotry and discrimination.86 In “Revisiting the Black Style: Lessons for the 21st Century,” Asafa Jalata described the situation thusly: The African American Movement gained political legitimacy because it politicized the grievances of collective memory and appealed to a common ancestry to regain for this people cultural, political, and economic rights by rejecting subordination and white cultural supremacy or hegemony. This movement showed that ‘people who participate in collective action do so only when such actions resonates with both an individual and a collective identity that makes such action meaningful.’87

Although a number of historical books on the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.have portrayed him as an individual who bowed and towed to the political leadership in America, the critically acclaimed movie, Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay and released in theaters, November of 2014, offered a compelling counter narrative to these previous interpretations. Selma

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portrayed the many different and complex layers of Dr. King, including his work as a brilliant and articulate spokesman for the needs and aspirations of the Civil Rights Movement, his highly developed political savvy, his brilliant political strategizing, and his role as the foremost political provocateur of his era. As the American Collector’s Magazine’s special issue on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has attested (Photo 7.7): In the final years of his life, King became an outspoken advocate for peace and opponent of the Vietnam War, which peaked at nearly 17,000 U.S. combat deaths….King also took up the issue of economic fairness and moved his family to Chicago in 1966 to highlight slum-like living conditions in northern cities. When he was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, he was supporting a local sanitation workers’ strike and was in the midst of organizing his next crusade: a “Poor People’s Campaign” protest planned for Washington D.C.88

The Civil Rights Movement eventually became more than a Black people’s movement as it broadened its tentacles to include gender inequality, the rights of the disabled, and today encompasses the rights of people to marry individuals in same sex categories. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was broad and sweeping in both its focus and impact. It covered a broad range of issues such as banning discriminatory behaviors as they related to the use of public facilities as well as providing for the Office of the Attorney General to use legal measures to ensure that public schools were integrated facilities. Moreover, it focused on the provision of equal opportunities in the acquisition of jobs in America for all citizens, the banning of methods that had been used to prevent African Americans from registering to vote and participating in the political arena. It also included penalties through the potential loss of federal dollars to facilities which refused to abide by these regulations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 also included measures to prevent African Americans from registering to vote and becoming politically engaged actors in the political process.89 In spite of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the enactment of Affirmative Programs with regard to the hiring of women and minorities, it is fair to say that the vision that Dr. King so brilliantly articulated in his famous 1963 “I Have A Dream Speech” has not been fully implemented. While some progress has been made in some key areas, much more work needs to be done to ensure equal treatment under the law in the United States. African Americans still suffer from employment discrimination, and in some communities, they experience unemployment rates that are more than twice that of the national average. Their current poverty rate is 27.4% and they experience constant discrimination in their efforts to secure adequate housing. There is still a substantial wealth and inequality gap between Blacks and Whites and although the United States has only 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s prisoners, rendering it the country with the highest rates of incarceration in the entire world. African Americans now constitute nearly 1

Photo 7.7 The Great Freedom March Rally Cobo Hall, June 1963 (Note Left to Right: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mrs. Rosa Parks, and Mr. David Boston. Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

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million of the 2.3 million incarcerated people in this country. African Americans and Hispanics are incarcerated at nearly six times the rates of whites. If current trends continue, one in six black males can expect to spend time in prison during their lifetimes. Institutional racism is still the bane of existence for people of color who reside in the United States, and African American males have been under siege across time and space. One manifestation of this fact is the increasing number of incidents of racial profiling and police brutality with members of the African American community, which far too often ends in death. The individual cases are too numerous to mention, but some of the tragic episodes involve the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner in New York; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; and Walter Scott in Charleston, South Carolina, who was shot several times in the back by a police officer, who was subsequently charged with murder. The excessive use of force continues to accelerate and numerous grand juries have refused to indict many of the white police officers involved, in spite of a host of incontrovertible data that these murders were unjustified and undeserved. These individual cases now constitute a painful part of a complex national historical narrative of pain, tragedy, pathos, and suffering that continues to plague African Americans and others in this country. The final words of Eric Garner, “I Can’t Breathe,” as he was wrestled to the ground in an illegal chokehold by officers in New York city resonates in our national consciousness and continues to symbolize our struggles over the past few centuries in a country where, to borrow the words of the famous novelist Terri McMillan, “we are still waiting to exhale.”90 According to Herbert Ruffin, the development of the Black Lives Matter Social Movement can be attributed to the roles played by three different individuals whose work focused on organizing various groups in different locations in the United States during the summer of 2013. These individuals included Opal Tometi, who worked in the area of rights for immigrants in Phoenix, Arizona; Patrisse Cullors, whose work centered on helping to organize folks around issues of police violence in their respective communities in Los Angeles, California; and Alicia Garza, who at that time played a pivotal role in the development of leadership for the rights of domestic workers located in Oakland, California. Initially, this movement began by appealing to individuals on social media through the use of the hashtag #Black Lives Matter. The Organization, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, played a pivotal role in the development of the movement as it was through this organization that the three women listed above voiced their concerns about the fact that George Zimmerman was not sent to prison for murdering Trayvon Martin in the state of Florida in 2013 when he was visiting his father. #Black Lives Matter continued to gain momentum in 2015 after the tragic murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. This senseless murder at the hands of a white police officer, once again, led to explosive anger by members of the African American community and many others who felt helpless to stop the continuous onslaught of African American males and females. This helplessness

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coupled with the futility of hope that grand juries empowered to investigate some of these killings would do the right thing and indict the accused police officers in the various cases for murder. When violence erupted in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, armored military tanks were sent in by the Governor of the state of Missouri. # Black Lives Matter encompasses several major goals which include an eradication of police brutality in the Black community; over-incarceration of blacks by the judicial system, often for non-violent offenses and crimes that many whites are not arrested for, and an end to racial profiling.91 As Herbert Ruffin has articulated: While Black Lives Matter drew inspiration from the 1960s civil rights/ Black power movement, the 1980s black feminist/womanist movement, the 1980s anti-apartheid/Pan African movement, the late-1980s political hip-hop movement, the 2000s LGBT movement, and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement, they used newly developed social media to reach thousands of like-minded people across the nation quickly to create a Black social justice movement that rejected the charismatic male-centered top-down movement structure that had been the model for most previous efforts….Black Lives Matter incorporated those on the margins of traditional black freedom movements, including women, the working poor, the disabled, undocumented immigrants, atheists and agnostics, and those who identify as queer and transgender.92

But, as recent incidents over the past decades have emphasized, the struggle is not yet over in Africa and in the African Diaspora. We must remain ever vigilant as we commemorate the contributions of many men and women who gave of their lives in Africa and the Diaspora, so that human and civil rights could become the purview of every man, woman, and child. The election of President Barack Obama to serve as America’s 44th President from 2008 to 2016 offered a beacon of hope that America could finally overcome her aversion to Black leadership in the highest political office in the land. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote: Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, struggle, and the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous positive action.93

Conclusions This chapter has focused attention on the Yoruba in the Atlantic World and the development of the African Diaspora in North America predominantly with some attention also being placed on their enslavement and survival in South America. It has also examined the ways in which Africans that were brought

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involuntarily to the New World used and constructed their own survival mechanisms, which included various ways to assimilate into the New World societies on one hand, versus the need to organize rebellions, protests, and other measures to ensure their own survival, on the other hand. A discussion has also been made of the continuing challenges that African-descended people have endured to obtain and utilize their citizenship rights. As the research has shown, when Blacks gained political and social momentum both legally and socially, new efforts to dispossess them of these rights were constantly utilized to take them back to a lower status. The election of President Barack Obama, though a positive accomplishment in the historical trajectory of the African American Experience in the United States, was also fraught with difficulty as he encountered hostility from the members of Birther Movement, who attacked his rights to run for this high office and who sought to delegitimize his ability to serve in this pivotal role. The development of the Modern Civil Rights Movement was fundamentally important with regard to its broad-sweeping impact and subsequent dismantling of many barriers that had been erected to prevent African Americans from acquiring political, economic, and social equality with whites in the broader society. # Black Lives Matter Social Movement, which developed in the aftermath of the murder of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman and which continued to gain momentum after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer and numerous others also has brought international attention to the issues of police brutality against African American men and women, the excessively high rates of criminal prosecutions and sentencing of Blacks to serve long terms in prison, as well as the low overall value that the American society has placed on Black lives. It has become a rallying cry for those who wish to assert that not only do Black Lives Matter, but that we are all bound together with others around the world as significant members of the broader human community.

Notes 1. See Edward Alpers, “Defining the African Diaspora,” Paper presented to the Center for Comparative Social Analysis Workshop, October 25, 2001, University of California, Los Angeles; Joseph E. Harris, “The Dynamics of the Global African Diaspora,” The African Diaspora, eds. Alusine Jalloh and Stephan E. Maizlish (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 1996); William Safran, “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” Diaspora 1:1 (1991); Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas,” African Sociological Review 12 (2008); Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997); Christine Chivallon, The BlackDiaspora of the Americas: Experiences and Theories Out of the Caribbean, Translated from the French Version by Antoinette Titus-Tidani Alou (Kingston: Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2011); Paul E. Lovejoy and David V. Trotman, eds., Trans-Atlantic Dimension of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora (London: Continuum, 2003).

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2. Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas,” 17. 3. Sheila Walker, African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), 2. 4. Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison, eds. Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 1. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Toyin Falola, The African Diaspora: Slavery, Modernity, and Globalization (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013), 1. 8. Alpers, “Defining the African Diaspora,” 2. 9. Ibid., 4. 10. Ibid. 11. Robin Cohen, “Diasporas and the Nation-State: From Victims to Challengers,” International Affairs 72 (3) (July 1996) 514–515; See also William Safran, “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” Diaspora 1 (1) (1991): 83. 12. Cohen, “Diasporas and the Nation-State,” 514–515. 13. Michael A. Gomez, “Of DuBois and Diaspora: The Challenges of African American Studies,” Journal of Black Studies 35 (2): 177–180. 14. Falola, The Power of African Cultures, 279, 281. 15. Ibid., 281. 16. See Barbour and Wright, Keeping the Republic, 184. 17. The edited volume by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs, The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World,for example provides excellent, balanced chapters on both resistance, assimilation and survival of the Yoruba in North America, South America, and the Caribbean. 18. Ibid., 279–280; See also Chivallon, The Black Diaspora of the Americas, xxvii– xxviii. 19. Chivallon, The Black Diaspora of the Americas, xxviii. 20. Schaeder, African Politics and Society, 52. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 53. 23. Ibid. 24. Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 101, 106. 25. Ibid., 212–213. 26. Harris, “The Dynamics of the Global African Diaspora,” 7–15. 27. Chivallon, The Black Diaspora of the Americas, 21–22. 28. Ibid. 29. Editors, Time-Life Books, African American Voices of Triumph (Alexandria, VA: Time Life Custom Publishing, 1993), 46. 30. Wilma King, “Prematurely Knowing of Evil Things:” The Sexual Abuse of African. American Girls and Young Women in Slavery and Freedom,” The Journal of African American History 99 (3) (Summer 2014), 173–175. 31. Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History, 6–10. 32. Ibid. 33. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 5. See also S. Adebanji Akintoye, A History of the Yoruba People (Dakar, Senegal: Amalion Publishing, 2010), 365.

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34. See, for example, David Eltis, “The Diaspora of Yoruba Speakers, 1630–1865,” in The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, ed. Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs, 19–31; Paul E. Lovejoy, “The Yoruba Factor in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” in The Yoruba Disapora in the Atlantic World, ed. Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 43, Lovejoy, “The Yoruba Factor in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” 43. 35. Ibid. 36. Leon Litwack, “North of Slavery,” Blacks in White America Before 1865: Issues and Interpretations, ed. Robert V. Haynes (New York: David McKay Company, 1972), 380. 37. Ibid. 38. Brigid Callahan Harrison, Jean Wahl Harris and Michelle D. Deardorff, American Democracy Now, Fourth Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2015), 159; See also Karen O’Connor and Larry J. Sabato, American Government Roots and Reform (New York: Pearson, 2018), 93, 39. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 5; See also Harrison, Harris and Deardorff, American Democracy Now, 159. 40. O’Connor and Sabato, American Government: Roots and Reform, 93 41. Akintoye, A History of the Yoruba People, 365–366. 42. Ibid., 366. 43. Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison, eds. Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 1. 44. Karen O’Connor and Larry J. Sabato, American Government: Roots and Reform (New York: Pearson, 2018), 92. 45. Ibid. 46. Harrison, Harris and Deardorff, American Democracy Now, 159. 47. O’Connor and Sabato, American Government: Roots and Reform, 92. 48. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 4. 49. Bessie House-Soremekun, “The Ongoing Quest for Human and Civil Rights in Africa and the African Diaspora,” in Discourses on Human and Civil Rights in Africa and the African Diaspora, ed. Adebayo Oyebade and Gashawbeza Bakele (Austin: Pan African University Press, 2016), 16–17; Harrison, Harris and Deardorff, American Democracy Now, 158. 50. Akintoye, The History of the Yoruba, 366–367; Michael L. Coniff and Thomas D. Davis, Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 58–62. 51. Alphonso Pinkney, Black Americans (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1975), 1–29; Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 46–58; Time Life Books, African American Voices of Triumph:Perseverance (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Custom Publishing, 1993), 30–39; Chivallon, The Black Diaspora of the Americas, 22–31. 52. Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). 53. See Juliet E.K. Walker, “Trade and Markets in Pre- Colonial West and West Central Africa: The Cultural Foundation of the African American Business Tradition, A Different Vision: Race and Public Policy, ed. Thomas D. Boston,

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56. 57.

58. 59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64.

65.

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Volume 2 (New York: Routledge, 1997), 206–209; See also Walker, The History of Black Business in America, Volume 1, 9–15. Walker, The History of Black Business in America, Volume 1, 11. Manning Marable, “History of Black Capitalism,” African Americans in the U.S. Economy, ed., Cecilia. A. Conrad, John Whitehead, Patrick Mason, and James Stewart (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 231. House-Soremekun, Confronting the Odds, Volume 1, 1–100; HouseSoremekun, Confronting the Odds, Volume 2, 1–100. See Asata Jalata, “Comparing the African American and Oromo Movements in the Global Context,” Social Justice 30 (1) (2003), 68; See also John Henrik Clarke, H. Clarke, “African Cultural Continuity and Slave Revolts in the New World,” The Black Scholar 8 (1) (September 1976): 41–50; and John Henrik Clarke, “African Cultural Continuity and Slave Revolts in the New World,” Part Two, The Black Scholar 8 (2) (October–November 1976): 2–10 Toyin Falola, The African Diaspora. Howard Dodson, “The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Modern World,” in African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, ed. Sheila S. Walker (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), 118. Falola, The African Diaspora, 143. Toyin Falola and Ann Genova, eds., Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity in Africa and the African Diaspora (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005), 3, 11, 13.; Falola, The African Diaspora, 134–143. Olukoya Ogen, “Historicizing African Contributions to the Emancipation Movement: The Haitian Revolution, 1791–1805,” Paper scheduled for presentation at a conference that was to take place at the State University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on November 11–13, 2008, 1–8, The conference was held to discuss the topic of teaching the history and culture of the Diaspora. Ibid., 10; See also Michael S. Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 10. For much of U.S. history, Africans and their descendants have been characterized as foreign people who were not part of the real heritage of this country. This is doubly ironic since many of the early populations who settled America were also immigrants from other countries and the African presence in the New World was earlier than their own arrival as Zeleza, Walker, and others have pointed out. As shall be discussed more fully in the later part of this chapter, President Barack Obama was also cast as a foreigner or someone who was not born in the United States under the umbrella of the birther movement, even though he was born in the state of Hawaii which is part of the United States of America. Brigid Callahan Harrison, Jean Wahl Harris and Michelle D. Deardorff, American Democracy Now, Fourth Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2015), 158; Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diaspora, 50; Shelia Walker, “Introduction: Are You Hip to the Jive? (Re)Writing/Righting the Pan-American Discourse,” in African Roots/ American Cultures in Africa and the Creation of theAmericas, ed. Sheila D. Walker (New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 2001), 2–3. Paul Zeleza, “The Challenges of Studying the African Diaspora,” African Sociological Review 12 (2) (2008), 11.

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67. Walker, “Introduction. 2–3. 68. See a copy of the Constitution of the United States which was included in appendix II, O’Connor and Sabato, American Government, 417–427. 69. See a copy of the Declaration of Independence which was included in the appendix I, O’Connor and Sabato, American Government, 414. 70. Christine Barbour and Gerald C. Wright, Keeping the Republic: Power and Citizenship in American Politics (Washington, DC: Sage, 2020), 170–188; See also O’Connor and Sabato, American Government, 91–115; Harrison, Harris and Deardorff, American Democracy Now, 158–160. 71. Juliet E.K. Walker, “Whither Liberty, Equality or Legality? Slavery, Race, Property, and the 1787 American Constitution,” accessed online from HeinOnline at http://heinonline.org. 72. Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, Updated Edition (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), 2. 73. Barbour and Wright, Keeping the Republic, 178. 74. See Barbour and Wright, Keeping the Republic, 17; Alphonso Pinkney, Black Americans, 1–29. 75. Ibid., 1–29. 76. O’Connor and Sabato, American Government, 95. 77. Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison, eds. Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 1. 78. Rickey Hill, “Race, Post-Black Politics, and the Democratic Presidential Candidacy of Barack Obama,” Souls 11 (1) (2009): 17. 79. O’Connor and Sabato, American Government, 154–155. 80. Hill, “Race, Post-Black Politics, and the Democratic Presidential Candidacy of Barack Obama,” 18; Natural Born Shenanigans: How the Birther Movement Exacerbated Confusion Over the Constitution’s Natural Born Citizen Requirement,” Regent University Law Review 25: 155–165, Accessed online at https://www.regent.edu/acad/schlaw/student_life/studentorgs/law review/docs/issues/v27n/12_Jones_vol_27_1.pdf. 81. See article titled, “How Donald Trump Perpetuated the ‘Birther’ Movement for Years: A Look at the. Trajectory of Donald Trump’s role in the Birther Movement, accessed online at https://abcnews.com/Politics/donald-trump-perpetuated-birthermovement-years/story?id. 82. Michelle Obama, Becoming (New York: Crown Publishers, 2018). 83. Barbour and Wright, Keeping the Republic, 183–184; O’Connor and Sabato, American Government, 74–75. 84. Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1968), 14. 85. O’Connor and Sabato, American Government, 103–104; Barbour and Wright, Keeping the Republic, 181–185; See also American Collector’s Special Issue: Martin Luther King, Jr: 50 Years Later: The Enduring Legacy of the American Dream, June 2018, 1–84. 86. Asafa Jalata, “Revisiting the Black Struggle,” 87. 87. American Collector’s Special Issue, Martin Luther King Jr., 8–9. 88. Harrison, Harris, and Deardorff, American Democracy Now, 167–168; The critically-acclaimed movie, “Selma,” offered a compelling counter-narrative

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90.

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about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Civil Rights Movement, and the famous March from Selma to Montgomery. Pew Research Center, Social and Demographic Trends,” August 22, 2013, accessed at http://www.pewsocialtrends.com; See also Suzanne MaCartney, Alemayehu Bishaw, and Kayla Fontenet, “Poverty Rates for Selected Detailed Race and Hispanic Groups by State and Place,” US Census Bureau, 2007– 2011, American Community Survey Briefs, February 2013, 1–2; See also House-Soremekun, Confronting the Odds, Volume 1, 50. See Herbert G. Ruffin II, “Black Lives Matter: The Growth of a New Social Justice Movement,” accessed online from BlackPast on http://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-livesmatter-gro wth-new-social-justice, August 23, 2015; See also Barbour and Wright, Keeping the Republic, 186. Ruffin, “Black Lives Matter,” accessed online. Martin Luther King, Jr., accessed at http://humanityjournalorg/issue1/human-rights-anddecolonization-new-perspectives-and-open-questions/.

Part II

Africa and Global Knowledge Production

CHAPTER 8

African Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the World Amidu Owolabi Ayeni and Adeshina Gbenga Aborisade

Introduction Nations of the world are currently encumbered with countless challenges that constantly threaten their inhabitants’ continuous existence. These challenges stated here are often anthropogenic, meaning the excesses of man cause them through his many activities geared toward improving his comfort. Agyemang and Carver (2013) gave a glossary of such activities to include: indiscriminate grazing, large and small scale mining, sand and stone quarrying, periodic bush burning, and firewood harvesting have played an increasingly important role in driving the ecosystems in many developing countries far beyond their carrying capacity thereby causing unprecedented degradation and depletion of the natural resources.1 Furthermore, Chopra (2016) also cited modern urbanization, industrialization, overpopulation, garbage, air and water pollution as well as land degradation (land clearance & deforestation, soil depletion through poor farming practices, overgrazing, etc.) as the human activities impacting the ecosystem negatively and plunging it into chaos.2 However, the emerging consequences of these acts indicate that man’s comfort expedition is one that has been taken too far. Scholarly predictions of the effects of these irresponsible acts abound in literature and include: climate change, acid rain, desertification and pollution, changes in biological productivity, accelerated soil erosion, destruction of watershed stability, increased A. O. Ayeni (B) · A. G. Aborisade Department of Geography, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_8

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emission of greenhouse gases, and loss of biological diversity.3,5 The need to combat and manage these emerging threats has suddenly become urgent. Havemann (2016) thoroughly captured the urgency of the situation when he stated that the threats posed by climate change, food insecurity, and shrinking biodiversity are more urgent than ever, but adequate solutions have been slow to come.5 But while attention has focused on technologies and the need to invest in infrastructure development such as renewable energy systems, the damages done must be curtailed. The consequential environmental crisis emanating from these unchecked excesses has led to numerous questions being asked about the carefree ways of living of the current generation, especially the growing estrangement of many societies from nature and the reckless exploitation of the planet for development or resource extraction. Containing this situation has suddenly become paramount. Otherwise, environmental collapse is imminent. Therefore, the time is ripe for man to unlearn some of his environmentally damaging ways of life and embrace other but safer ways of doing things, and one such way is to embrace indigenous Knowledge. Indigenous Knowledge is the knowledge exhibited by indigenous people. Several scholarly definitions and descriptions that gave more elaborations on indigenous knowledge’s subject matter abound in academic literature. Warren (1991) stated that indigenous Knowledge is, broadly speaking, the Knowledge used by local people to live in a particular environment.6 Ellen and Harris (1996) opined that indigenous Knowledge and indigenous knowledge systems refer to knowledge and knowledge systems unique to a given culture.7 It was also described as what indigenous people know and do, and what they have known and done for generations, practices that evolved through trial and error and proved flexible enough to cope with change.8,9 Therefore, African indigenous Knowledge and indigenous knowledge system represent the knowledge and knowledge systems that are peculiar to African indigenous people.9 Crawhall (2006) also described the African indigenous people as the highly marginalized rural communities or African groups that are living by hunting and gathering or by nomadic/transhumant herding or were recently living by these specialized economic subsistence modes.10 Furthermore, indigenous people face rejection through acts that usually threaten their livelihoods and severely violate their collective human rights and cultural beliefs and consequently put their sustainability and survival in doubt. One may wonder why African indigenous knowledge addresses the many debacles confronting man globally. Successes recorded by African indigenous people using their indigenous knowledge were largely undocumented. Its continuous success was halted by colonialism, which brutally interrupted and severely diluted the simplicity, stability, serenity, and efficacy that characterized this Knowledge when deployed. According to Lalonde (1991), this was partly because much of African traditional Knowledge exists in oral form or is

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learned from elders through shared practice and trial and error experimentation.20 It is also part of the complex unfolding of events stemming from the severe cultural disruption faced by native Africans during the colonial period as their Knowledge was completely submerged with Western practices. According to Lalonde (1991), research has shown that around the world, aboriginal or tribal connection to the local land and wildlife is both symbolic (knowledge systems based on spiritual ritual, religious practice, taboos and naming, etc.), and experiential (travel, foraging, residence, etc.) hence recognizing indigenous traditional knowledge holders and their rights to selfdetermination, as well as mainstreaming their wisdom, a new biocultural paradigm could be developed to guide others on how to live within the Earth’s ecological limits.5,20 The preoccupation of this work is, therefore, to carry out a review of relevant research pieces of literature on the indigenous knowledge system of Africa and highlight its importance. The paper is organized around the following, methodology, conceptual framework, nature of African culture and indigenous knowledge system, African indigenous knowledge system and Western Knowledge as well as the successes of Indigenous Knowledge and Advocacy for Its Usage. Methodology This work was based on a qualitative research method, which according to Lincoln and Guba (1985), is called “the human as instrument” approach; hence it is concerned with understanding human beings’ richly textured experiences and reflections about those experiences.11,12 The relevant literature on indigenous people, indigenous Knowledge, cultures and other related literature were reviewed to enhance the necessary reflection and understanding to achieve this. Conceptual Framework A conceptual framework is a systematic arrangement of related and relevant concepts and/or assumptions put together to support and aid the understanding of the theme(s) of research work. It is a bridge deployed by a researcher to promote his work & aid understanding by linking it with the relevant or common concept in the mainstream research literature. The conceptual anchors for this research are those that could enhance the understanding of the indigenous people and their wisdom. They include: ● ● ● ●

Worldview concept Participatory Mapping Adaptation Strategies Knowledge

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Worldview Concept Worldview is a concept that has been described by different categories of people ranging from scholars to clerics and other interesting articles. Some of the commonest descriptions as collated by Naugle are given as follows: Worldview is the whole manner of conceiving of the world and humanity’s place in it, the widest possible view which the mind can take of things (James Orr); it is a life-system, rooted in a fundamental principle from which was derived a whole complex of ruling ideas and conceptions about reality.13 It is also a perspective on life, a whole system of thought that answers the questions presented by the reality of existence (Francis Schaeffer); James Sire described it as a set of presuppositions or assumptions held consciously or unconsciously, consistently or inconsistently, about the basic makeup of reality.13 Furthermore, Kalu (1978) and Kraft (1979) stated that world-view could be understood in terms of a unified picture of the cosmos explained by a system of concepts, which order the natural and social rhythms and the place of individuals and communities in them.14,15 Similarly, it can be referred to as how people perceive and explain their world or the ways things are or change in their environment. It is also defined as a coherent collection of concepts allowing us “to construct a global image of the world, and in this way to understand as many elements of our experience as possible. A world-view based on the scholarly definitions and descriptions given above is about the perception of individuals, a tribe of people, or even a nation on life in general. It is about how people see the world, how they perceive occurrences or occasions and how they feel these things affect their lives. Worldview is the opinion or perspective of an individual about things and the effects such things have on them based on some fundamental reasoning, explanations, or assumptions they have acquired over time. For instance, there is constant talk of unemployment globally, and a person’s world-view may be that he is not affected by the unemployment glut while another may feel he is affected. This position is often formed by a thought process formed as a result of growing within a certain culture, environment, or exposure. Nwoye (2011) is spot on with the statement that a people’s world-view stands for their source of explanations for the ways things are in the world, including their theories of illness, death, and misfortunes, and how human afflictions and problems can be resolved.16 Indeed as Animalu (1990) sees it, a world-view or cosmological framework refers to people’s way of organizing their activities, explaining the how and why of daily existence.17 It is a concept that emphasizes the fact that man does not exist in a vacuum but in a physical phenomenon that is the “world,” so the intent is for him to get a grip of occurrences that shape his life. Based on the foregoing, the explanation of the world-view to the indigenous people of Africa could only be obtained through the mirrors of culture and tradition; hence their understanding of the world, environment, and life is tied to the apron of culture. The several elements which form the fulcrum

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of the African culture such as the belief system, the norms and values, the spiritual rituals, religious practices, taboos, music, naming, languages, marriages, medicine, occupations, traditional authority, kingship, chieftaincy and leadership, births, deaths, wars, festivals, lands, the ecosystems, life after death, etc., aid the understanding of the average indigenous African man as well as shapes his world-view perspective. The world-view perception is something that could take a lifetime to be formed. In the African setting, it may come through everyday interactions, seasonal preoccupations, festivals, etc., all carried out within the dictate of culture.

Participatory Mapping According to Di Gessa, Poole and Bending (2008), participatory mapping is well established as a development intervention tool as it has allowed for improved information exchange between community members and outsiders (e.g., researchers, NGOs, government) in the design and implementation of development projects.18 The emphasis in this concept is on multiple participation and contribution from people from different works of life; hence this approach is an important tool as it gives room for many stakeholders such as indigenous people to partake in resource management. Participatory mapping can also be described as a traditional top-down, agency-driven decision-making in resource management that has moved toward processes that involve stakeholders (those who have an interest in or are affected by a decision) and acknowledge the importance of public attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and Knowledge. The whole idea is that combined Knowledge, ideas, and experience can generate a map that can be instrumental in managing resources. Maps allow for a clearer understanding of an endless variety of issues attached to a resource or resources. Notable areas where participatory mapping will come in handy include coastal issues, land issues, forest management, weather and climate management, etc. These are all areas where indigenous people’s Knowledge, which has thrived for centuries, could be integrated with relevant ideas from other sources. An example of the hybrid map that may evolve from participatory mapping was given by NOAA.19 The hybrid map generated by NOAA highlighted the usefulness of participatory mapping in coastal issues to include: provision of a way to engage stakeholders near and far, generation of objective local information on resources, traditional knowledge and practices from the community, access to information on how communities perceive, value, and use resources, a focal point for discussions on coastal issues, a valuable tool to support decision-making and graphical and easily understandable communication tools.19 A similar template may be designed for other resources; hence merging indigenous Knowledge with Knowledge from other sources can lead to a robust map that would be extremely useful.

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Adaptation Strategies Adaptation is a central theme in the man–environment relationship. According to Wikipedia, adaptation is an evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat or habitats. The indigenous people of Africa are historically vast at adapting to different challenges that the environment poses against them. As stated by Lalonde (1991), indigenous people adopt varieties of cultural strategies that are ingeniously designed to address local ecological limitations by maintaining a sustainable utilization and protection of commonly shared natural resources.20 Adaptation strategies such as those that were deployed in agriculture, managing weather and climate, trading, medicine, among others, all count as indigenous Knowledge as they have served the local people for many generations and have been instrumental in their survival and essential in their sustenance. Ngenwi (2011) highlighted the season prediction capability of the African indigenous people as a knowledge that supported their agricultural livelihood.21 Their understanding of this is deep as it includes planting dates, mixed farming, and storage of extra harvest for food supply separately from that destined for the market. Furthermore, they take cognizance of planting materials for the coming planting season by ensuring they were separated from food reserves; they adopted the use of local plant materials in protecting grains against weevils in storage; and also made crop diversification: a lot of crop species on the same piece of land guarded against crop failure in times of adverse climatic conditions. In Nepal, communities have dealt with natural climatic variability and other changes by innovating and institutionalizing indigenous and local knowledge practices in managing local natural resources and infrastructure development.22 Related to this is the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) program, which ensures that the communities use their knowledge to manage their natural resources. Mapara (2009) stated that indigenous ways of knowing had brought forth useful Knowledge on medicine and health.23 The rural community of Ilocos Norte Province of the Philippines heavily relied on indigenous weather forecasts to plan and prepare agroforestry activities and disaster prevention.24 There is no denying the fact that the man–environment relationship as explained via the concepts of environmental determinism, through possibilism to probabilism, was based on a high level of resilience and adaptation and the lessons learned helped the early man to survive, dominate, and manage his environment; the theme of these concepts is no different from that of the indigenous people who adapted to environmental impositions, constraints and travails to acquire survival intelligence that was continually fine-tuned until it became refined indigenous Knowledge that was orally passed from one generation to another. Therefore, adaptation strategies help conceptualize African indigenous Knowledge as bundles of tested and productive knowledge nuggets that can still help in the current time.

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Knowledge According to Bolisani and Bratianu (2018), knowledge is an abstract concept without any reference to the tangible world. It was also described as an ambiguous concept, just as its equivalents in other languages (Histanalytic.com/ETC1).25 The abstract nature of the concept contributes to the ambiguity and difficulties that characterize the failed attempts by various scholars, clerics, and other interested parties to adequately define or describe the concept. It is therefore not surprising but understandable that Coffey (1917) tagged it “sui generis,” meaning it cannot be defined properly/sufficiently/adequately/convincingly by anything other than itself.26 The failure in generating a universally acceptable definition for Knowledge is trans-generational as scholars and philosophers of repute from the ancient period like Plato, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Gettier as well as great spiritual leaders and philosophers such as Buddha, Confucius to the modern-day experts, were all unable to come up with a consensus definition rather the outcome of their trial was rather fuzzy. The foregoing therefore tallies with the opinion of Bolisani and Bratianu (2018) that Philosophers, starting with Plato and Aristotle, developed Epistemology as a theory of Knowledge in trying to answer the fundamental question: What is Knowledge?25 Many answers and many arguments emerged as points from scholars in supporting their perspective on Knowledge, but none of those theories has been accepted so far as being fully satisfactory; hence Neta and Pritchard (2009) and Russell (1972) stated that defining Knowledge and explaining its nature proved to be elusive and without a convincing and universally accepted result.27,28 Despite this inconclusiveness in defining Knowledge, there is some consensus level among historical and modern scholars and philosophers that Knowledge is anything that fulfills the condition of justified true belief; this, therefore, suggests that any postulation that can adequately satisfy the conditions of justified true belief is Knowledge. Furthermore, Agarwal (2017) gave the opinion that Knowledge requires three necessary and sufficient conditions to be defined as justified true belief. Hist-analytic.com/ETC1 highlighted the conditions as follows: cognitive abilities that result from learning but sometimes even motor abilities; acquaintance, familiarity, personal experience, and corresponding recognitional abilities; and facts gathered by study, observation, or experience, and conclusions inferred from such facts.29 Notwithstanding the complexity in defining Knowledge, it can still be described in the context of a preoccupation, i.e., within the subject matter framework. And just like Travica (2013), Knowledge will be defined in terms of understanding30 : ● what something is (concepts, concepts’ relationships, taxonomies), ● why something is (cause–effect relationships), and ● How to do something (procedures, know-how).

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This definition pinpoints the knowledge content and is anchored in the literature on cognition.31,32 This means that Knowledge in this work is based on understanding the African indigenous knowledge system. Nature of African Culture and Indigenous Knowledge Systems Africa, before her invasion by the colonialists, was firmly rooted in culture and tradition. This is so because the everyday life of the African people, their conduct, their norms and values, occupations, marriage, religion and belief, and general well-being were all subject to culture. Culture is ubiquitous; hence, it is not peculiar to Africa alone. Other countries and continents (Europe, Asia, South America, North America, and Australia) also have the cultural and traditional elements that define them regulate their ways of life. This submission is in tandem with Lalonde’s (1991) opinion that indigenous knowledge systems in Africa (which is similar to other indigenous societies worldwide) are traditionally applied in harmony with the natural and spiritual world.20 Therefore, it is not surprising that culture as an aspect of human life commanded the attention of many academic scholars who carried out endless research on it and came up with a plethora of literary findings on the subject matter. Culture is a complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.33 Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other, as conditional elements of future action (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952).34 Schwartz et al. (1992) stated that culture consists of the derivatives of experience, more or less organized, learned, or created by the individuals of a population, including those images or encodements and their interpretations (meanings) transmitted from past generations, from contemporaries, or formed by individuals themselves.35 It was considered as a collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.36 The above definitions and descriptions of culture gave credence to the fact that culture is a lot of things as it encompasses the totality of the ways of life of a people and largely dictates their behaviors. This description tallies with the scenario in Africa where culture functions as the thermostat for regulating the conduct of the natives in every given circumstance. This, therefore, suggests that the spectrum of African culture is broad, and its sphere of influence can be better understood if considered from the sociological perspective in which culture is seen as a merger of material and non-material elements. Knowledge is an aspect of culture that belongs to the non-material division.

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Therefore, the foregoing suggests that most of the indigenous Knowledge, whether African or otherwise, is situated and exercised within culture; hence, the importance of culture to indigenous Knowledge cannot be over-emphasized. Indigenous knowledge, according to Bruchac (2014), is conveyed formally and informally among kin groups and communities through social encounters, oral traditions, ritual practices, and other activities.37 They include oral narratives that recount human histories; cosmological observations and modes of reckoning time; symbolic and decorative modes of communication; techniques for planting and harvesting; hunting and gathering skills; specialized understandings of local ecosystems; and the manufacture of specialized tools and technologies (e.g., flint-knapping, hide tanning, potterymaking, and concocting medicinal remedies). The opinion of Bruchac as given above is notable in the African indigenous people who are known to exhibit some degree of spatial intelligence because of their understanding of the local environment (ecosystem), the terrain and the general geography of their domain as well as the possession of some technical skills which were deployed in making simple tools for their numerous activities especially farming, and hunting.37 Aside from the above, there are still other dimensions to indigenous knowledge. Some indigenous knowledge is commonplace and known to every communal member; such Knowledge is shared by all members of a tribal community, ethnic groups, kin networks, or families. Many of such pieces of knowledge are learned through phenomenological experience and everyday activities (Bruchac 2014). On the other hand, some knowledge are classified; hence, they are restricted to special categories of indigenous people. This other type of Knowledge, as highlighted by Lalonde (1991), is often kept in the custody of indigenous people who are generally called keepers of indigenous Knowledge. He stated that the wisdom and skills maintained by the “keepers of indigenous knowledge” (as applied in the traditional practices of farmers, hunters, gatherers, master fishermen, artisans, etc.), are based on a dynamic and sophisticated understanding of their local surroundings. Bruchac (2014), on his part, stated that more specialized types of information are preserved by gatekeepers (e.g., tribal leaders, ritual practitioners, medicine people) who have vested interests in, deep experience with, and long-standing connections to significant sites.37 Keepers of oral traditions are often carefully trained to link parts of traditional narratives to specific events and locales, and cultural coherence is ensured by regular repetition.38 Furthermore, Bruchac (2014) hinted at the existence of skilled individuals and families entrusted to maintain these traditions; some are specialists who protect esoteric knowledge.37 Ecological knowledge is also important; they can efficiently manage local resources, which are most needful to ensure human survival. There are also other variants of Knowledge exhibited by the indigenous people. The keepers of indigenous Knowledge or the gatekeeper are also gifted in devising simple but efficient communication methods. They are reputed for devising distinctive methods of encoding useful data within philosophies

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of thought and modes of activity linked to particular landscapes. This data includes geographical, genealogical, biological, and other evidence that maps human relations to flora and fauna, land and water, and supernatural forces. Knowledge is often passed on through regular Indigenous performances–including oral traditions, song, dance, and ceremony, conveying both literal and metaphorical truths about these relations.37 This medium of knowledge transfer from one generation to another is also a pointer to the relevance of culture to Indigenous Knowledge. The opinions of the scholars quoted above indicated that indigenous Knowledge is beyond mere trial and error but a product of diligence, conscious efforts, repetitions and continuous testing, intelligence, environmental understanding, and prolonged experience. These pieces of knowledge, it must be said, are also effective, productive, and well thought out as it is the basis upon which the livelihood and the general well-being of the natives hinges; hence any error in judgment or prediction will often time be fatal for the indigenous tribes as they could suffer in numerous ways including death. Therefore, it means that indigenous Knowledge is hard work as it leaves marginal room for errors that may have dire consequences if it occurs. Furthermore, diverse forms of indigenous Knowledge, deeply rooted in the relationships of the natives with the environment as well as in cultural cohesion, have allowed many of these communities to maintain a sustainable use and management of natural resources, to protect their environment and to enhance their resilience; their ability to observe, adapt, and mitigate has helped many indigenous communities face new and complex circumstances that have often severely impacted their way of living and their territories. Also, indigenous peoples worldwide have preserved distinctive understandings, rooted in cultural experience, that guide relations among human, non-human, and other-than-human beings in specific ecosystems. These understandings and relations constitute a system broadly identified as Indigenous Knowledge, also called traditional Knowledge or aboriginal Knowledge.37,39 As much as it can be claimed that African indigenous Knowledge is rustic and not scientific, it can be agreed that it is based on rationalism and empiricism, which are standardized concepts used in the explanation of Knowledge hence the indigenous people in the formation of their Knowledge and knowledge system adopted these core ideologies to formulate ideas, fine-tune their ideas, demonstrate it practically and it was able to sustain for many generations. African Indigenous Knowledge System and Western Knowledge System Doubt and rejection have characterized the rest of the world’s disposition to indigenous Knowledge, and African indigenous Knowledge, which also belong to this category, has suffered the same fate as its relevance and efficacy have often been subjected to severe scrutiny, rejection, and downgrading. Lalonde (1991) highlighted this concern when he stated that indigenous peoples’

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cultures and their respective knowledge systems had been largely misunderstood or even dismissed by development planning experts in the past.20 He referred to the final statement by the Brundtland Commission (WCED) to emphasize his point that: “Some traditional lifestyles are threatened with virtual extinction by insensitive development over which the indigenous people have no participation. Their traditional rights should be recognized, and they should be given a more decisive voice in formulating policies about resource development in their areas.”40 In recent times, academic scholars from different social and behavioral science disciplines like geography, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc., have resulted in a surge in the call for recognition of Indigenous Knowledge. These recognitions came mainly from these scholars’ research works who observed a pattern that may be useful in confronting the modern-day challenges. Lanzano (2013) stated that the debate over the use of indigenous Knowledge and its epistemological status concerning mainstream scientific and technical Knowledge first appeared in the academic literature of the 1980s, both in the social and in the natural sciences.41 It has already been stated on the pages of this work that indigenous Knowledge is not peculiar to Africa alone; several other indigenous people are scattered worldwide. However, the content of indigenous Knowledge and its tie to culture means indigenous people’s knowledges always have some similarity level, especially in certain preoccupations like season prediction, farming practices, ecological Knowledge, tool-making skills, etc. A common tragedy for all indigenous Knowledge is the doubts that characterize its usefulness, especially when considered in the same breath or sphere as the Western knowledge system. To shed light on the situation, there is a need to get a proper understanding of the knowledge system of indigenous Africa and the more popular Western knowledge system. According to Noyoo (2007), the Western knowledge system is regarded as universal because Western education is entrenched in many world cultures.42 He stated further that WKS has long been noted for its rigorous observation, experimentation, and validation procedures, all of which are carefully documented. The same cannot be said of indigenous knowledge system in particular when it comes to documentation (Kolawole 2001); rather, indigenous Knowledge is embedded in community practices, institutions; relationships and rituals; it refers to what indigenous people know and do, and what they have known and done for generations—practices that evolved through trial and error and proved flexible enough to cope with change.8,43,44 Melchias’s definition of indigenous Knowledge as which suggests that these pieces of knowledge are a monopoly of trials and error is wrong.8 This narrative, as stated by Senanayake (2006), is a product of colonial thinking in which many scientists and academics considered indigenous knowledge systems as primitive, simple, and static, and this opinion persisted in the post-colonial period.45 Hence, while the former (indigenous Knowledge) is presumed clogged, concrete, and inaccurate, the latter is painted as intangible, weighty,

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right, and imbued with universal reasoning.42 This submission is questionable because Indigenous Knowledge, though not documented, was developed via experimentation. The emerging knowledge systems were legitimized and fortified under suitable institutional frameworks, culture, and practices and have subsequently been transferred to generational descendants (though sometimes based on discretion). Noyoo (2007) stated further that this method of doing things had enabled indigenous people to survive, manage their natural resources and the ecosystems surrounding them like animals, plants, rivers, seas, natural environment, economic, cultural and political organization.42 So it can be argued that provided these knowledges had been put to practice and it has produced laudable results, then it is wrong to tag it trial and error besides what more experimentation is required when something has yielded the desired results for countless generations. As previously mentioned, the spectrum of Indigenous knowledges is broad; hence their areas of relevance should not be discarded without due diligence being carried out to gauge it. Senanayake (2006) pinpointed one such area of strength when he stated that indigenous Knowledge has a broad perspective of the ecosystems and sustainable ways of using natural resources.45 However, the colonial education system replaced the practical everyday life aspects of indigenous knowledge and ways of learning with Western ideas of theoretical Knowledge and academic learning methods. Therefore, the issue with indigenous knowledge system and Western knowledge system is one of the perspectives, and none should ideally be said to be inferior to the other or subdued without a proper attempt to work with it or implement it. African Indigenous knowledge, for instance, is practical, interlinked with culture, and played out every day; hence the daily interactions among the people and the environment ensure that learning takes place as people gained valuable experience from varieties of encounters rather than learning from theories within the comfort of the classrooms and other modified environments. Despite the objective nature of indigenous Knowledge, its relegation and rejection by Western Imperialism in many circumstances suggest that what Noyoo (2007) said about imperialism, seeking after the obliteration of the indigenous knowledge system, is true.42 This is so because they strive to prevent indigenous Knowledge from thriving within the domain of its manufacturing. According to Noyoo (2007), the local population has privy to this Knowledge as it has been handed down from generation-to-generation within their context; hence, it is linked with their way of life.42 Therefore, the indigenous knowledge system becomes relevant so far as it is not imported or imposed outside. The moot point here is that solutions to countless issues are easily availed to local decision-making processes. This is because the indigenous knowledge system encompasses: technology, social, economic, philosophical, learning and governance systems (Business Referral and Information Network 2005). Therefore, indigenous Knowledge has made, and can still make, a significant contribution to resolving local problems.

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Today, there is a grave risk that much indigenous knowledge is being lost and, along with it, valuable knowledge about ways of living sustainably both ecologically and socially.45,46 Eyong (2007) also echoed the situation surrounding indigenous Knowledge’s gradual disappearance.47 He stated that unfortunately, these systems are fast eroding due to colonialism, commercialization, globalization, and modernization, lack of efficient codification, breakdown of the traditional family structure and function (the institution that helps in the socialization of tacit Knowledge), developmentally induced human displacements, the decline in the practitioner base and many other reasons. This situation is also the aftermath of the domination of Western Knowledge within the African continent and the basic fact that more people stay in the urban areas than rural areas where most of the conveners and practitioners of indigenous Knowledge reside. Recorded Successes of Indigenous Knowledge and Advocacy for It Usage According to Lalonde (1991), indigenous technologies that are implemented in partnership with development agencies and indigenous societies can be duplicated and adapted to help solve problems faced by another society in a similar agro-ecosystem located elsewhere, both developing and developed countries.20 This implies that a recorded success case using indigenous Knowledge can be replicated in other locations with similar problems. The problem of changing conditions such as weather and climatic conditions, change in soil and drainage system can make replication difficult, but scientific adaptations to these conditions can help. An insight that could aid the scientific system was given by McNeely et al., (1990).48 He stated that identifying the ecological functions of the various components of ecosystems and predicting the way new and improved agro-ecosystems can be designed for specific localities can come in handy. Lalonde (1991) gave examples of case studies where African indigenous Knowledge was used to improve natural resource development projects.20 This includes the following: ● ● ● ● ● ●

Agroforestry Research Project in Kenya; Neem Bio-Pesticides in Niger; Soil Regeneration in Rwanda; Agro-Forestry Projects in West Africa; Water-Harvesting in the Sahel; and Indigenous Societies and Conservation Areas

The case studies highlighted above were collaborations between indigenous people’s indigenous Knowledge and the state and international agencies. For instance: the Agroforestry Research Project in Kenya was carried out in conjunction with the International Council for Research in Agro-Forestry

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(ICRAF), the Neem Bio-pesticides project in Niger had the USAID as a major sponsor while German Agency funded the Soil regeneration project for Technical Cooperation. Despite these relative successes, the adoption of indigenous Knowledge remains minimal as efforts to integrate these pieces of knowledge into mainstream processes to alleviate the various challenges currently affecting man are negligible. According to Trogrlic et al. (2019), studies of practical experiences of community-based approaches remain scarce, as current scholarship is oriented toward mere documentation of local knowledge, and there is a lack of understanding of the extent to which community-based approaches facilitate the uptake of local Knowledge.49 Findings and recommendations from academic research works are currently showing the numerous areas where indigenous Knowledge will be beneficial in combating some of the everyday challenges that have emerged from man’s indiscretions. The literature covers a broad range of resources, including forest management (Messerschmidt 1986; Appleton and Hill 1994), agronomy and agricultural research (Chambers et al. 1989; Richards 1985; Scoones and Thompson 1994), soils (Dvorak 1988; Tabor 1993; Chadwick and Seeley 1994), and soil and water conservation (Kerr and Sanghi 1992; Critchley et al. 1995; Riej et al. 1996).50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60 The literature also covers indigenous institutions and organizations (Messerschmidt, 1986; Price, 1995), indigenous knowledge and gender (Fernandez 1994) and indigenous experimentation (Abedin and Haque, 1989), as well, reviews of indigenous knowledge systems as a whole (Hausler et al. 1995; Warren et al. 1995).58,61,63,64,65,66 Other areas include Flood risk management; Indigenous Healing Practices; Knowledge of Plants and Animals and their Uses, indigenous agricultural system; Disease vector control, food habitats, indigenous Conservation Techniques: hunting habits, sacred forests, cultivation habits, control of foreign exploiters, food taboos, Knowledge of forest and its resources.47 Multiple other practices could be immensely useful in ameliorating the effects of the anthropogenic legacies of man that are ravaging the globe; hence it has become critical for a man to explore indigenous Knowledge either alone or in conjunction with other knowledges to checkmate the impending danger and the onus is on African researchers to carry the torch as proposed by Owusu-Ansah (2013) and persist in developing and using alternative methods of studying our reality and refrain from sticking to the research pathways mapped out by Western methodologies, within which many have been trained.66

Conclusion Almost all cultures have bits of knowledge that have profound relevance that is enshrined in its historical contributions to the people’s livelihood and sustainability for centuries. From this perspective, it is therefore dangerous,

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if not oppressive, to hail any one method of investigation as universal.67 Furthermore, Knowledge is not exclusive to any race, tribe, or ethnic nationality; rather, it is a product of capability, intelligence, diligence, ingenuity, and endurance. Similarly, the solution to a problem is not necessarily unilateral; it could come from diverse sources; hence it has become cogent that knowledges from multiple sources be examined and tested to gauge their applicability in ameliorating the many emerging challenges that represent worries for mankind. The issue at hand has made it compulsory for humanity to refrain from any egos contest and embrace Knowledge irrespective of where it emanates. As discussed on the pages of this paper, African Indigenous knowledge is one such rich source of Knowledge that represents workable solutions on a variety of issues that have been tried, tested, and certified as excellent. Therefore, it will be criminal to keep ignoring this Knowledge without making concerted efforts at applying it to checkmate some of the self-created debacles that threaten our continuous existence.

Notes 1. Agyemang, I. and Carver, S. “Environmental Degradation and Assessment in Northern Ghana: From Populist and Classic Methods to Methodological Triangulation Approach.” African Educational Research Jounal 2 (1), 2013: 12–19. 2. Rajiv, C. “Environmental Degradation in India: Causes and Consequences.” International Journal of Applied Environmental Sciences, ISSN 0973–6077, 11 (6), 2016: 1593–1601. 3. Hank. 5 Human Impacts on the Environment: Crash Course Ecology, No. 10. Retrieved August 2017 from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 5eTCZ9L834s&t=211s, 2013.1 4. Bada, S. B. “EMT 302: Environment, Ecosystem and Man. Lecture Notes on EMT 302.” 2011. 5. Paul, H. “Lessons from Indigenous Knowledege and Culture: Learning to Live in Harmony with Nature in an Age of Ecocide.” State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, 2016: 49–59. 6. Warren, Michael D. “Indigenous Knowledge and Development.” Center for Indigenous Knowledge for World Bank Discussion Paper Series, 1991. 7. Ellen, R., and Harris, H. “Concepts of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge in Scientific and Development Studies Literature: A Critical Assessment [Online Paper].” Paper presented at the East–West Environmental Linkages Network Workshop 3. Retrieved July 27, 2002, from, Canterbury UK, http://www.ukc.ac.uk/rainforest/SML_files/Occpap/indigknow. occpap_1.html, 8–10 May, 1996. 8. Melchias, G. “Biodiversity and Conservation.” Enfield: Science Publishers, Inc., 2001. 9. Ayeni, A., Soneye, A., and Badru, F. “Adaptation to Water Stress in Nigeria Derived Savanna Area: The Indigenous Knowledge and Socio-Cultural Nexus of Management and Humanitarian Services.” JMPP ‚ 15 (3), 2014: 78–87. 10. Crawhall, N. Indigenous Peoples’ in Africa. Oslo: Norwegian Church Aid, 2006.

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11. Lincoln, Y., and Guba, E. Naturalistic Inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1985. 12. Jackson II, Ronald L., Drummond, Darlene K., and Camara, Sakile. “What Is Qualitative Research?” Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 8(1), 2007: 21–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/17459430701617879. 13. Naugle, D. Worldview: Definitions, History, and Importance of a Concept. https://www3.dbu.edu/naugle/pdf/Worldview_defhistconceptlect.pdf, n.d. 14. Kalu, O. U. “Precarious Vision: The African’s Perception of His World,” in Kalu OU (ed.), In African Cultural Development, Reading in African Humanities. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978, p. 42. 15. Kraft, C. H. Christianity in Culture: A Study of Dynamic Biblical Theologising in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Orbis Books. New York and London: Longman Press, 1979. 16. Nwoye Chinwe, M. A. “Igbo Cultural and Religious Worldview: An Insider’s Perspective.” International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 3 (9), 2011: 304–317. 17. Animalu, A. O. E. “A Way of Life in the Modern Scientific Age.” Ahiajioku Lecture. Owerri: Culture Division Ministry of Information, 1990, 43. 18. Di Gessa, S., Poole, P., Bending, T. Participatory Mapping as a Tool for Empowerment: Experiences and Lessons learned from the ILC Network International Land Coalition. http://www.andcoalition.l.org/pdf/08_ILC_Participatory_M apping_low, 2008. 19. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Stakeholder Engagement Strategies for Participatory Mapping. Charleston: NOAA Coastal Services Centre, 2009. 20. Andre, L. “African Indigenous Knowledge And Its Relevance To Environment And Development Activities.” The Common Property Conference. Winnipeg, Manitoba: International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP), 1991. 21. Ngenwi, A. A. “Climate Change and Adaptation Strategies: Lessons from Women’s Indigenous Knowledge Practices.” 2011. 22. Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment. Mainstreaming Climate Change Risk Management in Development. Kathmandu: Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, 2015. 23. Mapara, J. “Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Zimbabwe: Juxtaposing Postcolonial Theory.” The Journal of Pan African Studies 3 (1), 2009: 139–155. Available at http://www.jpanafrican.org. Accessed on 25 February 2018. 24. Shoko, K. “Indigenous Weather Forecasting Systems: A Case Study of the Biotic Weather Forecasting Indicators for Wards 12 and 13 in Mberengwa District Zimbabwe.” Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa, 4 (2), 2012: 92–114. 25. Ettore, B., and Constantin, B. “The Elusive Definition of Knowledge.” Research Gate, 2018. 26. Coffey, P. Epistemology; Or the Theory of Knowledge: An Introduction to General Metaphysics. London: Longman, 1917. 27. Neta, R., and Pritchard, D. Arguing About Knowledge. London: Routledge, 2009. 28. Russell, B. A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.

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29. Abhishek, A. “Knowing ‘Knowledge’ and ‘To Know’: An Overview of Concept.” International Journal of Research Granthaalayah, 2017. 30. Bob, T. “Conceptualizing Knowledge Culture.” Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management 1, (2), 2013: 85–104. 31. Bruning, R. Schraw, G., and Norby, M. Cognitive Psychology and Instruction, 5th ed. Boston: MA: Pearson, 2011. 32. Schank, R. and Abelson, R. Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum: , 1997. 33. Kevin, A. Culture & Conflict Resolution. Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 1998. 34. Louis, K. A., and Clyde, K. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. The Museum, Volume 47, 1952. 35. Schwartz, T., White, G., and Lutz, G. Anthropology & Psychology: An Unrequited Relationship, in New Directions in Psychological Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 36. Hofstede, G. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. London: HarperCollinsBusiness, 1991/1994. 37. Bruchac, M. “Indigenous Knowledge and Traditional Knowledge.” University of Pennsylvania Scholarly Common, 2014. 38. Vansina, J. Oral Tradition as History. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. 39. Noor, M., Rebeka, S., and Zakaria, A.K.M. “Role Of Indigenous Knowledge In Sustainable Development.” International Journal of Development Research 8 (2), 2018: 18,902–18,906. 40. Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. 41. Cristiano, L. “What Kind of Knowledge Is ‘Indigenous Knowledge’? Critical Insights from a Case Study in Burkina Faso.” Transcience, 4 (2), 2013. 42. Ndangwa, N. “Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Their Relevance for Sustainable Development: A Case of Southern Africa.” Tribes and Tribals , Special Volume No. 1, 2007: 167–172. 43. Kolawole, O. D. Indigenous Knowledge and Development.” Retrieved 22 July 2005, from < http://www.nuffic.nl/ciran/ikdm/9-3/kolawole.html, 2001. 44. Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Systems (CFIKS). “Introduction.” Retrieved 23 June 2005, from http://www.cfiks.org, 2005. 45. Senanayake, S. G. J. N. “Indigenous Knowledge as a Key to Sustainable Development.” The Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 2 (1), 2006. 46. Warren, D. M. “The Impact of Nineteenth Century Social Science in Establishing Negative Values and Attitudes Towards Indigenous Knowledge Systems.” In. D.M.Warren, L.J. Slikkerveer and S.O. Titilola (Eds.) Indigenous KnowledgeSystems: Implications for Agriculture and Int. Studies in Technology and Social Change, No 11. Ames, Iowa State University, 1989, pp. 171–183. 47. Takoyoh, E. C. “Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainable Development in Africa:Case Study on Central Africa.” Tribes and Tribals, Special Volume No. 1, 2007: 121–139. 48. McNeely, Jeffrey A., Miller, K. R., Reid, W. V., Mittermeier, R. A., and Werner, T. B. “Conserving the World’s Biological Diversity. Washington, DC: The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, World Resources Institute, Conservation.” International, World Wildlife Fund (U.S.), and the World Bank, 1990.

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49. Trogrlic Robert Šaki´c, Grant B. Wright, Melanie J. Duncan, Marc J. C. van den Homberg, Adebayo J. Adeloye, Faidess D. Mwale and Joyce Mwafulirwa. “Characterising Local Knowledge across the Flood Risk Management Cycle: A Case Study of Southern Malawi” Sustainability, 2019, 11, 1681, https://doi. org/10.3390/su11061681. 50. Messerschmidt, D. People and Resource Management Systems of The Upper Kali Gandaki: In Common Property Management. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1986. 51. Appleton, H.E. and Hill, L.M. “Gender and Indigenous Knowledge in Various Organisations.” Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, 2 (3), 1994. 52. Chambers, R., Pacey, A. and Thrupp, L.A. Farmers First. London: Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd (ITP), 1989. 53. Richards, P. Indigenous Agricultural Revolution. London: Hutchinson, 1985. 54. Scoones, I., and Thompson, J. Beyond Farmer First—Rural People’s Knowledge, Agricultural Research and Extension Practice. London: Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd (ITP), 1994. 55. Dvorak. “Indigenous Soil Classification in Semi-Arid Tropical India.” Economics Group Progress Report No. 84, ICRASAT, India, 1998. 56. Tabor, J. A. “The Role of Indigenous Soil Knowledge in Agricultural Development.” Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, 1 (1), 1993. 57. Chadwick, M. T., and Seeley, J. Indigenous Soil Classification—An Investigation into Vernacular Soil Typology in Nepal. Kathmandu, Nepal: FRP Occasional Paper, Forestry Research and Survey Centre, 1994. 58. Warren, D. M., Slikkerveer, L. J., and Brokensha, D. The Cultural Dimension of Development: Indigenous Knowledge Systems. London: Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd (ITP), 1995; Kerr, J. and Sanghi. Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation in India’s Semi Arid Tropics. London, UK: Gatekeeper Series, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 1992. 59. Critchley, W. R. S., Reij, C. and Willcocks, T.J. “Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation: A Review of the State of Knowledge and Prospects for Building on Traditions.” Land Degradation and Rehabilitation, 5 (4), 1995. 60. Riej, C.I. Scoones and Toulmin, C. (eds.). Sustaining the Soil: Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation in Africa. London, UK: Earthscan Publications Ltd, 1996. 61. Price, T.L. Use of Local Knowledge in Managing The Niger River Fisheries Project. The Cultural Dimension of Development Indigenous Knowledge System, eds. Warren, D.M., Slikkerveer, L.J., and Brokensha, D. London: Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd (ITP), 1995. 62. Fernandez, M. E. “Gender and Indigenous Knowledge.” Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, 2 (3), 1994. 63. Abedin, S., and Haque, F. "Learning from Farmers Innovations and Innovators Workshops: Experiences from Bangladesh." Paper Presented at the Workshop on ’Farmers and Agricultural Research: Complementary Methods. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 1989, 27–31. 64. Hausler, S., Inatoy, E, Warren, D.M., Rajasekaran, B. and Stiles, D. Indigenous Knowledge. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1995. 65. Ayeni, A. O., Cho, M. A., Mathieu, R., and Adegoke, J. O. “The local experts’ perception of environmental change and its impacts on surface water in Southwestern Nigeria.” Environmental Development 17, 2016: 33–47,https://doi. org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.09.007i.

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66. Owusu-Ansah Frances, E. Gubela, M. "African Indigenous Knowledge and Research." African Journal of Disability 2(1), Art. #30, 2013: 5 pages. 67. Asante, M. K. The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.

CHAPTER 9

Coloniality of Being, Imperial Reason, and the Myth of African Futures Tendayi Sithole

Overture: The Colonial Redux Colonialism has been the redux, it has never left, it remained intact through evasion and guises, and it took the form of coloniality. This means the continuity of the colonial infrastructure within the absence of the colonial administration plagues Africa. It is coloniality that keeps the colonial state largely intact, and this perpetuates colonial continuities. The African future’s notion foregrounds itself as the paradise, the arrival moment where Africa will be on the optimistic side of history and progress. Africa will be in a better place, and that is what the African future is all about. However, it is contended here that this is a fraudulent myth. Nor is it enough to suggest that African futures will only be actualized through decolonial subjectivity. The intervention here is premised on two foundational questions: How is the existential category of being colonized? How does the colonized conception of impacting the creation of a future? The colonization of the category of through ‘a radical questioning or permanent suspicion regarding the humanity of the being in question.’1 Being is colonized through what MaldonadoTorres refers to as ‘Manichean misanthropic skepticism’, which doubts the African subject’s humanity. This being is colonized by systematic and systemic ways of suspending humanity. In short, the humanity that is brought into question is not only colonized, but ontologically suspended. Through the Cartesian idea, which also inaugurated the colonial relations that Memmi T. Sithole (B) Department of Political Science, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_9

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captures as the colonizer and the colonized, and the daily existence of the colonized being as that of humiliation.2 Being is colonized in that ontological violence is structured to be directed to the being in question. Being is colonized in that the idea of race (the organizing principle of the modern colonial world) determines the imperial man’s superiority and the inferiority of the being in question. The being of the African subject has been that of the being without, for it is coloniality of being qua imperial attitude that ‘promotes a fundamental genocidal attitude in respect to colonized and racialized people.’3 It means, therefore, the existence of the African subject is synonymous with the condition of non-existence. It is, in many respects, the superfluous existence. Moreover, the African being qua coloniality of being means the being without a soul, a civilization, history, ethics, invention, knowledge, and all virtues that have to do with the conception of being qua imperial man. According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘[t]he concept of coloniality of being is important as it captures not only the depersonalization of black people under colonialism but the constitution of Africans as racialized subjects with next to no value placed on their lives.’4 The imperial man and his imperial attitude led to the creation of the African subject through imperial reason, which denies any form of subjectivity that has to do with the African subject, and obviously, the arrogated positionality that no form of future can result from the African subject. Surely, this is likely to be the case because the subjectivity of the African subject is plagued by coloniality of being. There is no way that the colonized being can create a future—this is the future that does not belong to this very being but that of its exteriority—the imperial man. It is in the colonial redux that African futures will not be forthcoming. There cannot be any African futures in the colonial state where being is colonized. The futures bound to exist are those who are not in the making of Africa, but that of the imperial man. If Africa’s futures are imagined, contemplated, and actualized in the colonial state, such futures will only be a myth. And for this myth to be dispelled, decolonial subjectivities should set in to militate against colonial subjectivities that alienate the African state. This is coloniality at its best, which then leaves the colonial infrastructure largely intact. This then creates the colonial subjectivities and colonial subjects. If everything is caught in the colonial imagination, it follows that its futures will be eclipsed not to create the moment of rupture. Decolonial subjectivities also confront neo-liberalism, which argues for the end of history and the telos of futures. Therefore, it is necessary to argue that African futures do not only rest with the myth of good governance, human rights, development, peace and cooperation, and so on. The call for this happens within the colonial state, and this is also, indeed, the register of coloniality. The colonial custom has always been that the colonizer rules and the colonized should obey. The African state is the colonial state because it exists under global imperial designs. These global imperial designs discipline African states to follow colonial futures, which are registered on the template of coloniality.

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That is why the African states’ initiatives create their futures but inevitably serve the colonial infrastructure they are supposed to resist. African states are reduced to a colonial repository and outposts—that is, they are made to be alienated from themselves. Nothing can come out of alienated subjectivity except to say that what will come out is a derailed subjectivity. That which is derailed cannot be destined to a greater future, but a bleak one. The future is bleak not because the present is both murky and mysterious.5 If the present is the continuity of the past, then the future will not be liberated. What prevails is the eclipse of imagination, which denies any sense of thinking outside the colonial infrastructure’s bounds. Africa is made to freeze and with no chance to move at all. To break this mold, Africa must decolonize its futures by deepening the subjectivities that march toward liberation. If there is one thing that Africa needs is liberation. It is the liberation from the colonial plague that Africa can realize its futures—but then, this does not mean that futures are frozen existential states with all things positive. It is the present that needs to be liberated, and the future will take care of itself. For the African future to be realized, Africa should be present, and this is realized through decoloniality. Mignolo defines decoloniality as ‘critical thoughts emerging in the colonies and ex-colonies.’6 Decoloniality makes visible the underside of modernity—it is the critique of criticism. It means that it criticizes theories, paradigms, and approaches critical of modernity, but within the bounds of modernity like poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism. This is the thought that responds and critiques modernity in its mutating form—that is, coloniality. It hides its locus of enunciation by claiming to be objective, totalizing, and universal. It unpacks critical theory and its genealogy of thought as a particular kind of critical thought and opposes the fundamentalist position of comparing, measuring, evaluating, and judging human experiences.7 Decoloniality is not a theoretical dead-end but the ‘search for other possible knowledges and worlds.’8 Decoloniality is rooted deeply in genealogies of understanding that examine coloniality as long-standing patterns of power that emerged due to colonialism and defined social, economic, and cultural conditions in the absence of the colonial administration.9 Therefore, coloniality is the survival, metamorphosis, continuity, and maintenance of subjection, making it necessary for decoloniality to be grounded in the histories and lived experiences of the African subject. Decoloniality aims to break away from coloniality, which ratifies colonial subjection. For this to be possible, decoloniality, which is informed by the praxis of a different kind, confronts the hidden and cobwebbed asymmetrical relations of the colonial redux that promises the African future—a myth.

Africa’s Humanitas Presence as Anthropos Absence It is the myth of the African futures that Africa’s presence is its absence. The latter is because of African’s vulnerability in colonial violence whims at the

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metaphysical and psychic level. The marginality, suffering, and vulnerability of the African subject are structured so that it is in the form of banality— that is, it is institutionalized, naturalized, and normalized. This saturates the African subject into colonial subjection in the normal ways of life (which is contradictory because it is survival) that becomes meaningless. The African subject’s ontological absence provides a signature that solidifies the African subject’s existence at the level of dispensability. The African subject’s valuable human life is the entity that is akin to nothingness—a lifeless form. If ontology is established, when it comes to the African subject, it collapses, but it becomes absent. The ontological absence essentially means the absence of the African subject. The being of the African subject is that of the fallen race. The African subject is outside the domain of humanity, the very irreconcilability with the very thing that makes life a form of essence. Life for African subjects is not living but surviving. This has been structurally created through colonial subjection that positions the Africa subject in the marginality of life. To articulate the ontological absence of the African subject, it is essential to make the existential distinction between the Humanitas and the Anthropos. The Humanitas are beings (civilized, modern, intelligent, virtuous, and so on) and the Anthropos are non-beings (barbaric, primitive, uncivilized, idle, oversexed, and so on). In short, the figure of the human and on that note, the Humanitas is the human while the Anthropos is not.10 Of course, the human is what takes center stage in the colonial subjection, and it is the humanity of the Humanitas. The point of focus here is to understand colonial subjection from the ontological absence of the Anthropos. The Anthropos figure is the one excluded from the world, and of course, the world being that of the Humanitas. The world is the thought of Humanitas. T he one articulated in such terms and operating in such a world, and they are susceptible to perpetuating such a world’s very tendencies, the myth of the African futures being one. The Humanitas and the Anthropos do not co-existence symmetrically in the modern colonial world. Only the Humanitas exists while the Anthropos is erased from the domain of existence. Suppose the Anthropos is at the receiving end of the ontological erasure. In that case, it, therefore, means that the presentation of colonial subjection has nothing to do with the Anthropos but to lump the Anthropos in the Humanitas existential zone. In this ontological absence, the African subject becomes the Anthropos —the being outside the human domain. This existential problematic that cannot be conceptually solved through treaties and conventions predicated on peace. Still, it is the field of structures of antagonisms where the creation of the Anthropos by the Humanitas is the phenomenon predicated by gratuitous violence.11 The existence of the Anthropos is violated, and such existence means absence. The Anthropos is made by colonial subjection as entities that are redeemed from falling into perpetuity of self-destruction. Thus, the Anthropos struggle to have a future because of the traces of this perpetuity. They need the Humanitas again to extract them from this existential abyss and realize a future.

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As Wilderson notes, the register of fungibility is the absence of the African subject in the realm of life structured by ontological violence.12 To amplify this, Bogues argues that the Humanitas assume the status where they dominate the Anthropos and enact violence against them.13 For Bogues and Wilderson alike, the Anthropos, as a result of ontological violence, assumes a living corpse’s ontological status. This status is symptomatic of what Patterson refers to as ‘social death’—that is, the natal alienation and general dishonor of the African subject.14 This violence á la social death puts the Anthropos in the existential state of precariousness. There is no ontological density to the existential condition that is precarious, and it is clear, having had this ontological erasure, that no Africa futures exist. Ontology is, as Fanon states, thrown off on the wayside, and this state of absence will leave the entity of being without.15 Ontology is not constitutive and foundational to the Anthropos — the very existential being for Africa and its supposed future. Absence is the major component of the African subject’s subjectivity. What is brought to bear is that the African subject is both absent metaphysically and epistemologically—the very reason the Anthropos becomes the subject structured inside ontological violence. The existence of the African subject is mute and nameless in the face of structurally relational violence in the form of coloniality of being. For this to be combated, decoloniality needs to set in as the Anthropos’ very ontological grammar. For decolonial subjectivity to set where Africa will speak for itself, it would mean that it affirms its presence through its self-definition. Africa’s presence in the world is absent, makes Africa alienated, and its subjects—the Anthropos — do not have anything to account for in so far as presentation is concerned. How can there be Africa’s future if there is no Africa’s presence? It is based on self-definition that decolonial subjectivity will be in the making to affirm the existential condition of presence. It is in the absence, which is the present colonial subjectivity that Africa’s future is oblique. No futures can be created if no present is fundamentally changed. The mere fact that the present is not changed essentially means that there is no African presence. The present determines the future, but it remains a fact that the future is not absolutist in that it is fraught with uncertainty. In short, no one knows the future, except for the future knowing itself. The absence of Africa means that futures do not belong to Africa. The coming of colonialism and its continued operation meant that Africa would not feature in any way—that is, Africa is nothing of its own—for, it belongs to the realm of absence. The coupling of the Humanitas and the Anthropos in the realm of absence (the very aberration of presence) brings the conception of African futures into crisis. Not only are African futures the lost object in the Anthropos’ realm—the very condition of the absence collapses the future—foundational to this, it is key to ask: how can those who are absent create the future? African futures should be created, and this should be done by combatively engaging the present. The latter is the foundational base of the future, and there must be Africa’s presence. The absence of Africa in the world has been systematic and

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systemic in that this absence is not self-inflicted but something that is exterior. The marginalization, exclusion, and interiorization of Africa in the so-called ‘world affairs’ is well established to the point of normalization. The culmination of the subjectivity of the Anthropos —for it has been relegated to the realm of absence—if it is articulated as full speech, it will inaugurate conversational impossibility were to enact presence is the very act that exposes a scandal in that the lived experience of the Anthropos has been what Bogues refers to a ‘historical catastrophe’ and its ‘repetitive traumas.’16 Africa is an entity that is acted upon, and decisions are made so that Africa is not there, whereas it is there. No will is demanded, for that will not count those decisions that are made for Africa. If Africa occupies the realm of absence, it cannot be invited to be present, nor can there be future creation. By all means necessary qua decolonial subjectivity, African should make itself present, but that can only be realized if the ontological realm of the Humanitas is attained. It means, therefore, that the construction of the future (the figure of time as the uncertainty, of course) will largely depend on reconstructing the present by tracing the traumatic colonial history and its aftermath (the present) and to make the humanity that is superfluous to bare witness to their absence as they ensure to be present.

The Imperial Reason Is Coloniality of Being The myth of African futures, the phenomenon in the clutches of imperial reason, signifies nothing else but coloniality of being. It means, therefore, that the imperial man is the one who not only creates its Other but rather, it is the colonial subjection that dehumanizes the Other. If there is something that imperial reason is armored with, Maldonado-Torres refers to as the ‘paradigm of war,’ which is the central leitmotif that perpetuates the existential condition creates coloniality of being.17 Imperial reason determined the state of being alive or survival, having subjectivity, or having none of it. If there is no thorough understanding of imperial reason, there will be a complicated understanding of the African futures. The African subject is regarded as the entity outside the realm of being, and as such, there cannot be any expectations for there to be anything that will come out of that subject. It is the imperial reason which questions the humanity of the black subject, and that being something that questions the subjectivity of African subjects in creating African futures. Imperial reason qua coloniality of being emerged as Maldonado-Torres points out from coloniality reflections and the modern and colonial world’s conception.18 The question of coloniality of being in this perspective can only be understood based on exploration and the discursive interventions that question power relations and the logic and the configuration of the world and understand the structural positionality of the African subject in that process of subjection. The notion of being is that of the racial invention where the notion of race is used as the organizing principle through the combination of power

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and knowledge, the very constitutive parts of subjection. These were the arsenals used to create the Other, the Other of Europe, the aberration of the norm, the non-being whom there will be no penalty or justice is such a human figure is dehumanized. It is the imperial reason that created exaggeration of difference. The difference is the very cause of Africa’s problems. This is because, as Bogues notes, ‘the figure of the human was constructed through the conceptions of human difference already classified into a hierarchical schema.’19 The conception of human differences—the very figure of exaggeration—is racialized. Nor deracialization is necessary, but rather, the end of imperial reason in totality because it is the one that solidifies the foundation of exaggerated difference. This, besides, solidifies injustices that befall Africa, which makes African subject to be the damne or ‘wretched’ or the condemned of the earth who are rendered otherwise, as they are indeed the other.20 The damned of the earth are excluded, and they are considered the aberration from the norm. In this form, they are found in the outskirts and wastelands of the empire, the geography that is seen as devoid of any content of being and notion that can come out of it. In this logic of modernity, Maldonado-Torres refers to as ‘forgetfulness of coloniality,’ that is simply that, imperial reason tends to forget that it is the sole creator of the damned of the earth who is trapped in the abyss of violence.21 The damned of the earth also exists in the designed, maintained, and decorated conditions by the configuration of power—the colonial matrix of power. The colonial matrix of power creates the typology of ontological difference with Africa as a doormat of the world, its humanity as the signifier of a fallen race among many other races, the exteriori of things Humanitas, the figure of excess, and the existential state of things negative as it is a Conradian ‘dark continent’ gives the justificatory solidity that there is no future for the continent. Coloniality of being concerning the African subject means that this subject is a non-being—and ontologically void subject. ‘Coloniality of Being suggests that Being in some way militates against one’s own existence.’22 The fundamental point is that the African subject’s structural positionality is that of being racialized, implicated, criminalized, and persecuted. The African subject is the aberration from the norm, and for it to be dealt with, it has to be eliminated and excluded in the anti-black world. The stereotypes that inform the invention of African subjects are still alive to attain some form of conical truth that then put most African subjects in their place—exclusion and marginalization of the hellish conditions. The colonial matrix of power signifies Africa judgementally by relegating it to the state of the abyss. It is the form of power that negates Africa from the realm of presence. For, this difference is the aberration in so far as Africa stands for nothing in the realm of humanity. To be in the realm of difference (and the exaggerated one, of course) means that imperial reason stands for Africa’s dehumanization. It would be naïve to expect the navigation of the futures from imperial reason.

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The African subject can become human by the very basis of destructing the coloniality of their being. Coloniality of carrying with it the logic of violence that creates pathologies, the very things that make sure that the African subject is the sole target of colonial subjection. Imperial reason affirms the imperial fraternity of what Maldonado-Torres refers to as the ‘community of masters.’23 The notion of a community of masters valorizes the ethics of power needed to maintain the pathos of domination and self-control that keep the structure of coloniality intact.24 This means that the notion of a community of masters is the master morality that is constitutive of modernity, from its beginning, its changing faces, and the present. The interests of civilization were and are only benefiting the community of masters, and the opposite of what they claim to serve.

On Epistemic Violence Tied to imperial reason is epistemic violence, where the making of the African future is colonized and erased from the making of knowledge. The modus operandi of epistemic violence excludes, marginalizes, demonizes, and even eliminates episteme forms that differ from modernity.25 It presents itself as the world in toto, its conception of truth being universally valid and pretending that all socio-historical experiences are the same. Yet still, this sameness means that everything stems from the particularity of imperial reason. Moreover, colonization is cast as the event that has resulted in sameness. This arrogated stance is epistemic violence. It reduces Africa to the embodiment of lack and deficits. The imperial reason is mostly found in the discourse that propagates development, which is seen as a panacea to all problems that plague Africa. Development is often positioned and couched as the positive, and that it affects change to a better position. Of interest is the fact that development is not a call for Africa themselves. Still, the call from outside Africa and if the rhetoric of development were to be located, for example, on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the development template is not that of Africans. The World Bank and IMF are the hegemons of development in that they provide intellectual and financial hegemony. So, whatever form of development there is, it is subjected to the dictates of these institutions that have shown not to have African development interests at heart. They should, of course, not be expected to have them. Their hegemonic position still maintains the colonial relations, and this is a clear signification of epistemic violence. The World Bank and IMF as development apparatus dictate the nature, form, and content of development, and African development is made to operate under the capture and gaze of this apparatus. The reality of development is the institutionally created one—safe to say the least; it is the rhetoric of development. As Escobar warns, ‘there are no grand alternatives that can be applied to all places or all situations.’26 Development is seen as ‘catching up’ by Mkandawire, who scathingly criticizes it as a repressive meta-narrative that privileges certain forms of knowledge

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while denigrating local ones.27 It means that if Africa works toward building its futures, its subjectivity will be discounted if not disciplined to adhere to colonial futures. This adherence would mean that Africa must catch up to the colonial path of development. Colonial futures are plagued with the pretensions of progress, change, and transformation. These futures are pretentious in that they offer nothing but only plain elusiveness. This is even clear in the discourses of development, a repressive meta-narrative that regards the colonial episteme as the only basis and the only reservoir that is essential for development. Therefore, anything outside it is nothing that can lead to development. Development in Africa is predicated on the virtuous, the ideal, and the fix of ruins, and yet, it is still a scandal as it is infected by coloniality. Escobar argues that development has been a disaster: instead of the kingdom of abundance promised by theorists and politicians in the 1950s, the discourse, and strategy of development produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitations and oppression.28 The most astute critic of developmentalism, as stated in Mkandawire, focuses its attention on Truman version of development (development involved both geopolitical considerations and humanitarianism), so that much of the criticism of development efforts and the so-called impasse development was about the idea that Euro-North America was entrusted with the task of developing Africa in its image. Given the analysis of the global politics of knowledge that has been naturalized through coloniality, the hegemony of knowledge, advantageous to Europe and North America, is a deliberate act whose intent is to continue the betterment of Euro-North America expense of the other worlds. The development discourse, which is driven by the same context of geopolitics of knowledge, will bring nothing desirable. The epistemological project of development has been that of Euro-North American canon, which needs transplants and appendages which reproduce such knowledge, and of course, development turning into the decadence of what Chinweizu coins as ‘maldevelopment.’29 This canon, in its epistemological project of development, ‘has created an efficient apparatus for producing knowledge about, and the exercise of power over, the Third World’.30 ‘Knowledge-making in the modern/colonial world is at once knowledge in which the very concept of “modernity” rests and the judge and warrantor of legitimate and sustainable knowledge’.31 For Mignolo, knowledge-making of development is entrenched in modernity with its imperialist purposes largely informed by maldevelopment. The epistemic decolonial shift of development, which is the movement of the geography of reason, clearly indicates that knowledge about Africa’s development should be looked through the locus of enunciation of Africa, not that of the Euro-North American empire, which is in control of global imperial designs which are the constitutive parts of modernity. The expansionism informs Western civilization’s modernity, which is seen as the absolute civilization, which is the only process than other forms of civilizations. Hence there is a colonialist argument that Africa is not developed due to its absence of civilization and modernity.

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Development as identity can be understood concerning what Escobar regards as the regime of representation.32 This means that the geography is laid out in which parts of the world are considered developed and those who are said to be developing—and the very regime of representation being how the Euro-North American empire constructs other parts of the world, writing them off from worldliness. In effect, they are the other, that is, that which needs development from the Euro-North American empire. As Escobar points out, this regime of representation forms itself in the form of order and truth wherein the paternalistic attitude toward the other parts of the world remains so profound, and for them to come into worldliness, they will need the assistance and dependence of the Euro-North American empire. Development has only relied exclusively on one knowledge system, namely, the modern Western one. The dominance of this knowledge system has dictated the marginalization and disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems.33

The knowledge system propagates itself as rational and objective. It serves as a blueprint of development that does not differences of contexts into account. Epistemic violence ensures that there is no contextual reflection, and the project of development in Africa is the transplant from the Euro-North American context. Epistemic violence creates colonized minds, and if minds are colonized, how can there be decolonial futures? The starting point should be that African minds are colonized, and African subjects have to admit that they exist in coloniality of being. Chinweizu and wa Thiong’o call for the decolonization of the African mind, and this call serves as the standpoint that defies epistemic violence.34 This violence hinders Africa’s efforts outside its own frames of imagination, aspirations, and practices of freedoms. Decolonization of the mind is the restoration, affirmation, and reparation of the African episteme and Africa to create its present. The creation of the present is epistemologically important in that it is the rectification of the present that will lend, if possible, a promising future. The decolonization of the African mind, if anything that it is, it is what African subjects are rather than what they should become. It is the urgency to deal with the present, in that what is at stake is Africa’s livelihood. The African mind needs to be decolonized in the present and not in the future. The colonial past has haunted the present, and this continues to be the bane in the practices of the present, which are accused as they are obsessed about creating better futures without having to deal with the actual present. In short, the African mind, which needs decolonization, cannot confront and combat what haunts it. What haunts in the form of epistemic violence is the interpellation of African subjectivity to decapitate it to be an alienated subjectivity, with no standpoint and with no sense of itself. The decolonization of the African mind that Chinweizu and wa Thiong’o refer to is the one that marshals African subjectivity, not to the future, but rather, the subjectivity that deals with the present, which is haunted by

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the past. It is a form of cleansing and a form of exorcising the specter of hauntology. In no way can this be done without any form of decolonial subjectivity. This, in particular, is necessary as it is a form of subjectivity that confronts and combats epistemic violence. By so doing, the colonized minds will be foundationally changed to be decolonized minds with decolonial subjectivity. For coloniality of being to come to an end qua epistemic violence, the African subject should come to itself by taking African epistemic systems seriously and to think of Africa from where it is located as opposed to thinking of Africa from the colonial episteme. Doing so does not mean obsessing with solutions and the rush to create futures. There is no use in providing solutions for the problems that are not understood in their genealogy and trajectory. There must be concerted effort to epistemologically wrestle with the present to make the present the key foci. To make the present the starting point that should undergo fundamental change. That is to say, the present should be the sole basis to decolonize the mind for the present itself and not obsessing (through projection, prediction and scenario immolating) the future, for the latter is the existential state of uncertainty. Nor is it logical to assume that such a future will come without overhauling the present in toto. There is nothing important about the future if the mind is not prepared for it—thus, as it will be demonstrated—the future should not be the telos. Epistemic violence even delegitimizes the criticism of development to the point of its criminalization, more so if it comes from Africans themselves. So, it means Africa must always be grateful when its future is determined without it. Decolonial subjectivity debunks this gesture and refers to the acts of coloniality of being qua epistemic violence as the outposts of colonial utopic registers, which offer nothing but the elusiveness of hope.

Colonial Utopic Registers The conception of colonial utopic registers determines African futures that are not futures but, in paradox, the colonial past continuities. Africa is not on the definition of itself in the modern colonial world. This is not to suggest that there have not been political moves that are Africa’s self-definition. For example, it is essential to point to self-definition political practices such as Pan Africanism, Negritude, African Humanism, African personality, Ujamaa, Nyawo, and African Renaissance, to name just a few. These political practices of self-definition were fueled by African subjectivity and claiming Africa from the clutches of subjection. The challenge has always been that these modes of self-definition have been muted if not frustrated. Therefore, the impediments to self-definition are the very structures of colonial matrices of power that are foundational and constitutive to the modern colonial world. They are structures that put Africa in a position that is devoid of any sense of subjectivity. In the postcolonial context, Africa’s self-definition has been about the national projects as opposed to the continental project. With the exception, of course, of Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance, which were continental in

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scope. But then there has not been the overall continental support due to the colonial border divisions and the regional political fault lines that continue to exist. This is to demonstrate that there has not been the overall rallying point of African positionality. Self-definition comes in the context where political projects are undertaken, and they serve as a vehicle to realize the betterment of the continent. With mixed results, of course, due to differences in scope and aims of each, and the contextual socio-historical factors being responded to, African political projects’ self-definition has been about a better future. They were infused with the utopic registers. Some did not even respond to the major challenges that haunt the present, which would be an important starting point. With good intentions they had, the thing that was not realized was that these political practices of modes of African self-definition articulated themselves within the colonial utopic register. The colonial utopic register has made Africa captive in articulating the future through the gridlock of ad infinitum postponement. This creates the opium of the mind for the colonized being. The colonized being is trapped in the illusion of hope, and the myth of the future in the colonial utopic register creates the impression that the present does not matter; only the future does. The African modes of self-definition are complicit in this in that they create this illusion of hope without having to solve the precariousness of the politics of the present. The escape from the present to the future is what informs the colonial utopic register. It is the register of denial in that it creates a condition where the problem of the present is denied. As a way of aversion, problems and solutions are put in the era that African subjects are not situated in. What has been of interest is how African subjectivity has fallen prey to this gridlock of ad infinitum postponement, which is designed in projector scenario makings. It is naïve for the being that is colonized to have the illusion that the future will be better than the past and the present. The future is not always good. To have the illusion that the future will be better is to be trapped in colonial subjectivity. Philosophically, there is no evidence that the future will be better. The assumptive logic that creates the impression that the future will be better is coloniality. Coloniality of being qua colonial utopic register signifies nothing but the opium of the mind. It is important to go back to the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDG), which includes the achievement of the following eight targets: the eradication of poverty, universal primary education, gender equality, and women empowerment, reduction of child mortality, improved maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases, environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development. These goals are indeed important in that they inform some of the political interventions to be made and highlight some of the problems that plague Africa. Indeed, it is clear that their prognosis is still caught in the colonial utopic register in that they are not focused on diagnosing the present. The colonial matrices of power continue to act as disciplinary forces in that Africa is still indebted in excess to the World Bank and IMF. Also, donor funding has

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been one of the external revenue to realize some of these goals. It still means, if African futures are in the making, colonial matrices of power should serve as the source. African states have engaged in the drudgery of finding solutions to their underdevelopment and economic stagnation since they took over the mantle of leadership and governance since the dawn of independence in the 1960s. The failed and protracted trial and errors, political navigations, economic algorithms for poverty alleviation to reach sustainable development now submit to the MGDs as the de facto tool that promises lasting solutions.35

Nwonwu also registers that MDGs are also systematic in that they diagnose the problems and not symptoms. Indeed, this is plausible and what is important to register, in paradox, is the fact that MDGs were and are still disciplined by the colonial matrices of power and the colonial utopic register in the form of targets to be met by the year 2015 is bound to be postponed again. Thus, there has not even been much noise about MDGs in recent years. Another interesting initiative is food security, which will be solved in the year 2020—earmarked as a target to respond to food demand—the baseline assumption of this projection being that the present problem of food insecurity will be addressed in the realm of the future. That is, the problem of malnutrition will be reduced by 2020. It is not whether these projections are received in the spirit of optimism or pessimism. Rather, these are projections that are earmarked on the future as if the future holds plausible prospects of the scenario of optimism. Besides, putting 2020 as the year is bound to be postponed in that these projects are the colonial utopic registers that do not concern themselves with decolonizing Africa’s present. Recently, African futures are placed on the panoptic projection of Africa 2063 as a point of departure. The myth of structural change—the social, political, and economic change—is caught in the colonial utopic register in that the form of change is cosmetic rather than genuine. This creates a condition where African subjectivity is stuck between policies and their realizations. The ultimate end seems to be progress and development as rallying points. If this rallying point is the end, then nothing seems to effect change. Words like comprehensive, integrated, innovative, and so on are deployed, but they still produce the same gridlock. African subjectivity is stuck in the trial and error register with the same result of failure because the interventions are not formed from the root core of African subjectivity itself. That is why Africa is disciplined by colonial matrices of power to adjust and adapt to the dictates of the ‘international best practices.’ What is put as new thinking is the very recycling of new ideas. Therefore, what is registered is that Africa will be a better place in the world since the twenty-first century belongs to Africa. It is a time where Africa will own itself and having a better place in the world. In the form of prognosis of the African futures, what is not highlighted is whether the modern colonial

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world would have ended. It is clear that African futures, even in the target of 2063, will still be caught in the colonial utopic registers. African subjectivity needs to be clouded in optimism since this is the opium of the mind. NdlovuGatsheni warms: This optimism must also be careful not to minimize the structural straitjacket of colonial matrix of power that continues to maintain the hierarchical hegemonies of domination between the South and the North. Africa cannot maintain a good policy space at the global economic and political high table as long as the realities of neocolonialism are not completely broken and swept away in every area of life, such as culture, epistemology, discourse, language and images. What can be said with confidence is that Africa has a long battle to fight before it can claim the twenty-first century as its own.36

Nothing is made in this continuum of projections to deal with the colonial problem in that they do suggest that coloniality is not in sight. Whatever that has to do with colonialism is the relic of the past. Africa should fight against coloniality, since the continent’s existential reality is not where victories can be claimed. The colonial utopic registers should be combated through decolonial subjectivity. Even in these future projections, the African subject is clutched in colonial matrices of power that perpetuates the existential crisis of the coloniality of being. The preoccupation with the future will not do anything if Africa is to be better in the present. This preoccupation is nothing else but the myths of African futures. The future is the existential plane that must the left to its own devices, more so if the present is the one that is not favorable to those who occupy the existential plane of coloniality of being.

The Future In-Itself and For-Itself To re-assert Africa’s future in its terms and by Africa subjects themselves and for themselves in service of the continent’s broader interests. This might sound sentimental if the political imagination is hesitant to take the horizons and futures seriously that Africa’s future ought to be—the very political possibility to bring Africa to itself . This is the militancy against coloniality of being because alienation becomes the thing that is no longer the African subject’s embodiment. It is important to hasten that the future should be left to itself— that is, let the future take care of itself while the present is the moment that is fundamentally changed. There will be no future without the present. It will be contended that Africa’s future should be in-itself and for-itself because decolonial subjectivity requires that Africa be not acted upon, thus having any preoccupation with the future they know nothing of. The future is the existential plane that is unknown, and it is that of uncertainty. In this uncertainty, decolonial subjectivity sets in, and not to seek alternatives to project the future in the realm of optimism to have certainty. The intervention here is not to plunge African subjectivity into the realm of the future’s

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pessimism, nor the optimism of the future. According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni, uncertainty, which has plagued the continent, has always been the constitutive element of both pessimism and optimism.37 These two extremes of subjectivity are not the point of focus here. What is fundamental is to decentre the future as the point of departure because the present itself is the realm of uncertainty. Uncertainty cannot solidly construct certainty. It is the present where African subjectivity means mastery of its destiny. Still, this destiny is not the preoccupation with the future, but the present—the latter calls Africa to act, not the distant future, which is clutched in uncertainty. No easy victories should be claimed simply because the battle against coloniality is yet to start. This battle is not only about correcting the present, but restoration and reparation of the African self will mean the re-humanization of the subject that has been dehumanized. The meaning of the future in-itself and for-itself serves as the clear indictment that all propositions made in terms of the prognosis of the African future can be wrong and might even lose credibility. If the African future is the state of uncertainty, the present is the state of uncertainty in which no further scenarios can be drawn. If these scenarios get it wrong (as they have in the continuum), it is clear that the future should be left to prophets. To be preoccupied with the future is the eschatological thought which can breed illusive hope and its attended—fatalism. It is the future of Africa, and Africa should be in its own making. Chinweizu articulates the decolonial subjectivity thus: It is too late for us, the imperialized, to weep upon the shoulders of those who have brought about our oppression for sympathy toward our plight. We need, rather, to understand our past defeats if we want to avoid the deadly shocks our future seems to be holding in ambush for us.38

What is taken by Chinweizu here is positionality—that is, the composure of articulating the grammar of existence to marshal demands of the African subject in other to create the present. The present is an important moment to be attended to and the one in need of urgent decolonization. It is in the present where the coloniality of being is the existential injustice. If African futures are claimed to be in the mold of giving existential justice to those who are existentially wronged, then this, in paradox, is the contradiction in terms, for this is a feat of injustice. The idea of existential justice is to register the fact that African subjects (the Anthropos ) must determine, in the moment of the present, what kind of existential justice they want and how they will engage in the political acts of realizing it. Existential justice in these terms does not mean that justice will be given to the Anthropos. To existentially struggle is to militate against coloniality of being and to become the Humanitas. This cannot be realized through the invitation of the Anthropos by the Humanitas to the human fraternity. This is because the Humanitas, through the infrastructure of exaggerated difference, wants existential injustices that create coloniality of being to remain. That is why the anti-systemic efforts of the Anthropos

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to resurrect to the realm of the Humanitas are disciplined through colonial matrices of power. Those how are at the receiving end of existential injustice should not expect justice. Simultaneously, the coloniality of being is definitive to their existence as the damned and the wretched of the earth. Any gesture of justice articulated through imperial reason, structurally positioned through colonial matrices of power, and executes itself through ontological violence of coloniality of being is injustice proper. African futures are a myth in that Africa the Anthropos are in the belly of existential injustice. The change that is said to be the modern colonial world’s agenda is injustice in that it bastardizes African subjectivity. To move further, as a stretch, the Anthropos should rearticulate and act on its insatiable demands as the modern colonial world will not meet them. These demands are foregrounded in decolonial subjectivity to end racism, exploitation, interiorization, structural, and ontological violence, which are the very basis that sustains the existence of the modern colonial world. Decoloniality is Africa for-itself and in-itself in the present, and the future will take care of itself if the present is in this existential mode of justice.

Coda: Another World Is Possible By concluding, this paper affirms the positionality that another Africa is possible. Another world is possible. This possibility is informed by the fact that there is no nihilism in the Anthropos by the political advocacy of decolonizing futures. This means another world where many other worlds fit is possible. Another Africa’s possibility cannot be rooted in juridical independence as the starting point, but rather, the making of decolonial present. This is the present that originates from subjectivities that take Africa seriously to defending the continent from the colonial matrices of power and takes its subjectivity to be outside of coloniality. The continent’s challenges are too numerous to demand a fixed solution, with its nature being exclusionary to African subjectivities. The mere fact that Africa has been monolothized as something reducible to an entity has made the Euro-North American hegemon to see itself as the only paragon of virtue, and the future of Africa depends on it. In this scheme of things, Africa is not allowed to develop its subjectivity on its terms. Still, decolonial subjectivity requires no permission for this possibility since what is at stake is necessary. The Africa that is possible is the Africa that will radically change the present for the better. Yet still, Africa as it is—Africa in the clutches of Euro-North American dictates—will need to be ended in totality, for it is not Africa for itself, but Africa for the modern colonial world. The solutions and prescriptions offered are not embedded in African subjectivities, but those of Euro-North America. Another Africa is something that is not mentioned, except to say that it needs to be fixed. Is it not important to imagine another Africa? Well, this is always in the affirmative with a high dose of optimism. This means, African subjectivity

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needs to decolonize itself and not be clouded by pessimism and naïve optimism predicated on the expectation that Africa will be rescued externally instead of starting again. Another reality has to come into being where the horizon and futures will enable another Africa to be possible. The importance of Africa’s horizon and futures cannot be understated in that the epistemic exclusion and the existential precariousness of the present. The struggle has been waged to proceed further in the futures of Africa, with gains and losses along the way. However, what is interesting is the continuing tenacity to see another Africa outside the yoke of oppression, erasure, distortion, and interiorization. Even though the future seems to be discounted here, this does not mean they are impossible to realize, and they should be put aside since it is the present that needs to be decolonized. The decolonization of the present arises from the need to break the mold of coloniality and chart the terrain of decoloniality—that is, the world’s unmaking as it is to make the world where many other worlds fit. That is another Africa, the one that is possible only if it is decolonized from the present’s existential fulcrum.

Notes 1. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, ‘On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept’. Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2 and 3 (2007): 240– 270. Cited in 245. 2. Albert Memmi. The Colonizer and the Colonized (New York: The Orion Press, 1965). 3. Maldonado-Torres, ‘On the Coloniality of Being,’ 246. 4. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2013) 133. 5. Ibid. 6. Walter D. Mingolo, ‘Introduction: Coloniality of Power and Decolonial Thinking’. Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2 and 3 (2007): 155–167. Cited in 155. 7. Ibid. 8. Catherine E. Walsh, ‘“Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge”: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies “Others” in the Andes. Cultural Studies 21, no. 2 and 3 (2007): 224–239. Cited in 234. 9. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008). 10. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011). 11. Frank B. Wilderson, III. Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010). 12. Ibid. 13. Anthony Bogues, ‘And What About the Human?: Freedom, Human Emancipation, and the Radical Imagination’. Boundary 2, Fall (2012): 29–46. 14. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 15. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. Translated C. L. Lam Markmann (London: Paladin, 1967). 16. Bogues, ‘And What About the Human?’.

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17. Maldonado-Torres, Against War. 18. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, ‘The Topology of Being and the Geopolitics of Knowledge: Modernity, Empire, and Coloniality’. City 8, no. 1 (2004): 29–56. 19. Bogues, ‘And What About the Human?’ 35. 20. Maldonado-Torres, ‘The Topology of Being and the Geopolitics of Knowledge’. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 43. 23. Maldonado-Torres, Against War. 24. Ibid. 25. Ramon Grosfoguel, ‘The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond the Political Economy Paradigms’. Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2 and 3 (2007): 211–223. 26. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 222. 27. Tandika Mkandawire, ‘Running While Others Walk: Knowledge and the Challenge of Africa’s Development’. Africa Development xxxv1, No. 2 (2011): 1–36. 28. Ibid. 29. Chinweizu, Decolonizing the African Mini (Lagos: Pero Press, 1987). 30. Escobar, Encountering development, 9. 31. Walter D. Mingolo, ‘Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought, and Decolonial Freedom’. Theory, Culture, and Society 26, nos. 7 and 8 (2009): 159– 181. Cited in 176. 32. Escobar, Encountering Development. 33. Ibid., 13. 34. See Chinweizu, Decolonizing the African Mind and also Ng˜ ug˜ı wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Currey, 1986). 35. Francis O.C. Nwonwu, Millennium Development Goals: Achievements and Prospects of Meeting the Targets in Africa (Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2008), 3. 36. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa, 242. 37. Ibid. 38. Chinweizu, Decolonizing the African Mind, xi.

References Bogues, A. 2012. ‘And What About the Human?: Freedom, Human Emancipation, and the Radical Imagination’. Boundary 2 (Fall): 29–46. Chinweizu. 1987. Decolonizing the African Mind. Lagos: Pero Press. ________. 1975. The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers and the African Elite. New York: Vintage Books. Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fanon, F. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks (trans. C. L. Lam Markmann). London: Paladin. Grosfoguel, R. 2007. ‘The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-Economy Paradigms’. Cultural Studies, 21 (2–3): 211–223.

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Maldonado-Torres, N. 2008. Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. _________. 2004. ‘The Topology of Being and the Geopolitics of Knowledge: Modernity, Empire, and Coloniality’. City, 8 (1): 29–56. _________. 2007. ‘On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept’. Cultural Studies, 21 (2–3): 240–270. Memmi, A. 1965. The Colonizer and the Colonized. New York: The Orion Press. Mignolo, Walter D. 2007. ‘Introduction: Coloniality of Power and Decolonial Thinking’. Cultural Studies, 21 (2–3): 155–167. _________. 2009. ‘Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought, and De-colonial Freedom’. Theory, Culture, and Society, 26 (7–8): 159–181. _________. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Mkandawire, T. 2011. ‘Running While Others Walk: Knowledge and the Challenge of Africa’s Development’. Africa Development, xxxv1 (2): 1–36. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. 2013. Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization. Dakar: CODESRIA. Nwonwu, F.O.C. 2008. Millennium Development Goals: Achievements and Prospects of Meeting the Targets in Africa. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa. Patterson, Orlando. 1982. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Walsh, C.E. 2007. ‘“Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge”: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies “Others” in the Andes.’ Cultural Studies, 21 (2/3): 224–239. wa Thiong’o, N. 1986. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey. Wilderson, F.B. III. 2010. Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 10

African Voices and Black Spaces : Confronting Knowledge in White Man’s IR Cliff (Ubba) Kodero

Introduction While Africa’s relationship with international relations (IR) has been extensively researched, insufficient studies have linked Africa’s absence1 in international relations to the simultaneous marginalization of Black scholars of IR. This paper discusses Africa’s relegation to the margins of IR scholarship as a function not only of the Eurocentric focus in IR, but also because of the lingering effects of race and power, which continue to marginalize scholars in the field.2 The paper traces African input and how these contributions’ sidelining impacts theory formation and application. Additionally, this chapter attempts to salvage the discipline by highlighting important works available in the field and their contributions to Africa’s IR. The purpose of the paper is to contribute to what Srdjan Vucetic has described as “broaden(ing) our conceptions of what constitutes IR,” to transcend a White supremacist view of IR into a “global IR,” consequently truncating “white ignorance.”3 This research draws from works of Robert Vitalis, Duncan Bell, Kwame Nkrumah, and W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as conceptions from philosophy and social sciences. In the United States, international politics derives from positivism and other social science disciplines.4 Steve Smith defines positivism as “a commitment to a unified view of science and the adoption of the methodologies of the natural sciences.”5 In the West, positivism takes a central role in C. (Ubba) Kodero (B) Political Economy, The College of Idaho, Caldwell, Idaho, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_10

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shaping epistemology.6 This epistemology emphasizes logic, empiricism, the space between observation and theory, and the human theory of causation.7 This study suggests that this view of knowledge has not always escaped the temptations of racial bias. Africans as Agents of Theory and Theory-Building This section covers Africans’ contribution to scholarship both as agents in their stories as well as subjects of study. The section covers the paradox of plenty in Africa as a study site,8 before exploring the debates that accompanied IR’s development. These debates emerged within specific contexts and defined the field’s orientation, thus subjecting IR to an identity crisis. The debates excluded race and imperialism’s topical issues, which sidelined African involvement in the academy. The second section focuses on hierarchy and racism, arguing that while African countries were sovereign states, they were “quasistates,” as Clapham remarked.9 The same can be said about the knowledge that arose from the previously colonized spheres of European empires. The third section grapples with the consequences of sidelining African knowledge even though the African continent is a centerpiece in IR’s evolution. However, even though Africans were central players in IR development, they were never accredited or considered worthy of developing theoretical models. Significance: Africa’s Position in Changing Global Order The significance of this chapter to the discussions on Africa’s position in the changing global order is three-pronged. First, the chapter focuses on the agency of the African continent in the formulation of IR theory. Instead of the continent’s perception as a passive bystander or a non-entity, this paper reinvigorates the place of Africa—and race in the events that shaped the international society as we know it today. A great deal of these contributions has happened in the area of racial justice and the pursuit of self-determination. This paper pushes the impacts of these inputs to the scholarship of IR as well. In short, the paper makes a case that racial justice issues should have been mainstreamed in scholarship and theorization of IR. In the changing global order, such a consciousness will not only help IR, but it will also reform the perception of Africa as an intellectual deadland. The second contribution is to make the case that there’s an emerging connection between racial concerns in the continent and abroad. For the Black diaspora, intellectual isolationism has been a defining feature in segregated social science spaces before the 1960s. In the global order, there is a need to connect scholarly voices from Afro-descended diaspora spaces and the continent. These voices, while not uniform and monolithic, and with respect to their various conceptions of Blackness, will situate Africa as a futuristic place of study—and perhaps a home for global Blackness. Thus, this paper transcends scholarship into the practice of development as a result of what is

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considered knowledge. The more globally accepted Black knowledge permeates intellectual spaces, the more opportunities for African and Black scholars. Hopefully, an intensely focused study of Africa could change norms on governance, culture, and economy necessary to leverage a much better place in the changing global order. Lastly, this chapter makes a historical analysis of the global positioning of Africa. From the examples of Haiti and Liberia, it raises questions on the permanency of race in shaping the operations of the international society of nations and the scholarship of IR. In doing so, it advocates for racial justice to be at the center of discussions in shaping not only scholarship but also statehood for posterity. What Is Africa’s Place in IR? It is not a secret that the mainstream IR scholarship ignores the African continent. Moreover, many references to Africa in IR are negative.10 As William Brown has described, the isolation of Africa in mainstream IR occurs in two ways. First, some Africanists have argued that traditional IR models and theories are out of place in African contexts and impractical. Second, the conceptual basis of IR theory is a product of Western experience, fails to acknowledge Africa’s historical uniqueness,11 and therefore, inapplicable to the continent. Many Africanists within IR argue that the scholarship on Africa “occur[s] largely from a vantage point of detachment, exclusion, and aberrance.”12 Karen Smith has stated that transformations in the international system, particularly those concerning Africa and the developing world, seem to outpace relevant IR theories.13 This rapid transformation leads to a paradox concerning14 Africa’s place within the study of IR. On the one hand, Africa has been marginalized and understudied amidst a focus on what Kenneth Waltz described as great powers—“the states that make the difference.”15 On the flipside, Africa is increasingly present within IR. It is a region for which most issues pertinent to the study of IR occur. Still, North American and European scholars often dominate major Western IR journals. Potentially, this is a result of racism in academia and relative underdevelopment of higher education and research in Africa.16 Yet, the consequence is the concentration of commentary about Africa from non-Africans, and in places outside Africa.17 Perhaps one asks: what is Africa’s place in IR? Or, to borrow from Karen Smith’s paper title, “has Africa got anything to say”?18 Racism against Africans may account for much of Africa’s dominant narrative as an intellectual deadland when it comes to IR contributions and, in general, the contribution of Africa to global history and knowledge.19 Kevin Dunn states that IR scholars and Western society often define what constitutes Africa in negative terms. Dunn writes that “Africa is useful only for generating sensationalized reports of human suffering, not for contributing to any serious discussions of world politics.”20 In contrast, Siba Grovogui has stated

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that “in IR, as elsewhere in social sciences, ‘Europe’ and the ‘West’ still stand for many as shorthand for ‘goodness and universalism.’”21 But some scholars have refuted this notion, stating that Africa has valuable input in the theoretical development of IR22 Robert Vitalis has also traced the development of IR’s alternative history from the perspectives of Africanist scholars and Black scholars of IR in the United States, affirming “intellectual apartheid” within the discipline.23 Duncan Bell explores the contradiction between liberal political thought, the ideas of capitalism and democracy, and imperialism. The centerpiece of Bell’s question is: if liberalism empowers, how come political theorists made arguments for repressive regimes in colonized societies?24 Alexander Anievas (eds) has explored the central role of W. E. B. Du Bois’ concept of “color line” and its ramifications in developing an often-unstated history of the discipline. Consequently, two strains of logic emerge. The first is the irrelevance of the African continent in global discourse and theory formation. The second is a thread that connects IR’s discipline to the murky and convoluted episodes of exclusion not only of Africa but also African-originated peoples and thoughts, which fundamentally shaped the evolution and entrenchment of “intellectual apartheid.” The next section traces the evolution of race within IR.

The Absence of Race in the Great Debates The IR field operates in a dynamic environment where events and ideas of the day impact scholarly insights and analysis. Miles Kahler has claimed that IR is a function of historical events and a drive to create an identity in an interdisciplinary arena, which has encouraged differentiation, an alignment with political science, and the need for scholars to realize practical results.25 The traditional IR approach concentrated on the historical origins of issues, such as the nature of the state system and the diplomatic practices in western Europe.26 IR is a fragmented discipline that wrestles with “intellectual pluralism” even as it avoids the racist underpinnings of focusing on Western power(s). International politics had no systematic study until World War I opened the way for its formal study.27 E. H. Carr’s Twenty-Year Crisis is significant in the study of IR between 1919 and 1939. Carr charges that ideations in the form of morals and ambitions influence politics’ operations and are immeasurable in society. Carr highlighted the first great debate in IR between the idealists, or liberal industrialists, and the realists of the 1920s and early 1930s. They focused on finding lasting peace in the “civilized” world. While Carr raised the debate between utopians and realists, a White supremacist tautology influenced the discipline’s discussions, relegating people of color to the margins.28 As of 1939, only four African countries—South Africa, Ethiopia (Abyssinia), Liberia, and Egypt—were members of the League of Nations. Racial hierarchy guided international politics of the predominantly White states that constituted the international society. Carr wrote that “the campaign for

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the popularization of international politics begun in the English-speaking countries.”29 According to W. E. B. Du Bois, the discipline was not international relations but “interracial relations.”30 Du Bois’ responses to the causes of the world war and the prospect of eternal world peace were through “political thinking and race-ordering.”31 Du Bois asserts that World War I was “no aberration of European civilization, but its clearest expression and the main causes of European greatness, overseas expansion, and colonial aggrandizement—were also the very causes of the war.”32 Whereas Carr emphasizes finding peace through a fusion of utopian and realist ideas, Du Bois reasons that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea.”33 While Carr does not mention Africa in Twenty Years Crisis, Du Bois centrally places Africa and other global people of color in its analysis. In the interwar period, at the height of anti-colonial movements, IR scholars ignored the influence of regional academics and nationalists who spearheaded national struggles and ideas. Raymond Leslie Buell, a Princetontrained social scientist was among the few scholars to engage Black intellectuals, and researched Africa. Buell’s scholarly interests included topics on race, empire, and colonialism. In 1925, Buell published the book International Relations, which among other topics, focused on Western nations’ appetite for cheap labor and new markets.34 Buell also published a series of articles concerning Africa in Foreign Affairs: “Destiny of Africa” (1928), “Two Lessons in Colonial Rule” (1929), and “The Struggle of Africa” (1927). In “The Struggle of Africa,” he wrote that “as far as the white man is concerned, (Africa) has not only been Dark but in vast areas has been deserted.”35 Even though Buell was progressive about racial issues and wrote about Africa when no other White scholar did, he also labeled nationalist scholars with “racialism” or “racial nationalism,” criticizing them as reactionary or ethnocentric.36 These racial undertones or discourses were pivotal during the interwar period in shaping IR as a discipline about the West and the Rest.37 Crucially, though, IR as an academic field has evolved, and changes in norms have left scholars struggling with crises of identity and orientation. However, this emerging identity has often neglected the “Rest,” as it tended to conform to the West’s interests. IR owes its present preoccupations to the European-born scholars who left Europe for the United States from the 1930s to 1960s, elevating the discipline’s discourse from one focused on utopian ideals to a more realistic view of the world as the works of Hans Morgenthau exemplify. Morgenthau outlined the principles of realism in Politics Among Nations, which stemmed from the premise of self-interest. Morgenthau writes that “politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have roots in human nature to improve society. It is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives.”38 Morgenthau proposed a study of the world as it is rather than as it should be. He started a critical departure from the flirtations with utopianism in the period after the First World War.

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Tellingly, this epoch of IR also grossly ignored the concerns of people of color and the continent of Africa. IR left no room for the study or theorization of Africa, as the focus turned to “great powers.”39 On race, Morgenthau reiterated what earlier European scholars had stated: Africa has no contribution to modernity. Morgenthau added that Africa was devoid of a worthy political history before 1945 and was, therefore, “an empty political space.”40 Consequently, if racial hierarchy was the natural order of things, as Charles Darwin had suggested, it was the natural law of life to exclude the world’s less developed peoples. In the 1940s, realists shifted from international organizations and the European concert system to more traditional international politics. Emphasizing the classical approach in the 1940s exposed the new discipline to accusations of pseudoscience. In consequence, IR adopted a positivist approach that would foster the scientific identity of the discipline.41 Nicolas Guilhot’s Invention of International Relations Theory resurrected IR’s formalized understanding with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, which funded a conference in 1954 for leading scholars in the field. In this conference, the realists did not agree on a mutual understanding of realism. Nonetheless, they promoted IR as a discipline that would emphasize power politics and the national interest.42 Race and empire seemed to have receded from the realists’ minds at the Rockefeller conference and subsequently in many published works of White scholars in IR.43 During this time, Du Bois and the “Howard School of International Relations” irradiated the implications of racism, colonialism, and empire as fundamental organizing principles of international politics. Toni Morrison noted that many White intellectuals ignored racism, instead of analyzing its consequences in academia.44 Other scholars have labeled this phenomenon as “racial aphasia,”45 a calculated effort at forgetting. Yet, it was not just race and racialized topics forgotten in the Cold War era of IR; Africa was also erased. In the 1950s and 1960s, science’s pursuit gained momentum, lending greater credibility to the behaviorists over the traditionalists. This era was equally devoid of scholars of color, African epistemology, or theory derived from or for Africa. Science offered the model that was necessary for realizing the authority and legitimacy of IR as a discipline. Scholars focused on emulating the cannons of knowledge in the natural sciences. They envisioned international politics to be scientifically credible with replicable and generalizable outcomes. While scientific models gained traction in IR, African IR also emerged. The 1960s was an era of African intellectualism. African scholars gained traction during the decolonization and the postcolonial period. Many students who had attained training abroad in the colonial metropoles or Western schools had the opportunity to teach at local institutions and write about Africa. In these institutions, IR had been taught as a discipline of “great powers,” forgoing African voices except for a few intellectuals in the diaspora. African IR was dominated mostly by male nationalists and pan-Africanists, such

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as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. At the International Congress of Africanists in Accra, Ghana in 1962, Nkrumah remarked that the Africanists’ “efforts marked a renaissance of scientific curiosity in the study of Africa and should be directed to an objective, impartial scrutiny and assessments of things Africa.”46 The Africanists attempted to bring African thought into the academy, yet their projects remained on the periphery.47 By the 1970s, IR surrendered intellectual independence and became a field much like the rest of social sciences, leading to a diversion of thought between the Americans and the English. Whereas the Americans envisioned a positivist discipline, the English remained on the traditional route; as Tim Dunne remarked, “the English school has consistently opposed the sterility of a realistcum-positivist approach to the discipline.”48 Still, the English school scholars neglected the 60-year colonial period and did not change Africa’s peripheral relationship and the industrial North. In the 1970s, the newly independent states’ economies collapsed from what historical materialists have asserted as unfair trade agreements. Historical materialists (Marxists, dependency, and world system theorists) refocused attention on Africa and the exploitative nature of the relationship between the North and South. Yet, much of their work focused on Asia and Latin America.49 The absence of systematic, longstanding labor exploitation in Africa hampered the explanatory logic of the historical materialists.50 Walter Rodney, a Guyanese intellectual who was banished from Jamaica for his academic leftist activism, settled at the University of Dare Salaam, where he penned his Magnus opus, How Europe Undeveloped Africa. He transplanted Cardoso’s dependency theory in the African space. He influenced a reckoning on self-reliance ideas that influenced nationalists like Julius K. Nyerere, who was also the chancellor of the University where he taught. While Rodney’s articulations were not new, he introduced these conversations to mainstream academic discourse. His work bridged the disconnect between Afro-diasporas and Black intellectuals from the continent. In the United States, IR became more scientific, but the realists lost their dominant position. Moreover, a new debate interrogated the fundamentals of positivist epistemology. During this era, scholars such as Kenneth Waltz of the neorealism theoretical perspective argued that IR theorization was about “great powers.” Africa and the developing world had no space for systematic analysis. Waltz wrote that “it would be ridiculous to construct a theory of international politics on Malaysia and Costa Rica... a general theory is based on great powers.”51 Christopher Clapham reiterated this point, suggesting that IR ignored the world’s poorest states and focused on Africa as a site of “super-power contests” during the Cold War era.52 In the 1980s, a new debate arose; one that questioned the premise of positivism. Debates among proponents of reflectionism and defenders of rational thought, on the one hand, and rationalists and constructivists, on the other, offered opportunities to discuss race and Africa. Although this discussion was less racist than earlier debates, it was much more convoluted because

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of charged arguments by constructivists, feminists, realists, post-structuralists, and the like. These debates revamped theory and developed innovative ideas, such as neo-liberalism, neo-realism, post-modernism, etc. The result is that two camps in IR emerged. The first includes the proponents of critical theories, post-structuralism, and post-modernism. The second camp incorporates traditional rationalists such as liberals, realists, and some constructivists. Significantly, these ideas challenge IR’s scientific premise, postulating that the field’s epistemological standpoints lack validity. The next section details how the liberalization of theories opened IR for a detailed analysis of race and empire.

African-Centered IR in the Era of Critical Theories Africanists argue that cultural knowledge enables postmodern analyses. Accordingly, embracing the Africana experience contributes to the epistemology of social science, especially IR. The African contribution is best captured through a wholesale appreciation of the African experience as equally credible to knowledge acquisition.53 However, the “purists” argue that academics must acknowledge Europeans’ influence in African scholarship. Led by Kwame Antony Appiah and V. Y. Mudimbe, this camp has often been at loggerheads with those who argue that African contributions to scholarship have been possible because of the many Africans who write about Africa. Even so, Africans had become central players in their narratives. Scholars in this school of thought include Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, and Molefi Asante. Their pursuit of valid African epistemology is a response to the introduction of Afrocentered scholarship. Bates, Mudimbe, and O’Barr wrote in Africa and the Disciplines that “research into the experiences of persons of African descent in the modern world poses fundamental challenges to Western society’s understanding of itself.”54 In The Predicament of Blackness, Jemima Pierre posits the argument that a meaningful conversation on race must reckon that the “postcolonial societies are structured through and by global white supremacy.”55 Among the most influential critical theorists is Michel Foucault. Foucault discusses the European statecraft and the genealogy of race in Society Must Be Defended. He charges that racism can be explored as a continuation of society’s pursuit of an alternative history that conflicts with accepted accounts.56 Foucault questions sovereignty and its purity amidst biopolitics to reassert that the concept of sovereignty leads to racialized states. Foucault understands race as a question of the alternative discourses of sovereign rights, the war of races, and the emergence of counter-narratives of history. Consequently, state racism becomes less of an effect but a power tactic that divides society into a constant state of struggle.57 Foucault’s genealogy of race unearths the consistent presence of racist ideologies in the European state in all its forms. Accordingly, race shaped European state formation58 and, to a larger extent, theories that inform IR study. Although significantly enriching

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the discourse on power and race in international politics, Foucault’s theory is still entrenched in the European narrative and neglects the world’s remainder. The importance of race stems from its fundamental rooting in modernity, which continuously reinvents race ideologies. If imperialism is the starting point for the race, it is critical to society’s structure and of IR as it stands today. While racial discussions are understated in IR, the discipline confronts the role that race has played in forming empires, the triumph of capitalism, and modern states’ formation. In White World Order, Black Power Politics, Robert Vitalis proposes that IR faces the legacy of racism in the field’s foundation and continues to shape its conceptualization of the world. Vitalis reminds readers that the Journal of Race Development was the first journal of international relations in the United States and was founded in 1911 by Stanley Hall and George Blakeslee of Clark University. The publication was later renamed Journal of International Relations and merged with Foreign Affairs in 1922. The Journal of Race Development housed some influential contributions to the field, including A. F. Chamberlains “The Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization” (1911) and Du Bois’s “Of the Culture of White Folk” (1917).59 Yet, the racialization of the discipline has not occurred to fight inequalities but the fulfillment of White supremacist objectives. The field of IR, formulated as the politics of high powers, reduces the “others” of the world while continuously elevating the forces engaged in many facets of racism. Similarly, Vitalis protests the situation of race studies at the peripheries of the discipline, while evidence points to racism’s central role in IR.

Connecting Hierarchy, Race, and Africa After outlining the debate on race and IR, it is necessary to appraise the “otherness” of Black IR and critique the meaning of modernity concerning Africa. David Lake has noted that “IR as a discipline (like international relations itself) is hierarchically ordered.”60 This point is evident because international relations is a discipline that studies only “great powers.” Consequently, discussions within IR displace Africa and Blackness, causing the internationalization of race and demanding an analytical framework that connects hierarchy, race, and Africa. Despite accounting for over a billion of the world’s population, African countries remain on the discipline margins. Thus, the first question is: Why is Africa missing? Could racism in IR be the cause? How does the absence of Africa challenge the knowledge that the IR canon dictates? Examining the first Black republic is a starting point for answering these questions. In the independence declaration of 1804, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, General Dessalines, ratified the constitution, which included, among other rights, “social freedoms.” The constitution also mandated that all Haitian citizens be declared “Black” regardless of their skin tone.61 The Haitians attempted to eliminate the racial hierarchy prevalent in Haiti courtesy of the interracial marriages between the Spaniards, the French, and

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the Africans.62 In the United States, the Haitian revolution was a diplomatic headache for the president and the Democratic-Republican Party leader, Thomas Jefferson. While Jefferson supported the French revolution and the ideas that it represented, his slave-owning and upbringing in Virginia made him fear the Haitian rebellion’s influence on the American south. In consequence, Jefferson argued for careful diplomacy that included aiding White minorities in Haiti with limited aid. Despite the noticeable political differences between the DemocraticRepublican Party and the Federalists party on many issues, the United States agreed that it was in the national interest for the Union to take diplomacy with Haiti slow.63 Haiti’s Blackness had been sold as an experiment with freedom, exposing its citizens to the dangers of hierarchy, race, and imperialism. Haiti also set a precedent for future republics. Liberia and Ethiopia experienced aspects of diplomatic isolation from the international community arising from the race. Yet, many IR scholars have failed to trace the connection between Haiti’s treatment in 1804 and the quasi-statehood of African states today. The absence of this narrative in the canon underscores the fallibility prevalent in color-blinded theories. Other times, prominent scholars are not only color blind; they are blatantly racist. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism provides one example. Arendt explores the root causes of totalitarianism, which she attributes to imperialism. While the purpose of the book is to identify the unique conditions that led to the Holocaust, Arendt contributes to the discourse on racism in IR through her boomerang effect theory, which she postulates emanated from the contamination of the European space with African savagery, acquired from European expansion into the Dark Continent. Arendt is a pioneer in linking the Holocaust to imperialism, but she does so in a manner that exposes her Eurocentric bias.64 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, pointed out that Arendt was blind to her racist assumptions and fell into that trap by referencing Heart of Darkness, which impacted her description of the Nazi death camps.65 Even though Arendt writes about the connection between imperialism and the Holocaust, she also embeds her argument with psychological logic originating from dislocation politics. From her vantage point, the displacement of civilized Europeans to the wilderness in southern Africa led to a return to the past they had forgotten, backwardness that inspired their violence. Consequently, Arendt’s work requires a double reading, connecting the Holocaust to colonialism and race, and a second that examines her racialized perspectives and biases.66 For instance, she joins the Jewish people in the camps to the “naked savages” in southern Africa.67 Africans, in this context, are reduced to animalistic behavior that Europe had surpassed.68 Europe becomes a symbol of progress, while Africa represents barbarism. Like Arendt, Aimé Césaire’s work in Discourse on Colonialism analyzes the idea of modernization surrounding European colonization’s marketing. However, Césaire charges that European colonialism acts are brutal, leading

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the colonized and the colonizer to trauma.69 Modernity is inherently racist and genocidal—both in Europe and in colonized spaces.70 Césaire connects the discussion of race and the idea of de-civilization in European modernity to the Holocaust. While Arendt dehumanizes the Africans, Césaire celebrates their civilization as equally crucial as Europe, and, stunningly, less violent. Césaire tackles European Holocaust deniers’ dishonesty, saying instead that the Holocaust has been a part of the colonial experience since European contact with Africa.71 While most IR scholars ignored Black intellectuals and racialized discourse in the mainstream, it does not mean that Black scholars in IR went silent. Du Bois fought for the equality of Black people and other people of color, but he also wrote extensively about race and Africa. Alongside Booker T. Washington, Du Bois was one of the early champions of the pan-African movement. Yet Du Bois “pan-Africanist sympathies elevated his position as an intellectual in the motherland more than it did in the United States where he was born.”72 Both Buell and Du Bois were prolific contributors to Foreign Affairs. While Raymond Buell was thriving as the quintessential authority in Africa’s foreign affairs, Du Bois was writing extensively on Africa with limited traction. Buell and Du Bois’s key difference was that, although Buell wrote on Africa, he was not as assertive on racism as Du Bois was. In 1925, Du Bois wrote “Worlds of Color,” in which he studied the First World War from the lens of race. Du Bois posed the question: “How deep were the roots of this catastrophe entwined about the color line? And of the legacy left, what of the darker race problems the world would inherit?”73 Du Bois published on this topic in 1915 in an article for the Atlantic Monthly, entitled “African Roots of War.” In the article, he argued that Africa’s scramble and partitioning caused the First World War and could cause more wars.74 In 1933, Du Bois examined the Liberian debt crisis and its entanglement with Western powers, even as the country fought vigorously to retain its independence. Du Bois surmised that Liberia’s problem was “to be black and poor in a rich, white world.”75 Du Bois’s fascination with Africa might have stemmed from his more profound quest for belonging and identity. In July 1900, at the first panAfrican conference held in London, Du Bois uttered his now-famous line, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”76 On Pan-African ideals, Abiola Irele argues that it was a result of Du Bois’ desire to fight against Western imperialism and because Africa represented a “longing for home and belonging.”77 If Africa represented a sense of belonging for Du Bois, the place of Africa remained peripheral. Even so, African political leaders such as Leopold Senghor and Kwame Nkrumah were fruitful writers. Leopold Senghor and Kwame Nkrumah’s idea of Negritude and African Personality embody a quest for acceptance of Black “being” in a colonial society that has ignored Black people’s humanity. For Senghor, race is the first factor in creating distinct African personhood. The African is primarily “emotional rather than rational; spiritual rather than

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materialistic, and socialist rather than individualistic.”78 Senghor also argues that there is a distinct type of African reasoning, one that is “traditionally dialectical, transcending the principles of identity, non-contradiction, and the ‘excluded middle.’”79 Sengor follows the logic of African people’s otherness, which arose from centuries of subjugation to posit that African worldview is one focused on “being” and “life forces.”80 Nkrumah’s African personality embodies the idea of collective consciousness in traditional African society. The African situation arises out of the many layers that constitute the present African understanding. These layers are functions of history that include traditional, Islamic, and Christian values and European colonialism. However, Nkurumah, espousing an ontological base for a socialist society, argues that Africa should return to its original creed, fundamentally “African” and founded on a classless society. Nkrumah’s analysis brings to the fore the importance of African values, the refusal to naturalize colonialism, and the castigation of Europe for its refusal to disavow colonial violence.81 Yet Nkrumaha’s views not only sponsor his quest for continental unity, but they also influenced thinkers and nationalists like Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and his Ujamaa (togetherness) philosophy of development. Ujamaa policy is designed to eliminate inequality, elitism, instability, and the greed of colonialism. In the Arusha Declaration, Nyerere argued that Ujamaa envisions the realization of equality and racial parity.82 For many Africans, this was a critical issue, considering the yoke of colonialism had engulfed Tanzanian society. Africa, in general, was looking for an “African solution” to the problem of development. Ujamaa had the potential of an original African idea that could set a precedence for how development could occur in Africa. Unfortunately, Ujamaa failed partly because of Nyerere’s naivety about great power politics and their hold on Africa.83 It is vital to acknowledge IR scholarly works’ influential role concerning Africa’s marginalization and African-centered scholars. IR, as a primarily Western discipline, has not thoroughly analyzed its racist past. Duncan Bell has reported that there are echoes of nineteenth-century ideologies that remained in the twentieth century and lasted to the present day. Scholars of IR did not heed the Haitian revolution lessons and how it impacted Africa’s place in IR discourse. While many scholars continue to argue about the nature of democracy, justice, and rights, they often ignore “how many of the ideas and institutions have been deformed and inflicted by centuries of Western imperialism.”84 The imperial system combines the liberalism and imperialism that enabled its polity to operate as a transcontinental state. Bell contends that “while liberalism is not intrinsically imperial, liberals must avoid replicating the corrupted position adopted by the nineteenth-century predecessors.”85 The next section highlights the consequences of ignoring racism and Africa in IR.

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Consequences of Limiting Black Voices and Black Spaces in International Relations While previous sections covered the history of IR as a discipline, examined critical theorists who discussed race and IR, and highlighted some of the African thinkers who researched and studied IR, this section focuses on the consequences of limiting Black voices in IR. The name “international relations” lays claim to a systematic analysis of international politics, foreign affairs, or international relations. The scope of the discipline is global. Nonetheless, for most of the discipline’s history, IR has not been global; it has been dominated by and has drawn from European theories and ideas. For instance, Yong-Soo Eun reports that “hypothesis-testing” works by American and other Western scholars often get published “approximately in proportion to submissions” in major journals. In contrast, scholars from developing or non-Western societies hardly get past the review process.86 To Eun, IR is still a “Western-centric discipline,” and much of mainstream IR theory is “simply an abstraction of Western history.”87 Indeed, IR discipline has not fully confronted parochialism and embedded racial assumptions on what constitutes knowledge. Yet, race’s importance arises from its fundamental rooting in modernity, which continuously reinvents racial ideologies. As a result of European exploration and Africa’s conquest, African people were subjected to European scientific studies. Such experimental studies led to the creation of race as a natural phenomenon and established European culture’s constructed superiority over “other” races.88 As a result of European exploration, conquest, and colonization, the world became organized according to European state models.89 Suppose European mercantilism is viewed as the starting point for a racist international system. In that case, it is possible to understand how it became critical to the structure of society and IR as they exist today. In IR, the transformation of African societies into nation-states was a central subject of the mid-twentieth century. In Africa, Europeanization resulted in the emergence of nation-states governed by European laws but populated by Africans entering the conversations on IR. Silencing Black voices in IR engages in the “willful forgetting of the fact that IR’s original purpose was to help maintain and expand global White supremacy.”90 For example, the German colonial genocide of the Herero prefigured the Holocaust. However, because it was not studied in detail, lessons could not be extracted from it. To reverse course, IR needs to go beyond the Westphalian system and cover truly international phenomena. Scholars must confront the significance of the atrocities committed through imperialism in IR, regardless of where these crimes happened. These events should not be regarded as “human oddities” or “events of the past.” Instead, IR scholars should build on theories that do not confound the understanding of what is ethical and unethical. In David Lake’s “White Man’s IR,” he proposes that “promoting diversity in universities and societies more generally is an important good. But promoting diversity

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in the academy will also make us better scholars, both individually and collectively.”91 While racial discussions are understated in IR, the discipline must enter race relations, which influenced the expansion of empires, the triumph of capitalism, and modern states’ formation. Robert Vitalis argues that IR must confront racism’s legacy at the root of its foundation, which continues to shape the discipline’s conception of the world. This is not limited to scholarship; it is also about justice.92 IR must confront race as its problem to combat racism in hiring, career paths, teaching, and epistemology. Similarly, expanding the focus of IR will affect questions asked, topics explored, and theories employed. As such, confronting race in IR is not only about studying Black IR scholars; it is also about encompassing IR as an accurate representation of the world as lived.

Conclusion This chapter has explored racism within the IR discipline, evident both in its inadequate focus on Africa’s continent and the limited acknowledgement of scholars of color. As the IR discipline has come to terms with English School and American School’s existence, there should be a recognition of the Howard School and, within the Howard School, a branch that focuses on theoretical models applied and studied by Africanists. Black scholars in IR are scarce. If they exist, they are hardly published and scarcely tenured. If they are published, they are not cited. If cited, it is because of some unique case study about some peculiar case of a conflict in some forgettable country in Africa. IR as a discipline does not only have an African problem; it has a race problem. The chapter argues that there is a need to recognize the “intellectual apartheid” in IR.

Notes 1. While Africa here includes Afrocentric, Afro-centered, and Afro-originated models and theories. It also includes Africa as a geographical place. 2. David A. Lake, “White Man’s IR: An Intellectual Confession,” American Political Science Association 2, Vol. 14, No. 4 (December 2016). 3. Srdjan Vucetic, “Global IR and Global White Ignorance,” TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research (TRAFO, June 1, 2017), https://trafo.hypotheses. org/6677. Accessed 3/25/20, paragraph 6. 4. Steve Smith, 14. 5. Steve Smith, International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009), 11. 6. Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, eds., Handbook of International Relations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013), 40. 7. Steve Smith, 15. 8. Kevin Dunn, “One Punk’s Guide to African Politics,” Global Punk (2016), 3. 9. Christopher Clapham, “The Evolution of Africa’s International Relations,” in Africa and the North: Between Globalization and Marginalization (New York: Routledge, 2005), 16.

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10. Tandeka C. Nkiwane, “Africa and International Relations: Regional Lessons for a Global Discourse,” International Political Science Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 (July 2001), 280. 11. William Brown, “Africa and International Relations: A Comment on IR Theory, Anarchy and Statehood,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (July 2006), 121. 12. Scarlett Cornelissen, Fantu Cheru, and Timothy Shaw, eds., Africa and International Relations in the 21 St Century (London: Palgrave, 2012), 2. 13. Karen Smith, “Africa as an Agent of International Relations Knowledge,” in Africa and International Relations in the 21st Century. International Political Economy Series (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 21. 14. Sophie Harman and William Brown, “In from the Margins? The Changing Place of Africa in International Relations,” International, Vol. 89, No. 1 (January 2013), 69–87. 15. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (NYC: Random House, 1979), 73. 16. Paul-Henri Bischoff, Kwesi Aning, and Amitav Acharya, eds., Africa in Global International Relations: Emerging Approaches to Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2016), 145. 17. Sophie Harman and William Brown, 72. 18. Karen Smith, “Has Africa Got Anything to Say? African Contributions to the Theoretical Development of International Relations,” The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 98, No. 402 (June 2009). 19. Ian Taylor, The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2010). 20. Kevin Dunn and Timothy Shaw, Africa’s Challenge to International Relations Theory (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2001), 2. 21. Siba Grovogui, Beyond Eurocentrism and Anarchy Memories of International Order and Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan US, 2006), 55. 22. Karen Smith, 269. 23. Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 24. Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton University Press, 2016). 25. Miles Kahler, “Inventing International Relations: International Relations Theory After 1945,” in New Thinking in International Relations Theory (Westview Press, 1997), 22. 26. Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 8. 27. Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 2. 28. Alexander Anievas, Nivi Manchanda, and Robbie Shilliam, eds., Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (Routledge, 2014), 2. 29. Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 2. 30. Anievas, 20. 31. Anievas, 4. 32. Anievas, 4. 33. Alexander Anievas, 1.

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34. Robert Vitalis, 11. 35. Raymond Leslie Buell, “The Struggle in Africa,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 1 (October 1927), 22–40. 36. Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, The Making of Global International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 109. 37. Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, 110. 38. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power And Peace (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2006), 2. 39. Stuart Croft, “International Relations and Africa,” African Affairs, Vol. 96, No. 385 (October 1997), 607–615. 40. Morgenthau, 369. 41. Miles Kahler, 26. 42. Nicolas Guilhot, The Invention of International Relations Theory Realism, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the 1954 Conference on Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 15. 43. Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 60. 44. Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 60. 45. Alexander Anievas, 2. 46. Kwame Nkrumah, “Address Given to the First International Congress of Africanists,” The Proceedings of the First International Congress of Africanists (1964), 10. 47. V.Y. Mudimbe and Kwame Appiah, The Impact of African Studies on Philosophy, 118. 48. Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), xiv. 49. Ronald Chipaike, Matarutse Knowledge, and Meissner Richard, “The Question of African Agency in International Relations,” Journal of Cogent Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2018). 50. Pierre Englebert and Kevin Dunn, Inside African Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2013), 109. 51. Kenneth Waltz, 72–73. 52. Christopher Clapham, 3. 53. Bates, Mudimbe, O’Barr (eds), Africa and the Disciplines (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), xi. 54. Bates, Mudimbe, O’Barr (eds), xi. 55. Jemima Pierre, The Predicament of Blackness Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 1. 56. Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 89. 57. Ann Stoler, 59. 58. Ann Stoler, 60. 59. Robert Vitalis, 60. 60. David Lake, 1116. 61. Ibram Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (New York: Nation Books, 2016), 119. 62. Ibram Kendi, 123.

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63. John E. Baur, “International Repercussions of the Haitian Revolution,” The Americas, Vol. 26, No. 4 (April 1970), 394. 64. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harvest Book, 1994), 193. 65. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 37. 66. Rothberg, 37. 67. Rothberg, 36. 68. Rothberg, 40. 69. Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 29. 70. Césaire, 22. 71. Césaire, 22. 72. F. Abiola Irele, “Critical Perspectives on WEB Du Bois: What Is Africa to Me?” Souls, Vol. 7, No. 3–4 (2005), 26. 73. W. E. B. DuBois, “Worlds of Color,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 3 (April 1925), 423. 74. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The African Roots of War,” The Atlantic Monthly, https:// www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/08/the-african-roots-of-war/ 373403/. 75. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, “Liberia, the League and the United States,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 4 (July 1933), 695. 76. . F. Abiola Irele, Viii. 77. Irele, 30. 78. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading (Berkshire, UK: African Renaissance, 2011), 53. 79. Ekwe-Ekwe, 55. 80. Lilyan Kesteloot and Ellen Conroy Kennedy, “Senghor, Negritude and Francophonie on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century,” Research in African Literatures, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1990). 81. Richard H. Bell, Understanding African Philosophy: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Classical and Contemporary Issues (New York: Routledge, 2002), 40. 82. Richard H. Bell, 37. 83. Richard H. Bell, 39. 84. Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton University Press, 2016), 4. 85. Duncan Bell, 31. 86. Yong-Soo Eun, ed., Going Beyond Parochialism and Fragmentation in the Study of International Relations (NY: Routledge, 2020). 87. Yong-Soo Eun, ed., Going Beyond Parochialism. 88. Sally Falk Moore, Anthropology and Africa: Changing Perspectives on a Changing Scene (Richmond, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1994), 83. 89. Sally Moore, 85. 90. Srdjan Vucetic, ‘Global IR and Global White Ignorance.’ 91. David Lake, 1112. 92. Robert Vitalis, 185.

CHAPTER 11

Epistemologies of the South and Africa’s Marginalization in the Media Zvenyika Eckson Mugari

Introduction Societies separated by distance and time co-orient themselves one to another based on what pictures the news media in their wisdom decide to “put into the minds of men” the UNESCO motto reminds us. But does not the harsh realities of the past centuries of human history also tell us that very grave social outcomes critically depend on those pictures that the same channels of public education withdraw and deny us access? Much of our consciousness about the world and our place in it is bound up with those pictures we are especially prevented from accessing. What mainstream news, reports, underreports or is silent about provides the foundations upon which we build our common understanding of the world in their diversity and contrarieties. From the repertoire of pictures availed or withheld, we go on to fashion our own and other people’s identities. When for example, citizens of the United States of America think about and act apropos citizens say of a distant African country such as Zimbabwe, they do so guided by what their trusted sources of pictures on that country; CNN, Fox News, or Associated Press (AP) news agency avail to or withhold from them. These preeminent paragons of journalistic ethical and professional standards that hold that facts are sacred would have us believe that the news they put out there is the objectively verified truth and nothing else but the truth. American foreign policy thus stands guided. Galtung and Ruge1 make Z. E. Mugari (B) Midlands State University, Gweru, Zimbabwe © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_11

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this point most succinctly in their seminal study on the constitutive factors of newsworthiness hence: since it is axiomatic that action is based on the actor’s image of reality, international action will be based on the image of international reality. (…) the regularity, ubiquity, and prevalence of news media will, in any case, make them first-rate competitors for the number-one position as international image-former”.

Extant scholarly literature on the news media can be classified into three broad areas focusing on: the nature of media organization, production processes, news texts, and news reception. It can be argued that research pursuit of these areas is premised mainly on the basic assumption that the news matters. By implication, non-news is an irrelevance for the simple reason that it is an absence and therefore not apprehendable by means known and available to the research community. Thus, the western dominant news episteme stayed the course and remained hegemonic and, so has the product of its epistemic processes, the news, enjoyed the status of quintessential truth. The professional production of news as knowledge, while it falls short of claiming the status of science, it indeed insists on being regarded as the objective truth. Like science, it is a product of strict adherence to institutionalized empirical verification practices and routinized news gathering, processing, and dissemination procedures. The assumption that news is gathered presupposes its existence as a news fact out there that all else that is not reported does not exist as such. An impression is often created that newsworthiness attaches to some occurrences, places, and people and not others by dint of nature. Those other occurrences, places, and people lacking in the quality of newsworthiness, the “non-news” automatically deselect themselves and exist as an absence of a news void by professional news standards. The non-news of the dominant Euro-American news epistemic construction of realities of the global South as a nullity that I address myself to in this chapter is to such absences. It is a critical appraisal of the nature of that absence, how it is produced, perpetuated, challenged, and resisted over time. The news presumption that Africa has been silent does not lend itself to easy theorization from a western epistemic and philosophical standpoint. Voids are not subjects of scientific inquiry. Contrary to Nyamjoh’s2 suggestion that it is just a matter of shopping for a theoretical dress from the Euro-American epistemic supermarket, which has room for expansion, a dress you could extend to accommodate the fullness of your being, the reality is that the western epistemological heritage does not take into account diverse possibilities of being human3 and demands of the ontological Other body to be adjusted to fit into the parameters of the normative theoretical dress already on offer on a take it or leave it basis. There is no “room on the sides of existing (western) theories for African scholarship to extend the cloth.” Studying the news’ absent Other silencing and silenced responses to silencing in Africa as a subject worthy of scholarly attention, calls

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for a decolonial theoretical dis-engagement with canonic western paradigms.4 For purposes of critically unpacking the Africa present/absent problem in the news, I deploy the decolonial global South perspective suggested in the scholarship cited above.

Historicizing Africa’s Presence/Absence in News That news as public knowledge thrives on a parasitic ecological relationship with that which it renders invisible as non-news. Understanding the nature of news silence on Africa and African indigenous people’s experiences is the pathway to the cemetery of subordinated bits of knowledge. The subject of study here does not end with that which news media put out as news about Africa and Africans. Still, the nature of its silences, that which it actively renders absent by the very act of its coming into being, the subaltern conversations turned into mere whispers through denial of articulation, the smarting of many centuries of pain turned into a muffled groan. I am talking here about knowledge systems that did go down fighting—Epistemologies of the South. It is the palpable invisibility which, like Joseph Conrad’s5 “a violent babble of uncouth sound” bursting out of “savages” “speaking together” unintelligible but unavoidably present but unknowably inscrutable. In the end, it is news as the voice of empire that gets documented and that Conradian “babble of savages” gets irretrievably lost to history. Such is the institutional power of agency the news has that what it names is and what it ignores is not, as Chambers cited in Goudge6 points out, the news has: “the power to name, identify, classify, domesticate and contain” on the one hand, and the other, “to obliterate, silence and negate.” It can be argued that western news media played no small role in the colonial project of inventing Africa and the African and all that passes as “African tradition.” That the result may not have come out precisely as Europe intended was not for want of having attempted to do so, as Terence Ranger notes: “ … The invented traditions of African societies whether invented by the Europeans or by Africans themselves in response - distorted the past but became in themselves realities through which a good deal of colonial encounter was expressed”7 ). The treatment of indigenous people in the news played no small role in typifying and inventing Africa’s inhabitants in Europe’s imaginary. In light of the mixed and mangled legacies of invented traditions resulting from centuries of the colonial encounter, the so-called “‘traditional’ African culture; the whole body of reified ‘tradition’ invented by colonial administrators, missionaries, ‘progressive traditionalists,’ elders and anthropologists,” Ranger8 warns us against the fallacy of essentializing codified custom as representing authentic pre-colonial African tradition. In a similar vein, the search for original untainted epistemologies of the South or indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) about how Africans made sense of and shared the meanings of their world before the advent of western modes of communication (newspapers,

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radio, and television) may be problematic. Similar reasoning should spare us the futility of peering into Africa’s pre-colonial past for some romanticized way African indigenes came by news uncontaminated by years of Africa’s colonial contact with Europe because even that past handed down from one generation to the next by word of mouth had no way of escaping the same process of reinvention. A more realistic goal would be to look at those popular communication strategies Africans evolved at the crucible of the struggle against colonial erasure, communication engaged in and deployed in resistance to colonial domination. How those relegated to colonial society’s margins came by the news, communication strategies born of opposing impulses of exclusion and cooptation, resistance, and cooperation with dominant forces remains a subject crying out for scholarly attention. How the subaltern remained a speaking subject throughout whether or not the colonial masters bothered to pay attention is at the core what Santos has sketched as the sociology of absences, by which he meant “an inquiry that aims to explain that what does not exist is actively produced as nonexistent, that is, as a non-credible alternative to what exists.”9 A concern first, with how silences were not the unintended but inevitable by-products of the news as discourse and secondly, with how such selective silencing was critical in the social construction and reproduction of master and servant colonial subjectivities between whites and blacks. The difficulty in imagining news absences or non-news as an object of scientific or aesthetic contemplation is that in terms of western empiricist reasoning, nothingness has no substance or physical properties through which it could be apprehended through our senses. Santos proposes a research agenda that starts but does not end with the news articulations and disarticulations of those that it constructs as discardable but seeks to render intelligible the everyday praxis by which they reassert their humanity. And this may be no mean task, since, for the discarded, to dare to name the world is to reclaim one’s humanity and by its very nature an act of subversion by subjugated classes–unauthorized pieces of knowledge. What information was permissible, even encouraged to publish about the indigenous Mashona people in Mr. Ernest William Fairbridge’s Mashonaland Herald and Zambezian Times is a telling example of how mainstream news inscribes identity more effectively by its silences than by its articulations. Mr. Fairbridge offered prize money of 10 shillings for an article not exceeding 500 words in length by any “responsible person of interest to the public” on “the best humorous or epigrammatic definition of a Mashona servant.”10 A fortnight passed, and none came. That absence of a description even of a humorous type of a Mashona servant stands as a monumental pointer to how the media communicated much more about the Mashona by its silence on them than if it had published something about them. We come out better educated about the status of the Mashona in the broader scheme of things in the emerging colonial order from that absence of information in the news than if we had a whole treatise describing them in minute detail.

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Why News Matters What distinguishes news as a genre of discourse is mainly in the sense in which it claims facticity. News, unlike works of literary art (poetry, drama, the novel), which announce themselves upfront as works of the imagination, conceals its constructedness by claiming to present a “true” reflection of reality out there.11 The extant research literature on media and Africa by largely focusing on the colonial news archive (manifest news content) and not on that which is absent from news, has been complicit in valorizing the covered of news and diminishing the already excluded or underrepresented of the news. It plays into the hands of and reinforces the same objectification of victims of that silencing and their modes of communication as inconsequential and unintelligible—“the uncouth babble of savages.” This chapter endeavors to debunk the widely accepted notion that news somehow represents all of the truth there is to be known about Africa and its people over the years. It seeks to demonstrate that the news was and continues to be the most visible articulation of power’s dominant forces. The universes of the excluded which it indexes as unnewsworthy do not simply disappear by operation of the news’s act of unsaying it. Rather, it exists in a dialectical and resistant relationship with the myriads of news as its under-side. Selective bestowal or withdrawal of news status on some events, places, and people rather than others is directly linked to the exercise of power and domination in hierarchically structured societies. While the news is productive of both the said (its manifest discourses) and unsaid, it is the whole universe of news’ unsaid that is of interest in this discussion. Although some scholars have tended to regard it as a new phenomenon: “how ordinary citizens deprived of information in various parts of Africa have deployed rumor, humor and drama to fill the information void created by government censorship of mainstream media”,12 I contend that the resort to alternative means of recovering voice and self-expression on the part of those rendered invisible by mainstream professional news media has its roots deep in the cultures of resistance that animate colonial histories of the global South. Barber13 adds that: “songs, jokes, and anecdotes may be the principal channel of communication for people who are denied access to the official media,” those who lived and died outside the western news frame. The novelty of modern time humor, rumor, songs, and jokes finding articulation on difficult-to-regulate online media platforms should not obscure their historical connections with the subversive communication practices that successfully upstaged colonial misinformation-as-news throughout Africa in the last century. The world owes it to the global South that the notion of an egalitarian, participative, and counter-hegemonic model of “producing news together” were the fore-runners to the world celebrated the rise of citizen journalism as the fifth estate. “In Africa, ordinary people tend to be invisible and inaudible. (…) And if the poor are invisible, the very poor are downright nuisance-some regimes have treated them literally as rubbish.”14

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Baber’s comment above was made regarding the contemporary media situation as it obtains in post-independence Africa. Still, it equally holds true if not much more so under white settler rule. The challenge with such critical but realistic portrayals of despotic tendencies to monopolize news spaces in contemporary Africa, as Barber presents above, is that they often fall into the trap of de-historicizing and, as a consequence reifying postcolonial media problems as lying in the realm of nature and therefore incapable of being changed. In the exuberance of Afro-pessimism, a connection is often not made because colonial experience presented the only schoolroom from which the current crop of Africa’s rulers drew their lessons well. Wherever newspapers, radio, and television were introduced on the continent, they were never imagined as being there to solve African communication problems. They were not placed in colonial subjects’ hands to use as watchdogs to check colonial state power and hold colonial administrators accountable to the governed. Far from it, they were unapologetically part and parcel of the colonial infrastructure in the Empire’s service, there to cover-up not to expose colonial atrocities, to extoll not to denounce colonial conquistadors’ frontier wars of dispossession and theft of indigenous people’s lands and resources. What one should find surprising, actually, is the patronizing expectation that African media now ought to behave differently, that they ought to have literally lifted themselves with their bootstraps from their colonial moorings to the lofty pedestal of a more inclusive media system designed to serve as a pillar of democratic citizenship. There certainly is a grain of truth in the British Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s poetic line “child is the father of the man” that certain traits, quirks, and inclinations that come late in a person’s life trace their origins to one’s formative childhood experiences. Galtung and Ruge’s15 original list of 12 news factors developed from an analysis of foreign news published in Norwegian newspapers back in 1965 has since been reviewed and extensively revised by themselves and by other scholars after that to come up with expanded lists in some cases and others reduced lists. According to Galtung and Ruge, news images of underdog nations such as the Congo, Cuba, and Cyprus that filtered into western newspapers did so through a screen of factors of newsworthiness. Events and occurrences had to have one or more of these characteristics to warrant coverage as news. Journalists were absolved from any responsibility if some events, some places, and some people failed to make it into the news. What much of the scholarship on factors that confer newsworthiness appear to have missed were how capital, whether social, economic, or cultural, whiteness and maleness operating singly or in combination determine in the last instance what gets selected as news. In an earlier epoch, to this list could be added assumptions about the human. Despite all rhetoric to the contrary media, to all intends and purposes, have continued to allocate access to the news media based on these structuring factors. News workers tend to locate themselves on an ongoing basis close to individuals, organizations, and places that ooze with newsworthiness features. This early school of thought on

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news factors appeared “to suggest that news values exist independently of language or before the news text” and despite the news workers’ predilections.16 All that a good journalist needed to do was develop a good news sense or a “nose for news” to distinguish what was newsworthy and what was not. Upon this notion of the pre-existence of newsworthiness was built the western conceptions of professional journalism as the act of “newsgathering” and dissemination. News existed objectively out there, complete with newsworthiness embedded in them. A good journalist anticipated what his audience liked to read as news and used this to select those news events and facts with the greatest audience appeal and deliver them as news. Truthtelling and objectivity were the hallmarks of good journalism. The idea of news as representing objective truth has since been the subject of robust scholarly debate and critique from the social constructionist school.17 The goal of objectivity in the news is frequently viewed with skepticism. News was not an ideologically neutral reflection of reality but was an active participant in the construction of the reality it reports. Another strand of the constructionist critique of the news even went on to question the assumption of news values inhering in some events, places, and people as pre-existing news production itself, arguing that journalists discursively wrote these news factors into the news in the production process of the news.18 In the next section, I consider in detail how each of these three news values; whiteness, maleness, and possession of capital, operated to structure what passed as news in the making of postcolonial Africa. The world context which formed the locus of Galtung and Ruge’s analysis probably accounts for the analytic blindness to the operation of widely shared assumptions about what it was to be human, white, and male in the world. Privilege and white entitlement to newsworthiness that went with it were so commonsensical that they went without saying. The moment a white man, any white man, found themselves on the continent of Africa and among Africans, their skin color automatically bestowed on them royalty.19 The Africans who came into close contact with these European agents of Empire; traders, missionaries, and colonial administrators were at first classified outside of and below the status of human. It was only by degrees and at great cost in expended intellectual labor that Africans gradually approached humanity’s status in Europe’s estimation. Europeans from as far back as the Conradian primeval night of first ages, saw Africa as peopled by a degenerate race referring to which Marlow (Conrad’s narrative voice) could opine: “… and the men were – No they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it – this suspicion of their not being inhuman.”20 Even the most advanced among them were not to attain humanity by association with whites, let alone newsworthiness. They would remain poor imitations of Europeans, “the reclaimed ... product of the new forces at work,”… “improved specimen” looking upon whose comportment was no better than looking at the spectacle of “a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind legs.”21 Their only worth was a functional one as carriers whose historical and news significance consisted

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of the porterage of European explores and travelers across flooding rivers and mountains into Africa’s interior. The opening sentence in Jean-Paul Satire’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s book; The Wretched of the Earth: “Not so very long ago, the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants: five hundred million men and one thousand five hundred million natives”22 aptly capture Europe’s ethnocentric classificatory system according to which not all members of the human family were “men” entitled to the same natural rights of men as white men. The rest were “natives,” “savages.” For as long as news was defined as the story of the foremost among men, and history’s first draft is it any wonder then that the news up to as late as 1963 remained strangely white and masculine. Thus, to expect news constructions of Africa and its black inhabitants as anything but nonhuman would be to hold news up to a standard altogether unreasonable. Absence was the ontological status of an African for news purposes, deriving from a racist ideology. His inferiority was taught him in the colonial schoolroom, his laziness and dishonesty as biologically wired into his very nature,23 his depravity was harped upon at the church pulpit, insisted upon on every turn as an original sin from which he needed redemptive grace from the white man’s god. It was also violently enforced by force of arms. So bereft of the reason was he that it was unthinkable that he could be imagined as having the capacity for language with which to name his world. So on these assumptions about the wretchedness of the native, Europe was here with a suitable language and instruments of naming to produce Africa, factual or fictional, out of nothing.

News as Weaponized Words Through the medium of the newspapers and journals, Africa was presented as fact, and through the novel, Africa was presented as the work of the imagination. How the two genres fed off each other is seldom acknowledged by those hoping to reconstruct Africa’s past from archives of the two. Between the two, which genre could claim greater felicity to truth and experience remains debatable. Great works of literary art have been truer to experience by dressing fact under the cloak of fiction just as great news expose have often concealed their fictiveness under the garb of facticity. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Henry Morton Stanley’s news dispatches present an interesting test case of the contention over which did greater damage to the historical task of sketching a more nuanced, richer, and fuller reflection of realities obtaining in Africa of their times. What is undeniable, though, is that Victorian-era Europe drew from discursive resources of both genres to fertilize Africa’s colonial imaginary and its inhabitants. This institutional power to name the world, to hail into being that which was not, is that which Europe weaponized and used in the colonial conquest of Africa. To justify “shelling a continent,” its inhabitants had to be imagined and named “enemies” first. To justify the placing of iron collars around their necks and to keep them chained together and to extract

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some rubber, some nuggets of gold, and some bit of ivory out of these natives with a liberal administration of the Chicotte, they had to be pronounced “criminals” in terms of “the outraged law,” which just “like the bursting shells had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea.”24 To this list of colonial horrors emerging from the sea, one has to add the newspapers, soft cannons they were, but no less invidious in their devastation and estrangement visited upon the colonized’s imagination through misnaming the colonized’s world in a way most alienating to him. At worst, the colonial subject was simply imagined as an absence, his continent “the most blank,” a terra nullius25 waiting for Europe’s inscription and occupation in the news logics of colonialist Euro-American thought. The news as part of western epistemologies, “systems of reading the world attempt to exercise an authority of a particular type, assigning Africa to a special unreality such that the continent becomes the very figure of what is null, abolished, and in its essence, in opposition to what is the very expression of that nothing whose special feature is to be nothing at all.”26 The true extent of brutality and genocidal proportions of Europe’s civilizing mission to Africa’s interior remained largely unknown in Europe, with a few exceptions. Referring to the brutal methods King Leopold’s representatives applied to obtain rubber in the Congo Free State, Lindqvist27 notes that: “in the mid-1890s, this murky secret of rubber was still unknown.” The answer to how this could have gone on for years without being noticed lies in the question Conrad rhetorically poses about what happens when the sources of public information such as the press malfunction: “‘Who will talk, if we hold our tongues? There is nobody here?’ No, that was the root of the trouble, … There was nobody there and being ‘left alone with their weakness:’ men can get up to anything.” To expect that Henry Morton Stanley’s news dispatches from the “heart of darkest Africa” could have contained a fair share of news about thousands of native Africans he met and interacted with, some of whom may have been instrumental in carrying and caring for him for the greater part of the journey to where Doctor David Livingstone was to be found, in the interior of the continent, would be to expect too much as such stories would fly in the face of journalism’s time-honored professional credo of proximity by which journalists since Stanley, projected white interests and tastes as universal and above all other cultural sensibilities of communities in distant places. To give coverage to any other native save, for those who were their helpers “trusted black servants” Stanley’s own Kalulu and Livingstone’s Susi and Chuma would have been equivalent to exposing Europe’s sordid part in the then unfolding colonial holocaust and atrocities. As a journalist, Stanley knew well that he could not play neutral bystander or impartial observer but actively asserted his membership with the glorious Anglo-American Empire. The bottom line is that from when the news became part of enlightenment Europe’s utilitarian rationality, privatized and commodified for profit, its evolution has since been dictated to by the whims of the market. Even where it was wont to proclaim its publicness, the public interest to which it pandered was sectional and coincided with that

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which was of interest to those with the wherewithal to pay for it. In Stanley’s time, these were not found among Africans on the continent nor anywhere else in Europe and America. The news-reading public whose interests the newspapers addressed themselves to happened to be the capitalist class in Europe and America who stood to benefit the most from any resources of value that could be got from Africa, and Europe’s pioneering agents, missionaries, explorers, and traders covered by the entourage of itinerant journalists corresponding for western-based news organizations, were of strategic importance to the success of the whole enterprise of European expansion abroad. What brought Stanley and later Joseph Conrad’s fictional Marlow to the interior of Africa in search of, were “the Council of Europe’s” emissaries to the continent; a European missionary cum explorer turned native in an African village (David Livingstone) and “a first-class Agent” (Mr. Kurtz) respectively, to feed the news appetites, not of Africans but Europeans back home. Anything else about how Africans lived their lives and experienced the early invasions of their continent was irrelevant as it was bound to be incomprehensible and unintelligible to the cultural tastes and sensibilities of their European readership. Here is how Conrad, at his most candid and iconographic in representing western colonial attitudes toward African indigenes: We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. … but suddenly as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet, stamping, of bodies, swaying, of eyes, rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. … a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us – who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. … because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign – and no memories.28

Such was the arrogance of Europe’s self-inflicted ignorance of Africa as its inferior Other. Notice the dismemberment of the African’s dwelling place and his self, his village huts are a disorderly rush of walls, under peaked grass roofs. The African self is reduced into a tangle of riotous body parts; yelling mouths, whirling black limps, clapping hands, stamping feet, swaying bodies, rolling eyes under drooping, motionless foliage. Emphasis is on mindlessness and lack of order and coordination in the chaotic aboriginal world of Africa’s dark races. This black and incomprehensible frenzy presented Europe with an excuse and justification to colonize and civilize. Her journalists spared themselves the trouble to understand the meaning of the colonial Other’s modes of communication and ever since western-centric news work has tended to just glide like phantoms past African experiences and interpretations of reality which they tend to dismiss as occasional “enthusiastic outbreaks in a madhouse.”

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Europe delegitimized African language-based, communal modes of communication, and information sharing as anything but news or media. It treated them as the incoherent and “uncouth babble of savages,” “unintelligible yells,” incomprehensible outbreaks in a madhouse. For many centuries, African accounts of events unfolding on the continent did not easily make it into mainstream western news media as Hochschild’s29 study on King Leopold’s Congo; Erichsen and Olusoga’s30 on Germany’s forgotten genocide and the colonial roots of Nazism; Ranger’s31 account of the revolt in Southern Rhodesia; and Elkins’s32 study on the brutal end of empire in Kenya, and many similar studies on the continent’s history have shown. Centuries of negation have nurtured and cultivated in people of African descent, cultures, and practices of communication as a form of resistance to colonial subjugation. It taught the African peoples the art of turning the white man’s arrogance against him. The very act of excluding, ignoring Africans as not worthy of news attention imprisoned the white man in his ignorance about the African’s way of life and attitudes toward his oppression and strategies of subverting that domination. It taught the Africans the necessity of developing parallel systems of keeping themselves informed without relying on colonial propaganda news outlets. The conversational chain-letter networking through word of mouth delivered by messengers (pilgrimaging priests, priestesses and spirit mediums, and sons and daughters of the soil acting as liaison agents and informers in the armed struggles against colonialism) and signal fires were developed, perfected over time, and adapted to particular circumstances as a liberatory practice across the continent.33 They became the de-facto means of production and information sharing in resistance to hegemonic mainstream news media like the colonial press and broadcasting system. The contribution of this cooperative model of doing journalism to the process of liberation and decolonization has not been fully documented in the literature, nor has the emergent neo-colonial African state invested in its intellectual development into an African news epistemology. It was these informal communication processes that created potent messages which were the driving force behind the liberation movements that dislodged settler-colonial rule across the continent from the Maghreb down to the southernmost tip of Africa. Africa of the colonized evolved journalism of the people not acknowledged by established cannons of western journalism of the free press; journalism that was the true check on the colonizer’s despotic power; journalism from below; journalism that understood and spoke the language of the oppressed. Revolutionary journalism, as an epistemology of the South,34 arises from and is conditional upon the prior experience of oppression, coercion, denial, unequal, and unjust social conditions—in short, under conditions of the coloniality of news as a knowledge system to which it is opposed. Communication as resistance becomes the only means available to the oppressed classes for selfaffirmation in the universe where their very being, their presence if at all acknowledged, exists in the form of a question—“the native question.”35 It

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is journalism whose criteria for truth are not based on officialdom and verification or fact-checking with so-called credible sources but on a commitment to challenge the univocal and colonizing journalism’s claim to truth. For communication systems developed in the service of a people’s revolution, there was, just as Fanon puts it, “no character to imitate.”36 Its value consists in providing spaces for the insurrection of subjugated news as knowledge and the rehabilitation of voices of those left on the margins by the march of centuries of monologic silencing into unspeaking objects of Europe’s journalistic gaze. It is pluriversal and transversal to western established binaries of the liberal versus the authoritarian models of doing journalism. Its methods of knowledge generation and sharing stand on its head the unilinear and directional models of the powerful and all-knowing professional journalism as the source to the objectified and passive recipient of ready-made journalistic truths with its neat implied divisions of labor and specialization between Europe as knower and Africa as the known of news. It inaugurates the silenced as a speaking subject of history and gives silence itself an ontological status from an epistemology of absence as a social construct.37

The Whiteness of News What has the long night of colonial despotism and crusading news media made of Africa? an enervating scar of self-abnegation—an absence. This is how Chinua Achebe puts it: “This tradition has invented an Africa where nothing good happens or ever happened. An Africa … waiting for the first European visitor to explore it and explain and straighten it up.”38 Africa has not been silent nor absent from history by choice. The news as the “first draft of history” has been largely responsible for the yawning silence on Africans as history agents. Silencing of the subjugated colonized Other was and remained a key strategy in the hegemonic project of western colonial expansion in Africa since the 1800s. European and American news workers who came to Africa were not sent to the continent to gratify Africans’ quest for knowledge and information, much less to search for and give expression to indigenous people’s views on issues affecting them and their continent. “Of the hundreds of Europeans and Americans who traveled to the Congo in the state’s early years, (no one is) on record as questioning Africans about their personal experience of Stanley.”39 Henry Morton Stanley’s expedition into the heartland of Africa was prototypical and pattern setting. He was sent there, first and foremost, on an assignment in search of news narrowly defined as the story of the Whiteman in Africa. David Livingstone, the missionary/explorer, was the sole object of Stanley’s news expedition to Africa’s interior. In that single-minded search for Livingstone or information about his whereabouts or wellbeing, Stanley was not going to allow anything to stand in the way, no, not even the enormity of the cost of it. This is how his Editor impressed upon him the importance of that story to the New York Herald when Stanley raised the likely imponderable cost implications: “well, I will tell you what you will do. Draw a thousand

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pounds now, and when you have gone through that, draw another thousand, and when that is spent, draw another thousand, and when you have finished that, draw another thousand, and so on, but, FIND LIVINGSTONE.”40 Of interest to the New York Herald’s European readership on both sides of the Atlantic were the discoveries and achievements of fellow whites, more specifically Anglo-American agents of Empire abroad. Thus, news from Africa and indeed anywhere else beyond Europe’s shores was, by definition, the story of the Whiteman’s exploits in Africa. And it appears, that definition of news though unacknowledged, has tenaciously remained definitive of Africa’s experience with Europe’s news treatment of her, whether by foreign correspondents stringing for metropolitan-based news agencies and organizations or by bonafide African news workers. News has remained essentially white in Africa.

The News Algorithm One way of keeping news white without saying so, was through the “universal” application of a set of criteria called news values.41 The internationalization of Journalism education consists of teaching these news criteria as common sense standards or normative guidelines based on which sound news judgments are made in deciding between what is and what is not news. A disinterested, systematic, and rigorous application of these time-honored criteria on verifiable news facts lies at the heart of news’ claim to the status of a value-free, epistemologically valid truth. Of interest here is that which fails to meet these news criteria and gets left out. Focusing on that which fails as news about which news has been silent in Africa throws light on the unnaturalness and opacity of the Eurocentric news paradigm as a form of knowledge about Africa as Europe’s inferior Other. The process by which news values act as an algorithm for the systematic undervaluing, silencing, and absenting of black voices as un-newsworthy has escaped research elaboration. The western news tradition inaugurates epistemic racism at two levels. Firstly, at the level of its insistence on applying an exclusionary set of criteria for news and non-news. News is what gets itself published in institutional news outlets that pass the neo-liberal ideal of the free marketplace of ideas; the rest is propaganda. At this level, epistemic racism in the news consists of devaluing other ways of producing and disseminating information as non-news. Alternative news, gossip, propaganda, mere rumor-mongering, “tradition, folklore, and myth” and more recently, fake news, “are some of the terms invented to dismiss differential knowledge.”42 Secondly, according to the logic of news writing geo and body politics, news values act as a mechanism for concealing the uneven distribution of news potential geopolitically. They will be present in some locations and not in others. western metropolitan centers and such other centers deemed strategically or culturally proximate to them (Australia, New Zealand, apartheid ruled Rhodesia and South Africa, Israel, and HongKong may be good examples), or what Mignolo referred to as “the geography

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of reason,” automatically qualified as zones of high news probability. The global South and Africa more generally suffer from chronic proximity deficiency syndrome. Black bodies and much more so of the feminine type are defined by their lack in the news value of prominence, and only in rare circumstances, when they come into sufficient contact with white bodies, does it often rub off to them. News is what it is because it has passed the rigors of selection. Those events and those individuals who fail to make it into the news have no one but themselves to blame. It is their lack of newsworthiness, that is. Then any silences, gaps, or news whiteouts43 that may happen as a result are to be deemed inevitable and therefore acceptable by western journalistic standards. The question that access to newsworthiness is unequally distributed among different individuals, events, and places, along the axes of race, gender, historical time, and place, does not arise to journalism modeled in conformity with the western neo-liberal notion of free competition in the marketplace of ideas. To borrow Justice Holmes’44 now-famous turn of phrase and to apply it to the process of news selection: that the best test of news as truth is the power of [a news idea] to get itself [selected] in the [imperfect] competition of the market. Imperfect, because some occurrences, some individuals and some places were born newsworthy, others achieve it, while yet others have newsworthiness discursively thrust upon them in writing. But the operation of news values is at its most ideological by acting as a sieve to prevent some truths from entering the marketplace of ideas in the first place. The first and most foundational and principal requirement is that for news as truth to be tradable on the market, it has to be appropriated and owned as the private property of its owner, that there is someone out there who needs this truth and has the wherewithal to purchase it for their private use. It follows these assumptions that the utility of the market metaphor is of limited applicability as the best test of the truth. Some news truths arise from different sets of logic and never enter the news market by their very nature. The most problematic of the news values such as those that refer to prominence, proximity, and personality whose selective conferral of permanent newsworthiness on some people and others irremediable deficiency is not self-evident. Such seemingly value-neutral attributes say nothing about how they are unequally structured by race, gender, location, etc., as well as how they are competitively won and lost at the site of “struggle against invisibility and domination.”45 That which was then unfit for news had to be containerized and locked into circuits of un-newsworthiness, objectively through violent displacement, both physically and symbolically. Physically, the African body became the site of extreme forms of debasing experimentation and ill-treatment. It was mutilated, it was denied food. It was randomly shot at. It was denied agency. Things were done on it, with it for causes unknown and unfathomable by it. Things befell it as if by divine will, a matter of factly, with no need for explanation. In such a world and only under such conditions was it perfectly sensible for Conrad through his stand-in Marlow to

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put it down on record that: “a nigger was being beaten nearby,”46 how, by whom, and for what was left unsaid—as if it was in the nature of things for a nigger to be beaten—as somehow immaterial and therefore needing no explanation. Symbolically, through labeling and tagging with markers of inferiority and negation such as Native, cannibal, aboriginal, indigene, traditional, primitive, black, and more recently African, as falling outside of what it is to be human. They had to be called enemies, rebels to justify shooting at them and putting their skulls out to dry on stakes around a bed of flowers, or for presenting them as trophies of war to her majesty the Queen, or as cadavers in European museums or medical laboratories for the advancement of science and learning. More recently some African and other non-western countries had to be labeled despotic, under tinpot dictators, or hiding weapons of mass destruction to justify bombing them into accepting democratic values.47 Africa’s entry into the news was by way of what has occurred to her, never what she does unless it helps explain an aspect of her fallen nature hitherto unknown. In the news, Africa exists at the angular bottom tip of the inverted pyramid. Achille Mbembe points to how overtime, terms like Black or Negro operated as discursive constructs used to connote a lower status on the ladder of being. He points out that: “The noun ‘Black’ is in this way the name given to the product of a process that transforms people of African origin into living ore from which metal is extracted,”48 in a process Aimé Césaire49 summarizes in the form of the equation: “colonization = ‘thingification.’” Similarly, the contraption “woman” has come to signify belonging to inferior sex, domesticity, and belonging in the private sphere and therefore of negligible news significance except only when associated with the bizarre. The tragedy is that those on whom these labels attached through time and usage ended up believing in the meanings these nicknames imported. “Some of those who were enclosed in these nicknames – and who in consequence were placed apart or to the side – have at certain moments in history, ended up inhabiting it.”50

The News Archive and News Agendas While there is nothing in the definition of news that would suggest that it exclusively refers to that message which is mediated through some form of technology-based media such as the press, radio, or television, the study of Africa in the news has tended to concern itself more and more with the study of that mold of news that has been codified and documented mediated by technology. A pertinent question then arises as to the adequacy of such scholarship to capture and represent the full range of low-tech modes of grassroots communication by means of which majority of Africans have held communion through the years. In its written form, news about Africa is often regarded as part of colonial modernity, the production of which until very recently was exclusively by and for white men. It was a white phenomenon. Black journalists run the local, national newspapers now. Still, they tend to mimic international

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news agencies such as Reuters, AFP, AP, CNN , the BBC, etc., in taking their cues about what to write about and the correct news slants to use from the extant colonial news archive. So, even though foreign correspondents may have packed their bags and returned to Europe and have been replaced by local journalists, African perspectives’ trivialization is no less complete than in colonial times. This phenomenon called pack journalism is not peculiar to Africa alone. It is the norm everywhere, as Soley points out concerning American journalism practice: “At other times, the direction of the pack is determined hierarchically, with New York Times reporters on top and reporters from small newspapers on the bottom. … Because small-paper reporters want to move up to the big time, they follow the lead of journalism’s heavyweights.”51 In this way, the news agendas, even of the most “progressive” African daily newspaper, are often dictated to it overseas. When things go wrong local newspapers point an accusatory finger inwardly to some internal cause, as if by instinct. Something is pathologically awry in African systems. It’s either unnewsworthy or nature or some benefactor from somewhere must be credited if all goes well. Besides, news sourcing practices tend to favor whites as credible news sources. “Journalists contented that white males associated with elite organizations are the most frequently cited sources because they are the most newsworthy”.52 According to Bunce53 : a second major constraint on the work of local journalists arises from the conventions and professional norms that guide international journalistic production. Chief amongst these is the notion of objectivity, often described as a definitional component of professional journalistic work. Objectivity refers to a package of ideas that includes the notion of ‘retreatism’ or non-involvement, whereby journalists are expected to be disengaged from their news stories, acting only as a witness to events.

The pursuit of objectivity in news writing enjoins the local journalist to act as referee and neutral arbiter of competing viewpoints among credible (code word for white elite preference) news sources. The result has been news as a product of an algorithm that fits the end product into the western news template regardless of who does the editing. This speaks to a vacuity of agency on the part of African journalists now in charge of the newsrooms on the continent. News coverage of the fast track land reform program in Zimbabwe during the 2000 to 2010 decade54 presents a textbook case of the argument advanced by Bunce above, that the use of local journalists stringing for western news organizations may do little to change dominant western news narratives about Africa.

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Pathways into the Future: The Zimbabwean Case In ex-colonies, the transition to national independence has hardly changed the fact of absence for most Africans who have remained in abjection as before, for, narrow is the path that leads to eternal visibility in the news and few be they that find it. Only those among Africans who inherited state power and privilege become fit replacements of departed colonial masters as news subjects. In the Zimbabwean case as elsewhere, former white editors at the “national” newspapers and broadcasting stations were replaced by black editors, fair enough, but to the chagrin of many who had looked to see greater inclusivity in the content of the news, little changed because the news template in use ensured continued elitism and urban orientation in the news output. Other critics have called the transformation in the media landscape blackwashing. Local journalists can influence the content of news stories in a variety of ways. However, their ability to challenge dominant narratives should not be overstated. All journalists operate within the constraints of wider political, economic, and organizational pressures. These organizational and external factors constrain the autonomy of individual correspondents and their ability to shape news content. Thus, even where local journalists want to make a difference – to tell stories from a more localized perspective – they may not be able to.55

Colonial practices tied to mainstream news like other state institutions inherited at independence continue to weigh down like an albatross around the necks of even the most well-meaning black journalist who, despite themselves, would continue to produce unedifying output against their own kind. The people for whom he writes shun his news offerings and give it a berth. They find little incentive to read the news in which they do not see themselves. So absent is the majority rural-based population in the press, which is just as missing in the villages that to call it mass media is a contradiction. There is just nothing mass about its urban-centric news orientation nor in its reach. The people find nothing to do with a newspaper industry that continues to produce them as non-existent—an absence, a nullity. “Nonexistence is produced whenever a certain entity is disqualified and rendered invisible, unintelligible, or irreversibly discardable.”56 This abiding characteristic of mainstream news outlets in Zimbabwe has not helped inculcate a news reading culture in the larger population who continue to prefer information from alternative sources. Since colonial times, mainstream news has never earned the people’s trust, and this deficit of trust has dented the news media’s normative claim as the handmaiden of democracy. The coloniality of mainstream news’s alienation of majority rural-based poor people has ironically in that process sown the seeds of its demise as the people have not passively reconciled themselves to the fate of being absent. They have engaged in the inversion of the actuality of absence into a practice of their news production and sharing in resistance to their marginalization. This is where people focus on and participate in sharing forbidden news as

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a form of truth. They discover the utility of their language in naming and bringing forth new actualities unrecognizable by the oppressor. Under the white settler-colonial rule, songs, choruses, and new anthems were invented and shared as rallying points for fashioning a unique identity in revolt. Such pieces that exuded a Pan-African ethos refocused the African mindset to an identity that transcended colonialism’s territorial impositions indifferent to the fact of their being. Such hymns that attained a black anthem status in African schools and at political mobilization meetings, all-night vigils called (pungwes) helped conscientize and raise them to higher forms of solidarities that transcended colonially imposed differences. Such were the songs from which most African school-going children drew their first lessons in Pan-Africanism, love for one’s country, pride in African dignity, etc., in colonial Rhodesia. At school assemblies, young black children were taught to sing these songs as entertainment interludes at school functions officiated by esteemed envoys and regime agents. Such songs provided ambiance to sharing co-created myths and legends of resistance that people lived by.57 In a model of doing journalism together where no one had a monopoly over the truth, for the fact was one, and it stood naked in the colonies. The wretched condition of the oppressed was evident everywhere. The African, young and old, male and female encountered it on the streets, on the farms, in the mines, at school, indeed everywhere except on the front pages of the white man’s newspaper which as far as the African knew either cleverly concealed or dispensed daily lies about the colonial condition. The Africans in the colonies, in Jullie Frederikse’s58 words fashioned “a means of communication of their own which they had never conceived of as ‘media,’ yet the message they received and communicated had power and relevance that the mass media never matched.” In this way, the subaltern has always been speaking59 except that western model news media had signed up to the ignorance contract.60 At Independence “God Bless Africa” became the default national anthem in Zimbabwe until it was replaced in 1994 by the current ultra-nationalistic one “Simudzai Mureza weZimbabwe” (Raise the Zimbabwean Flag )61 whose ethos, it can be argued, was to mark the break with the earlier Pan-Africanist sentiment and to inaugurate the birth of Zimbabwe as a sovereign nation. The firm reference to an African identity in songs of resistance slowly receded. In its place, a new Zimbabwean national identity emerged, complete with its myths grounded on the ashes of centuries of repressed histories of builders of the golden age of Madzimbabwe civilization. New narratives of the new nation’s birth, Zimbabwe took center stage, erasing and replacing any references to Africa in the waning vitality of songs and narratives that won the liberation struggle. The irony of it all was how the post-independence period was marked with the abandonment of the bush radio concept of communication and an embrace of the same colonial structures of mass communication that had relegated the majority of Africans to the zone of non-being. This model lay in the neo-colonial wastebasket for many decades until the turn of

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the twenty-first century when there was a resurgence of a much more radicalized form of “Africans talking together” again with its best exemplar in the social media-driven Arab Spring when social media technologies revitalized and re-socialized the means of media production and communication under the rubric of user-generated content and citizen journalism. In a case of history repeating itself, the dominant news episteme now continues to de-legitimate the popular conversational modes of producing and sharing news online as fake news, where in the past such markers of inferiority as rumor or the “uncouth babble of savages” would have been used. The world may yet draw valuable lessons from the distinctly African contribution on conversational modes of news production and sharing in resistance to the dominant western news episteme’s coloniality. Africa’s experience with the news should point to new possibilities experimenting with more humanistic, counter-hegemonic alternatives to mainstream western newsification of the world.

Notes 1. Galtung, Johan, and Mari Holmboe Ruge. “The Structure of Foreign News: The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers.” Journal of Peace Research 2, no. 1 (1965): 64–90. Pg. 64. Last modified June 10, 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238431 199_The_Structure_of_Foreign_News. 2. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. “‘Potted Plants in Greenhouses’: A Critical Reflection on the Resilience of Colonial Education in Africa.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 47, no. 2 (2012): 129–154. Pg. 20. Last modified June 10, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254110105_%27Potted_ 2020. Plants_in_Greenhouses%27_A_Critical_Reflection_on_the_Resilience_of_Colo nial_Education_in_Africa. 3. Freter, Björn. “White Supremacy in Eurocentric Epistemologies: On the West’s Responsibility for Its Philosophical Heritage.” Synthesis Philosophica 65, no. 1 (2018): 237–249. 4. Grosfoguel, Ramón. “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond PoliticalEconomy Paradigms.” Cultural Studies, 21, no. 2–3 (2007): 211–223; Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. “Thinking Through the Decolonial Turn: PostContinental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique—An Introduction.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1, no. 2 (2011); Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Coloniality of Power in Development Studies and the Impact of Global Imperial Designs on Africa.” The Australasian Review of African Studies, 33, no. 2 (2012): 48; Mignolo, Walter D., and Arturo Escobar. “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-Economy Paradigms Ramón Grosfoguel.” In Mignolo, Walter D., and Arturo Escobar, (Eds.) Globalization and the Decolonial Option. London and New York: Routledge (2013): 75–87; and de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. 5. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin, Signet Classics, 1950. Pg. 74.

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6. Goudge, Paulette. The Whiteness of Power: Racism in Third World Development and Aid. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2003. Pg. 138. 7. Terrence, O. Ranger “The Invention of Tradition in Africa”. In Hobsbawm, Eric and O. Ranger Terrence (Eds.) The Invention of Tradition. London: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pg. 212. 8. Ibid. Pg. 261, 262. 9. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Pg. 171. 10. Neame, L. E. Today’s News Today. Salisbury, S. Rhodesia: Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd., 1956. Pg. 67. 11. Bird, Elizabeth S. “The Anthropology of News and Journalism: Why Now.” In Bird, Elizabeth S. (Ed.) The Anthropology of News & Journalism: Global Perspectives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (2010): 1–18. 12. Obijiofor, Levi. “Death of the Gatekeeper: Foreign News Reporting and Public Sphere Participation in Africa” In Judith, Clarke and Michael Bromley (Eds.) International News in the Digital Age. New York, London: Routledge (2012): 41–59. Pg. 42. 13. Barber, Karin. “Popular Arts in Africa.” African Studies Review 30, no. 3 (1987): 1–78. Pg. 3. 14. Ibid. 15. Galtung, Johan, and Mari Holmboe Ruge. “The Structure of Foreign News: The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers.” Journal of Peace Research 2, no. 1 (1965): 64–90. Last modified June 10, 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238431199_The_ Structure_of_Foreign_News. 16. Bednarek, Monika. “Voices and Values in the News: News Media Talk, News Values, and Attribution.” Discourse, Context & Media 11 (2016): 27–37. Pg. 28. 17. Tuchman, Gaye. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press, 1978; Schudson, Michael. “The Sociology of News Production Revisited (Again).” Mass Media and Society 3 (2000): 175–200; and Hartley, John. Understanding News. London & New York: Routledge, 2013. 18. Bednarek, Monika, and Helen Caple. “Why Do News Values Matter? Towards a New Methodological Framework for Analyzing News Discourse in Critical Discourse Analysis and Beyond.” Discourse & Society 25, no. 2 (2014): 135– 158. 19. Terrence, O. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–97: A Study of African Resistance. Chicago: North Western University Press, 1967. 20. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin, Signet Classics, 1950. Pg. 98. 21. Ibid. Pg. 70, 99. 22. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2007. Pg. 7. 23. Memmi, Albert. Colonizer and the Colonized. London: Souvenir Press (Educational & Academic) Ltd., 1974. 24. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin, Signet Classics, 1950. Pg. 70. 25. Lindqvist, Sven. Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One’s Land. New York: The News-Press, 2005. 26. Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Black Reason. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2015. Pg. 4.

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27. Lindqvist, Sven. Exterminate All the Brutes. New York: The News-Press, 1996. Pg.26. 28. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin, Signet Classics, 1950. Pg. 97. 29. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. London: Macmillan Publishing Company, 2006. 30. Erichsen, Casper, and David Olusoga. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber & Faber, 2010. 31. Terrence, O. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–97: A Study of African Resistance. Chicago: North Western University Press, 1967. 32. Elkins, Caroline. Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of the Empire in Kenya. London: Random House, 2005. 33. Terrence, O. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–97: A Study of African Resistance. Chicago: North Western University Press, 1967; and Frantz, Fanon, “A Dying Colonialism.” Trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1965. 34. Mahler, Anne Garland. “Global South.” Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory. Oxford/Nueva York: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 1–2. Last modified June 10, 2020. https://globalsouthstudies.as.virginia.edu/whatis-global-south. 35. Verschoyle, F. Cecil Rhodes: His Political Life and Speeches, 1881–1900. London: Chapman and Hall, limited, 1900. Pg. 366. 36. Frantz, Fanon, “A Dying Colonialism.” Trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1965. Pg. 50. 37. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. 38. Achebe, Chinua. The Education of a British Protected Child. London: Penguin Books, 2009. 39. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. London: Macmillan Publishing Company, 2006. Pg. 110. 40. Gallop, Alan. Mr. Stanley, I presume? The Life and Explorations of Henry Morton Stanley. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2004. Pg. 132. 41. Galtung, Johan, and Mari Holmboe Ruge. “The Structure of Foreign News: The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers.” Journal of Peace Research 2, no. 1 (1965): 64–90 Last modified June 10, 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238431199_The_ Structure_of_Foreign_News. 42. Mignolo, Walter. D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011. Pg. 206. 43. Mugari, Zvenyika E. Press Silence in Postcolonial Africa: News Whiteouts, Journalism, and Power. London: Routledge, 2020. 44. Fagan Jr, James F. “Abrams v. the United States: Remembering the Authors of Both Opinions.” Touro L. Review 8 (1991): 453. Pg. 499 Last modified June 10, 2020. https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/lawreview/vol8/iss2/2. 45. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Pg. 271. 46. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin, Signet Classics, 1950. Pg. 81.

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47. Curtis, Mark. Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses. London: Random House, 2008. 48. Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Black Reason. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2017. Pg. 40. 49. Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. Pg. 42. 50. Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Black Reason. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2017. Pg. 47. 51. Soley, Lawrence C. The News Shapers: The Sources Who Explain the News. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992. Pg. 20. 52. Ibid., Pg. 17. 53. Bunce, Mel. “International News and the Image of Africa: New Storytellers, New Narratives?” Images of Africa: Creation, Negotiation, and Subversion. Manchester: Manchester University Press (2015): 42–62. Pg. 10. 54. Mugari, Zvenyika E. Press Silence in Postcolonial Africa: News Whiteouts, Journalism, and Power. London: Routledge, 2020. 55. Bunce, Mel. “International News and the Image of Africa: New Storytellers, New Narratives?” Images of Africa: Creation, Negotiation, and Subversion. Manchester: Manchester University Press (2015): 42–62. Pg. 9. 10. 56. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Pg. 271. 57. Pongweni, Alec JC. Songs That Won the Liberation War. Harare: College Press, 1982. 58. Frederikse, Jullie. None But Ourselves: Masses Versus Media in the Making of Zimbabwe. Harare: Anvil Press, 1982. Pg. xi. 59. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?.” In Nelson, C. and L. Grossberg (Eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana, University of Illinois Press (1988): 271–313; and Mignolo, Walter. D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011. 60. Steyn, Melissa. “The Ignorance Contract: Recollections of Apartheid Childhoods and the Construction of Epistemologies of Ignorance.” Identities 19, no. 1 (2012): 8–25. 61. Vambe, Maurice Taonezvi, and Katy Khan. “Reading the Zimbabwean National Anthem as Political Biography in the Context of Crisis.” JLS/TLW 25, no. 2 (2009): 25–39.

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Mahler, Anne Garland. “Global South.” Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory. Oxford/Nueva York: Oxford University Press (2017): 1–2. Last modified June 10, 2020. https://globalsouthstudies.as.virginia.edu/what-is-global-south. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. “Thinking Through the Ddecolonial Turn: PostContinental Interventions, in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique—An Introduction.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1, no. 2 (2011). Manning, Paul. News and News Sources: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage, 2001. Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2015. ———. Critique of Black Reason. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2017. Memmi, Albert. Colonizer and the Colonized. London: Souvenir Press (Educational & Academic) Ltd., 1974. Mignolo, Walter D., and Arturo Escobar. “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-Economy Paradigms Ramón Grosfoguel.” In Mignolo, Walter D., and Arturo Escobar (Eds.) Globalization and the Decolonial Option. London and New York: Routledge (2013): 75–87. ———. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011. Moser, Paul. K. 2010. “Epistemology.” Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition. Last modified June 10, 2020. https://www.researchgate. net/publication/288829852_Epistemology. Mugari, Zvenyika E. Press Silence in Postcolonial Africa: News Whiteouts, Journalism, and Power. London: Routledge, 2020. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Coloniality of Power in Development Studies and the Impact of Global Imperial Designs on Africa.” The Australasian Review of African Studies, 33, no. 2 (2012): 48. Neame, L. E. Today’s News Today. Salisbury, S. Rhodesia: Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd., 1956. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. “‘Potted Plants in Greenhouses’: A Critical Reflection on the Resilience of Colonial Education in Africa.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 47, no. 2 (2012): 129–154. Last modified June 10, 2020. https://www.resear chgate.net/publication/254110105_%27Potted_Plants_in_Greenhouses%27_A_C ritical_Reflection_on_the_Resilience_of_Colonial_Education_in_Africa. ———. “De-westernizing Media Theory to Make Room for an African Experience.” In Wasserman, Herman (Ed.) Popular Media, Democracy, and Development in Africa. Routledge (2010): 35–47. ———. Africa’s Media: Democracy and the Ppolitics of Belonging. Zed Books, 2005. Obijiofor, Levi. “Death of the Gatekeeper: Foreign News Reporting and Public Sphere Participation in Africa.” In Judith, Clarke and Michael Bromley (Eds.) International News in the Digital Age. New York, London: Routledge (2012): 41–59. Pongweni, Alec JC. Songs That Won the Liberation War. Harare: College Press, 1982. Rhodes, Cecil. The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes: With Elucidatory Notes to Which Are Added Some Chapters Describing the Political and Religious Ideas of the Testator. “Review of Reviews” Office, 1902. Schudson, Michael. “The Sociology of News Production Revisited (Again).” Mass Media and Society 3 (2000): 175–200. Soley, Lawrence C. The News Shapers: The Sources Who Explain the News. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992.

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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?.” In Nelson, C. and L. Grossberg (Eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana, University of Illinois Press (1988): 271–313. Steyn, Melissa. “The Ignorance Contract: Recollections of Apartheid Childhoods and the Construction of Epistemologies of Ignorance.” Identities 19, no. 1 (2012): 8–25. Stijn Joye, Ansgard Heinrich, and Romy Wöhlert. “Fifty Years of Galtung and Ruge: Reflections on Their Model of News Values and Their Relevance for the Study of Journalism and Communication Today.” CM: Communication and Media. 11, no. 36 (2016): 5–28. Last modified June 10, 2020. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/ 193594877.pdf. Terrence, O. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–97: A Study of African Resistance. Chicago: North Western University Press, 1967. ———. “The Invention of Tradition in Africa”. In Hobsbawm, Eric and O. Ranger Terrence (Eds.) The Invention of Tradition. London, Cambridge University Press (1983): 211–262. Tuchman, Gaye. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press, 1978. Vambe, Maurice Taonezvi, and Katy Khan. “Reading the Zimbabwean National Anthem as Political Biography in the Context of crisis.” JLS/TLW 25, no. 2 (2009): 25–39. Verschoyle, F. Cecil Rhodes: His Political Life and Speeches, 1881–1900. London: Chapman and Hall, limited, 1900. Zimbabwe News, June/July 1990. Harare: Department of Information and Publicity, Jongwe Printing and Publishing Co. Last modified June 10, 2020. http://psimg. jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.nuzn199006.pdf.

CHAPTER 12

The Influence of Globalization in Positioning African Indigenous Knowledge and Learning System Andrew Enaifoghe

Introduction African cutting-edge education system in higher learning institutes has recently formed part of the greater discourse on the rebuilding of African institutions. This chapter looks at the influence of internationalization on the preservation of African indigenous knowledge and learning systems (IKLS) and their sustainability in the evolving global system and development. The evolving global order and the correlation between African cultures, indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in sustaining African education development examines the concept of Africanization for the sustainability of internationalization of African education and indigenous knowledge systems. This chapter discusses some of the characteristic landscapes of African (indigenous) paradigms and the knowledge learning and transferring systems in the African context. Besides, it further deliberates on how sustainable development is viewed, while indigenous knowledge systems are only casually referred to. It concludes that there is a need to call for more research into indigenous knowledge systems’ practicability because it unearthed to be a potential sustainable development tool. Given Africa’s history of colonial subjugation, colonization and domination, the basic idea of Africanization of African education—typifying and encapsulating a mission for importance—is not impossible.1 Africanization is, however, viewed to be a renewed centre of focus in Africa; that is, it is the recovery of what has been taken from Africa, and, in that A. Enaifoghe (B) University of Zululand, Empangeni, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_12

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capacity, it shapes some portion of post-colonialist, hostile to supremacist talk. Concerning learning, it focuses on indigenous African information and concerns all the while ‘legitimation’ and ‘security from abuse’ of this information. With respect to instruction, training, and education, the emphasis is on the Africanization of foundations, educational programs, syllabi, and criteria for perfection and excellent pursuit. While giving understanding to the essential worries that inform the call(s) for Africanization, this chapter illuminates the issues and points of confinement of this task. For a certain thing, the possibility of Africanization may bring out a false or, if nothing else, a shallow feeling of ‘having a place’. For another, it might involve assisting underestimation and discrediting. While it might underscore significance, it is dangerously near an exhaustive relativism. In light of these focuses, this paper proposes an additional option: a structure of essential human rights has all the earmarks of a more fitting locus for relevant concerns and requests. In both strategy and research settings, internationalization in African advanced education is welcomed for its capability to fortify local limits and forewarned against for its capability to expand long-standing asymmetries of intensity in worldwide associations. This study is qualitative in its approach which involved collection of data and analysed thematically.

Conceptual Clarification The main objective of this paper is to examine the influence of globalization on the African indigenous knowledge learning systems and their sustainability in the evolving global system and development. This section reviews two provisions of internationalization while taking into account more prominent local control, local concentration, and local advantage. The first one identifies with a more formalized strategy, organizing and research a way to deal with globalization and substitute to the intra-regional mode of internationalization affected by the Bologna procedure. It proposes that proceeding with the absence of local constraint, the supplementary or structural imbalances in organizations and deficient cross examination of prevailing ideas, the models of internationalization may pose questions and challenges in moving towards a possible socio-political issue in African advanced education. The questioning on the role of African indigenous knowledge and learning systems in higher education in Africa is based on the argument that indigenous knowledge goes back to the history of the origin of humanity on the continent.2 The current advancement in both education and other spheres of life and development is a recent phenomenon. Horschemke states that, ‘it has gained conceptual significance as a subject of discussion in the last two decades’.3 A reaction to the western view of the African indigenous knowledge and learning system has not yet provided a strong definition and conceptualization of what they consider ‘knowledge’. Scholars like Lander4 and Chavunduka5

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have argued that the western worldview of ‘knowledge’ has, since its introduction in Africa and other non-western societies, lacked an understanding of the holistic nature and approach of non-western ways of knowing and knowledge production. Nkondo argues that ‘the western perception of African indigenous knowledge as a mere repetition of practices without any theory to explain them is a depiction of western cultural and intellectual arrogance.’6 In the view of African scholars, Kaya & Seleti argued that, a traditional healer who can cure a particular disease using specific herbs has the knowledge and theory of the plant species and their characteristics.7 Mazrui8 explains that the limited western conceptualization of education and scholarship that stresses scholarly and scientific scholarship implies being free from external interference, especially community engagement and political demands. The point of departure for theory to practice as emphasized in western education and scholarship, likewise criticized by the late former President of Tanzania, when he questioned the role of higher education in a developing country such as Tanzania, characterized by poverty inequality.9 The point expressed above as a concern is whether such a country can offer pure academics, who emphasize theoretical knowledge at the cost of engaging the local or indigenous community. This approach to scholarship and higher education in Africa has been criticized for making higher education in the continent too distant from community concerns and the production of graduates who tend to be inadequately sensitive to the developmental challenges of their local communities and country.10 Despite decades of self-rule, it is demonstrated that African scholars have failed to empower the continent in developing its own educational theoretical and methodological framework for knowledge production and sustainable development. There could be several reasons for this failure; Kaya and Seleti argued that, one of the key factors is that education, especially higher education, in Africa has not been relevant to the needs and concerns of African societies.11 This is even though a considerable resource has been expended on advancing the development of higher education in Africa. The evidence provided by the South African National Treasury shows that about 6% of the national budget goes to Higher Education and Training. Therefore, the fundamental challenge is that educational structures inherited from many years of colonialism in Africa are based on cultural values that differ from the existing ones in most African indigenous societies.12 Again, Kaya & Seleti noted that the lack of application being perpetrated in Africa by the continued socio-economic, socio-political, socio-cultural, and technological ties between the continent and their former colonial influences.13 The absence of African indigenous knowledge and learning system as culture and practice in higher education is regarded as one of the main instruments that fosters the influences bond rather than reducing it. Nevertheless, according to Smith,14 and Walter,15 reforms in African education are still conceived and implemented within the framework of this relationship by marginalizing the integration of African cultural values and indigenous languages into the education system

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at all levels. This ultimately perverse the situation compounded by the fact that connexions between African institutions themselves are largely neglected in favour of partnerships with the western countries.16 More research and academic relationships exist between African and western institutions rather than among African institutions themselves. Hountondji justified the above findings that another prominent feature of extraversion in Africa is that most academic and research activities are still carried out in colonial languages, especially English, French and Portuguese, thus undermining the development of research and theory based on indigenous conceptual framework and paradigms.17 The era of colonial dominance and the introduction of apartheid education by the then government and research in Africa and South Africa, apparently did not invest in the development of African indigenous theory in building and interpreting the society as the centre of the scientific practice. This is because the education system provided in African academic and research institutions was never meant to address the intellectual and research needs of the African people. The intellectual and research activities in these institutions of higher learning are still designed to support the economic exploitation of natural resources ‘including justification of the theoretical assumptions of western institutions and scholarship about the primitive nature of Africa.18 Despite the extraversion and displacement of indigenous knowledge systems in Africa, there is a great potentiality in the continent to promote African indigenous knowledge and learning systems to sustain its community and development. The ill-fated history of the continent with the experience of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, has not completely destroyed the African intellectual, cultural, and spiritual heritage. Kaya, & Seleti argued that the indigenous institutions of knowledge production, preservation and sharing like initiation schools, indigenous games, agricultural systems, dances and songs, storytelling, proverbs, etc., remain the pillars of indigenous African ways of life and knowing.19 The wealth of knowledge that still exists among the elders and other knowledge holders in local African communities demonstrates the vibrant intellectualism to which African researchers and intellectuals should turn.20 It needs to be documented and shared with the youth for sustainability.21 In addition to the above knowledge, it must be noted that African philosophers should assist Africa in closing the gap that was created by many years of western domination and marginalization of African knowledge and learning systems, thereby rejecting the continued utilization of western dominance, in view of knowing and knowledge production as the only way of knowing. The above concern is well enunciated by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his seminal work on: ‘Decolonizing the mind’.22 African indigenous knowledge should be seen as an alternative knowledge and one domain of knowledge. This proposition for instituting higher education in Africa through research can no longer be piloted with African indigenous communities and their people because their views and personal experiences seem to add no significant value to research. Another argument that is being

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promoted in this study is an absolute need to transform the attitudes, mindset, and practices of researchers and conservatory workers working in African local communities. The concepts or ideas of globalization, internationalization, citizenship, good administration, multiparty democratic government, and systematic governance have turned out to be trendy in scholarly circles in recent times. Such ideas have been advanced by people in general—on the media platform, pedagogic and political foundations.23 While beyond any doubt, various parts of Africa, including East Africa, required attention and call for Africanization of African establishments. According to Enaifoghe, the above call was noted to be ‘conspicuous in the colonial period24 ; this call has turned out to be more equivocal in the post-independence period. In contemporary African scholarship, the ideas ‘internationalization’ and ‘Africanization’ have turned out to be evident in standard dialog or mainstream discussions. Surprisingly, previous research done by the author shows that ‘the political administration has gotten itself wittingly and accidentally entangled in contemplating these two ideas and concepts and their suggestions, especially for the advanced institute of higher education’.25 It was further noted that ‘the pervasiveness of these two terms, in both pedagogic and political settings, it makes the discussion about them and their relationship to each other much more supernatural and intriguing’. Given the part of academic or scholarly establishments in moulding society’s psyches, the argument about the connection between internationalization and Africanization would be inadequate without bringing such foundations into various local conditions. For the most part, education in Africa has been a voyage fuelled by an exogenously initiated and disguised feeling of insufficiency in Africans and blessed with the mission of depreciation or destruction of African imagination, organization, and esteem frameworks.26 Such ‘social offence’ has served to fortify in Africans self-downgrading and self-loathing and a significant feeling of mediocrity that propels them to ‘help their murkiness’ both physically and mystically for western liberality.27 According to a scholar like Sehoole, there is a relationship between globalization, regionalization, and internationalization. In any case, he doesn’t assert that these ideas mean one and a similar thing.28 Africanization is both a cognizant and deliberate attestation of the privilege to be an African.29 Louw gives an expansive definition in this manner: ‘for me, Africanization mirrors our basic inheritance, history and postcolonial encounter’.30 Another expansive definition is offered by the Sankofa Youth Movement, which comprehends Africanization to mean the grasping of African legacy and building a feeling of devotion towards Africa as a mainland. Makgoba asserts that ‘it’s anything but a procedure of avoidance, yet consideration’31 and considers Africanization to be a learning procedure and a lifestyle for African individuals. Crossman expresses: ‘by Africanisation, we plan more than the basic nationalization, that is the substitution of foreign staff and organization, if not financing, by national, of college and research structures which

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itself has constituted an intricate issue for recently free countries or states’.32 As this chapter contributes to the African position in the changing global world order, the end goal in terms of ‘Africanization of African knowledge through education’, the term is applied to allude to the African perspective’s on knowledge without necessarily rejecting anything western. This could be a struggle for the cross-pollination of internationalization and Africanization as opposed to seeing them as contenders and hostile to each other. The possibility of an ‘African college’ is a mind-boggling one. As specified somewhere else, ‘Any college is a multi-confronted organization. It has a local and worldwide personality’.33 So in the above argument, the question therefore is; do we mean any college that is physically situated in Africa? The view of the college as a local resource was caught richly in a workshop in 1965, ‘The new East Africa and its needs ought to be reflected in a reassessment of courses, the syllabi, reading material, fields of research and showing strategies’.34 In an address delivered to the World University Service International General Assembly, President Nyerere remarked that the college ‘must be a dedicated establishment, currently relating our work to the networks of communities it looks to serve’.35 Regarding this part, the conceived ‘African college’ ought to have the capacity to produce a personality for itself amidst other non-African colleges. The idea of ‘internationalization’ is complex36 and multifaceted.37 The individuals who have characterized internationalization regarding advanced education consider it to be the way towards incorporating a universal or intercultural measurement to the instructing, research and administration elements of the establishment.38 Nevertheless, for Hawawini, the internationalization of advanced education foundations is ‘the way toward incorporating the organization and its key partners – its understudies, personnel, and staff-into a globalizing world’.39 It has turned into ‘an imperative issue in the improvement of advanced education’.40 Cross and Rouhani guarantee that the term internationalization ‘isn’t yet perceived by most advanced education researchers as an examination topic’.41 Notwithstanding, the general affirmation that the idea of ‘internationalization’ has turned into a mantra in the training set, especially in the advanced higher learning institutions. Internationalization is progressively turning into an unequivocal strategy, arranging42 and research topic in African advanced education43 ; Current strategy in understandings of ways to deal with internationalization in numerous OECD nations are now under investigation, in the quest for a more extensive motivation past scholarly portability, a short-term ‘offering model’44 or an internally arranged regionalism (the Bologna Process). Internationalization has a place with a suite of arrangements surrounding vocabularies which incorporates social information orders; entrepreneurial colleges; extending investment; scholastic versatility; cross-border instruction; advanced education collaboration, associations and systems; third stream salary; and local coordination. In the African setting, the brain drains, past and current power asymmetries and disparities in North–South organizations, the relationship

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of internationalization to the revitalization of African advanced education, and building local limits are added to the condition. There are different protections in arrangement dialect and topics in internationalization debates in various regional settings. It is amazing to learn about African diversity, Nigeria alone has over 520 spoken languages, over 4000 ethnic groups, while South African has 11 languages; these multi-languages could be considered barriers, rather than diversity. Swahili is commonly spoken in most Eastern Africa countries as a single language while the Nigerian owned Pidgin English as one of the languages adopted by the BBC for news casting. It is widely spoken in many parts of western Africa, which includes Ghana, Cameroon, Niger Republic, Togo, and many others; it is gradually penetrating other African countries as a result of the presence of migrant Nigerians, particularly in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Malawi, DR Congo and Rwanda. As a result, this study suggests that one of these African languages is adopted as a medium of communication. Notwithstanding, there are sharp contrasts in the governmental issues of internationalization in those settings, particularly while considering internationalization’s part for and effect on advanced education in sub-Saharan Africa as one of the poorest locales of the world. This chapter addresses some of the specific historical and political proportions that shape the internationalization question structure in African institutes of higher education. This, therefore, raises questions on the insinuations of internationalization for African institutes of higher learning, both in training intervention and choice over originating and running the concept of internationalization and being an article of the internationalization approaches of other states and areas.

Africa in Changing World Order and the Framing of Africanization in Global Context In both research and policymaking contexts, the application of internationalization in African higher education is, without prejudice welcomed, because of its potentiality to strengthen both local capacities and caution against its possibility of extending a long-standing asymmetry of influence in the international partnerships with the west. This section assesses two sets of developments that re-orient internationalization that acknowledge greater local control, with a local focus and local advantage. While trying to frame internationalization in Africanization, the author explores the prospects that support internationalization in Africa to generate more equal North–South partnerships and encourage the revitalization agenda and its development priorities in higher education. Singh suggested that the persistent ‘lack of local capacity, continuing structural inequalities in partnerships, and insufficient interrogation of dominant concepts and models of internationalization may still pose problems in moving towards an alternative internationalization politics in African higher education’.45 Internationalization has become increasingly an explicit policy, planning, and research theme in African higher education.46

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This echoes the trends in many developed and developing countries, where internationalization has become a familiar constituent of higher education reform discourses since the mid-1990s.47 ,48 Bone opined that the current policy understandings and approaches to internationalization in many OECD countries are already under review, in pursuit of a broader agenda beyond academic mobility, a short-term ‘selling model’.49 While Singh saw it is as an inwardly oriented regionalism (the Bologna Process).50 Internationalization belongs to a suite of policy framing vocabularies which includes: knowledge societies; entrepreneurial universities; widening participation; academic mobility; cross-border education; higher education cooperation, partnerships and networks; third stream income; and regional integration.51 In the African context, the brain drain, past and current power asymmetries and inequalities in North–South partnerships, the relationship of internationalization to the revitalization of African higher education, and building local capacity are added to the equation.”52 There seem to be various overlaps in policy language and premises in which internationalization debates in different regional settings are framed. However, Singh argued that there are also sharp differences in internationalization politics in those settings, especially when considering internationalization’s role for and impact on higher education in sub-Saharan Africa as one of the poorest regions of the world. To address some of the specific historical and political dimensions in Africa’s education, which shape the construction of the internationalization issue in African higher education. This raises the questions of the implications of internationalization for African higher education. What are the threats, opportunities, and challenges of internationalization to African education, which have been articulated by different key players? A huge part of this discussion in connection to African advanced education centres around improvements in the internationalization of the current decade. The term traverses an area recognizable from internationalization debates in different areas. It covers the area under study and staff versatility; cross-border instruction in its distinctive modalities; plans for the acknowledgement and explanation of study programs; research and educating/preparing associations and systems; and the advancement of arrangements, structures, and methodologies for overseeing and propelling internationalization at institutional, national frameworks, and hierarchical levels. Be that as it may, there are principal contrasts with nations from the Global North.53 A counterfactual illustration is South Africa, which has an expanding number of African understudies54 and staff moving to its HEIs; it is a sending nation for cross-border instruction. All the more vitally, the pre-history of the present internationalization on the landmass has not been principally self-initiated and self-directed types of global participation in advanced education yet has included methods of internationalization whose pioneer and post-independence inheritances and their related power uncooperative nature remain full in the present discussions. As indicated by Mamdani, the post-independence race to set up colleges was guided by the case of metropolitan models like Oxbridge and the

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Sorbonne.55 Teferra demonstrates that pilgrim; tutelage; in moulding the personality of African advanced education reached out to replicating programs and educational programs, administration56 and books, and proceeding with utilization of frontier dialects of direction. The present spotlight on quality as a key column in the revitalization of African advanced education has a dim antecedent in the early view that quality couldn’t be delivered or shielded outside of provincial/global oversight. Notwithstanding the early and proceeding with the impact of previous frontier nations on advanced education, the impacts and effects of the arrangements and undertakings of multilateral bodies like the World Bank, worldwide guide organizations and outside establishments on African advanced education have been very much reported.57 This history drives Mohamedbhai to believe that African colleges have been internationalized ideal from inception in an assortment of structures58 and conflicted reasoning methods. Mohamedbhai contends that African organizations have tried to internationalize character through Northern originations and methodologies for advanced education, without adequate basic cross-examination of their fit to developing nations or African settings. In connection to African reliance on outside or foreign guides, Teferra alludes to the inclination locally to internalize the view that improvement and change require outer help, counsel, and frequent personnel.59 In such a manner, African advanced education has not exclusively been a basic question of others’ internationalization belief systems; however, it has also built up an assortment of accommodative and imitative practices that move the epistemological look past the landmass or continent. There has likewise been express protection from the over-determining effect of provincial and post-colonial types of internationalization. In the 1970s, characterizing and setting up the African Development University was an endeavour to challenge and divert the great post-independence worldwide introduction. This included organizing the part of the college in national advancement, with a more prominent accentuation on Africanization and localization, and the quest for information to enhance the states of the normal man and lady in Africa.60 It was an approach that supported numerous imaginative changes went for refocusing advanced education on African substances and needs. Nonetheless, it fell into unsavoriness because of its plain instrumentalization of advanced education in the administration of African improvement, its absence of separation from statistics and patriot plans, and a short-sighted trade-off between local significance and universally benchmarked quality.61 Notwithstanding a desultory example of counterposing the universal educational introduction with African logical goals, and a commitment with issues of intensity, control, and independence in motivation and need setting for African advanced education, were at that point some portion of the governmental issues of internationalization. In the most recent decade, there is a wide-ranging revitalization venture. For instance, there are different contextual analyses of advanced education in Africa distributed under the protection

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of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, James Curry Ltd,62 Oxford has been in progress in African advanced education after several decay and disregard,63 originating from disparaged World Bank orthodoxies about low rates of social and financial returns from interests in advanced education. In the structure of new tenets about advanced education and information social orders, particularly the accentuation on expanding abnormal state human capital as a component of a more knowledge-intensive course to development.64 The different changes are in progress in connection to the framework and institutional administration, financing, get to, expansion of institutional sorts and modalities of the arrangement, quality confirmation, and more noteworthy levels of local and sub-regional co-operation. A large number of these patterns mirror the impacts of globalized arrangement change originations, which have turned out to be standard admission in rethinking advanced education and its motivations and structures, regardless of provincial setting. Global organizations’ issue in the changing world order to help Southern improvement seems, by all accounts, to be all around settled as an arrangement standard even though inquiries stay regarding how this standard is being given impact and its effects on reinforcing African office and creating maintained advantage.

The Africanization of Knowledge and Learning System Researchers have recognized the dangers of internationalization of the African education system while indicating its advantages and opportunities. The most as often specified are the plausibility for improved internationalization to exasperate the officially grave loss of scholarly and expert assets as the brain depletes. Jowi stated that the misfortune converts into ‘advance minimization of Africa in international learning system generation as it exhausts the effectively sparse limit’.65 The potential for expanding the authority of western/Northern proficiencies, social qualities and dialects to the detriment of indigenous familiarities,66 African social standards and personalities, and local dialects67 ; the perils of social homogenization,68 educational modules homogenization, and loss of social character.69 The commodification of advanced education,70 identifying with the treatment of advanced education as a tradeable ware in the GATS treaty. Continuing unequal connections between colleges in the Global North and South, ‘imitative modernizations in developing nations’, and simple infiltration of western learning in African advanced education educational programs.71 Many of these worries have been recognized by African colleges themselves in their reactions to the International Association of Universities (IAU) overviews on internationalization (2003, 2005, and 2009).

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From the 2009 overview, Egron-Polak reports that the brain’s issues deplete or drain, the uprooting of different needs, and the loss of social character are the three best dangers distinguished by African colleges’ commodification of instruction and degree factories moving to bring down positions. Regardless of the worries on the Northern authorities and unequal power relations in associations, the best advantage from internationalization was recognized as reinforced research and information creation.72 This pattern means that occasionally conflicting concerns which, from one viewpoint, resound the predominant worldwide discourses on the overwhelming part of the information in the contemporary socio-economic improvement and the part of research in reputational chains of importance like rankings, yet then again mirror a solid basis to restore and fortify the learning system work altogether that African advanced education could re-assert control over the setting of teaching, learning and research headings and needs, and also contribute all the more adequately to local advancement motivation. Regards to knowledge and learning system, the call for Africanization includes an emphasis on indigenous African information and concerns at the same time ‘legitimation’, or ‘approval’, and ‘assurance from abuse and exploitation’ of this learning.73 Sipho Seepe writes, ‘Africanisation of information... alludes to a procedure of setting the African worldview at the focal point of examination... and advocates for the need to forefront African indigenous information frameworks to address ‘Africa’s’ issues and difficulties’.74 He proceeds to state, ‘Beginning with indigenous information frameworks would urge students to draw on their social practices and day by day encounters as they arrange and ponder new circumstances and new landscape’.75 In 1998, the South African Ministry of Science and Technology, in a joint effort with the Council for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR) and historically truly black institution, finished a national review of indigenous technological advances. The review was taken instantly by the dispatch of the indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) Program, an activity of the Parliamentary Portfolio on Arts, Culture, Language, Science and Technology.76 The attention is on the advancement and insurance of indigenous learning frameworks. Besides, affirming and enabling experts of IKS and legitimating and approving IK in its particular terms, the IKS Program likewise limits the learning gap between the different frameworks of information found in the nation. The challenge is to find and recognize the scientific aptitudes, information, and process installed in the African greater part’s social practices and utilize them, to rebuild, update, and reformulate the present educational module. A rebuilt educational program should aid the affirmation of the African youth.77 Nkomo agrees that ‘a sincere push to deconstruct the predominant Eurocentric epistemology must be a need venture. The African reality ought to be at the focal point of another majority rule epistemology …The centrality of the African reality would not refute different substances that advance the human corpus of learning …Formerly hushed indigenous information frameworks ought to be breathed life into the back through

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a recharged African research in training process educated by the scientific technique for the request’.78 Among these indigenous information frameworks, Nkomo incorporates ‘ethnomedicine, ethnopsychiatry, ethnobotany and ethnozoology’. Furthermore, Pitika Ntuli argued that the African ‘renaissance as a resurrection expects us to rethink our insight framework once more’.79

African Knowledge and Learning System A prompt issue with or any record of conventional, local, or indigenous learning is that no advocate of Africanization offers a definition or explains the comprehension of information they are working with. This area tries to add to such an understanding, both for reasons of calculated clearness and as a reason for basically assessing the possibility of Africanization of learning. In ordinary dialect utilize, we recognize three sorts of learning.80 In like manner understanding, Enaifoghe suggested that, ‘learning system’ incorporates information of a man, place, or thing (learning by a colleague), learning how (common-sense information or expertise) and information (real or propositional learning).81 The thoughts of information by associate and down to earth learning are sensibly direct. It is the third kind, learning that is impressively more mind-boggling: it has been and keeps on being the focal point of warmed scholarly discussion. However, the author’s previous study does not put on a show to have much to add to this unique discussion. However, the study does surmise that the customary philosophical definition of learning at any rate. That may focus on the correct way of learning. An altered rendition of this definition constitutes a measure against which promoters of Africanization and African information, Knowledge, and learning system need to protect and assess their cases. Generally, three states of genuine or propositional learning have been proposed: the conviction, truth, and justification. Each of these has been viewed as essential. As it were, without any of these, conviction or truth or justification, there is and can be no learning. Separately essential, these parts have generally been considered together sufficient for information. While there has in epistemological circles been nearly minor discussion and discourses about the abstract segment, that is, the conviction condition, and about the goal part, that is, reality condition, ‘justification’, that is, the connection between the emotional and the goal, has gotten impressive consideration—the imperative kind as well as the essential degree, and the plain need of justification have been the subject of philosophical contestation. The reason for the re-examined justification condition is to insinuate the significance of setting in epistemological contemplations. ‘Reasonable’ is an intentionally open-ended idea and, along these lines, empowers some sort of affectability to epistemic settings. As such, flexibility with respect to the use of models of justification allows the attribution or credit of information all the more indulgently at times and all the more entirely in others.

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For instance, in assessing the learning cases of people who are, probably, subjectively, and soundly more develop, similar to British leaders and American presidents. On the view that the attribution or credit of learning is setting touchy, this does not imply that information is relative in a way that would suggest relativism about truth. A learning system, qua information, is secured equitably by reality conditions. What might be relative is the justification required or anticipated. Justification may shift as per distinctive principles of reasonableness. As it were, conviction and truth stay fundamental for information, as it is with justification.

Difficulty Linked with Africanization of Knowledge Although the possibility of the ‘Africanization of abilities’ bodes well than the ‘Africanization of colleague compose learning’, it is flawed, be that as it may, regardless of whether the call for Africanization fits the official acknowledgement of indigenous aptitudes. The idea of the Africanization of learning in the real or propositional sense is tricky. Makgoba’s reference to ‘the changing and aggressive universe of information, qualities and standards’82 motions towards a far-reaching relativism. Convictions may, and do, contrast from individual to individual, from society to society, and from culture to culture. The examination of the appropriateness of justification may change with various settings. However, the suggestion that reality varies in comparable ways is exceptionally dangerous. Truth is neither a matter of individual conviction nor of social or cultural agreement. There are notable issues with this sort of relativism. To start with, the relativist cannot coherently guarantee widespread legitimacy for his theory that learning varies drastically over social orders and societies or that reality is locally or setting subordinate.

Conclusion Conclusively, while it might accentuate pertinence, it seemingly neglects to do justice to assorted variety. The issue of internationalization in African advanced and instituted higher learning education can be translated and overseen in a huge number of graphically nonpartisan and politically charged ways. It includes regulating, ideological and business-like methodologies that extend from an emphasis on scholastic portability information or records of institutional approaches and structures to the ideological forms of North–South organizations or African getting of overwhelming Northern originations and internationalization procedures. Furthermore, in a globalizing period, where developing nations likewise work in Southern power coalitions, internationalization progressively incorporates South–South organizations and impacts. The higher education sector in Africa will remain the continuing target of the internationalization, yet it is challenging to re-orient these for local purposes and in addition starting its particular internationalization ventures. When people disregard their knowledge, understanding, and perception, it

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will slowly get misplaced and could easily be misappropriated or distorted. While this study acknowledges that there is no single method to conducting indigenous knowledge system research, the emphasis is placed on the participatory methods and procedures which incorporate the knowledge and opinions of people within the community in planning and management of research activities in their settings. These procedures include group dynamics, interviewing, visualization. These procedures avoid writing wherever possible but rely on the original knowledge instead and verbal communication tools like pictures, symbols, physical objects, and group discourses. Therefore, a recommendation that calls for the interfacing of indigenous knowledge systems with other knowledge systems is based on tenets that can contribute to humanizing the western knowledge systems and will be a major contribution to cognitive justice. Furthermore, the integration of indigenous knowledge systems in higher education will promote epistemic pluralism, which can add more value to the society.

Notes 1. Enaifoghe, A.O. Implication of African Knowledge and Learning System for Internationalization. African Renaissance (AR), December 2018, 15(4), 227–251. 2. Breidlid, A. Culture, Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Sustainable Development: A Critical View of Education in an African Context, 2009. Available https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248169282_Culture_i from: ndigenous_knowledge_systems_and_sustainable_development_A_critical_v iew_of_education_in_an_African_context [accessed Apr 03 2020]. 3. Horsthemke, K. Indigenous Knowledge—Conceptions and Misconceptions, Journal of Education, 2004, 32, 1–15. 4. Lander, D. Eurocentricism and Colonialism in Africa, Nepantla, 2000, 1(2), 510–532. 5. Chavunduka, M. The Missing Links. Kkeynote Address to the Workshop on the Study and Promotion of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Sustainable Natural Resources Management in Southern Africa (Midmar, KwaZuluNata) l, 24 April, 1995. 6. Nkondo, M. Indigenous African Knowledge Systems in a Polyepistemic World: The Capabilities Approach and the Translatability of Knowledge Systems. Paper Presented at the Southern African Regional Colloquium on Indigenous African Knowledge Systems: Methodologies and Epistemologies for Research, Teaching, Learning and Community Engagement in Higher Education. Howard College Campus: University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2012, 3. 7. Kaya, H.O., and Seleti, Y.N. African Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Relevance of Higher Education in South Africa. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 2013, 12(1), 30–44. 8. Mazrui, A. Political Values and the Educated Class in Africa. London: Heinemann Educational Books and Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978. 9. Nyerere, J.K. Education for Self-Reliance. Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1967.

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10. Muya, S. The Efficacy of Traditional Knowledge in African Education. Paper Presented at the Conference on Education and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Africa, College of Business Education, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2–3 August, 2007, 13. 11. Kaya, H.O., and Seleti, Y.N. African Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Relevance of Higher Education in South Africa. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 2013, 12(1), 32. 12. National Treasury (South Africa). 2012 Budget Highlights. Pretoria: National Treasury. 13. Kaya, H.O., and Seleti, Y.N. 2013, 32. 14. Smith, A. Power and Hierarchy of Knowledge. Geoforum, 40(1), 230–248, 2002. 15. Walter, D. Colonial and Post-colonial Discourses in Social Sciences: A Cultural Critique of Colonialism. Latin American Research Review, 2002, 28 (3), 120–134. 16. Kaya, H.O., and Seleti, Y.N. 2013. 17. Hountondji, P. J. Knowledge Appropriation in a Post-colonial Context, in C. A. Odora Hoppers (ed.), Indigenous Knowledge and the Integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Towards a Philosophy of Articulation. Claremont, New Africa Books, 2002. 18. McCarthy, S. In Globalization and Education, in B. William (ed.), The Book of Virtues. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. 19. Kaya, H.O., and Seleti, Y.N. 2013. 20. Kaya, H.O., and Seleti, Y.N. 2013, 33. 21. McNee, 1999. 22. Wa Thiong’o Ngugi. Decolonizing the Mind. Nairobi: Heinemann, 1986. 23. Chachage, 2003, 2–3. 24. Enaifoghe, A.O. 2018. 25. Enaifoghe, A.O. 2018. The Decolonization and Africanisation of Africa with African Education. 26. Enaifoghe, A.O. 2018b. 27. Andrew, 2018. 28. Sehoole, 2014, 218. 29. Ramose, M. B. Foreword, in S. Seepe (ed.), Black Perspective(s) on Tertiary Institutional Transformation. Johannesburg, Vivlia, 1998. 30. Louw, 2010, 43. 31. Makgoba, M. W. An African Vision for Mergers, Beyond Matric/Mail and Guardian Supplement, 2–8 May, 20.18, 2013, 1–2. 32. Crossman, P. Perceptions of ‘Africanisation’ or Indigenisation at African Universities: Issues and Recommendations, in T. Zeleza, and A. Olukoshi (eds.), African Universities in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 2, Knowledge and Society, 321–340. Pretoria: UNISA Press, CODESRIA, 2004. 33. Mngomezulu, 2012, 122. 34. Commentary, East Africa Journal, 1965, 44. 35. Nyere. 36. De Wit, H. Strategies for Internationalization of Higher Education, Amsterdam: EAIE, 1995. 37. Knight, J. Internationalisation: Meaning and Models, in M. Smout (ed.), Internationalisation and Quality in South African Universities, 15–35. Pretoria: SAUVCA, 2003.

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38. Knight, J., and de Wit, H. Internationalization of Higher Education in Asia Pacific Countries. Amsterdam: EAIE, 1997. 39. Hawawini, 2011, 5. 40. Sehoole, 2006, 2. 41. Cross and Rouhani, 2004, 236. 42. Jowi, J.O., and Huisman, J. Special Issue: African Universities and Internationalization. Higher Education Policy, 2009, 22(3). 43. Teferra, D., and Knight, J. Higher Education in Africa: The International Dimension. Boston, MA: CIHE, 2008. 44. Bone, D. Internationalization of Higher Education: A 10-Year Review, Department for Business Innovation and Skills. http://www.bis.gov.uk, 2008. 45. Singh, M. Re-Orienting Internationalization in African Higher Education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2010, 8:2, 269–282. 46. Knight, J. The Internationalization of Higher Education: Complexities and Realities, in D. Teferra and J. Knight (eds.), Higher Education in Africa: The International Dimension, 1–43. Accra: AAU, 2008. 47. Kalvermark, T., and van der Wende, M. National Policies for the Internationalization of Higher Education in Europe. Stockholm: Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, 1997. 48.a. Scott, P., Massification, Internationalization and Globalization, in P. Scott (ed.), The Globalization of Higher Education, 108–129. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998. b. Scott, P. 2006. Internationalising Higher Education: A Global Perspective, in R. Kishun (ed.), The Internationalization of Higher Education in South Africa, 13–28. Durban: IEASA, 2006. 49. Bone, D. Internationalization of Higher Education: A 10-Year Review, 16. 50. Singh, 2010, 269. 51. Singh, 2010, 270. 52. Singh, 2010, 270. 53. Enaifoghe, 2018. 54. Council on Higher Education (CHE). Higher Education Monitor, No. 8. Pretoria: Author, 2009. 55. Mamdani, M. Introduction, in M. Diouf and M. Mamdani (ed.),The Quest for Academic Freedom in Africa, 1–15. Dakar: CODESRIA, 1994. 56. Mamdani, 1994. 57. Samoff, J., and Carrol, B. The Promise of Partnership and Continuities of Dependence: External Support to Higher Education in Africa. African Studies Review, 2004, 47(1): 67–199. 58. Mohamedbhai, G. WCHE Online Forum Discussion, 6 June. https://com munities.unesco.org/wws/admin/wche_forum, 2009. 59. Teferra, D. The International Dimensions of Higher Education in Africa: Status, Challenges and Prospects, in D. Teferra, and J. Knight (eds.), Higher Education in Africa: The International Dimension, 44–79. Boston: CIHE, 2008. 60. Yesufu, J.M. Creating the African University: Emerging Issues of the 1970s, 40, Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1973. 61. a. Coleman, J. The Idea of the Developmental University, in A. Hetland (ed.), Universities in National Development: A Report of the Nordic Association for the Study of Education in Developing Countries, 85–104, Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell International, 1984.

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b. Mamdani, M. University Crisis and Reform: Reflections on the African Experience. Review of African Political Economy, [Taylor & Francis Online], 1993, 58: 7–19. Partnership for Higher Education in Africa. 2003–2007. Case Studies of Higher Education in Africa, Oxford: James Curry. Sawyerr, 2004. World Bank. Accelerating Catch-Up: Tertiary Education for Growth in SubSaharan Africa, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009. Jowi, J.O. Internationalization of Higher Education in Africa: Developments, Emerging Trends, Issues and Policy Implications. Higher Education Policy, 2009, 22(3): 263–281. Assie-Lumumba, N. Higher Education in Africa: Crisis, Reforms and Transformation. CODESRIA Working Paper, Dakar, Senegal: Council for the Development of Social Science, Research in Africa, 2006. a. Brock-Utne, B. Formulating Higher Education Policies in Africa: The Pressure from External Forces and the Neo-Liberal Agenda, Journal of Higher Education in Africa, 2003, 1(1): 24–56. b. Barasa, S. Accomodative Education Language Policies as a Driving Force in the Internationalization of Higher Education. PowerPoint Presentation at the ANIE Conference, September 3–4. Nairobi, Kenya, http://www. anienetwork.org, n.d. Knight, 2008, 35. Jowi, 2009, 274. a. Singh, M. Higher Education in Africa, International Co-operation and GATS, in AAU (ed.), The Implications of WTO/GATS for Higher Education in Africa, 107–118, Accra: AAU, 2004. b. Teferra, 2008. Jowi, 2009, 274. Egron-Polak, E. Internationalization of Higher Education: Tracking Global Trends and Regional Challenges, http://www.anienetwork.org, 2009. Odora Hoppers, C. A. African Voices in Education: Retrieving the Past, Engaging the Present, and Shaping the Future, in P. Higgs, N. C. G. Vakalisa, T. V. Mda and N. T. Assie-Lumumba (eds.), African Voices in Education, 5–7, Lansdowne, Juta, 2000. Seepe, S. Africanisation of Knowledge: Exploring Mathematical and Scientific Knowledge Embedded in African Cultural Practices, in P. Higgs, N. C. G. Vakalisa, T. V. Mda and N. T. Assie-Lumumba (eds.), African Voices in Education, Lansdowne, Juta, 2000. Seepe, 132. a. Seepe, 133, 134. b. Draft Report, 1998. Seepe, 2000, 134. Nkomo, M. Educational Research in the African Development Context: The Crisis of Education in Africa, in P. Higgs, N. C. G. Vakalisa, T. V. Mda and N. T. Assie-Lumumba (eds.), African Voices in Education, Lansdowne, Juta, 2000. Ntuli, P. P. Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the African Renaissance: Laying a Foundation for the Creation of Counter-Hegemonic Discourses, in C. A. Odora Hoppers (ed.), Indigenous Knowledge and the Integration

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of Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Towards a Philosophy of Articulation, Claremont, New Africa Books, 2002. 80. African Union (AU). Harmonization of Higher Education Programs in Africa: A Strategy for the African Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Author. Summary Report, 2007. 81. Enaifoghe, 2018. 82. Makgoba, 2003, 1.

Bibliography Association of African Universities (AAU). 2009. Regional Harmonization of Higher Education for Africa. Accra, Ghana: Author. Report. Dale, R. 2007. Specifying Globalization Effects on National Policy. In The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Education Policy and Politics, Edited by: Lingard, B., and Ozga, J., 48–64. London: Routledge. Kishun, R. 2006. The Internationalization of Higher Education in South Africa. Durban: IEASA. Teferra, D., and Altbach, P.G. 2003. African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Teichler, U. 2005. Research on Higher Education in Europe. European Journal of Education, 40(4): 447–469. Teichler, U. 2004. The Changing Debate on Internationalization of Higher Education. Higher Education, 48(1): 5–26. Wandira, A. 1977. The African University in Development. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

CHAPTER 13

Ubuntu: The Political Paradigm Africa Should Endorse to Impact the Global Community Peter Genger

Introduction The essence of this book project is to expound how with its vast human, cultural, and natural endowments, Africa as a continent can actively influence itself and impact global trends. This position is reminiscent of Chamberlain’s1 retrospective appreciation of Africa’s pre-colonial and colonial past. He argues that as a continent Africa is generally blessed with various individual and collective negro appearances, inventiveness, creativity, and concrete achievements that are capable of determining the development of human civilizations. However despite its rich indigenous traditions the continent has evidently remained a mere “consumer”, the “recipient” of Western theories, instead of being the teller of its story in its own “language”, “characters” and its own ideological “plot” to serve its identity, advance its agency and enhance its active presence in the world.2 In reaction against this situation, Patrice Lumumba, a popular Kenyan lawyer and speaker decries that with this ill-fated image, Africa is nothing but “a peace-meal” that is being consumed at the dinner table by active global superpowers.3 Africa is indeed in need of a political ingredient to transform from its current passive presence to an active figure that is influential, exhortative, and performative thus capable of commanding change in matters that are domestically and globally important to the continent.

P. Genger (B) American University of Nigeria, Yola, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_13

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Furthermore, suffice to narrate that, in my undergraduate days, I published the article; Why is Africa a Home of Resources but the Friend of Poverty? I was questioning why Africa is still bedeviled with the turbulent experiences of poverty, disease, and conflicts, and why it has not adopted and fronted an indigenous catalytic response, the needed “political ingredient” to confront these problems. These questions are pointing out to one fundamental fact: the need to develop and adopt a causal African paradigm, which will enhance the transformation of Africa’s current recipient status and inactive presence in global affairs to that of being the leading factor or the key determiner of its own daily social processes and destiny. I also argued that, this ideological force must be indigenous to Africans, that is, elicited from their own worldviews and position. The ideology must not be given by any foreign factor, but the product of African indigenous epistemology. Basically this catalytic paradigm should be representative of Africa’s agency and Africans’ dexterity in their own cultural forms, not the expertise in agential elements of an alien culture. To reinforce the debate, this chapter has identified Ubuntu as the required commanding paradigm. It argues that, by adopting and working with Ubuntu, Africa will significantly influence both itself and the world as an active figure and participant in global affairs. The needful now is for Africa to adopt Ubuntu as its influential ideology. To explore this argument, this chapter is arranged into three comprehensible headings: (1) the empirical experiences and scholarship narratives for Ubuntu; (2) the description of Ubuntu as the catalytic force and (3) Africa’s immense benefits for adopting Ubuntu.

Empirical and Scholarship Narratives for Ubuntu This refers to the practical factors that illustrate the imperative to adopt Ubuntu as the appropriate ideology to catalyze Africa’s image, identity, resources, agency, and influence. Two strands of existing empirical facts depict the imperative to institutionalize Ubuntu are discussed below. They include Africans’ nostalgia for Africa’s pre-colonial symbolic order and African scholars’ advocacy for the centralization of Ubuntu. The Nostalgia for Africa’s “Pre-Capitalist Mode” and “Symbolic Order” When the Swiss medical student, Johannes Hofer first coined and used the concept of nostalgia by combining the Greek Nosos (return) and algos (melancholy), he defined it in medical parlance as the “sad mood originating from the desire for the return to one’s native land”.4 He argued that people who are disrupted and dislocated from their native lands and traditional histories certainly experience “afflicted imagination”, that is, homesickness, hankering, and the recourse for their original space and cultural symbols. In the later years, nostalgia became a lexicon for every other field of “rational inquiry”. Its expanded connotations include: aversion to the imperial and foreign customs that subvert local forms and identities; the notable sensitivity to injustice and

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the demand for justice; local re-awakening for the recovery and revitalization of the impacted indigenous symbols of meaning; activism memories for liberation and collective fondness for the past5 . Colonized communities, forced migrants, refugees, war prisoners, and battle field soldiers are examples of the groups that battle with nostalgic experiences and the psychopathological conditions of colonialism that inform the nostalgia.6 Informed by its colonial hurt, Africa’s desiderium may not be a psychopathological malaise of colonialism alone, but also the intergenerational trauma that goes with colonialism. The first President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere corroborated this point when he argued that the years of Arab slave raiding, and the later years of European domination were no accidents but intended by the imperialists. Another most disastrous intention of the imperial invader is to subject the invaded community to a psycho-social pathological condition and turn the community into to denigrating and rejecting its own abilities, assimilating alien cultural forms, and submiting to the powers of the imperial invader. This spiritual, cultural, and physical violence usually leaves the colonized community deeply traumatized, and the “Tanganyika [Africans] were no exception”.7 Stimulated by this offensive experience, Africans have continued to be nostalgic for their pre-colonial values as a way of liberating themselves and restoring the agency they used to enjoy. How is the nostalgia for the “Africanist authorization”8 demonstrated? In the next paragraphs, I will explain the ways the nostalgia is demonstrated and how the demand for the re-entrenchment of an African ideological power is pursued by four African actors, namely: (1) African writers, (2) African activists, (3) African public speakers, and (4) African academic forum. African Writers —The African writer, also known as “African intelligentsia” is conceptualized in this essay as the category of authors who plays locally and globally acclaimed roles in the repositioning of the original identity, elements and the “public affairs of African countries (communities)”.9 As “African intelligentsia”, their stories represent the continent’s protracted plight of existential and epistemic violence of slavery and colonialism perpetrated by the Arabo-Islamic and Euro-Christian arrivals and their yearning for the retrieval of Africa’s historical agency lost to the two abrasive colonial encounters. The yearning is “for the reclamation, reconstitution, reaffirmation, and self-representation of Africa and its peoples” in their original and legitimate forms.10 Two categories of African writers can be illustrated. The first are those whose prose works depict a clear “literary ideology”, that clearly counteracts the polemic ethnographies of European writers on Africa and the vehement calls for the retrieval and empowerment of African traditional ideology. The second African intelligentsia is interested in regaining of the Africa’s authenticity11 as demonstrated in the works of Sol Plaatje, William F. Conton, Hamidou Kane, Mongo Beti, Yambo Ouloguem, and Sembene Ousmane. In general, African writers used effigies, villages, figures, characters, gods and goddesses, festivals, and philosophies in their works to mirror the African world and how “the good were praised and the bad were criticized”.12

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While the two are appraised for articulating Africa’s authenticity, what Soyinka describes as racial retrieval, African writers are however faulted for failing to develop a clear ideological concept and flaunting very strong local activism to advance the retrieval process.13 In other words, African writers have piloted Africa’s nostalgic condition, but “The Great African Novel”, the ideological orientation to which constant reference will be made “still remains to be written”.14 African Activists —These are Africans who are using various symbolic acts to rebuff all the loathsome experiences weighing on the continent and demanding that an overriding catalytic strategy be developed to liberate the region and its people. Africans at home and in the diaspora have established radical activists projects in the forms of anti-imperialism rallies, anti-colonialism insurgency and pro-indigenization movements with the sole aim of promoting the retention of their ancestral identity, values, and pride. They are envisioning the eventual rescue from the “obloquy and oblivion” which the enemies have “promoted against the continent”.15 Critically, he stark absence of a waxing African political ideology is a clear indicative that African activists have also not provided an indigenous personality which Africans can learn, use, propagate, and tie all of their dealings to. African Social Media Community—These are African social media actors, variegated in bloggers, v-bloggers, you-tubers, tweeters, facebookers, and other old and emerging media interactive outlets. Among their many advocacies are those that depict an overt resistance to neo-colonial oppression, imperial denigration and capitalist exploitation of Africa, especially by China, Europe, and America, and religious clashes influenced by the two dominant exotic religious traditions: Christianity and Islam. They also express disgust at the self-destructive attitudes of Africans. First, at those who exhibit uncensored craving for foreign forms to the denigration and loss of African values and agency. Second, at the Africans who violate their own people with failed governance, corruption, and symmetric and asymmetric armed conflicts and thwart their destiny. Third, at the Africans who participate in the cruel foreign schemes that are crafted to cause antagonism between Africans, predate on their resources, and disrupt their political order. Against this backdrop, African social media actors are constantly speaking against the destruction of Africa by Africans and foreigners. Though they assert the need to advance an African redemptive paradigm to salvage the scandals, they have also failed to point at or develop one. African Public Speakers —There are three prominent examples of contemporary African public speakers; Patrice Lumumba who is very observant about the missing African change paradigm; Arikana Chihombori who is actively mobilizing Africans at home and abroad to reclaim the African continent from predatory colonial entrepreneurs; and Joshua Maponga whose media releases explicate the indispensability of African indigenous wisdom for Africans’ identity and development. These emancipation speakers are constantly talking about the necessity of an African “political ingredient” which will give Africa

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the power with which it can influence local and global events, thus no longer present be consumed as a piecemeal at the dinner table by other super powers. These African motivational speakers accuse African leaders for not working for Africa’s freedom and agency, but to large extent, according Patrice Lumumba, being "Africa’s curse". This challenge goes out to the African Union (AU) and African governments who must think of the appropriate ideological model that can be used to advance Africa’s freedom and self-reliance. African Academic Conferences and Research Centers —Contemporary conferences held on Africa are featuring radical themes which vehemently call for the decolonization and indigenization of Africa. Their proceedings are reservoirs of information for the advocacy. An excellent example is the 2018 international conference held in Nigeria, with the theme: African Indigenous Knowledges and Alternative Futures. The conference gave birth to a very reputable publication titled; the Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development. Every chapter of the book critically dissects African indigenous worldviews, and dialectically recommends that African thought forms should be revitalized, developed, and imparted. The chapters also assert the urgency of developing an African ideological energy from African knowledges to re-empower Africa, the feat that will position the continent to significantly influence global matters. In the introductory chapter of the book, Oloruntoba, Afolayan, & Yacob-Haliso16 demonstrated that the singular argument of the book is the authenticity and the re-enthronement of African knowledge and the “canonization” of an African ideology that Africans and their political institutions must imbibe. Even though a number of conferences are making the same argument, nothing concrete about the required ideology has emerged. In the same vein, the former President of Ghana, John Draman Mahama at an international conference in Rwanda charged Africans to appreciate their rich and powerful stories and histories that can transform the world. He argued that, Africans must begin to tell their stories and use them to knit an African standard which will give them control over themselves, offer them the pride of who they are, the direction they are coming from, and where they are going.17 By implication, Mahama is charging Africans and African power brokers to develop from their cultural assumptions an overarching story that will help them to determine their destiny and the course of global events. Even though contemporary conferences have radical themes and literary outcomes on the need for an ideology, they have not defined a clear one. It is in this light Falola18 regrettably observes that, it is unfortunate that “nothing has been resolved, neither in the past efforts—nor in the present—and in the future imaginations,—Africans are still struggling for answers,—we scholars of Africa must continue to engage ourselves in this productive conversation”. With the arguments for Ubuntu, this chapter is supplying an important material to fill the vacuum. Fundamentally, Africa’s nostalgia for its pre-colonial symbolic forms represents the imperative to adopt an indigenous grand plan so that as Africans; “we

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become the center of knowledge, not its periphery; we originate, we adopt and adapt, and in the end, we invent, we renew. We create an ‘African universalism’ in the context” and our encounter with other universalisms.19 African Seminal Scholarships and the Espousal of an “African Initiative” African seminal works also have ample evidence for the adoption of an “African initiative”. This chapter explores four categories of the African seminal works, namely Africanist/Afro-centrist, Pan-Africanist, Afro-fortifiers, and Afro-indigenous. The Africanist scholarship was borne and powered by African Americans who after the American Civil War began the intellectual discussion about African civilization and decolonization, and the black pride. They explicated the power of the African identity, culture, history, wisdom by establishing that modernity began in Africa prior to colonialism. They demonstrated how Africa is the nursery of science and the true stories that humanize. They steadfastly used this Africanist consciousness to resist the oppression, domination, and unjust treatment of the black race in the world, and resolutely pushed forward for the freedom of Africa. The Africanists corrected every negative imaging and comments about Africa and vehemently rejected the condescension of Africans as enhanced by colonial narratives. Africanists also discouraged their fellow Africans from craving or having “obsessive interest in so-called exotic and erotic societies” and accepting the depiction of Africa as a static society that was fortunate to be opened up by colonization.20 Essentially, Africanists celebrate Africa’s pre-colonial political and cultural history as one replete with lessons that the contemporary Africa needs. Generally, Africanists at home and abroad want the restoration of a pre-colonial “African initiative” to give Africa the agency it deserves and the power it needs to counteract every imperial manipulation.21 Africanists emphasize the richness of African image and land, while Afro-centrists reject the centering of Western paradigms in Africa. Thus, Afro-centrists call for a paradigm shift, that is, the return of African ideas and forms from the periphery to the mainstream. For this reason, Africanists and Afro-centrists in America and Africa tactically embodied their ideas by challenging colonial academic curriculum and establishing Afrocentric academies, associations, and journals in the diaspora and Africa, as well as nationalist universities like that of Ibadan (Nigeria), Legon (Ghana), and Makerere (Uganda) in Africa.22 Intriguingly, some Africanists tolerated the Europeanization of Africa, like Rev. Samuel Ajayi Crowther who spread Christianity and Dr. James Africanus Horton who entrenched Western medical science.23 Also, African “nationalist intelligentsia of lawyers, merchants, journalists, doctors, and clergymen” assimilated colonial forms and “sought to share political power with the colonial ruler and [took])—the duty of disseminating (colonial) political ideas and values”.24 This notwithstanding, these distracted Africans did not practically ditch their vision and struggle for the re-entrenchment of an overall African guiding principle and the removal of

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the internalization and the pathology of colonialism in Africans. Therefore, what emerges as a necessity now is that, like the European missionary, Revd. W. Turnbull Balmer who insisted and taught Africans to cherish their customs, history, languages, and modes of dress,25 Africans in the contemporary times must take over and show the deserving passion for the liberating pedagogy. The list of Africanists and Afro-centrists includes W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Samuel Johnson, Christian Reindof, Apollo Kagwa, Aimé Césaire, Leopold Senghor, Kenneth. O. Dike, Jacob Ade Ajayi, Beth Ogot, Amilcar Cabral.26 Pan-Africanism as a phenomenon began from the African pre-colonial times. Okhonmina27 illustrates that in 3200 BC, “Pharaoh Aha united the upper and the lower Nile to form a united country in order to be able to resist foreign aggression and invasion”.28 This illustration gives credibility to Senghor’s position that before any colonial incursion, the Egyptians succeeded in bringing together “the vulture of Upper Egypt and the cobra of Lower Egypt” and created the symbol of “equilibrium” for the people of this region, namely; the overarching African principle of shared “Humanism”. Informed by this principle Africans in the North began to “look toward the South” and those from here to “look to the North”,29 in the bid to create an equilibrium between them. African humanism therefore began to assume an African universal order used by Africans to determine their destiny and interaction with their neighbors. Unfortunately, this order was later destroyed by the two colonial waves that rocked the continent. The restoration of this shared principle is the main concern of Pan-Africanists. In the 1900s, Pan-Africanist movements flourished, and they also founded associations, meetings, academies, and rallies in Africa and the diaspora to enable them to drive home their point.30 Despite their background in Western education, Pan-Africanists like W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Stokey Carmichael, Kobina Sekyi and J. E. Casely Hayford resisted the colonial culture and insisted on African indigeneity.31 Afro-fortifiers also called neo-Africanists are basically concerned with concretizing or mainstreaming the agenda of the previous discourses. In another way, Falola has categorized these previous discourses into four groups. The first group represents African “traditional intellectuals” who wrote without compromising as the custodians of African knowledge and power for the purposes of representing, developing, defending imparting it. African literati refer to the early Western Christian theologians and scholars who wrote about Africa with Western lenses. The Islamic intelligentsia emerged in the seventh-century AD and wrote to uphold the Islamic education and culture. It is the previous works of the first category above all that resonate with the vision of African fortifiers and whose suggestions they want to make concrete today. Afro-fortifiers have come to the scene with a new form of energy and emphasis, to use the modern media and technology an incarnate the discourse for an African paradigm.

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The most radical off shoot of the Afro-fortifiers is the Afro-indigenous scholars. As the fortifiers of past struggles to entrench an African order, AfroIndigenous intellectuals have first defined Africans as the people south of the Mediterranean, the original inhabitants of North and South of the Sahara. As a people, they in non-coercive interactions along the Nile developed for themselves the principle of hospitality, the “conciliating accord” that represents their shared worldviews.32 The primary dream of Afro-Indigenous fortifiers is to see the African principle of humanism become symbolized in contemporary Africa. As fortifiers,33 Adedeji insists on decolonization and indigenization of Africa and Muiu (2005) identifies the first step in this direction, namely; the overhauling of the current postcolonial nation state system and the development of the political systems that are informed and are representative of African indigenous values. Thus, Fundiwa Afrika! which means Africans alone can do it should become the main mantra. For Mkandawire, Africans should abandon the “catch up” syndrome of chasing the Western and its forms and paradigm as well as stop submitting themselves to the dictatorship of the Bretton Woods network. To the question about the appropriate indigenous ideology, Murithi identifies and submits that Ubuntu is the answer. Doe accentuates that the endorsement and mainstreaming of Ubuntu as the viable indigenous paradigm requires designing, integrating, and sustaining Ubuntu. Essentially, what is demonstrated from the kaleidoscope of African seminal scholarships is that the adoption of an “African Initiative” for Africa to liberate and actively influence the global scene is ripe. The African initiative to be adopted as the Fundi Wa Afrika! project is Ubuntu. What is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu: The Catalytic African Paradigm Despite the popular discourses on Ubuntu, Gade34 has produced significantly deeper scholarly explorations about it, especially with regards to its etymology and nature as an ideal African ideological force. Consequently, it is worth appraising that his works have stimulated more academic and diplomatic curiosities and conversations, with the common focus on advancing the public and institutional appreciation and increased understanding of the idea. In this way, Ubuntu is promoted to enjoy the required authority that it deserves. Remarking about his academic research on Ubuntu, Gade states, I am not aware that other scholars are engaged in the project of mapping out the entire landscape of different ideas about the nature of ubuntu that are found among members of the SAADs group [South Africans of African Descent]. Accordingly, I hope that my map will be of interest to many people, and that it will be used as a background for developing more detailed maps.35

The position that the onus of telling African stories and wisdom is on Africans and not Westerners, is consistently reasserted. For example, Sefa Dei, Toyin

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Falola, Mark Chingono, and Oyeronke Oyewumi36 have declared that what is considerably a valid story about Africa is that which is told by its intellectuals, who according to Oyewumi must be proudly “nativist” by representing African indigenous forms as they are and not regrettably being “anti-nativist” who distort the originality of African forms to please European donors and audience. Descriptions of Ubuntu Generally, Ubuntu, the African indigenous concept, is increasingly gaining popularity and acceptance as the representation and explication of the African traditional worldview on the human entity or the human person in the society. It is “the foundation of the African conception of humanism”, the traditional African philosophy that explains the reality of the human being as an existence and as a moral and virtuous person.37 According to Gade,38 Ubuntu first appeared in written discourses in 1846, in the works of scholars who are not of South African descent. As a terminology, Ubuntu is an indigenous concept used by “all African communities of South Africa”.39 Nevertheless, as an indigenous worldview it is commonly found in “societies throughout Africa”.40 And as a dialogic ethical value, Ubuntu is “widely used in the East, Central, North and Southern Africa”.41 While some communities with Bantu origin use Ubuntu as their nomenclature for the shared worldview, other African communities based on their peculiar primordial traditions have their variations, such as: Sesotho—Botho, Akan— Biakoye, Yoruba—Ajobi, Shangaan—Numunhu, Venda—Vhuthu, Tsonga— Bunhu, Xhosa—Umntu, Shona—Nunhu, Swahili (Kenya)—Utu, Kiswahili (Tanzania)—Ujamaa, Ugandan—Abantu, Cape Afrikaans—Menslikgeit,42 Tiv—Umace and Hausa—Mutunci. Despite the diverse nomenclatures and explanations for Ubuntu, African communities have a homogenous position about it, as an ontological phenomenon that defines the existence of the human person, and the moral idea that defines the virtuous identity of the human person. African scholars, like Gade43 have made efforts to explain these definitive functions of Ubuntu. Many others like Lumumba-Kasong44 have demonstrated that it is a worldview which should be institutionalized for learning about Africa and for recognizing that it invokes the African “spirit”, “ideology, “civilization”, “homogeneity” and advances the required values of collective self-understanding and selfconfidence. Essentially, Ubuntu revives the African identity and renews the “dialogic interaction formally practiced in Africa before the modernization period”.45 Definition of Ubuntu Gade’s intensive research works on Ubuntu indicates that the idea has two core definitive aspects, viz: the moral quality and the phenomenal reality. As a

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moral quality, Ubuntu is the upstanding value that the human person possesses and exhibits. Ubuntu means to be “generous, hospitable, friendly, caring, and compassionate”.46 It is the inner moral voice, which sparks, restrains, and constrains one to remain within the boundaries of empathy and social responsibility manifest in relationship, connectedness, tolerance, consultation, compromise, harmony, cooperation, support, solidarity, and conscious respect for the welfare of the community and its members. As a moral quality, it exhorts the individual to be good, and to be performative in praiseworthy manner. It is because of Ubuntu that we say a person is good or bad, negative, or positive. As a phenomenon, Ubuntu is understood as (1) an influential ideology, (2) a moral force, (3) a human person, and (4) and a worldview. As an influential ideology, Ubuntu is the force that holds the community together and rebuilds it when it is troubled. As an ethical force, it is the shaper and determiner of the moral attitudes of the community members by obliging them to be positive and responsible. In relation to the human person, Ubuntu is understood as the constitutive element that makes the individual to be defined as a person and as human. In other words, Ubuntu is the intrinsic element that gives essence to every person, and it unites all humanities into one shared humanity. In summary, on the one hand, Ubuntu means to be or to exist as human beings, and on the other it is the essence of being. To exist is Ubuntu, to be responsible is also Ubuntu and each person’s being or humanity occasions the being of the humanity of the other, and all humanities are inextricably entangled to form one being, because we each are and have Ubuntu. This is why the popular African adage says; umuntungumuntungabatu—“a person is a person through other persons”. That is, I am because you are, and you are because I am. Due to connection, no one is expected to harm the humanity of the other, for such an act makes the perpetrator and the offended inexorably in need of the community to re-humanize them.47 Ubuntu: Principles, Functions, and Goals Desmond Tutu describes Ubuntu precisely as the key “essence of being human”, that is, to enhance each other’s being.48 All the principles of Ubuntu reject every form of violence, be it corruption, bloodletting, oppression, neglect of and by high and low members of the community, and by and large the tyranny of participating in foreign schemes that are intended to predate on the community. The violators of Ubuntu are aberrant of the African idea of true humanity and the sufferers of the violence against the shared humanity.49 Some of the key principles of Ubuntu include: humanism, community and harmony, team spirit, and functionality. Humanism holds unequivocally that life is sacred, and is connected with the Supreme Being, ancestors, community, and land. Harming or killing life by any means is highly abominable and punishable. As an Ubuntu principle, personhood represents the integration of existence, relationality, morality, and

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living interdependently irrespective of one’s success, power, status and wealth. Thus, true personhood is lost when one dissociates with the community and when one is cruel, wicked, selfish, ungenerous, or unsympathetic. In these ways, “it would be said of that individual that he is not a person”, he has lost his personhood.50 The principles of community and harmony recognize that personhood is enhanced by community consciousness and is prized above all else. In this light, the Ghanaians say: human beings count more than gold, and the Hausa proverb: zumunci ya fi arziki (community and fellowship are worth more than wealth). Community consciousness makes the principle of harmony equally a prime value, and its disruption an unquestionably grave abomination. Common good is another principle and it implies the aggregation of the members’ individual goods into one shared community wealth, so that every person’s wealth and welfare is both personal and communal and “there is no tension or opposition” about this principle Gyekwe.51 Duty and Responsibility denote that every member of the community is under the obligations to respect life, community, and common good and show passion for solidarity, reciprocity, and interdependence. In Ubuntu, the overriding pedagogy is communal responsibility, this contrasts the Western ideology of individual human rights. In Ubuntu, individuals owe their existence and essence to the community, thus bound to be responsible toward it and one another. What matters above all is a “humanitarian, social and duty-oriented rather than rights-oriented morality”.52 Team spirit is another core principle of Ubuntu. This principle nurtures the members with a very strong sense of collectivism to enable them to work together and be in alliance. Among Africans therefore, “any achievement or failure is taken as a group obligation (or experience and) it belongs to the entire community”.53 This is the principle that guided Khomba54 in designing the African balanced scorecard model and an African business theory. Functionally, Ubuntu is impacting the lives of Africans in various ways. Foremost, it is continually inculcating the Africans with the philosophy of shared existence and essence and the moral obligation to positively impact the other and the community. Functionally also Ubuntu is challenging the members of the community to cooperate with each other for common good. In another way, it is used as the standard, deontology, and teleology for measuring good personality and ideal leadership in traditional African societies. The fundamental goals of Ubuntu are collectivism, support, solidarity, and relationality between the members of the community. It is observed that the failure to formalize Ubuntu as Africa’s ideology or standard is the cause of Africa’s continued identity and political haze and maze, and the inability to laudably reclaim and propel its destiny.55

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The Catalytic Implications of the Ubuntu Paradigm for Africa There is no alternative implication of Ubuntu than for Africans to henceforth take it as a political paradigm which will give them a clear focus in their daily experience and interactions with the outside world. By adopting Ubuntu as Africa’s ideology, Africans will get a universal standard to facilitate a functional understanding of themselves and their environment and determining the trend of things happening far away from them. The adoption of Ubuntu will bring about the required liberatory and agential change to the continent and to Africans. For example, African communities are overtly outrageous against the perpetual flux of resource predators in their lands, the pillaging of their resources by the multi-national corporations from the West and from China. The brutal swoop on Africa for by these predatory capitalist forces has created the tradition of lethal resource wars and the culture of enmity between Africans, who are thus made to kill themselves while the interests of the predators get materialized. The daily reports of deaths and displacement in the Central African Republic (CAR), the DRC, Cameroun, Nigeria, Libya, and those that took place in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire are evidences of this assertion. Firmly holding unto to Ubuntu, Africans will get to understand better the devastating presence of the capitalist culture and ideology whose emphasis is the exploitation of the human person and environment in contradistinction to Africa’s Ubuntu which promotes the respect and preservation. Trusting the legitimacy of indigenous worldviews, Pope Francis calls on indigenous communities to rise and defend this invaluable wisdom from imperial ideologies and genocidaire attacks fronted by Western capitalists.56 Furthermore, the Pope calls on the Church to compassionately support, adopt and promote indigenous wisdom in its pastoral programs.57 The dominant educational system in Africa is essentially colonial in content, focus, and emphasis. All of its theoretical and ideological trends are significantly influenced by the competing Euro-Christian and Arabo-Islamic purviews. By and large, the educational system in Africa is basically apprenticeship in essence, divided by the competing two colonial cultures, it tends and shapes the minds of African students in the imitation of the imperial thought forms. Educated in this context, Africans are perpetually conditioned to copy, catch up, conform and adopt alien forms and patterns. This systemic process is still hurting the African identity and cultural values. The integration of Ubuntu as the overarching African epistemological power will significantly replace the defective dominant educational and systemic traditions. With this in mind, Ngugi has consistently insisted that the educational systems in Africa should be indigenized to decolonize Africans’ mind. Lumumba-Kasong58 adds that it is time for education in Africa to Ubuntunize to improve learning about Africa and its values and people by injecting African indigenous epistemologies into the public educational systems in Africa.59 As it has now become pertinent for academic institutions in Africa to decolonize, Mbembe60 has

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identified the following ways to go about it: the teaching of African indigenous history, censoring against colonial contents, indigenizing buildings and campuses, ending apprenticeship and consumerist studentship and entrenching dialogic and producer oriented educational system. Africa is deeply wounded by self-annihilating conflicts or the tyranny of participation. Africans’ self-destructive conflicts are the outcomes of their predisposition to natural conditions, which Anyanwu & Njoku61 say are the attitudes of greed, selfishness, ineptitude, and apathy, as well as aggression informed by intolerable fear and anxiety. The tyranny of participation represents Africans’ attitudinal collusion with foreign institutions and figures in executing foreign schemes originally intended to predate on Africans thereby further the colonization, disruption, and the exploitation of Africa. Unfortunately, African participants are wangled into thinking that the outcomes of their participation in the schemes are genuine benefits, while they are nothing but “negative generosity”62 or “false altruism”.63 When Ubuntu is mainstreamed as the measuring ideological standard, Africans will gain the power to identify, comprehend, educate, and mobilize themselves against selfannihilating attitudes and foreign subtleties. Until Africans fall back to their indigenous wisdom, they will be able to consequentially confront the plaguing violent exogenous forces and schemes which Africans do not meaningfully challenge.64 Inarguably, Africans are haunted by the loss of belief and confidence in themselves and in their indigenous values and processes. Despite the growing discourses on colonialism, post-coloniality, Africanity, decolonization, and indigenization this negative experience is not eradicated. Africans at all levels have continued to consciously make self-negating remarks about themselves, the continent, and the people in comparison with the West. For example, they are fond of saying: “compared to the West, Africa does not have”; “unfortunately, Africa is not like the West”; “Africa is backward on this, compared to the West”; “in contrast to the west, Africa lacks”; “we Africans, the new world people”; “as a 3rd world continent”; and “as a pre-industrial community”. These are inherited and internalized imperial and imperializing descriptive comparisons. By making these expressions, Africans are furthering the chauvinism that has conditioned them as inferior to the imperial cultures. They are also, unacceptably infesting themselves with the debilitating syndrome of dependency on the invading worldviews. It is now obvious for Africans to begin to aggressively desist from any form or trend of self-negation. The centralization of Ubuntu will provide Africans with their own conversational ideology and vocabulary. This will enable them to make agential assertions that are appreciative like: “Africa does it in its way”; “as Africans, we do it like this”; “this is our African way of seeing and doing things”; “see it and do it like the Africans”; “this is our African standard for the world” and “Africa a competing world with the West”. In other words, by essentializing Ubuntu, Africans will enjoy the ideological consciousness, and vocabulary that empowers them to

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encounter their foreign counterparts without losing confidence in themselves and their own. Closely related to the above is the servile mentality that Africans show toward the West most especially. For example, mimicking attitudes and statements such as these are common place among Africans: Africa has to catch-up with; Africa will imitate; Africa is waiting on; Africa needs aid from; Africa can be guided by; Africa will follow; and Africa will watch the West or Europe. Irked by this servile and self-invective phenomenon, the former AU President, Paul Kagame publicly asserted at several times that Africa needs the right mindset than chasing after the West and begging for its funds.65 Another former AU President, Olusegun Obasanjo once challenged this mentality and the disruptive paternalism of the West by declaring that there is a lot the Western or outside world can learn from Africa.66 On his part, Mkandawire67 clearly warned that Africa cannot develop and fully express itself unless it abandons the slavish “catching up” idea that was tricked on Africa and has deeply ruined the continent. The appraised principles of Ubuntu are enough resources to address this mental malady, especially it is eventually institutionalized. The dominant Western liberal order must be critically dissected without fear and reservation. Generally, the order is identified to be alienating and traumatizing Africans with its values and emphases. For example, it is essentially propagandist in its dealings, criminalizing with its processes and adversarial with its purviews. It also criminalizes social spaces, thereby dispossesses the people of their rights and freedom to move and act with the idea of the realist state. It coerces and manipulates the people into being totally reliant on only what the realist state has said or offered, thereby leaving them with no initiative or a little proposal that is usually rigidly goaded by the state’s hegemonic instruments of the police, law, fines, and jail terms.68 Rather than act and express themselves freely the people act with conscious fear of the clout of the hegemonic institutions and dread the complex and dehumanizing punishment that will be meted on them. The irony is that, the liberal order proclaims freedom, but shrouds the people with restrictive laws and control institutions. It also predates on everything with its capitalist interests and promotes crass individualism. The order and its parameters as can be seen utterly contradict the African society and its indigenous worldview of Ubuntu, which emphasize humanity, relationality, community, cooperation, support, sacredness of land and life, mutual respect, and true personhood. The liberal order is a square peg in Africa which is the round hole, and Africa’s insistence on adopting and adapting to it will continue to leave the continent in ideological, political, cultural, and social fracas that will deny it of the agential power it deserves in this new age. Without mincing words, it is not the Western ideological liberal order but the Afro-indigenous philosophy that can unite Africans and restore its agency and promote Africa’s ownership of its destiny. The nonsuitability, failure, ontological violence, and aberration of the liberal ideology

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and forms to Africa are exposed and condemned widely in various scholarship.69 The needful in this age going forward is to take the debate to the practical level of ferreting more on the ways of mainstreaming the overarching African indigenous political catalyst, Ubuntu, a credible, suitable, efficacious, and viable paradigm Africa’s search for answers to her crises. Deadly and gory religious terror characterized by Jihadist attacks, intrareligious animosity, inter-religious suspicion and clashes, religious bigotry, violent proselytism, and the politics of religious domination and control have bedeviled Africa without a clear solution in sight. At the 2018 Falola@65 international Conference on African Knowledges and Alternative Futures, a scholar outlined the peacemaking elements of one of the exogenous religions in Africa and posited that Africa should adopt the elements to address its perturbing religious conflicts. Before the end of the presentation, all the members of the various faith communities in the panel displayed their emotional discomfort against the scholar’s ideas. This was because the scholar’s debate was odd and offensive to other faith communities. There is no gainsaying that the AraboIslamic and Euro-Christian religions introduced into Africa are essentially in a “holy competition” as it is evident in their violent encounters for “total or partial replacement”, being the “fulfillment of the many others”, and each claiming to supersede the other because it is exclusively the ideal religion, which every African indigenous person, value, institution, and process must profess to be saved, thus avoid damnation. Rather than mutually accept themselves and relate for the common good, the imported religions often engage in violent competition against each other in addition to destroying, distorting, opposing and denigrating the unifying African indigenous values. The consequence of this “holy competition” has not provided Africa with a catalytic ideology in this new age, but confusion and apprehension. The two colonial traditions have not offered Africa a unanimous paradigm or a common ground for change, but mutual suspicion and violent competition which overheat the national polity. Provoked by this agonizing scenario, Ali Mazrui70 properly asserted that Africa is indeed grappling with triple conflictive experiences: holding unto its own indigenous worldview; adapting to colonial political forms and grappling with the essential and existential demands of the invading Arabo-Islamic and Euro-Christian traditions. In the face of this quandary, Ubuntu as a catalytic ideology will clearly call out against every divisive and violent colonial phenomenon. With all of its defining principles, Ubuntu does not call for adverse competition. Rather, it exhortatively and performatively inculcates shared humanity and relationship. It is also very important to open a critical discourse on the impacts of these two epistemological approaches: a posteriori and a priori, on Africa and its search for an impactful agency in the changing global order. While the former encourages making comparisons, Africans have abused it by allowing Western forms to become their traditional standards and models to be imitated. The evil of this a posteriori purview is that it has conditioned Africans to use

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Western lenses to develop their dreams and express their potentials. Consequently, this purview has turned Africans into “non-nativists” who speak of Africa to please the West instead of being “nativists” who are proud of their typical peculiar African worldview in the modern world. No matter how much Africa adopts, aligns, and develops dexterity in the agential elements of the West and other climates, it still does not have its own agency. This is because it has not yet offered a new cultural dimension to the dominant narrative but repeating the forms of the imperial culture. Unquestionably, Africa needs to be a priori in approach. Africa has to introspect into its indigenous constitutive elements, retrospect into its indigenous cultural past and elicit its own original models that resonate with the people’s worldviews, vision, feelings, dreams, and ownership and negotiate with the global communities on its own terms. The institutionalization of Ubuntu will facilitate this paradigm change. Despite scholars’ consistent critical position against Western donors and researchers who are claiming expertise on African worldviews and values and‚71 the vehement call for Africans to take over the research and expertise in their culture,72 there is yet to be a sufficient assurance of the realization of this important advocacy. While African humanities and social sciences are etching recognizable notches in this direction, the natural and applied sciences are still unfortutnately depicting an abysmal picture of this task. External donors and researchers on Africa view the region and its experiences with Eurocentric lenses and overtly or subtly impose their alienating foreign ideologies and programs on Africa. Also, they not only misconceive and misrepresent Africa and its rich cultural traditions but implant their imperial processes aimed at advancing their vested interests while destroying the image and traditions of Africans. Against this situation, Pope Francis73 advertently awakened indigenous communities and their youths to resist foreign actors and ideologies that seek to influence them “to ignore their history” and indigenous worldviews and become slaves to colonial interests. Chingono74 has called for the end of Eurocentric investigations and misrepresentations of Africa, and the beginning of a new era where African scholars will adopt Afro-indigenous lenses to research and write for a “holistic understanding” of Africa. At this point, two things have become pertinent. First, external donors and researchers who claim to be at the service of Africa must henceforth invest their resources and efforts to further the development of the Ubuntu ideology. They are to also rummage ways of centralizing Ubuntu. Failure to act in this way will question and discredit their claims of sincere support for Africa, especially through epistemological activities. There is also an increasing number of African donors, and this is commendable. Therefore, as the continent is seeking to regain its agency by eliciting and working with its own catalytic indigenous paradigm (Ubuntu), African donors are obliged to invest their resources in their own pride and cause. Fundi Wa Afrika echoes this obligation clearly by asserting that no other people but Africans can do this for themselves. African donors cannot dissociate themselves from this vision and struggle, lest, they too will

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risk their credibility, integrity, and sincerity for Africa’s future and agency and fail to impact the ongoing process of changing the global order. Furthermore, there are increasing popular calls for the realization of the craving for one Africa, one people, one passport, one president, one language, and one front. It is argued that unless Africa unites as one, the continent cannot do much better in terms of science, economics, development, and the expression of an agential force. With this sense of oneness, the continent can address the palm of stupidity variegated in xenophobic attacks, selfdestructive conflicts, and the tyranny of participation. The oneness of Africa will counteract the subtle tactics that the colonialists buried in the psyche of Africans: the be like us, catch up with us and model after us, as well as the evil tradition of keeping Africa divided, which is congruent to the saying: “divide and rule, if you cannot rule them, divide and run”. Africans need a bargaining power for their women, children, scientific investigations, and cultural prospects. The oneness will also enlighten Africa to no longer buy into the economic development narratives that predatory institutions such as the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank) and the Beijing debt-traps schemes propagate, namely the adoption of World Bank and IMF economic programs and grants. History has shown how these institutions and schemes are manifestly questionable, divisive, discordant, and dysfunctional to Africa75 and accounted for Africa’s poor performance.76 Confronting these menaces pose a considerable challenge. However, the adoption of Ubuntu can ease the struggle.

Conclusion Africa is challenged to rediscover and use an ideological paradigm that will provide agency and power for its people and position them to determine global change. In order to achieve this, Africans should take advantage of their many shared rich cultural worldviews, moral values, natural resources, human ingenuity, epistemological contents, and mental capability. In other words, Africa is a rich continent, and can exhibit its influences on the world when it harnesses its rich endowments into an overarching exhortative and performative ideology. Destutt de Tracy, the French philosopher coined ideology in 1796, to refer to “the science of ideas” or “a powerful system of ideas” that is made up of the people’s values, worldviews, sensations, meaning, and experience. Ideology is the social and political tool that is used to organize people and effect change.77 Marx and Engels reiterated the understanding of ideology as the abstract representation of positions, beliefs, attitudes, and opinions to assert dignity and power and effect social change, especially when it is used positively.78 African nationalists used various indigenous philosophies to fight for independence, but no philosophy eventually stood out as an overarching ideology to mobilize and effectively bring coordinated change to the continent. Illustratively, Nkrumah’s integral personality, Nyerere’s Ujamaa or “communalism”, and Kaunda’s recollection of African “humanism” ended

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with their days. For Amilcar Cabral, the “cultural life” slogan was to become Africa’s mantra for awakening and mobilizing Africans. Aime Césaire’s “negritude” was meant to be used to remind Africans of their experiences of slavery and colonialism and to mobilize them to take liberatory actions. Biko’s “black consciousness” emphasized that “the black man” is good and must reject any ideology that seeks to snob his dignity and subject him to foreign forms in his land of birth. “Pan-Africanism” as presented above is concerned with the idea of one Africa, united by race and geolocation.79 These ideological craftings have remained stale and pale in our minds of many Africans who are still inclined toward Western and other colonial paradigms. The central argument of this chapter is that Ubuntu is a microcosmic element shared by every African community. In the search to address its problems and actively influence global discourses, Africa is compelled to resuscitate and re-entrench Ubuntu. Africa has immense content capable of determining global change, but it must endorse its own catalytic indigenous ideology, namely; Ubuntu, to efficiently do so.

Notes 1. Chamberlain, F. A. (1911). The Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization. The Journal of Race Development, 1(4), 482–502. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/29737886. 2. Smith, K. (2009). Has Africa Got Anything to Say? African Contributions to the Theoretical Development of International Relations. Round Table, 98(402), 269–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/00358530902895378. 3. Genger, P. (2020a). Re-empowering African Indigenous Peacemaking Approaches: Identifying the Enabling Possibilities from Decolonization and Indigenization Discourses. In S. O. Oloruntoba, A. Afolayan, & O. YacobHaliso (Eds.), Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development (pp. 131–157). https://doi.org/10.1016/0309-586x(82)90086-3. 4. Anspach, K. C. (1934). Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia or Homesickness. Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 381. 5. Fuentenebro de Diego, F., & Valiente Ots, C. (2014). Nostalgia: A Conceptual History. History of Psychiatry, 25(4), 404–411. https://doi.org/10.1177/095 7154X14545290. 6. Fuentenebro de Diego, F., & Valiente Ots, C. (2014), 439. 7. Gade, B. N. C. (2011). The Historical Development of the Written Discourses on Ubuntu. South African Journal Philosophy, 30(3), 303–311. 8. Zeleza, Y. P. (2014). Africa’s Struggles for Decolonization: From Achebe to Mandela. Research in African Literatures, 45(4), 121–139. https://doi.org/ 10.2979/reseafrilite. 45.4.121. 9. Simonse, S. (1982). African Literature Between Nostalgia and Utopia: African Novels Since 1953 in the Light of the Modes-of-Production Approach. Research in African Literatures, 13(4), 451–487. Retrieved from https://www. jstor.org/stable/3818493. Accessed: 16/4/2020, 451. 10. Zeleza, Y. P. (2014), 121. 11. Simonse, S. (1982).

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31. 32. 33.

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Simonse, S. (1982), 453. Simonse, S. (1982). Simonse, S. (1982), 458. Freund, B. (1984). The Making of Contemporary Africa: The Development of African Society Since 1800. London: Macmillan, 4. Oloruntoba, S. O., Afolayan, A., & Yacob-Haliso, O. (2020). Introduction: African Knowledges, Decolonization and Alternative Futures. In S. O. Oloruntoba, A. Afolayan, & O. Yacob-Haliso (Eds.), Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development (pp. 1–14). https://doi.org/10.1016/0309-586x(82)900 86-3, 6. Editorial. (2019). Let’s Tell our Own African Story – Mahama. Retrieved May 14, 2019, from GhanaWeb website: https://www.ghanaweb.com/. Falola, T. (2018). The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Natinalis, Development and Epistemologies. Ibadan: Pan African University Press, 373. Falola, T. (2018), 889. Falola, T. (2018), 130. Freund, B. (1984), 7. Falola, T. (2018), 12. Falola, T. (2018), 75. Langley, J. A. (1973). Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in West Africa 1900– 1945: A Study in Ideology and Social Classes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1. Langley, J. A. (1973), xv. Falola, T. (2018), 12. Okhonmina, S. (2009). The African Union: Pan-Africanist Aspirations and the Challenge of African Unity. Journal of Pan African Studies, 3(4), 85–100, 9. Okhonmina, S. (2009), 9. Senghor, S. L. (2009). The Foundations of “Africanité.” Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, 3(1), 166–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 19301944.2009.10781367, 168, 169. Osei-Nyame, K. (1999). Pan-Africanist Ideology and The African Historical Novel of Self-Discovery: The Examples of Kobina Sekyi and J. E. Casely Hayford. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 12(2), 137–153. https://doi. org/10.1080/13696819908717846, 138. Osei-Nyame, K. (1999), 137. Senghor, S. L. (2009), 168. Adedeji, A. (1983). Historical and Theoretical Background. In A. Adedeji (Ed.), The Indigenization of African Economies. New Jersey: Holmes & Meier, Muiu, W. M. (2005). Fundi Wa Afrika: Toward a New Paradigm of the African State. To Be Presented at CODESRIA’S 11th General ConferenceMaputo (Mozambique December 6–11, 2005), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9781107415324.004, Mkandawire, T. (2015). Africa: Beyond Recovery. Legon-Accra: University of Ghana, 37, 17, Murithi, T. (2006). African Approaches to Building Peace and Social Solidarity. African Journal on Conflict Resolution, 6(2), 9–33. Retrieved from http://www.accord.org.za/ ajcr-issues/african-approaches-to-building-peace-and-social-solidarity/, Doe, S. G. (2009). Indigenizing Postconflict State Reconstruction in Africa: A Conceptual Framework. In J. Malan (Ed.), African Peace and Conflict Journal (Vol. 2, pp. 1–15). Retrieved from http://www.apcj.upeace.org/issues/APCJ_June 2009_Vol2_Num1.pdf.

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34. Gade, B. N. C. (2012). What Is Ubuntu? Different Interpretations Among South Africans of African Descent. South African Journal of Philosophy, 31(3), 484–503. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2012.10751789. 35. Gade, B. N. (2012), 501. 36. Dei, G. J. S. (2013). Critical Perspectives on Indigenous Research. Socialist Studies, 9(1), 27–39. https://doi.org/10.18740/S47G64, 29, Falola, T. (2018), 847, Chingono, M. (2016). Violent Conflicts in Africa: Towards a Holistic Understanding. World Journal of Social Science Research, 3(2), 199–218. Retrieved from www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjss, Oyewumi, O. (1997). The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolils: University of Minnesota Press, 18. 37. Sibanda, P. (2014). The Dimensions of ‘Hunhu/Ubuntu’ (Humanism in the African Sense): The Zimbabwean Conception. IOSR Journal of Engineering, 04(01), 26–29. 38. Gade, B. N. C. 487. 39. Masina, N. (2008). Xhosa Practices of Ubuntu for South AFrica. In I. W. Zartman (Ed.), Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts: African Conflict “Medicine” (pp. 169–182). Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 40. Murithi, T. (2009). An African Perspective on Peace Education: Ubuntu Lessons in Reconciliation. International Review of Education, 55(2–3), 221– 233. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-009-9129-0, 226. 41. Asike, J. C. (2008). The Philosophical Concept of “Ubuntu” as Dialogic Ethic and the Transformation of Political Community in Africa. OGIRISI: A New Journal of African Studies, 12(0), 1–16. Retrieved from https://www.ajol. info/index.php/og/article/view/140090, 3. 42. Broodryck, J. (2006). Ubuntu African Life Coping Skills: Theory and Practice. The Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management (CCEAM) Conference, (October), 1–34. Retrieved from http://www.topkinisis.com/conference/CCEAM/wib/index/outline/ PDF/BROODRYKJohann.pdf, 3. 43. Gade, B. N. (2012), 501. 44. Lumumba-Kasong, T. (2018). Ubuntu and Pan-Africanism: The Dialectics of Learning About Africa. In E. J. Takyi-Amoako & N. T. Assié-Lumumba (Eds.), Re-Visioning Education in Africa: Ubuntu-Inspired Education for Humanity (pp. 35–54). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70,043-4. 45. Asike, J. C. (2008), 3. 46. Tutu, D. (1999). No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday Press, 34. 47. Gade, B. N. (2012), 494, Tutu, D. (1999), 35. 48. Tutu, D. (1999), 31. 49. Genger, P. (2018). Combating Corruption with African Restorative Justice: Suggested Steps for Nigeria. African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies, 11(1), 20–41. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.uml.idm. oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=d225c1f4-4132-49d6-944d1363abaf4e48%40sessionmgr4010, 24. 50. Gyekwe, K. (2011). African Ethics. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (pp. 1–9). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/ent ries/african-ethics/, 8. 51. Gyekwe, K. (2011), 14.

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52. Gyekwe, K. (2011), 17. 53. Khomba, J. K., Vermaak, F. N. S., & Gouws, D. G. (2011). Redesigning an Innovation Section of the Balanced Scorecard Model: An African Perspective. Southern African Business Review, 15(3), 1–20, 138. 54. Khomba, J. K., Vermaak, F. N. S., & Gouws, D. G. (2011). 55. Sibanda, P. (2014), 26. 56. Pope Francis. (2020). Querida Amazonia: A Post-Synodal Exhortation on the Amazon and Integral Ecology. Retrieved from http://www.vatican.va/con tent/francesco/en/apostexhortations.html, 3. 57. Pope Francis, (2020), 6. 58. Lumumba-Kasong, T. (2018). 59. Ezeanya-Esiobu, C. (2015). Indigenous Knowledge and Education in Africa. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6635-2. 60. Mbembe, A. J. (2016). Decolonizing the University: New Directions. Arts & Humanities in Higher Education, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/147402 2215618513. 61. Anyanwu, O. E., & Njoku, C. R. (2010). The Causes of Wars and Conflicts in Africa. War and Peace in Africa, 19–33, 28. 62. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 44. 63. Bishop, A. (2005). Beyond Token Change: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression Institutions. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 84. 64. wa Thiong’o, N. (2004). African Identities: Pan-Africanism in the Era of Globalization and Capitalist Fundamentalism. Macalester International, 14, 21– 42. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1377&context=macintl. 65. Genger, P. (2020a). Re-empowering African Indigenous Peacemaking Approaches: Identifying the Enabling Possibilities from Decolonization and Indigenization Discourses. In S. O. Oloruntoba, A. Afolayan, & O. YacobHaliso (Eds.), Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development (pp. 131–157). https://doi.org/10.1016/0309-586x(82)90086-3, 293. 66. Ojo, E. (2016). Obasanjo Asks: “What Can the World Learn from Africa?” Retrieved October 29, 2018, from Face to Face Africa website: https://face2f aceafrica.com/article/still-obasanjos-homily-western-world-eric-ojo. 67. Mkandawire, T. (2015), 24. 68. Jeong, H.-W. (2008). Structure. In S. Cheldelin, D. Druckman, & L. Fast (Eds.), Conflict: From Analysis to Intervention (pp. 181–194). New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 69. Genger, P. (2020b). Toward Sustainable Security in Africa: Theoretical Debates for the Institutionalization of African Indigenous Peacemaking Approaches. Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research, 45(2), 287–317. https://doi. org/10.1111/pech.12403. 70. Mazrui, A. (1986). Africans: The Triple Heritage. Little Brown & Co. 71. Kovach, M. (2015). Emerging from the Margins: Indigenous Methodologies. In L. A. Brown & S. Strega (Ed.), Research as Resistance. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 50. 72. Dei, G. J. S. (2013), 29. 73. Pope Francis. (2019). Christus Vivit: A Post-Synodal Exhortation to Young People. Retrieved from http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_ exhortations.html, 38.

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74. Chingono, M. (2016), 213. 75. Falola, T. (2018). The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Natinalis, Development and Epistemologies. Ibadan: Pan African University Press, 373. 76. Mkandawire, T. (2015). 77. Nemeth, D. J. (2006). Ideology. In Encyclopedia of Human Geography (pp. 241–243). Sage, 10. 78. Martin, J. L. (2015). What Is Ideology? Sociologia, Problemas e Praticas, 77 , 9–32. https://doi.org/10.7458/SPP2015776220. 79. Nwosimiri, O. (2017). Do the Works of the Nationalist–Ideological Philosophers Undermine Hume’s and Kant’s Ideas About Race? SAGE Open, 7 (1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017700678, 3.

CHAPTER 14

Ancient Knowledge and the Right to Development Mofihli Teleki and Serges Djoyou Kamga

Introduction This chapter’s essence lies in the understanding of how African thought had remained relevant for the progression of development for at least over a century. African thought has the potential to inform contemporary sociopolitical issues that are modern. For instance, African political thought refers to the original values, ideas and a template for an ideal African system that informs African political systems and their institutions from an ancient era.1 Political thought often informs the nature of political action and influences political thought.2 This chapter’s inquiry does not seek to regurgitate what many other scholars have already said about the validity of African thought and how Western patterns of thinking subjugate this thought. Quite to the contrary, the inquiry in this chapter seeks to bring out the importance of how Africans served a particular purpose for advancing the right to development. Various academic works on the right to development have pointed out that development is not only about the progression towards economic growth of a

M. Teleki (B) School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa S. D. Kamga The Thabo Mbeki African School of Public & International Affairs,University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_14

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populace, but development should exist with the fundamentals of freedom, equality, spiritual interests and human aspects that lead to well-being. The right to development as per the U.N. Declaration places a particular focus on the need for respect for human rights and freedoms that are not distinct from each other based on race, class, language and religion. This particular aspiration presents a more broad interpretation of development in the post-liberation period of Africa. One of the pioneers of the right to development in the African continent, Keba M’baye, once said that all development processes need to have a human dimension that is moral, spiritual and material.3 In other words, the right to development in the African context has a lot more density than the linear Western thought that depicts development as the growth of the economy, ignoring other factors in the outer layer of development. This particular argument resonates with the fact that Africa holds more for the right to development than contemporary thinking on development in general. This is further reiterated by Kamga & Fombad,4 who opines that it has always been common that the right to development is subject to different ways of thinking in Africa compared to other conventions elsewhere around the world. In light of the aforementioned assertions, this chapter will not pursue a discussion about which measure of the right to development is appropriate between Western thinking and African thought. But we rather pursue and build our assertions on the notion of the right to development as a less linear concept and resembling the idea that development must be based on the human-centred principles. This is what, in our view, constitutes the right to development. This particular notion is also postulated by Samb,5 who once said that African thought on the right to development should be considered a significant contribution to the international human rights discourse. Such a contribution, in our view, is depicted by how the emphasis on human-centred aspects that affect the human rights corpus has been part and parcel of African life. The first sections of this chapter explore the foundational issues on the right to development in the context of thought. This seeks to give a grounding on the thought around the right to development between Western and African contexts. In this regard, the observations seek to illustrate that ancient thought of development was always relevant to the current debates about what the right to development ought to be in modern times. In building our arguments, we use Southern Africa as a case from which certainly examples are made and explained. This particular setting is important for the sake of context and illustration.

The Significance of “Thought” in the Advancement of the Right to Development The exploration of thought around the right to development places particular importance on any state’s intention that seeks to advance the right to development. For instance, the prescripts of the right to development under the

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UNDRTD clearly states that state parties ought to ensure that policy is created in a domestic setting for the right to development. This means that the state’s intention shall inform the means to which the right to development will be affected. This requires thought and practice. The thought may also ascribe African thought on the right to development as the means to obtain development as a fundamental entitlement based on the belief systems, worldview, aspirations of freedom, equality, as well as spiritual disposition. The justification around the right to development was not only charted forth for purposes of human rights and development but also to challenge failed economic policies that carry “inadequate thought”.6 In other words, those who stand behind the construction of the right to development have also questioned principles of economics and how these fundamentals can lead to the fulfilment of the right to development. This is important because it is the same context from which both the U.N. Declaration on the right to development and the African Charter draws their preambles and the intention for development as a human right. This form of inquiry draws one to image on how the development would be if African thought were followed in advancing the right to development as opposed to the current state of thinking. The inquiry on “thought” has a lot to do with pointing our conventional wisdom about possible reasons for why the right to development remains a challenge for implementation. Even though we will not explore this in full in the chapter, our conclusion could be helpful for those researchers who wish to further explore why the right to development is difficult to realize when thought and practice are not aligned. We have at least explored the latter by also looking into what happens when “thought” is connected to certain mechanisms that make development possible. Gordon & Sylvester7 state that things that follow the “thought” on development, in general, may exist in the form of movements but failure for development to happen amidst common thought requires all the means necessary to look into legal issues, political issues and everything else that is important for development to occur. The challenges that Nagan8 and Gordon & Sylvester9 (in the above paragraphs) point out regarding the determination around “thought” and its importance on the right to development has an impact on the modern economics and development technocrats who are forced to revisit their thinking about the rules, laws, policy and practices. This particular concern is valid, but that as it may, the concern should not only post-modern thought around contemporary models and philosophies of the right to development. The right to development and its challenges must also be debated in the context norms that guide and build those who espouse development as an entitlement irrespective of their geographic positioning across the world. We argue that the right to development should first reside in the “thought” that would later be transposed into action or practice. In essence, a great deal of depth is needed to assess the thinking around the right to development because this is where the ideas, beliefs and dispositions become

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important in applying the right to development. In this chapter, we argue that African thought can indeed carry enough depth to advance development as an entitlement or right to development. Van Binsbergen10 states that African thought revolves around a humancentred ontology from which African scholars and sympathetic European onlookers have regularly cast in African philosophies. In light of this assertion, it is important to point out that indeed the right to development is a humancentred approach, hence our consideration of assessing African thought in development affairs as an entitlement. Menkiti11 argues that African philosophies can be assimilated into the social and intellectual changes linked to “modernization” and the transition to new national identities. African thought holds the ideas on human nature, which is given effect by the African ethos, which are ideal instead of modernity or urban.12 Menkiti further argues that African scholars have a responsibility to exploit cultural resources and test them against the intimations of Western philosophies.13 African thought has the potential to inform contemporary socio-political issues that are modern. For instance, African political thought refers to the original values, ideas and a template for an ideal African system that informs African political systems and their institutions from an ancient era.14 Political thought often informs the nature of political action and, influences political thought.15 African centred thinking is concerned about the thought and practice rooted in the cultural imagery and interests of Africans with a reflection on their realities, traditions and history.16 Below, Wiredu states that amidst the location of African thought and why it is important to maintain its presence in contemporary scholarship on social issues17 : If Africans do not enter these areas of philosophy and make their presence felt in them, they will in perpetuity remain outsiders to the project of understanding and clarifying modes of thought that have played a huge part in the making of the modern world.

The inference drawn from the above disposition suggests a need to constantly clarify all things that inform the “thought” behind doing things that ought to be done irrespective of modernity. In other words, African thought should always exist within the scope of the modern world. African thought is also linked to the social and ethical systems which inform how an African would live. Mabovula states that Africans’ socio-ethical thought is reflected in the social features of African life through the structures of society.18 Even though the right to development has become part of the global discourse in the past few decades, the right to development’s efficacy should start with the “thought” around its basis in any local setting because the basis for development may differ from one geographic region to another. In essence, globalizing development or the right to development also requires consideration of local and regional dynamics, and we argue that for this to

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happen, it is important to also consider the “thought” that makes development a compelling construct. In the chapter, we will explore Ancient Southern African thought on the right to development as an imagined principle and look into the things that work in tandem with philosophies.

Context We have chosen to superimpose principles of the right to development from the United Nations Declaration on the right to development rather than those from the African Charter for Human and Peoples Rights (African Charter). The reason for this is that it is plausible that African thought may have guided certain principles of the African Charter. For that reason we would avoid bias by avoiding using the African Charter as the focal basis of our arguments. This chapter uses our preference to try and equate Ancient African thought within the global norms; hence we choose UNDRTD. Article 2(3) of the UNDRTD states must formulate adequate development policies and aim to improve the well-being of people and that people should meaningfully participate in the process of development.19 This article places a specific duty to countries that are signatory to the declaration to ensure that there is a clear intent stated in the form of policy to the development effort within society, governed by the state.20 There is also a particular inference that people ought to be at the centre of the development with their direct participation in the development processes.21 In other words, development is not a factor driven by the government on its own, but it is an inclusive process that involves those who are the beneficiaries of development.22 Article 5 of the UNDRTD states that there should be steps taken to eliminate violations of human rights, especially those that arise from apartheid, colonialism, foreign domination and threats against national sovereignty (amongst other things).23 Article 5 references all factors that may impede development from happening, particularly when development is a human right of all citizens. Several factors point to how systems of deliberate exclusion contributed to the derailment of development in certain African states, particularly in the Southern African region, with examples including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia to name a few.24 These are the countries subjected to policies of separate development that aimed to enforce a racialized system of development where the Black majority of the population were at the receiving end of lack of development.25 Article 6 of the UNDRTD makes provision for state parties to cooperate to encourage the universal respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms without any distinction on race, sex, language and religion.26 In Article 6, reference is made to the importance of the importance of freedoms that arise due to the advancement of human rights.27

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The inference drawn from here suggests that human rights are what leads to the freedom of persons. Article 7 of the UNDRTD makes provision for state parties to promote the establishment, maintenance and strengthening of international peace and security; to that end, states should achieve disarmament under international control.28 This article places emphasis on the promotion and determination of peace as well as the security of persons and the prospects of disarming warring countries for peacebuilding.29 Article 8 of the UNDRTD makes provision for state parties to ensure equal opportunities in accessing resources inclusive of education, health services, housing, food, employment and fair distribution of income, reinforcing equality.30 It further provides that state parties should ensure appropriate economic and social reforms to eradicate social injustices. Article 8 refers to the factors that are important for human development.31 In essence, without Article 8, the human person will not develop according to their potential.32 In this instance, Amartya Sen’s theory of development as freedom becomes plausible; only if Article 8 is followed and fully attained by state parties.33 The essence of the above-mentioned articles are important to human life in respect of the following: In as much as Article 8 refers to the provisions from the state in regards to access to all factors of human development, it is important to note that Article 2(3) describes the relationship between the state party and the right holders.34 Even though the state may create provisions for human development, it is in Article 2(3) that the beneficiary of development ought to be part and parcel of development by direct participation in the development process.35 In other words, the human person located in the right to development is not dormant in the decisions of development but rather as active participants of that development. The essence of Article 7 rests in the idea of global peace where countries can cooperate in the process of peacebuilding and perhaps for greater stability, which gives effect to development to take place.36

The Essence of African Thought in Respect of Development (Southern Africa) The basis of African concerning development mirrors the aspirations found in Articles 2(3), 5, 6, 7, 8 of the UNDRTD. Article 2(3) Makes reference to the importance of developing policies on the well-being of people and that the beneficiary of such development (people) shall become part of the process of policymaking.37 Article 5 of the UNDRTD states that all factors that make it impossible for development to happen should be dealt with accordingly. This includes but is not limited to the notions of human rights, in that development should not happen at the expense of people who are oppressed through development that is racialized or happen with the exclusion that comes from apartheid, colonialism. This particular aspect of the right to development relates to equality

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and fairness in the distribution of wealth within the state in the process of advancing development.38 Article 6 of the UNDRTD references the notion of exclusion from development based on race, sex, language and religion. This particular article relates to the importance of freedom. Article 7 of the UNDRTD is about strengthening peace, disarmament in the global society and stability of regions of the world, thereby obtaining sovereign equality.39 The notion of equality is also depicted in Article 8, which refers to the need for countries in the access to issues of human development (education, health, services, housing and food). Article 2(3) and 8 both reference all factors that are important in advancing the well-being of a society by looking into factors that promote the well-being of people through policy and through access to the factors that necessitate human development. Article 7 as a means to obtain international cooperation and peacemaking efforts is concerned with the states’ stability in a reciprocal manner.40 But with that stability, there is a need to ensure that internal affairs of development within member states should happen in harmony without exclusion (based on human factors such as race or gender, religion and so on). The common thread in all of these articles creates a narrative that suggests that international peace is important for member states’ growth and development. But be that as it may, it is important for countries to develop policy on the development of their people. Such development should happen with the people at the centre of such development and through their direct participation. The people also ought to be involved in the development of policies for their well-being. Harmony is needed through the eradication of exclusionary systems that divide societies.

Ancient Southern African Thought on International Peace and Cooperation The issue concerning cooperation and peace in Ancient Southern Africa requires context that gives meaning to Article 7 of the UNDRTD. It is common knowledge that long before the occupation of the west in Africa, Africa had its problems and challenges.41 These challenges are depicted by some events that took place through skirmishes, wars and civil strife.42 By the 1700s, Southern Africa experiences a series of conflicts that destabilized the Southern African nations and their people.43 Some of these skirmishes and wars led to the displacement of people who had to scatter themselves all over the continent’s Southern African region. This form of displacement of people was so endemic to the extent that certain cultural groups were forced to swallow certain groupings of people who were displaced by the wars of Southern Africa.44 Less likely to get into the wars.45 One such war was that of the Lifaqane. The phenomenon of the Lifaqane wars consists of a series of conflicts that had taken place in what is now known as the KwaZulu Natal area (province of South Africa) until the northern part of the region of Zimbabwe.46 The depiction of this in both examples is to

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point out the suffering of people in the conflict zones how the migration of this kind may breed further problems for those who are displaced in a foreign land. This is what had happened during the Lifaqane wars as it typifies the need for disarmament for peace so that citizens of the world do not become displaced. In the armed conflict of the Lifaqane, there were causalities of the warlike in many other instances of contemporary times. In any aftermath of a war, states tend to consolidate power and focus on the rebuilding of nations that had suffered from any war. This was the same in Ancient Southern Africa.47 For this to happen, the consolidation of power and rebuilding before and after disarmament is led by leaders of nations, much like how world leaders chartered the U.N. and the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights. In the context of Ancient Southern Africa, two such figures come to light, especially in the rebuilding of nations in Southern Africa. One such person is Morena Mohlomi. Morena Mohlomi was a traditional leader born in South Africa and later died in Lesotho (Southern African country).48 Morena Mohlomi is depicted in historical texts that explain the thought of Southern Africans in the consolidation of power at times of conflict.49 Morena Mohlomi’s efforts were limited to the notion of preaching peace, but he also championed the notion of strengthening relations in the region at times of civil strife.50 It is mentioned in certain historical texts that Mohlomi travelled the lengths and breadths of the South region of the continent to convince the leaders of the region that another war of a similar kind was unnecessary and all efforts to avoid such a war was needed.51 In this instance, Morena Mohlomi became a diplomat in preserving peace and strengthening relations amongst cultural groups that had experienced a war.52 Those who have written about Morena Mohlomi express Mohlomi’s stance of forging peace with nations through talks and negotiations. It is documented that the thought around transitions to new forms of states in the Southern should be propelled to bring about stability in Southern Africa. His disposition was that for peace and cooperation to prevail, it was important to treat one’s enemies with kindness and respect.53 Mohlomi is described as a pre-colonial statesman whose legacy was that of compassion, care and empathy and as such, he made it his duty to relieve those in distress.54 The events around the consolidation of power due to a string of wars waged in the 1700s carry the aspirations found in Article 7 of the UNDRTD. Probably, the notions of respect for human beings as the notions of thought around Ubuntu are identical to the modern prescripts of human rights and the right to development.

Ancient Southern African Thought in Respect to the Well-Being of Societies The ancient Southern African thought regarding societies’ well-being is echoed by Articles 8, 5, 2(3) and 6 of the U.N. Declaration on the right to development. The notion of well-being in this instance refers to all of the

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factors that make it possible for the development of the human person in a balanced manner.55 Such aspects are already explained in the previous section of this chapter. It is rather difficult to compare all of the aspects of article into the context of ancient life but what is important is to look into some of the important factors in the well-being of Southern African in ancient history. In the previous subsection of this chapter, we mentioned one of the leaders who championed peace in the Southern region after the Lifacane wars. The other leader worth mentioning is Morena Mosheoshoe I. Moshoeshoe rallied around the survivors of the Mfecane wars and built a kingdom that he established with the moral code of leadership by consensus, goodwill, and democracy through consultation with his subjects on key decisions.56 Almost similar to what we now find within Articles 5 and 6 of the UNDRTD. In light of the teachings, Moshoeshoe implemented the policy of peacemaking in Lesotho. The basis for this was to ensure that the well-being of people is protected and advanced by allowing the right to culture, languages and customs of those who were refugees in Lesotho.57 The right to land in ancient time in Lesotho was in the community’s hands in that land was considered a piece of property that would be allocated to subjects for purposes of sustenance and social security.58 In essence, the right to property ownership was also extended to those who were refugees within Lesotho in the late 1700s. Teleki59 and Laydevant & Tjokosela state that language and cultural rights were also afforded to those who were considered foreigners at the time of the consolidation of power in Lesotho in the early 1800s.60 The essence of this is found in Articles 5 and 6 of the UNDRTD. In these two Articles, inference is made on how state parties to remove all obstacles to development on the grounds of language, race, sex and cultural backgrounds. In the same vein, Articles 5 and 6 of the UNDRTD, makes provision for the recognition and advancement of human rights. As explained herein, those who, by virtue of being destitute in the aftermath of regional wars of the 1700s in Southern Africa, were given rights that were accessed irrespective of how differences in culture, language or religion. The essence of the rights or entitlements that existed in Lesotho in precolonial times were not created out of a vacuum, but they were rather part of the consciousness instilled in the leadership of the Basotho nation. In this instance, there is a layer to the governance of Moshoeshoe, which needs a reflection in light of the modern prescripts of the right to development in Ancient Southern Africa. Mahao states that jurisprudence in ancient Southern Africa consisted of notions of human dignity and political freedoms that were inseparable from socio-economic rights.61 These socio-economic rights depicted in Articles 5 and 6 had a well-defined vessel that put them into practice. This was the policy of Letsema. The word policy as mentioned herein to illustrate the common notion of making the state’s intent as policy in modern academic texts.62 In other words, a policy is referred to as the intent of the state to solve or deal with a particular problem within society.63 The policy of Letsema is a socio-economic development policy that was meant to deal

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with issues pertaining to food security, avoid poverty that may have an adverse effect on the people of Lesotho as well as the micro-financial system that made it possible for assisting those who required improving their well-being.64 Letsema was a type of work party that was common amongst Southern African lives since time in memoriam. It was practised in countries like South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, amongst others.65 The purpose of Letsema as a sharecropping mechanism was used as the means to ensure that hunger and poverty are dealt with.66 Dube et al. point out that Letsema also existed in the context of other means of sustenance to which community members had access in light of curbing poverty and sustainability of development.67 For instance, Letsema was used alongside Mafisa, which was a loan system that operated to borrow cattle as currency to those who were impoverished.68 It was through the Mafisa loan system that members of a community in Ancient Southern Africa would breed cattle over a certain period and return the cattle based on an agreement reach within the community, but at best, at the time when the borrower of cattle was capable of sustaining themselves.69 The concept of Letsema and Mafisa is used as an illustration of how Ancient African thought of dealing with access to food, shelter and human development were dealt with as it is prescribed in Article 8 of the UNDRTD.70 The context of which Letsema happened was through community participation, which was transparent and relevant to the ethos of those who are beneficiaries of development.71 The concept of a “Pitso” in the context of Southern Africans is an illustration of democracy in the systems of governance of Southern African nations.72 Several scholars have since explained that the notion of “Pitso” as the basis to which elements of democracy were prevalent in Southern African societies.73 This is where transparency, openness, fairness and equality in terms of participation were prevalent.74 Issues pertaining to fairness, openness and transparency were concepts that are today synonymous with modern forms of democracy and human rights. The type of ancient government in Lesotho can almost be equated to “the constitution of non-literate polities,” which was well organized in its functioning.75 The ancient Southern African adage of motho ke motho ka batho (easily translated to a person owes his being to others within a society) resides within the epistemological backdrop of prescripts of human dignity as it is the bedrock of sustainable, homocentric, resilient social equilibrium with Southern African societies.76 A direct descendent of Moshoeshoe I, once articulated the following in describing the form of society Lesotho was in ancient times77 : African traditional culture was not attuned to individual competition, but cooperation within the community, the interests of the community always being put above individual interests, while community ethics protected individual rights. The community could not shed collective moral responsibility for the individual’s actions, which, in turn, bound the individual to the community’s religious and moral norms. Indigenous culture was committed to social justice,

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social management, and all its members’ popular participation. This produced a fundamental cultural ethic of mutual assistance and cooperation in the means of production. Equality within the community has always been central to the traditional African way of living. The notion of political competition had little or no place in traditional African society.

Some of the principles of human rights in the UNDRTD resemble those that are found in the UDHR, which was adopted in 1948.78 The timing of the UDHR, as well as the formation of Lesotho as an ancient democratic state that espouses notions of a modern democracy, bears a resemblance. For both UDHR and the formation of Lesotho into a state following a series of wars in both instances. In Lesotho’s case, there was a series of wars in the form of Lifaqane, whereas the adoption of the UNDHR followed the second world war. The aftermath of the Second World War dictated to world leaders of that time and those involved in the war to consider rebuilding nations through disarmament, peace, cooperation and human rights.79 This is almost the same way Southern Africa was reconstructed after a series of regional wars and skirmishes. The common theory in Southern African and Western thought is that countries shall be rebuilt with notions of human rights, development and international cooperation. The object of development and rights-based approaches are arguably overt when countries go through civil and political strife. The reconstruction of nations after wars or armed conflict requires a rather different form of governance and systems that are important in the rebuilding of societies.80 Human rights appear to be the common issue insulated through the advancement of democracy.81 Both democracy and human rights as antecedents to each other were prevalent in Southern Africa in developing the region after regional wars. In essence, the Articles 5 and 6 of the UNDRTD were well constructed under Article 7 of the UNDRTD if one was to fully analyse Lesotho’s building as a nation. Moshoeshoe governed the Basotho nation with a great deal of consciousness on the need for safety, security of foreigners, social welfare and the protection of the well-being of people.82

Lessons There are many lessons to be learned about the ancient Southern African thought on the right to development based on what we have mentioned in this chapter. One of those lessons is the purpose of thought but not simply the existence of thought on the right to development principles. This bears particular importance in respect of what UNDRTD expressly states on the realization of the right to development. The inference is drawn from what the UNDRTD states on the realization of the right to development are a stark reminder of the fact that thought and practice should go in tandem together. The transposition of thought into practice is important in actualizing the right

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to development.83 Such a pattern that consists of thought and the application of that thought into tangible results is something that is needed in the fulfilment of the right to development. It is important to note that the right to development requires certain mechanisms to be realized.84 In the context of ancient Southern Africans, Mohlomi’s thought and disposition on some of the factors that are equated to Articles 5, 6 and 7 were carried out after his death through Moshoeshoe. Concerning Article 7, it is stated that countries will engage in the processes of maintaining peace and strengthening relations for the maintenance of peace. This particular aspiration of the UNDRTD implies that there ought to be meaningful cooperation between countries in the development irrespective of the previous wars, clashes or skirmishes for the same of development. The inference is that countries ought to work with each other under peaceful conditions for the sake of development so that the people benefit. It should be noted that after Mohlomi’s death, Lesotho was still faced with are forms of challenges for sovereignty, especially the threat that was posed by the Afrikaaner nation of South Africa through possible territorial occupation that included parts of Lesotho.85 Despite this, Moshoeshoe continued to trade with the Afrikaaner regime, in light of the uncertain relations between the two nations of the Afrikaaners and the Basothos.86 Such an instance is indicative of the disposition of Moshoeshoe, whose mantra dictated that the world is better off when enemies are treated with kindness and respect despite the differences that divide one’s nation and the other.87 The depiction of Lesotho and its former leaders who, championed the essence of the right to development is that the right to development needs the political will of those who believe in it, especially influential leaders. The ancient thought on the right to development in Southern Africa was able to drive towards the notions of peace, participatory development, advancing particular things that are important for development as an entitlement or human right. The logic around the right to development and the fulfilment thereof rests in the efforts of those who champion it for the betterment of the people. We argue that the right to development cannot only reside in aspirational and philosophical thought, but the right to development will not mean anything unless it is realized. This particular thinking should be used to even challenge the common thought arising from Western countries about how the right to development is merely a ploy to make the west responsible for the development of the African continent.88 Du Preez argues that Mohlomi’s thought was transposed to Moshoeshoe over time in the following manner89 : But Mohlomi is one of the best examples of the brilliance of pre-colonial African leadership exactly because he never set eyes on a European and was thus not in any way influenced by their thinking, and because we have the example of one of his students (Moshoeshoe) who became a great leader, king and nation builder by following the teachings of the Mohlomi Academy.

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This is given impetus that even after Mohlomi had died, the principles of Ubuntu were still being upheld by Moshoeshoe. Leeman further states the following: “it is evident that his (Moshoeshoe) policies and character were governed by Mohlomi’s advice to use peaceful methods wherever possible”.90 History text gives further evidence on how the thought around promoting peace, humanity, human dignity and kindness was transposed from Mohlomi to Moshoeshoe over time.91 George-Williams agrees with ethics the thought leadership expressed by the Basotho even before Moshoeshoe’s era of governance92 : Mokhachane, biological father of the legendary King Moshoeshoe in southern Africa, greatly appreciated the importance of communication. Like his counterparts in other areas of Africa, Mokhachane, ’strongly believed that encouraging discussion with strangers led to greater knowledge than fighting against them’. …In many instances, citizens responded to injustice with nonviolent resistance.93

In our enumeration of the evidence on Lesotho’s thought leadership in ancient times, it gives a perspective on the type and form of political will that is needed for the right to development to occur in a country. In this chapter, the account of Lesotho relates several factors that make the right to development sustainable over time. This is important because how African thought can sustain development as an entitlement remains a serious problem today. The lessons from Southern Africans and Lesotho, in particular, is that policy development (as per Article 2(3) of the UNDRTD), human rights and human dignity (Articles 5 and 6 of the UNDRTD) need the type of consciousness (African thought) that is possible for sustaining the right to development in practical terms.

Ancient African Knowledge in the Global Order Amidst Contemporary Issues of Development The existence of ancient African knowledge systems in past academic current texts raises fundamental questions pertaining to its contribution to contemporary issues pertaining to development and the right to development as a concept. One of these is the question around the bounds within which ancient African knowledge is situated in the global arena. An inquiry into the latter question further raises another question as to what use is ancient African knowledge with regards to the concept of the right to development. We attempt to answer these questions looking at positioning of African knowledge production and repurposing African knowledge in contemporary issues pertaining to the right to development.

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Positioning Ancient African Knowledge in the Global Arena All forms of knowledge, philosophies exist within specific contexts for specific purposes and hence the issue of positioning becomes important. Its importance lies in the fact that there must a purpose for a particular context for knowledge production as well as the dissemination of such knowledge. It is in this vein that “ancient” African knowledge as it pre-supposes and pre-dates colonial epoch in Africa its ideals (African knowledge) were philosophized around the conception of communalism, humanity, rights and duties of people in communal context, social as well as political organization.94 This particular purpose and position of African knowledge and philosophies were replaced by European thinking (in colonial epochs) as well as social changes that disabled ancient institutions by complicated social and political processes that came along with the global concept of colonization.95 This explains why African traditions along with anti-colonial discourse were for many centuries un-institutionalised in the global context amidst criticism from African scholars on undue domination of Western knowledge and traditions which perpetually shape intellectual life in Africa.96 This view is supported by Mofuoa who opines that “specialization in knowledge production from enterprises of knowledge in the twentieth century has led to a major diffraction of the intellectual terrain and a growing distance between knowledge boundaries”.97 The dominance of Western knowledge at a global scale has over the centuries taken various forms including racialized and racist knowledge on Africa through several initiatives within and outside of the academia.98 As a result of this, Simbao asks the question as to how does African academia deal with the production of knowledge which privileges Western epistemological norms when Africa seeks to position African knowledge within the global academia and social life?99 This question dictates that globalizing Ancient African knowledge should therefore happen along the capacity to legitimation and security of such knowledge from the hegemony from other forms of thought and information.100 Even though internationalizing African knowledge and spreading its appreciation globally remains possible it is often not easy to transfer traditions of a region.101 However, one of the ways of positioning of Ancient African knowledge to other parts of the world is by preserving the same wisdom and knowledge through global academic centres where such wisdom and knowledge are maintained and accessible to people as well as institutions.102 For practical reasons it is important that ancient African knowledge should move towards the current post-colonial debates where African knowledge is recognized as a product of coformativity that creates social realities through historical time.103 This implies that positioning African knowledge in the global sphere should happen with practical progression wherein lived realities of people are referenced in the debates about African knowledge. For this to happen it is required that there be negotiation of new ways of

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communication systems, knowledge economy strategies as well as heightened knowledge resources, workforces that supports the reshaping of African knowledge production within the global sphere.104 For the change to occur there will be a need to continue developing local epistemologies which give priority to intimate understanding of local environments in Africa as well as the challenges before using African epistemologies within the global imperatives.105 Internationalizing African knowledge should not only be a cognizant ideal, but it must also be a deliberate attestation in giving African knowledge privilege against other forms of knowledge.106 Ancient African Knowledge in Contemporary Issues Pertaining to the Right to Development At the beginning of this chapter, we make reference to the fact that the right to development is a concept that finds expression within the so-called modern context or the current epoch of development. The illustration that we have drawn out in this chapter shows that whether development is modern or not the thinking applied is timeless, i.e. Ancient African knowledge. In essence, we have been able to explain that knowledge does not become outdated, especially when it has been proven to contribute to the practical realities of life. We have also explained how elements of the right to development were prevalent in the 1800s in Southern Africa even though the terminology (i.e. the right to development) was never fashioned to be popular in the previous century. Be that as it may, social and political issues of the prior century are not at variance with the current socio-political issues. For instance, the notion of peace creation for prospects of development is illustrated through involvement of Mohlomi as the driver of peace and security in the Southern African region (as per Article 7 of the UNDRTD), using ancient methods that are congruent to current norms. The fact of the matter is that peace and security forms part of the global discourse is relation to the stabilities of countries as well as the capacity to use that stability for development. At the centre of these issues is the knowledge applied to each aspect of the right to development. Knowledge production has taken over “wealth creation” as a powerful instrument for development or the notion of knowledge economy in that wealth based economies rely on the production of knowledge.107 Knowledge production is a multifaceted concept which includes generation, usage, communication or dissemination of that knowledge.108 Mohlomi’s persuasion of knowledge usage, advocacy and dissemination was able to make a contribution to the well-being of Southern Africa. In recent years, Mohlomi’s contribution to Ancient knowledge, as well as its usage is hailed as relevant to the current times. For instance, Mofuoa opines that Mohlomi’s contribution to enterprises of science and politics should be recognized as the means of pioneering knowledge production for sustained development.109 Mofoua further states “Mohlomi deserves our profound recognition for showing the

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way to imagine a liberated and sustainable future for southern Africa by integrating different sources of knowledge from and across enterprises of science, business and politics, which transformed the society of his time”.110 This means that knowledge generated and the usage of it was arguably timeless. Mohlomi’s stance on the right to development as we have explained in this chapter seeks to illustrate that knowledge should be preserved in order to support the application of the right to development in current times. Roland et al. argue that the preservation and the means of disseminating African knowledge to the global community rests on the capacity for Africans to connect this knowledge and experiences to academic institutions within the global community.111 Knowledge dissemination to other parts of the world through relevant institutions becomes an opportunity to share experiences on issues that pertain to development as well as the right to development. This means that Africa and Africans need to therefore create adequate capacity to dissemination knowledge on attaining the right to development through academia and other approaches. Roland et al. further state that “indigenous knowledge that has accumulated within rural African cultures over the years can be deployed for assisting modern approaches to data creation on various aspects of the environment”.112 This implies that globalizing African knowledge requires several strategies that are shared for specific purposes. This remains plausible in that internationalizing African knowledge has become a common dialogue in global affairs.113 By virtue of this fact, it therefore remains plausible to use Ancient African knowledge within the global community for development purposes in the same that we have illustrated the value, outcomes and goals of the right to development in the same way that this chapter has done.

Conclusion The Ancient of Southern Africans arguably posits an intriguing set of factors found in the modern world. This includes but not limited, nuances of human rights, the dignity of persons, entitlements as a source of development, governance systems that mirror a democratic regime. We have demonstrated that the thought around the right to development comes with a burden of making sure that philosophy, disposition, or the mere thought is put in place along with the promises of a regime much like Article 2(3) of the UNDRTD dictates. We argue that if the elements of the right to development around Ancient Southern Africa were never put into practice, there is a high likelihood that our perception regarding the right to development from ancient African thought would be different. The absence of what is promised to people often causes discord, disharmony and protest to force states to keep up with their promises. In essence, all the factors that accompanied Ancient Southern African thought on the right to development were also crucial in fulfilling the right to development in that particular region of the continent. This is perhaps why Samb postulated that African thought on the right to development should

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be considered a significant contribution to the international human rights discourse. Perhaps the lesson from this particular assertion follows the basis of why development needs should be human-centred to create prosperity or avoid hunger and poverty.114 In this chapter, we have tried to show how Ancient African works in tandem with communal practices that are understood by those who are involved in the process of development (participation in development) to illustrate that the lives of Ancient Southern Africans were once in accordance with the notions of the right to development by connecting “thought” and “practice”. In this chapter, we have referred to the ideal state of affairs when the right to development is fulfilled. In this form of illustration, our views are informed by how governance and democracy can aid the fulfilment of the right to development through Lesotho and the rest of Southern Africa. The right to development needs to be transposed from thought to practice. What resided in the spirit of the Basothos or through Mohlomi and Moshoeshoe was only held in a repository of thought, but the right to development was practically applied even though such terminology did not exist over 100 years ago when Lesotho was formed into a nation.

Notes 1. Guy Martin, African political thought (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2012). 2. Ibid. 3. Serges A.D. Kamga, “The right to development in the African human rights system: The Endorois case.” De Jure Law Journal 44 (2011): 384. 4. Serges A.D. Kamga and Charles M. Fombad, “A critical review of the jurisprudence of the African Commission on the right to development.” Journal of African Law 57 (2013): 196. 5. Moussa Samb, “Fundamental issues and practical challenges of human rights in the context of the African Union.” Ann. Surv. Int’l & Comp. L. 15 (2009): 72. 6. Winston P. Nagan, “The right to development: Importance of human and social capital as human rights issues.” Cadmus (2013): 1–6. 7. Ruth E. Gordon, and Jon H. Sylvester, “Deconstructing development.” Wis. Int’l LJ 22 (2004): 49. 8. Winston P. Nagan. “The right to development: Importance of human and social capital as human rights issues.” Cadmus (2013): 1. 9. Ruth E. Gordon, and Jon H. Sylvester, “Deconstructing development.” Wis. Int’l LJ 22 (2004): 49. 10. W.M. Van Binsbergen. 2001. “Ubuntu and the globalization of Southern African thought and society.” Quest 15 (2001): 70. 11. Ifeanyi A. Menkiti, “Person and community in African traditional thought,” ed. R Wright, African philosophy: An introduction (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 5. 12. Sandy Haegert, “An African ethic for nursing?” Nursing Ethics 7 (2000): 495. 13. Ifeanyi A. Menkiti, “Person and community in African traditional thought,” ed. R Wright, African philosophy: An introduction (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 5.

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14. Guy Martin, African political thought (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1. 15. Ibid. 16. Dumisani Thabede, “The African worldview as the basis of practice in the helping professions.” Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk 44 (2008): 234. 17. Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward decolonizing African philosophy and religion.” African Studies Quarterly 1 (1998): 22. 18. Nonceba N. Mabovula, “The erosion of African communal values: A reappraisal of the African Ubuntu philosophy.” Inkanyiso: Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 3 (2008): 39. 19. Flávia Piovesan, “Active, free and meaningful participation in development.” Realizing the right to development. Essays in Commemoration of 25 Years of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development (Geneva: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2013), 105. 20. Arjun Sengupta, “On the theory and practice of the right to development.” Human Rights Quarterly 24 (2002): 853. 21. Arjun Sengupta, “Right to development as a human right.” Economic and Political Weekly (2001): 2528. 22. Flávia Piovesan, “Active, free and meaningful participation in development.” Realizing the Right to Development. Essays in Commemoration of 25 Years of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development (Geneva: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2013), 105. 23. Stephen Marks, “The human right to development: Between rhetoric and reality.” Harv. Hum. Rts. J ., 17 (2004): 147. 24. Killian Munzwa and Jonga Wellington, “Urban development in Zimbabwe: A human settlement perspective.” Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management 14 (2010): 129. 25. Maynard W. Swanson, “Urban origins of separate development.” Race 10 (1968): 32; Walton R. Johnson. “Education: Keystone of apartheid.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 13 (1982): 215. 26. Upendra D. Acharya, “Is development a lost paradise-trade, environment, and development: A triadic dream of international law.” Alta. L. Rev. 45 (2007): 404. 27. M.F Haq, and A.R Shekhar, “Dehumanising development: Right to development versus rights-based approach to development.” Journal of Human Rights Law and Practice 2(2) (2020): 9. 28. Nsongurua J. Udombana, “The third world and the right to development: Agenda for the next millennium.” Hum. Rts. Q . 22 (2000): 774. 29. K. Boyle and S. Simonsen, “Human security, human rights and disarmament.” Disarmament Forum 3 (2004): 12. 30. Elisabeth E. Scheper, “On the right to development, human security, and a life in dignity.” Human Nature (1994): 12. 31. Avitus Agbor, “Realising the right to development in Africa: Responsible, responsive and ethical political leadership as a condition sine qua non.” Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa 52 (2019): 222. 32. James C. Paul, “The human right to development: Its meaning & (and) importance.” J. Marshall L. Rev. 25 (1991): 37.

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33. Bhupinder Chimni, “The Sen conception of development and contemporary international law discourse: Some parallels.” Law and Development Review 1 (2008): 12. 34. Benjamin M. Meier and Ashley M. Fox, “Development as health: Employing the collective right to development to achieve the goals of the individual right to health.” Human Rights Quarterly 30 (2008): 262. 35. Konrad Ginther, “Participation and accountability: Two aspects of the internal and international dimension of the right to development.” Third World Legal Studies 11 (1992): 69. 36. Manoj Panda and Srijit Mishra, “Poverty reduction strategy as implementation of the right to development in Maharashtra. Mumbai.” Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (2005), 35. 37. Isabella D. Bunn, “The right to development: Implications for international economic law.” Am. U. Int’l L. Rev. 15 (1999): 1445. 38. Winston P. Nagan, “The right to development: Importance of human and social capital as human rights issues.” Cadmus (2013): 1. 39. Christine M. Chinkin, “The challenge of soft law: Development and change in international law.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 1 (1989): 854. 40. Arjun Sengupta, “Development cooperation and the right to development. Human rights and criminal justice for the downtrodden,” ed. Morten Bergsmo, Human rights and criminal justice for the downtrodden: Essays in honour ofAsbjørn Eide (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003), 371. 41. Wangaari Maathai, The challenge for Africa: A new vision (London: Random House, 2009) 371. 42. Oseni T. Afisi, “Tracing contemporary Africa’s conflict situation to colonialism: A breakdown of communication among natives.” Philosophical Papers and Reviews 4 (2009): 60. 43. Timothy Besley and Marta Reynal-Querol, “The legacy of historical conflict: Evidence from Africa.” American Political Science Review 108 (2014): 320. 44. John Wright, “Beyond the ‘Zulu Aftermath’: Rescrambling Southern Africa’s mfecane migrations.” University of Kwazulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg Campus (2006), 3. https://phambo.wiser.org.za/files/seminars/Wright2006.pdf. 45. Tore Wig, “Peace from the past: Pre-colonial political institutions and civil wars in Africa.” Journal of Peace Research 53 (2016): 509. 46. Carolyn A. Hamilton, “’The character and objects of Chaka’: A reconsideration of the making of Shaka as ‘Mfecane’ Motor.” Journal of African History 294 (1991): 39. 47. Bernard Leeman, “Lesotho and the struggle for Azania the origins and history of the African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress, South African Communist Party and Basutoland Congress Party 1780 – 1994” (Last Modified April 20 2020), 21. http://www.academia.edu/download/36720980/ Lesotho_and_the_Struggle_for_Azania_1780-1994.pdf. 48. Thapelo J. Selepe, “S.M. Guma and the Sesotho historical novel: An afrocentric perspective.” Literator: Journal of Literary Criticism, Comparative Linguistics and Literary Studies 29 (2008): 117. 49. M.S. Tshehla, “Koma, Thuto and nineteenth century Basotho’s refusal to choose between the two: A remarkable instance of intercultural engagement.” Theologia Viatorum 40 (2016): 17.

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50. Nhlanhla Maake, “Murder they cried: Revisiting medicine murders in literature. Seminar paper. 5 August 1996.” Institute for Advanced Research: Johannesburg Wits University (1996), 17. 51. F.L.C. Rakotsoane, “Religion of the ancient Basotho with special reference to water snake” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1996), 12. 52. Quinlan (1983, 29). 53. Johannes Seema, “A structuralist approach to BM Khaketla’s novel Mosali a Nkhola (Doctoral dissertation, University of Johannesburg, 1995), 63. 54. Limakatso Chaka, “Land, botho and identity in Thomas Mofolo’s novels.” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 53 (2016): 81. 55. Rachel Dodge, P. Annette, Jan Huyton Daly and Sanders D Lalage. “The challenge of defining wellbeing.” International Journal of Wellbeing 2 (2012): 222. 56. Mofoua (2010, 27). 57. Mofihli Teleki, “"Ubuntu-ism” as the arbiter between cultural relativism and universalism in the context of the right to development,” ed. Wei Zhang, The right to development (Brill Nijhoff, 2019), 224. 58. Bernard Leeman, “Lesotho and the struggle for Azania the origins and history of the African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress, South African Communist Party and Basutoland Congress Party 1780 – 1994” (2015), 21. http://www.academia.edu/download/36720980/Lesotho_and_ the_Struggle_for_Azania_1780-1994.pdf. 59. Mofihli Teleki, “"Ubuntu-ism” as the arbiter between cultural relativism and universalism in the context of the right to development,” ed. Wei Zhang, The right to development (Brill Nijhoff, 2019), 235. 60. François Laydevant and M.J.I. Tjokosela. Histori ea Basotho (Morija: Mazenot Institute, Basutoland), 25. 61. Nqosa L. Mahao, “O se re ho morwa’morwa towe!’African jurisprudence exhumed.” The Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa 1 (2010): 317. 62. Richard F. Elmore, “Backward mapping: Implementation research and policy decisions.” Political Science Quarterly 94 (1979): 602. 63. Les Bell and Stevenson Howard, Education policy: Process, themes and impact (London: Routledge), 115. 64. Chitja Twala, “The’Letsema/Ilima’campaign: A smokescreen or an essential strategy to deal with the unemployment crisis in South Africa?” Journal for Contemporary History 29 (2004):194. 65. Khali Mofuoa, “Chief Mohlomi: A Pioneer in bridging knowledge from enterprises of science, business and politics in Southern Africa in the eighteenth century.” Journal of Corporate Citizenship 60 (2015): 101. 66. Winai-Ström (1986, 5). 67. Musa W. Dube, Modie-Moroka Tirelo, Setume D. Senzokuhle, Ntloedibe Seratwa, Kgalemang Malebogo, Rosina M. Gabaitse, and D. Sesiro, “Botho/Ubuntu: Community building and gender constructions in Botswana.” The Journal of the ITC 40 (2016): 4. 68. Ibid., 5. 69. Stephen Turner, “Livelihoods and sharing: trends in a Lesotho village, 1976– 2004” (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape & Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere Inc, CARE 2005), 41.

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70. Chitja, Twala, “The’Letsema/Ilima’campaign: A smokescreen or an essential strategy to deal with the unemployment crisis in South Africa?” Journal for Contemporary History 29(2004): 194. 71. Thomas Tlou, “The nature of Batswana states: Towards a theory of Batswana traditional government-the Batawana case.” Botswana Notes and Records 6 (1974): 72. 72. Thoahlane, “A study of village development committees: The case of Lesotho.” Roma: Institute of Southern African Studies 8 (1984): 27. 73. Thomas Tlou, “The nature of Batswana states: Towards a theory of Batswana traditional government-the Batawana case.” Botswana Notes and Records 6 (1974): 72. 74. Mofihli Teleki, and Pregala Pillay, “Exploring how women’s social capital in rural areas can inform the development of policy as a source of agency for empowerment.” African Journal of Public Affairs 11 (2019): 133. 75. L.B. Machobaneand Stephan Karschay, Government and Change in Lesotho, 1800–1966: A study of political institutions (Springer, 1990), 2. 76. Nqosa L. Mahao, “O se re ho morwa’morwa towe!’African jurisprudence exhumed.” The Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa 1 (2010): 326. 77. His Majesty King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho. “Give us back our own democracy.” Index on Censorship 21 (1992): 10. 78. Mashood Baderin, and Manisuli Ssenyonjo (eds). 2010. Development of International Human Rights Law before and after the UDHR (London: Ashgate Publishing, 2010), 19. 79. Bernhard Leidner and Li Mengyao,“How to (re) build human rights consciousness and behavior in postconflict societies: An integrative literature review and framework for past and future research.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 21 (2015): 107. 80. Puleng Morake, “Documenting historical faunal change in Lesotho and the adjoining eastern Free State of southern Africa” (Doctoral dissertation 2010), 31. 81. Tricia D. Olsen, Payne A. Leigh and Andrew G. Reiter, “The justice balance: When transitional justice improves human rights and democracy.” HuM. R.T.s. Q . 32 (2010): 986. 82. Nqosa L. Mahao, “O se re ho morwa’morwa towe!’African jurisprudence exhumed.” The Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa 1 (2010): 317. 83. Russel L. Barsh, “The right to development as a human right: Results of the Global Consultation.” Human Rights Quarterly 13 (1991): 323. 84. Ibrahim F.I Shihata, “Human rights, development, and international financial institutions.” Am. UJ Int’l L. & Pol’y 8 (1992): 27. 85. Innocent Modo, Review of a short history of Lesotho by Stephen (J. Gill. Morija: Museum and Archives, 1998), 29. 86. Laurence Juma, “The laws of Lerotholi: Role and status of codified rules of custom in the kingdom of Lesotho.” Pace Int’l L. Rev 23 (2011): 98. 87. Johannes Seema, “A structuralist approach to BM Khaketla’s novel Mosali a nkhola” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Johannesburg, 1995), 63. 88. F Kirchmeier, “The right to development: Where do we stand.” Dialogue on Globalization Occasional Papers Geneva 23 (2006): 1.

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89. Max Du Preez, “The Socrates of Africa and his student: A model of precolonial African leadership “Google Privacy Policy.” (2010) Last modified April 10 2020. http://ufh.ac.za/files/max_dupreez.pdf. 90. Bernard Leeman, “ Lesotho and the struggle for Azania the origins and history of the African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress, South African Communist Party and Basutoland Congress Party 1780 – 1994” (2015), 21. http://www.academia.edu/download/36720980/Lesotho_and_ the_Struggle_for_Azania_1780-1994.pdf. 91. Khali Mofuoa, “Chief Mohlomi: A Pioneer in bridging knowledge from enterprises of science, business and politics in Southern Africa in the eighteenth century.” Journal of Corporate Citizenship 60 (2015): 101. 92. Desmond George-Williams, Bite not one another. Selected accounts of nonviolent struggle (Ethiopia: University for Peace, 2006), 26. 93. Ibid. 94. Mutua, Makau Wa, “The Banjul Charter and the African cultural fingerprint: An evaluation of the language of duties.” Va. J. Int’l L. 35 (1994): 367. 95. Ibid., 368. 96. Adam Branch, “Decolonizing the African studies centre.” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 36 (2018): 73. 97. Khali Mofuoa, “Chief Mohlomi: A Pioneer in bridging knowledge from enterprises of science, business and politics in Southern Africa in the eighteenth century.” Journal of Corporate Citizenship 60 (2015): 101. 98. Adam Branch, “Decolonizing the African studies centre.” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 36 (2018): 73. 99. Ruth Simbao, “Situating Africa: An alter-geopolitics of knowledge, or Chapungu rises.” African Arts 50 (2017): 1. 100. Andrew Osehi Enaifoghe, “Implication of African knowledge and learning system for internationalisation.” African Renaissance 15, no. 4 (2018): 228. 101. Bardy Roland, Arthur Rubens, and Helen Akolgo Azupogo, “Combining indigenous wisdom and academic knowledge to build sustainable future: An example from rural Africa.” Journal of African Studies and Development 10 (2018): 9. 102. Ibid., 8. 103. Raewyn Connell, Fran Collyer, João Maia, and Robert Morrell, “Toward a global sociology of knowledge: Post-colonial realities and intellectual practices.” International Sociology 32 (2017): 21. 104. Ibid. 105. Bheki R. Mngomezulu and Maposa T. Marshall, “The challenges facing academic scholarship in Africa,” ed. Michael Cross and Amasa Ndofire, Knowledge and change in African universities (Brill: Sense, 2017), 175–188. 106. Andrew Enaifoghe Osehi. “Implication of African knowledge and learning system for internationalisation.” African Renaissance 15, no. 4 (2018): 230. 107. Bheki R. Mngomezulu, and Maposa T. Marshall, “The challenges facing academic scholarship in Africa,” ed. Michael Cross and Amasa Ndofire, Knowledge and change in African universities (Brill: Sense, 2017), 175–188. 108. Ibid. 109. Khali Mofuoa, “Chief Mohlomi: A Pioneer in bridging knowledge from enterprises of science, business and politics in Southern Africa in the eighteenth century.” Journal of Corporate Citizenship 60 (2015): 103.

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110. Ibid. 111. Bardy Roland, Arthur Rubens, and Helen Akolgo Azupogo. “Combining indigenous wisdom and academic knowledge to build sustainable future: An example from rural Africa.” Journal of African Studies and Development 10 (2018): 9. 112. Ibid. 113. Andrew Enaifoghe Osehi. “Implication of African knowledge and learning system for internationalisation.” African Renaissance 15, no. 4 (2018): 239. 114. Moussa Samb, “Fundamental issues and practical challenges of human rights in the context of the African Union.” Ann. Surv. Int’l & Comp. L. 15 (2009): 72.

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Dodge, Rachel, Annette P. Daly, Jan Huyton, and Lalage D. Sanders. “The challenge of defining wellbeing.” International Journal of Wellbeing 2 (2012): 222–235. Du Preez, Max. “The socrates of Africa and his student: A model of pre-colonial African leadership “Google Privacy Policy” (2009). Last modified April 10 2020. http://ufh.ac.za/files/max_dupreez.pdf. Dube, Musa W., Tirelo Modie-Moroka, Senzokuhle D. Setume, Seratwa Ntloedibe, Malebogo Kgalemang, Rosinah M. Gabaitse, and D. Sesiro. “Botho/Ubuntu: Community building and gender constructions in Botswana.” The Journal of the ITC 40 (2016): 1–22. Elmore, Richard F."Backward mapping: Implementation research and policy decisions.” Political Science Quarterly 94 (1979): 601–616. Enaifoghe Osehi Andrew. “Implication of African knowledge and learning system for internationalisation.” African Renaissance 15, no. 4 (2018): 227–251. George-Williams, Desmond. Bite not one another. Selected accounts of nonviolent struggle. Ethiopia: University for Peace, 2006. Haegert, Sandy. An African ethic for nursing? Nursing Ethics 7 (2000): 492–502. Gielink, M.I., and R.K. Dutkiewicz. “Energy profile: Lesotho” (1991). Last modified April 10 2020. https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/23888/Gie link_ERC_1991.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y. Ginther, K. “Participation and accountability: Two aspects of the internal and international dimension of the right to development”. Third World Legal Studies (1992): 55–77. Gordon, Ruth E., and Jon H. Sylvester. “Deconstructing development.” Wis. Int’l LJ 22 (2004): 1–99 Hamilton, Carolyn A."’The character and objects of Chaka’: A reconsideration of the making of Shaka as ‘Mfecane’ Motor.” Journal of African history 294 (1992): 37–63. Haq, M.F., and A.R. Shekhar. “Dehumanising development: Right to development versus rights-based approach to development.” Journal of Human Rights Law and Practice 2 (2020): 1–22. His Majesty King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho. “Give us back our own democracy.” Index on Censorship 21 (1992): 1–10. Johnson, Walton R. “Education: Keystone of apartheid.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 13 (1982): 214–237. Juma, Laurence. “The laws of Lerotholi: Role and status of codified rules of custom in the kingdom of Lesotho.” Pace Int’l L. Rev 23 (2011): 92–145. Kamga, Serges A.D. “The right to development in the African human rights system: The Endorois case.” De Jure Law Journal 44 (2011): 381–391. Kamga, Serges A.D., and Fombad Charles. “A critical review of the jurisprudence of the African Commission on the right to development.” Journal of African Law 57 (2013): 196–214. Kirchmeier, F. “The right to development: Where do we stand.” Dialogue on Globalization Occasional Papers Geneva 23 (2006): 1–27. Laydevant, François, and M.J.I. Tjokosela. Histori ea Basotho. Morija: Mazenot Institute, Basutoland, 1965. Leeman, Bernard. “Lesotho and the struggle for Azania: The origins and history of the African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress, South African Communist Party and Basutoland Congress Party 1780 – 1994” (2015). Last Modified April

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Part III

Africa in the Global Economy

CHAPTER 15

The New Scramble for Africa Jobson Ewalefoh

Africa has a history of interaction with the rest of the world. Trade contact was established by the Europeans with Africa following the need to source for and establish foreign markets for finished goods during Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of European imperialism in Africa1 The present arrangement of the world economic order is creating the developed nations to achieve their imperialistic desires. The most visible of these efforts can be seen in the expansion of European activities in Africa, which has recently become a hot issue2 while economic and cultural factors to varying degrees influence the bilateral relations between Africa and developed societies. There is no doubt that the lasting legacy created by the colonial relations Africa was considered to be Europe’s backyard.3 For over a century, African countries have been at the mercy of Western nations. The first scramble for Africa was directly linked to the colonizer’s desire to access raw materials for their industries and create a market for their finished products. The objectives of the new scramble remain the same through neo-colonialism. While the European are the major actors in the first scramble, the new scramblers for Africa include the emerging economies led by China4 There is no doubt that China and the United States are scrambling for Africa, but with a different mission. This position is justified with the different viewpoints of the present state of Africa. While some see it as a new form J. Ewalefoh (B) University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_15

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of colonialism,5 and a mirror image of Africa’s colonial past, some scholars have even gone to the extent of claiming that “Africa has now become de facto Chinese territory.”6 This was the position of Hillary Clinton, the former United States Secretary of State when she castigated China as a power bent on unleashing “new colonialism” on Africa.7 On the contrary, many African scholars such as Sanusi8 see China and the United States growing interaction with Africa as a positive development through infrastructural financing and development. The present scramble for Africa extends beyond the European powers; the emerging economies such as India, South Korea, Brazil, Malaysia, and China are involved in this competition. This chapter focuses on the United States and China. It provides an overview of the United States and China’s place in the new scramble for Africa. The essence is not basically to access these countries’ contribution in terms of investment and infrastructural development in Africa but to analyze the implication of the new scramble on Africa’s overall development. It posits that pan-Africanism needs to be repositioned as an ideal path to development discourse. The chapter, therefore, calls for the entrenchment of development-informed pan-Africanism. It concludes that it is important to secure the relevance of pan-Africanism in development discourse in tackling the development of dilemmas and the asymmetric relations between developed countries and Africa.

The New Scramble for Africa The term “New Scramble” had been described by Biyyaa9 and Abramovici10 as “the expanding interests of the United States in Africa,” while The Economist Magazine11 used the term in describing the business links of China with Africa. Nwoke12 sees it as “the inter-imperialist rivalries between superpowers to dominate and control the economy and the exploitation of people and resources of Africa.” The new scramble for Africa’s resources was launched after most of the continent’s nations had achieved their flagship political independence. More importantly, the “New Scramble” is historically linked to Africa’s first scramble by the superpowers in the 1880s. This period witnessed European nations and world powers such as France, Britain, Belgium, and Germany turned Africa into colonies after the scramble for and partition of Africa in the Berlin conference of 1884/1885. According to Sanderson13 the conference provided superpowers/scramblers with legitimate power to govern African territory, military, politically, and economically. Hence, the colonies’ natural resources were dictated by the colonial masters who provided human expertise, technology, and technology to ignite the oil boom. No wonder, Frynas and Paulo14 aver that based on intent and history of the scramble and partitioning of the 1880s, the oil boom experienced by most African countries in the 1960s had much of a colonial imprint than the oil rush we are experiencing

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today. The major difference in the 1960s oil boom occurred during decolonization, while the latest oil boom experienced by oil-producing nations had few marks of neo-colonialism. Besides, the former focused on the acquisition and partitioning of conquered territories; the new scramblers are not interested and concerned about partitioning national borders but having access to Africa’s vast natural resources15 In addition to the colonizers during the first scramble, emerging economies like India and China have joined the “new scramble” for Africa’s resources.16 Despite the controversies about the definitions of “the new scramble for Africa” given above, the fact remains that, like the first scramble, Africa’s present scramble has developmental implications for the continent.

Pan-Africanism: An Ideology of Development In recent years, the African continent has become the scene of ideological struggle. The African countries are intently searching for the quickest ways of overcoming economic and political backwardness. Pan-Africanism has continuously remained the lynchpin and fulcrum concept and a great force of Africa’s redemption from domination. It started as a political movement based on ideology. Pan-Africanism is essential “a revivalist philosophy in Africa’s struggle, it symbolizes the thin thread that connected Africa and a great force that kept the hope of reunion alive despite domination and its accompanying sense of uprootedness”17 Pan-Africanism18 originated from the subjugation and suppression of Africans, which was expressed through slavery, and followed by the African development space. Early Pan-African thinkers gave little attention to the economic aspects of Pan-Africanism. The Pan-African ideology included men like Dr. Martin Delany, Dr. Daniel Coker, Bishop Henry Turner, the Rev. Orishatuke Faduma, Milton Obote of Uganda, Julius K. Nyerere of Tanganyika, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Tom Mboya of Kenya. What was uppermost in their minds was emancipation. There is no doubt that Pan-Africanism is an idea and movement; it is apparent that Pan-Africanism is a recent ideology of development championed by Seidmann, Green, Amin, and Kofi Anan. It has been described as a virgin frontier of the techno-economic development of Africa19 Earlier Pan-Africanist scholars have emphasized two themes (liberation and integration). While there is much writing that portrays Pan-Africanism as a theme of integration and liberation, it would be erroneous to state that the fore-runners of Pan-Africanism gave no thought at all to the development perspective; what was uppermost in the minds was the emancipation and liberation of Africa. Pan-Africanism is of the view that Africa should be the master of its fate. It believes that colonialism destroyed the African economy, manifested in shocking wealth disparity, high unemployment rate, and capital flight. The unscrupulous policies of colonial masters have made African economies to be dependent and export-oriented. In this regard, the poor intra-African trade due to the persistence of Africa’s underdevelopment resulted in the absence of

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harmonized trade rules and tariffs, weak physical infrastructure, and the unfair and unfriendly laws and institutions of the global trade.20 Pan-Africanism is required when new hope is rising with rapid economic development in numerous African states. Pan-Africanism seeks to address underdevelopment, exploitation and dependency on external assistance and borrowing that unfortunately still prevails on the continent. While the basic element of pan-Africanism was and remains the struggle for empowerment and unity of Africans against exploitation and oppression, the main problem is how to institutionalize the pan-African idea21 It calls upon African people to rely on their capacities and strengths to become self-reliant.22 The real challenge before Africa in adopting pan-Africanism ideology as a blueprint for Africa’s development is whether there are exceptional leadership skills and political wills to reawaken such a strategic vision that will transform Africa into a stable, integrated and prosperous society. Today, given the importance of political and socio-economic challenges confronting the continent, the challenge is more pressing than at any time in Africa’s history.

Africa and the Changing Economic and Political Realities The economic and political geographies of Africa are changing. This change results from the rise of emerging powers such as India, China, and Brazil, which now compete with the superpowers such as France, the United States, and Britain over resources and political influence on the continent23 The “new scramble” is the latest form of imperialist engagement, with not only Western countries but also those of “emerging economies,” such as India, Brazil, China, Russia and Malaysia, seeking to consolidate access to/or competing for African resources and markets24 This is attributed to the presence of abundant resources that serves as a causative factor for conflict and political turmoil in the continent.25 Osaghae26 observed that “the presence of strategic resources in Africa manifests in artificial power to the political center and a subsequent absence of access to benefits accruing from resource wealth by Africans.” The evolving trend of China and the United States in controlling resources in Africa has a significant influence on the African political climate. This can be seen in the increased efforts to access African markets evident in the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) enacted in 2000. AGOA underscored the implication of Africa for US external trade relations.27 Immediatelyafter the enactment of AGOA, the European Union also formulated its trade policy to renegotiate trade relations with Africa.28 The scramble for Africa’s resources began during colonial rule, with decolonization, Okeke29 observe that the situation never ceased owing to the richness of the continent’s strategic resource. While the competition for Africa’s resources is the ultimate feature surrounding the stylized “new scramble for Africa,” the economic, social, and political benefits derived from this quest to

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secure Africa’s resources must, in turn, be weighed against the potential to aggravate conflict on the continent.30 The recovery of growth in African economies since the early 2000s has stimulated development experts and investors to look at Africa with new eyes. As opined by Meagher31 investment possibilities have “expanded beyond the focus on natural resources to wider interests in the development of infrastructure, services, industry, and focus on the quantity and quality of African labor.” The new scramble for Africa is a prevalent and pervasive process. The situation is more like a whirlwind that is sweeping across the continent. This scramble bears a striking resemblance to the nineteenth-century colonial takeover of Africa32 In its wake, just as the first scramble did, it has left a trail of disaster33 However, the new scramble has come with attractive incentives meant to cajole Africa to release their natural endowments such as platinum, diamonds, oil, and other strategic minerals.34 The new scramble for Africa is more indirect and subtle. It utilizes soft power tactics like humanitarian aids, investments in infrastructure and provision of benevolent economic and preferential trade agreements. As argued by Makwerere and Chipaike35 this trend pointed in the direction of a “new cold war between the most active participants in the new scramble." It has made the present economies of the continent export-driven, which systematically destroys local small and medium-size producers in an unprecedented manner. The new scramble for Africa is the latest version of colonialism. It is also, thus far, the most impious form of the plundering of the resources of the continent, because according to Weintstein36 “the new scramble for Africa is not only about profits, but also control of strategic resources, chiefly oil." No doubt, the new scramble is being facilitated by the overwhelming technological superiority of the scramblers and an evangelizing and crusading psychology of domination, which assumed the moral, cultural and racial superiority over Africa.37

United States and China in Africa: Common Interests and/or Different Approaches? In the past decades, the United States’ engagement in Africa has expanded. This shift reflects new trends in Africa, as well as evolving US political, security, and economic interests in a more interconnected global environment. The US has shown consistent and remarkable interest in Africa’s development38 The United States’ engagement in Africa, as observed by Cooke39 has been shaped over time by three broad sets of interests. The first is based on pragmatic considerations of direct interest, most often embedded in perceptions of traditionally defined US security interests—to prevent and mitigate direct threats emanating from Africa to US citizens’ safety and well-being, assets, and the US homeland. Commercial interests fall within this sphere as well, although until relatively recently, these interests have been pursued quietly in

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Africa, driven by a small (albeit powerful) handful of US energy and mining firms.40 The second set of interests derives from a values-based agenda that emphasizes democracy and human rights, poverty alleviation, and response to the humanitarian crisis, an agenda that resonates with Americans’ view of themselves and the United States’ role in the world. The third set of interests emanates from US objectives in shaping the global environment, in building spheres of influence and alliances that support US global foreign policy goals. In this arena, successive US governments have viewed Africa as a central player and a theatre in which proxy battles over ideology, influence, and US global standing play out. The United States has always expressed its dissatisfaction as regards how trade is decreasing with Africa. The US has especially been worried because of Chinese business overtures in Africa41 The diplomatic and military attention of the United States is turning to Africa42 Despite its limited, strategic, and minimal economic interest in Africa, the United States has started to recognize the potential of Africa with its population of over 800 million, representing about 20% of world land area, the vast wealth of mineral resources, its ecological diversity and potential markets.43 China has experienced rapid and unparalleled economic growth with an export-driven economic policy. China’s economic links with the continent have been directly reinforced through the signing of the Beijing Declaration at the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in Beijing in 2000. The Declaration outlines China and Africa’s commitment to increased economic cooperation to create a “new economic order”44 This Declaration, as noted by Mills and Skidmore45 also strengthened the economic relations between China and Africa. Consequently, China is one of the top three countries investing in Africa, especially in the mining and oil sectors46 Due to the security threat and increased insecurity in the Middle East and China’s rapidly rising oil dependence. China is pursuing and gaining new avenues of strategic resources in Africa. The engagement of China with Africa is not new. Since the period of colonial rule, when China had visible influence and contact with Africa through the provision of aids to several liberation movements, particularly in the Southern African region. The aids, such as military hardware provision, set China’s stage positive post-independence engagement with Africa. The United States, because of its position in world-wide affairs, was expected to take the upper hand in Africa since 2000, but the unipolar giant’s policies toward Africa are now largely a reaction to the Chinese policy of expansionism. In this context, Guest47 observed that in Sierra Leone, China had been involved in post-war reconstructions and refurbishment of roads in Zambia. Despite China’s positive engagement with most countries in Africa, the fact is clear that its objective is the exploitation of Africa’s abundant resources. Over the last decade, China’s engagement with Africa has certainly undergone remarkable changes, with notable consequences within and beyond Africa48 China has been able to exploit oil from countries that either have ultra-sovereignty inclinations or dictatorial. Most of these countries are either

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under United States sanctions or have little trade ties with global power. Singh49 noted, the domestic oil production of China since 1993 has been insufficient to sustain the increasing demands from its growing economy. With revelations that China’s energy consumption doubled in the last decade alone and that its booming economy has been growing at a staggering rate of 9% in the past two decades. Indeed, one of the most significant aims of China’s foreign policy is energy security. China has been forced to look beyond its territory for energy sources and other natural and mineral resources needed. The availability of raw materials in Africa and the need for the same for its rapidly and fast industrializing economy and oil energy to drive the same has heightened China’s interest in Africa50 The need for resources and the search for available markets for their products have dictated why China has become pro-active in Africa. This gives credibility to the belief that Africa is beset by yet another phase of plunder by external forces51 The post-colonial interaction of China with Africa has been described by Van-Ness52 as “a shifting pattern of engagement and indifference.” The United States and China have also been fighting a war of influence. For China, Africa is the place to win trade deals and developmental projects like the construction of railways, roads, airports, electricity stations, and many other buildings. China has actively expanded railway lines in Africa, but for their benefit53 To achieve this, China has strategically and tactically deployed private and state-owned enterprises to Africa not only to exploit Africa but to invest in infrastructural development on fairly cheaper terms. This is why China consistently claims that its relationship with Africa is based on mutual benefits and not exploitation. For the United States, Africa has always been a place to confront its enemies. From fighting terrorists to combating human rights abuses and the entrenchment of democratic government, this has been their modus operandi of the United States in Africa. From the foregoing, it is evident that the United States and China have become the main actors in the new scramble. While the United States prides itself as a defender of democracy, China, on the other hand, seems unconcerned about western-style democracy. In addition, the United States is boasting of the biggest economy and fighting to maintain its position as the world political and economic leader. Through its activities and engagement with Africa, China is embarking on an aggressive to dethrone the United States, though this has been denied by China several times. The current state of affairs has increased competition for influence and resources, especially in Africa, hence giving birth to the new cold war between them.

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Implications of the United States and China’s Engagement on Africa’s Development The development of any nation or continent, as opined by Ake54 is associated with its economy’s growth. Therefore, this section focuses on how Africa’s new scramble has influenced or affected Africa’s development. Africa’s recent economic and political and economic history is rife with external forces’ involvement in its economic activities and development. From the slave trade to colonialism, European powers have been manipulating and subjugating Africans due to the vast and abundant human and natural resources in the continent. Africa’s present situation and the remarkably growing trend of world powers’ engagement with Africa is no different. The shift in focus by the superpowers and emerging economies toward Africa as partners in the changing political and economic realities has posited the emergence of the “new scramble for Africa”.55 The emerging trend of involvement of the United States and China has a large influence on Africa’s political climate and will continue to do so. The United States has continually been concerned with human rights, tenets of democracy and good governance as solid foundations of any nation. This raises several questions surrounding China’s understanding, interpretation, and rigid interpretation of the principle of state sovereignty in Africa. In essence, China’s engagement with Africa is devoid of any restrictions and conditionalities surrounding political legitimacy, good governance, accountability, and human rights adherence. McLaughlin56 believes that the unwillingness of China to impose stringent conditions to financial assistance and aids, military and economic cooperation has undermined the efforts to reform Africa. This, is the viewpoint of Giry57 has resulted in the absence of political will toward reform within nepotistic, despotic and corrupt African governments. Politically, China does not interfere with internal politics but has been trying to create ties with Africa irrespective of the government system. Due to China’s nature as a one-party state, China has made it difficult to push for a democratic system and free and fair elections in Africa. As a result, China has consistently been accused of impeding efforts at fostering democratic governance in Africa. This is because developmental aids from China to Africa come with no specific demands, unlike the United States, which demands the entrenchment of democracy and free and fair elections as a precondition for aids and development assistance.

New Scramble and Africa’s Development Africa today is underdeveloped, and that the present position as posited by Rodney58 has been arrived at, not by the separate evolution of Africa, but exploitation. There is no doubt that Africa has had extensive and prolonged contact with Europe. As argued by Negussie59 this contact changes and affects the level of development in the continent.

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In the past decade, Africa’s growth and development have been widespread and by no means confined merely to resource exploitation and export60 Africa, comprising of 54 countries, despite its abundant wealth of natural and mineral resources, is the least developed continent of the world61 It is expected that the abundant resources in Africa will provide funds for the all-encompassing needed development, but this has still not happened. The continent’s development is becoming a pipedream because of the conspiratorial ploy between the cosmopolitan bourgeois and indigenous comprador fuels a state of conflict, poverty, and corruption. Rather than being a blessing, the natural resources in Africa, as Mandy62 observed, have largely become a curse because of the heavy control from external forces. According to him, the actual reason Africa’s vast resources are a curse of monumental proportions as unexpected is the lopsided global North–South engagement that brings about the so-called curse. The continuous availability of uninterrupted and affordable strategic resource supplies has manifested into the resource supplies and securitization of resources63 In his submission, Charles64 submits that the major scramblers are the custodians of foreign reserves and the determiners of Africa’s raw materials’ prices in the so-called international market. Thus, the few gains/profits made by African states are from time to time wiped out through the interplay of price hike and inflation manipulation. Like the old scramble and partitioning of Africa, the new scramble for the continent’s resources has extremely negative effects on the continent’s development. The new scramble is driven by imperialistic selfishness and a continuing lack of respect for the sensibilities of Africans, and not for the overall development of the continent. Weinstein65 describes the dicey conditions of the African countries vis-à-vis the shenanigans of the new scramblers thus: Because their economies are tied to exports, many African nations are compelled to import oil for their use, and so higher oil prices hurt them. Free-trade agreements also force developing regions such as Africa to import other Western goods, including food, which destroys the ’livelihood for many small producers …

As described by Charles66 the new scramble for Africa has made the present African economies export-oriented, and this systematically destroys local small and medium-size producers in an unprecedented manner. It has also further polarized and antagonized the economic and social class stratifications in the continent. The new scramble for Africa, as argued by Charles67 is the latest version of colonialism. It is the most impious form of the plundering of the continent’s resources, and this is in line with the submission of Weintstein68 that “the new scramble for Africa is not only about profits, but also control of strategic resources, chiefly oil.” Therefore, Africa’s resources control and direct the political and military spheres of the natural resources-rich nations of Africa.

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Concluding Remarks The new scramble for Africa is a very pervasive and persistent process, which is sweeping across the continent. The “new scramble for Africa” has had an enormous impact—both beneficial and harmful—on Africa and is transforming Africa’s economy. There is no doubt that the efforts of the United States and China to recast Africa’s economy. However, there are obvious benefits to developed economies such as the United States and China, even if Africa’s economy stands to gain rather less. In the face of looming labor deficits in the developed world, Africa’s economy has become gradually attractive not only as new consumer markets but as a source of cheap labor69 While tapping Africa’s resources by Western economies may look like a win–win strategy, the prospects of the new scramble for Africa look considerably more problematic for its overall development. It is important to note that, to some extent, the practice of exporting manufactured goods to the continent and importing unprocessed primary commodities from Africa exhibits an essence of neocolonialism. It is a trade structure likely to prevent Africa’s economies from upgrading its industrial sector, which is detrimental to its overall development. However, the new scramble for Africa is laced with a complex mix of activities, which sometimes makes it appear like a process beneficial to Africa. The present scramble for Africa is being facilitated by the awesome technological superiority and evangelizing and crusading psychology of domination, which assumed the moral, cultural, social, and economic superiority of Europe over dominated peoples in Africa and Asia.70 If care is not taken, Africa’s new scramble may last for centuries, like the slave trade and colonialism. The solution to the present situation in Africa as suggested by Rodney71 and Fanon72 is “to have a radical break with the international capitalist system, and to ‘turn a new leaf … work out new concepts,… completely leave Europe alone and stop mimicking her in all ways and …set afoot a new man.” There is no doubt that Walter Rodney has also described the old and the new scramble for Africa, which are integral parts of colonial and neo-colonial legacies, Kwame Nkrumah73 Daniel Offiong74 and Frantz Fanon75 as the cause of Africa’s shameful underdevelopment. Like the first scramble, political actors and leaders in Africa have failed to perceive the new scramble and its agenda of entrenching neo-colonialism and exploiting the continent’s human and material resources. There is no doubt that this structure operates in a manner that further heightens Africa’s marginalization, which is inimical to sustainable development in the continent. The question of exploitation and marginalization has remained crucial in understanding contemporary Africa, especially from the perspective of the present new scramble for Africa and the readiness and commitment of leaders in bringing about the continent’s development. In contemporary Africa, the main focus is on generalities rather than on specifics; thus, giving the impression that investment by the scramblers through infrastructural development by

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developed nations such as China and the United States will bring about the expected level of development. Pan-African ideology has acted and should continue to be acting as a transforming tool in exposing the relationship between Africa and the developed and emerging economies of the world whereby the control and the management of African economies have never been in the hands of Africans. Such a situation needs to be challenged, as submission of true Pan-Africanism that Africa’s response to neo-colonialism must be one that puts the Africans interest first beyond other considerations.76 This article’s submission is that pan-Africanism is the ideological vehicle for Africa’s development owing to its significant tenets of ensuring selfdetermination through the empowerment of the people with available resources. Pan-Africanism as an ideology is with the ultimate aim of making Africans in charge of their destiny through empowerment and unity. Therefore, there is a need to reset the African development agenda by prioritizing attitudinal change and enacting a bold but “harmonious” change process. Also, Africa needs the technological transformation of its economy to exploit its natural resources for development.

Notes 1. K.C. Ubaku, C.A. Emeh, and K.C. Okoro, Imperialism and underdevelopment in post-independence Africa: Focus on Central African Republic. International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education 2(6) 2015, pg 1–9. 2. H. Melber, Global trade regimes and multi-polarity: The US and Chinese scramble for African resources and markets. In R. Southall and H. Melber (eds). A new scramble for Africa? Imperialism, investment and development. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009, pp. 56–82. 3. Ibid. 4. J. Rooyen and H. Solomon, The strategic implications of the US and China’s engagement within Africa Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 35(1) 2007, pg 1–12. 5. E. Girouard, China in Africa: Neo-colonialism or a new avenue for south-south cooperation. Canadian Coalition to End Global Poverty, April, 2008. 6. T. Durden, The Beijing conference: See how China quietly took over Africa. Financial Times, 2012, August 8. 7. B. Law, Liberia’s foreign investment challenge. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2006, December 14. 8. L. Sanusi, Africa must get real about Chinese ties. Financial Times, 2013, March 11. 9. Q. Biyyaa, The environmental cost of the Euro-Arab scramble for Africa, 2009. Accessed online from http://farmlandgrab.org/2799. 10. P. Abramovici and J. Stoker, United States: The new scramble for Africa. Review of African Political Economy 31(102) 2004, pg 685–690. 11. The Economist Magazine, A new scramble. The Economist, 2004, November 27.

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12. C.C. Nwoke, The new scramble for Africa: A strategic policy framework. In Osita C. Eze & Chike A. Anigbo (eds.). New scramble for Africa. Lagos: Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, 2010, pp. 61–90. 13. Cited in Sanusi, op. cit. 2013. 14. J.G. Frynas and M. Paulo, A new scramble for African oil? Historical, political, and business perspectives. African Affairs 106(423), 2006, pg 229–251. 15. A. Hadland, If the hat fits: Revisiting Chinese ‘neo-imperialism’ in Africa from a comparative historical perspective. Asian Politics and Policy 4(4) 2012, pg 467–485. 16. S. Folarin, J. Ibietan and F.C. Chidozie, Nigeria and the BRICS: Regional dynamics in developing economies’ studies. Being a paper presented at the IBIMA Conference, tagged “ “Crafting Global Competitive Economies: 2020 Vision Strategic Planning and Smart Implementation.” Milan, Italy. 6–7 November 2014. A. Narlikar, Introduction: negotiating the rise of new powers. International Affairs 89(3), 2013, pg 561–576. B. Vickers, Africa and the rising powers: Bargaining for the ‘marginalized’ many. International Affairs. 89(3), 2013, pg 673–693. 17. S.A. Alemayehu, Pan Africanism as a conceptual basis for African unity, 2016. Accessed online from https://mfaethiopiablog.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/ pan-africanism-as-a-conceptual-basis-for-the-african-unity/. 18. S.D. Kamga, ‘A call for a ‘right to development’-informed pan-Africanism in the twenty-first century. Africa Today 12(1), 2019, pg 47–70. 19. O. Ola, Pan-Africanism: An ideology of development. Présence Africaine, Nouvelle série (112), 1979, pg 66–95. 20. S.A. Alemayehu, op. cit. 21. R.W. Walter, Pan-Africanism and linkages within the African world. In W. Ofuatey-Kodjoe (ed). Pan-Africanism: New direction in strategy. Lanham: University Press of America, 1986, pp. 317–349. 22. T. Murithi, Institutionalizing Pan-Africanism: Transforming African Union values and principles into policy and practice. ISS Paper 143, June 2007. 23. S. Ouma, The New Scramble for Africa. Regional Studies 46(6), 2012, pg 836–838. 24. J. Rooyen and H. Solomon, op. cit. 2007. 25. J. Pocha, Rising China: The geopolitics of oil. National Policy Quarterly. Winter, 2005, pg 50–56. 26. E.E. Osaghae. Political transition and ethnic conflict in Africa. Journal of Third World Studies. Spring, 2004, pg 220–241. 27. A.J. Ayers. Beyond myths, lies and stereotypes: The political economy of a ‘new scramble for Africa’. New Political Economy, 2013. Accessed online from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2012.678821. 28. H. Melber, op cit. 2009, p. 62. 29. C.N. Okeke, The second scramble for Africa’s oil and mineral resources: Blessing or curse? The International Lawyer 42(1), 2008, pg 193–209. 30. B. Kraxberger, The United States and Africa: Shifting geo-politics in an age of terror. Africa Today 12(1), 2005, pg 47–70. 31. K. Meagher, The scramble for Africans: Demography, globalization and Africa’s informal labor markets. The Journal of Development Studies 52 (4), 2016, pg 483–497. 32. C. Haigh, The new scramble for Africa. Politics and Society, June 17, 2014.

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33. D. Makwerere and R. Chipaike, China and the United States of America in Africa: A new scramble or a New Cold War? International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 2(17), 2012, pg 311–319. 34. A. Hadland, op. cit. 2012, p. 467. 35. D. Makwerere and R. Chipaike, op. cit. 2012. 36. L. Weintstein, The new scramble for Africa. International Socialist Review, 2008. Accessed online from http://www.isreview.org/issues/60/feat-africa. shtml. 37. O.T. Oyeneye and S.A. Ogunwa, A book review of—New scramble for Africa. In Osita C. Eze & Chike A. Anigbo (eds). International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Reviews 4(2), 2013, pg 165–169. 38. C.N. Okeke, op. cit. 2008. 39. J.G. Cooke, U.S. Engagement in Africa. Politique étrangère 2013/2 (Summer Issue), 2013, pg 67–79. 40. Ibid. 41. H.C. Takudzwa, The New Scramble for Africa as both China and the US battle for Africa’s resources and interests, 201. Accessed online from. https://www.africanexponent.com/post/10492-a-new-scramble-for-afr ica-led-by-the-united-states-and-china-is-emerging. 42. P. Abramovici and J. Stoker, op. cit. 2004. 43. N. Siyum, Why Africa remains underdeveloped despite its potential? Which theory can help Africa to develop? Open Access C Biostatistics & Bioinformatics 1(2), 2018, pg 1–5. 44. D.J. Muekalia, Africa and China’s strategic partnership. African Security Review 13(1), 2004, pg 5–12. 45. G. Mills and N. Skidmore, Towards China Inc? Assessing the implications for Africa. Johannesburg: SAIIA, 2004. 46. R. Jenkins and C. Edwards, How does China’s growth affect poverty reduction in Asia, Africa and Latin America? Norwich: Overseas Development Group, 2004. 47. P. Guest, Chasing the dragons. This is Africa, September 2009. 48. A.J. Ayers, op. cit. 2013. 49. G. Singh, China Africa relations: New terms of engagement, September 9, 2009. 50. J.K. Rutherford, S. Lazarus and S. Kelley, Rethinking investments in natural resources: China’s emerging role in the Mekong Region. Phnom Penh: Heinrich Boll Stiftung; Copenhagen: WWF; Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable Development. 2008. 51. D. Makwerere and R. Chipaike, op. cit. 2012. 52. P. Van-Ness, China and the Third World: patterns of engagement and indifference. In Samuel S. Kim (ed.). China and the World: Chinese foreign policy faces the new millennium. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998, pg 151–168. 53. H.C. Takudzwa, op. cit. 2019. 54. C. Ake, Democracy and development in Africa. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 1996. 55. J. Rooyen and H. Solomon, op. cit. 2007. 56. A. McLaughlin, A rising China counters US clout in Africa. Christian Science Monitor 97(87), 2005, pg 1–5. 57. S. Giry, China’s Africa strategy: Out of Beijing. The New Republic, 2004, November 15, pp. 19–23.

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58. W. Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Dar-Es-Salaam: BogleL’Ouverture Publications, London and Tanzanian Publishing House, Dar-EsSalaam, Africa, 1973. 59. S. Negussie, Why Africa remains underdeveloped despite its potential? Which theory can help Africa to develop? Open Acc Biostat Bioinform. 1(2), 2018, pg 1–5. 60. MacKinsey Global Institute, Lions on the move: The progress and potential of African economies. London: McKinsey Global Institute, 2010. 61. N. Siyum, op. cit. 2018. 62. T. Mandy, The scramble for Africa. The Guardian Newspaper, Wednesday, May 2, 2007. 63. B. Thayer, Confronting China: An evaluation of options for the United States. Comparative Strategy 24, 2005, pg 71–98. 64. A. Charles, The new scramble for Africa’s resources: Implications for its development. Africanus 44 (2), 2014, pg 1–14. 65. L. Weintstein, op. cit. 2008. 66. A. Charles, op. cit. 2014. 67. Ibid. 68. L. Weintstein, op. cit. 2008. 69. K. Meagher, op. cit. 2016. 70. O.T. Oyeneye and S.A. Ogunwa, op. cit. 2013. 71. W, Rodney, op. cit. 1973, p. 46. 72. F. Fanon, The wretched of the earth. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2004, p. 80. 73. K. Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism: The last stage of imperialism. New York, NY: International Press, 1980. 74. D.A. Offiong, Imperialism and dependency. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishing, 1980. 75. F. Fanon, op. cit. 2004. 76. O.A. Sylvester and O.I. Anthony, Decolonization in Africa and Pan-Africanism. Yönetim Bilimleri Dergisi Cilt: 12, Sayı: 23, 2014, pp 7–31.

CHAPTER 16

Shifting Centers of Coloniality of Power: The Scramble for African Mines and Minerals Robert Maseko

Introduction Africa is imbued with vast natural wealth and yet continues to suffer under extreme poverty and underdevelopment. More than 136 years had since passed, the moment when European countries sat down to have among themselves Africa shared. The Berlin Conference of 1884 ushered in a new era of invasion and colonization of African lands, and its effects are still being felt today in a postcolonial Africa.1 Africans lost their humanity and were relegated to the periphery of the urban economies; giant corporate companies began to take over the oppression and proletarianization process in the name of civilizing the native populations. Cecil John Rhodes, who is still celebrated by the West as the godfather of imperialism and civilization of African natives, went on a rampage in Southern Africa, killing and plundering African resources and kingdoms.2 With his De Beers Consolidated Mines in the 1880s, he created a monopoly enterprise that saw many black people taken as slave laborers in Kimberly’s diamond mines. He subsequently waged war on tribal lands and the proletarianization of black people and created the compound system that kept African workers in barracklike conditions. To date, De Beers controls the monopoly of mining and distribution of diamonds all over the globe through the Kimberly Certification process.

R. Maseko (B) University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_16

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More so, the quest for minerals in Africa reduced black populations to poor mines, farms, and factory workers. African Minerals and other resources were taken to Europe while the African continent was sucked bone dry of its riches. Colonial institutions and interests are still very much protected by present African states and government institutions and still make a lot of profits at poor Africans’ expense. At the same time, the few chosen elites benefit from the system. Africa has become a battleground for the US and Chinese interests. In 2012, China constituted 29% of foreign direct investment into Africa while the US constituted 60% of their investment in the mining sector in Africa.3 Despite US companies’ dominance in the mining sector in Africa, China is rapidly closing that gap and assuming a leading role in the extraction of natural resources in many African countries. By and large, the center is now shifting to the East, whereby the Chinese, the Russians, and the Indian companies are making their presence felt in Africa. In South Africa, the country has become part of the BRICS economic block (comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa),which is directly challenging the interests of the Breton Woods Institutions like the World Bank and the International Monitory Fund. With the help of African elites, China has made significant strides in its quest to hold on to African resources but with many consequences in the environment, sustainable mining, human rights issues, exploitation of workers, and looting of Africa’s resources. In this chapter, I will give a detailed description of the three scenarios in the mining industry in Africa, the South African, the Zambian, and the Zimbabwean situation to demonstrate the failure of the nationalists’ projects in Africa and the influence of the shifting global orders in the mining and extraction of African resources. In the next sections, I will discuss the concept of the coloniality of power.

Coloniality of Power in Africa Coloniality of power entails a global system of power based along racial lines, with those at the top of this hierarchy being Europeans and North Americans. Coloniality of power involves a Manichean society, which in the past doubted the very humanity of Africans on their color, culture, and spirituality. It involved the hegemony of a Christian racial white society based on the superior-inferior, colonizer-colonized relationship. For Walter Mignolo, colonialism had a symbiotic link with Christianity and capitalism and, combined, the latter propagated the idea that exploitation and suppression of colonial subjects was the point of departure for a civilizing and civilized world.4 The colonizers were hungry for natural resources and saw themselves as the sole owners of the world’s resources while believing that colonized subjects were a direct threat to their success. Coloniality of power is supported by the military strength of superpowers who do not hesitate to invade any country that does not agree with them. A good example is the invasion of Iraqi, Libya,

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Afghanistan, and Syria. The production of goods for global markets makes it possible for some people to be treated as expendables. According to a hierarchy of humanity, the capitalist world system continues to classify groups, deriving ultimately from biological differences such as whites, Asians, blacks, and Indians. Anibal Quijano argues: ‘Coloniality of power was conceived together with America and Western Europe, and with the social category of “race” as the key element of the social classification of colonized and colonizers’.5 Today coloniality of power, unlike during the days of direct colonialism and apartheid, is insidiously alive within coloniality/modernity, and it prevails in postcolonial states, including postcolonial Africa. The claim by Quijano is that coloniality of power still structures power relations between Africans and Europeans, and this is made possible through the control of culture (imposing dominant European cultures onto the periphery), structuring social relations, modes of authority, hegemonic notions of gender/sexuality and political relations between North and South. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni thus argues: Coloniality of power articulates continuities of colonial mentalities, psychologies, and worldviews into the so-called ’postcolonial era.’ It highlights the hierarchical social relationships of exploitation and domination between westerners and Africans that have their roots in centuries of European colonial expansion but currently continuing through cultural, social, and political power relations.6

Ramon Grosfoguel argues that at the apex of the world power structure are white capitalist heterosexual males. He describes this structure as a capitalistpatriarchal, Western-centric, Christian-centric, modern/colonial racial world system.7 This is important in understanding the challenges that African people and countries face under the coloniality of African resources by former and neo-colonial powers. As decolonization in Africa is concerned, deracialization in-and-of-itself does not equate to decolonializaton insofar as the colonial logic of the mining industry remains untouched by deracialization. Western civilization is premised on the endless accumulation of resources at the expense of people and the environment. Through the coloniality of power, both elites from the global North and global south are obsessed with the endless accumulation of wealth.8 Decolonial theory, in the last instance, proposes an African-led solution to global modernity. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni defines it this way: ‘The decolonial turn is towards the direction of Africanity as an assertion of the African identity; Afrocentrism as a liberatory methodology; decolonial thought as a combative epistemology and pan-Africanism as a terrain of ongoing struggles for liberation’.9 In this context, the decolonial paradigm from an African perspective seeks to understand the ongoing and current impacts of the coloniality of power on the continent and unpack the legitimizing discourse of Western modernity couched in terms of liberal democracy, human rights, and participatory development.

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A critical question that we need to grapple with in Africa is the question raised by Ndlovu-Gatsheni, which says, ‘can Africans create African futures within a modern world system structured by global coloniality’?10 He argues that global coloniality and coloniality of power are all products of the EuroNorth American-centric modernity. I believe it is a main problem of Africa today that the institutions created by coloniality are still operating within the context of unequal power relations and dependency. Today Africa is obsessed with catching-up and emulating European Metropoles, built on centuries of dispossession.11 Modernity was built on slavery and colonialism, and therefore if we understand the current modern system from a Western point of view, we fail to capture the atrocities of the past; however, if we think and analyze the system from an African perspective, we will understand it from the affected position. Ramon Grosfoguel argues that the view from the perspective of the West is the view of Europe and modernity expanding.12 Still, when viewed from Africa, we see Europe’s arrival, which is not devoid of the killings, looting, violence, displacement, and slavery. Examining the coloniality of power—brings to the fore the presence of a racialized world system with non-Europeans placed on the darker side of the world social order. The same is true with African neocolonial masters who still treat Africans with skepticism; the Chinese have been described as the worst colonizers, as it will be shown in the next sections of this chapter.

Mining in Africa Mining in ancient Africa by Africans has existed for centuries before the arrival of direct colonialism. Modernity brought about colonialism, and colonialism resulted in monopoly capitalism and racism. Western corporate mining companies have been involved in African mining resources ever since discovering payable mineral deposits in several African countries in the down of direct colonialism. Since the establishment of colonies in Southern Africa, the leasing of corporate giants in the mining sector dates back to the 1880s.13 These corporate giants, in many, hold more power than the countries themselves. They have found the willing partners to partner with, the African elites whose interests are to maintain power and influence over most Africans. The African elite is obsessed with the endless accumulation of wealth and the love of Western ways of living.14 However, some have argued that these corporate mining companies have contributed many to the development of the African countries in infrastructure development, creation of new vibrant cities, creation of employment, and the creation of small-scale industry directly and indirectly linked to the mining industry.15 In most cases, Western corporate giants have had a cozy relationship with the African states and governments; more so, they are central in the formation of some states in African, in particular the case of South Africa and Rhodesia thorough the Cecil John Rhodes and the British South

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Africa Company (BSAC).16 Corporate mining companies continue to wield more power in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania, and many more. The mining industry in Africa operates from a Neo-Liberal Order.17 The neo-liberal order emerged in the 1970s with the Washington Consensus, an economic idea to liberalize the markets. According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni, the Washington Consensus was a set of ideas and institutional practices designed to dominate world economies.18 In this case, the mines and the mining industry are to be regulated by the market forces and be protected by state governments for any threat to their operations and interests.19 The culmination of big financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that have become more powerful in regulating African economies and directing development policies in poor countries by imposing certain conditions that had an enormous impact on poor nations in achieving their social mandate to marginalized communities and populations.20 This also explains why most African governments who tried to regulate the mining industry ended up being failed states. I explore the Zambian, the Zimbabwean, and the South African mining experience in the next two sections. I will also discuss the role of China in Africa, the role of African elites, and development in Africa. The South African Experience In South Africa, the discovery of diamonds in Kimberly in 1867and gold deposits in 1886 in Johannesburg led to the near extermination of the tribal kingdoms through the expropriation of tribal lands. During this period, black people experienced the brutality of the process of proletarianization. Coerced labor forms were introduced because the mines needed cheap labor, and the vast black population provided just that. Various legislative measures were enacted during colonialism and apartheid designed to control labor and protect profits for big mining corporations. Black mineworkers were not allowed to participate in labor bargaining processes. The legislative measures designed to discriminate against black labor include: Government Notice 68 of July 1872, the Diamond Trade Act of 1882, Mining Regulations of 1883,21 Industrial Conciliation Act No 11 of 1924, Wages Act No 27 of 1925, Mine, Works Amendment Act No 25 of 1926, Labor Relations Act No 28 of 1956.22 Black mineworkers were housed in barrack-like compounds in prison-like conditions.23 According to Bernard Magubane, the discovery of minerals saved the black nation from total extermination as the white colonizers changed the strategy from ‘total extermination’ to labor as a ‘civilizing agent.’ South Africa was for a white man, and it was built of a black man’s sweat and blood.24 The mineral industry in South Africa is a product of conquest. Coloniality of power and racial capitalism in South Africa made sure that the blacks’ condition remains the same for centuries, even if direct colonialism is long gone today.

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But in the late 1870s, corporate and soon monopoly capitalism had taken over from individual claimholders, particularly as mining became either too costly or too dangerous. The majority of claimholders either moved on or worked for the big companies such as De Beers Consolidated Mines owned by Cecil John Rhodes, the Kimberley Mine owned by Barney Barnato and Joseph Benjamin Robinson, and the French Company known as Compagnie Francaise des Mines de Diamantes du Cap de Bonne Esperance owned by Jules Porges25 . This takeover of mining rights by big companies had even more far-reaching consequences for black people. It was a positive move for the organization and control of labor and profits for the capitalists, colonialists, and imperialists. According to Charles van Onselen, the logic among mine white owners was that ‘Natives should either be working, or resting or in hospital.’26 The discovery of gold in 1887 in the Witwatersrand changed the political and economic landscape of Southern Africa as cheap labor moved south from neighboring countries of southern Africa, including Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, to be used as cheap labor in early 1900. The Witwatersrand Labor Organization (WNLA), otherwise known as the ‘Wenela’ office, was created solely to import labor from neighboring countries to satisfy the mining industry’s needs.27 Here, workers were subjected to racial laws and inhuman treatment by the white owners and supervisors.28 From colonialism to the Union of South Africa and the apartheid government, black people were considered subhuman and visitors. However, after 1994 when Nelson Mandela took over as the first president of democratic South Africa, several changes were made to empower the previously marginalized population groups. The relationship between the state and capital in South Africa has always been strong. Some have described the South African mining industry as the golden goose of the economy.29 Today corporate giants such as De Beers, Anglo American Platinum, Anglogold Ashanti, Lonmin, Royal Bafokeng Platinum, BHP Billiton, Glencore, Harmony Gold, Impala Platinum, Sibanye-Stillwater, Kumba Iron Ore, Drdgold, and South African Coal Mining Holdings all dominate the mining industry in South Africa. They are among many companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Various legislative measures were introduced to change the mining industry’s overall ownership pattern since 1994, but black people remain marginalized from the ownership of these mines. Oppositional political parties like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have called for the nationalization of South African mines; similarly, calls for nationalization have also been amplified by the ANCYL, a youth league for the African National Congress (ANC) ruling party. To resolve the past imbalances, the government introduced the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) No 28 of 2002 and the Broad-Based Socio-Economic Empowerment Act (No. 53 of 2003) or the BBSEE Act.30 The MRPDA sought to ensure sustainable development in the mines, as understood, economically, socially, and environmentally. For

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Frederick Cawood, the focus in the act is on the equitable ownership of mines across races and black economic empowerment more broadly (as a social goal), while the BBSEE Act was a seemingly all-inclusive piece of legislation which sought to satisfy all but, like the MPRDA,31 it does not posit any fundamental shift in the coloniality marking the mining industry. Black people were to become more fully integrated into the wealth and benefits of the industry through, for instance, deracialization of ownership and management, skills development for black workers, and more broad-based rural development.32 The massacre of 34 mineworkers by a police officer in Marikana in 2012 has shown us that the lives of black miners are dispensable and that the relationship between mining capital and the government is toxic. The relation between the state and capital is unshakeable, while black people continue to suffer at the hands of the mining companies and the armed police officers. As Frantz Fanon once said, the line dividing the rich and the poor is heavily protected by armed police and soldiers. On the lighter side, in 2018, the mining industry in South Africa employed 456 438 people,33 the biggest number of people employed by the mines in Africa. However, despite the poverty status of mineworkers, the financial returns and profits for the mining industry are staggering. In 2018 the industry produced an estimated 356 billion rands in revenue. According to the Minerals South African Council and the South African National Development Plan, the mining industry remains a key sector to stimulate growth.34 The PwC annual mining report of 2019 states that the mining sector made a net profit of US$76 Billion, US$66 in 2018, and US$65 in 2018.35 Furthermore, according to the PwC report, the mining industry contributed much of its share to the government more than any other sector in the form of royalties. South Africa is a leading economy in Africa, and its mining industry has been a leading economic booster locally and in Africa in general. South Africa is positioning itself as a leading economic powerhouse, attracting global investors and asserting itself in the global market arena through its presence in the G-20 group and the BRICS block.36 The relationship between South Africa and China dates back to the early 1900 when Chinese indentured labor was brought in to work in the gold mines. However, the apartheid government in 1948 made it impossible for the Chinese community already residents because they were subjected to discriminating laws that classified them as non-white and relegated from the mainstream economy. In the late 1990s, Nelson Mandela sought to renew bilateral relations with China. Similarly, Thabo Mbeki also kept the South Africa-Chinese relations strong; later, Jacob Zuma, in August 2010, took the relations between the two nations a step further when the government announced China as a strategic partner.37 Alden and Wu also noted that during the visit by Jacob Zuma to Beijing, a Beijing Declaration was signed in which 38 bilateral cooperation agreements ranging from political dialogues, trade, agriculture and mineral exploration, and a Joint

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Inter-Ministerial Working Group on China-South Africa Co-operation was formed. In 2013 the Fraser Institute Survey of Mining exploration investment attractiveness placed South African in position 64 among 112 global mining powerhouses. South Africa was placed below Botswana ranked 25, Namibia ranked 34, and Ghana at 43. This came at the backdrop of the declining mining industry in South Africa due to political scandals and labor unrest despite the country harboring the richest mineral reserves in the world. The killings of Marikana mineworkers by the police harmed investor confidence, and Moody Rankings placed South Africa’s credit ratings to junk status in the years 2020.38 This has resulted in one of the global superpowers taking advantage to establish its position in the mining sector in South Africa. China began to buy shares in most mining companies in South Africa. Firstly in 2008, China Development Bank bought a 20% stake in South Africa Standard Bank. Secondly, in 2012, China bought a 74% stake at Palaborwa Mining Company (PMC) from Rio Tinto and Anglo American.39 Thirdly, in 2013, Wesizwe Platinum (located in the Platinum Belt of South Africa), which operates Bakubung platinum mine near Rustenburg received USD$650 million from China Development Bank. Also, China was to acquire 45% share ownership of the mine.40 Withthe ANC government’s help, China is slowly taking over the mining operations in South Africa. The Zambian Experience However, unlike the South African mining industry, the Zambian experience has been marred by turbulence since the defeat of direct colonialism. The discovery of copper in Zambia in the late 1880s saw the country being annexed under direct rule from London.41 The copper mining industry in Zambia developed in the 1920s when payable deposits were discovered in large quantities. The American and South African mining companies dominated the mining operations, driven by the prospects of making high profits. From this moment in time, up to 1969 at least, the boom in the copper mining industry saw the country classified as a middle-income country and attracted a lot of foreign investors and white foreign nationals.42 Ferguson further argues that the copper mining industry put Zambia on the world map, known to the Western countries for its high-quality mineral. However, from 1964 when the country got its independence from Britain, the incumbent government began to initiate reforms that were meant to empower the black majority by nationalizing its resources. The mining industry was targeted as the main driver of economic growth and an entry point to the black majority’s national economy. At least in principle, the government was justified in its attempt to empower the previously colonized black people who felt a sense of exclusion and abjection from the benefits of the mainstream economy. According to James Ferguson, this was the beginning of the Zambian economy’s de-industrialization, also known as the

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Zambianization project.43 In 1969 the government initiated a law that saw 51% of mine ownership given to the government, which was known as the Matero Declarations, which resulted in the formation of the Zambian Industrial and Mining Corporation (ZIMCO); the ZIMCO was run by the state, and its managers were state appointees and chaired by the minister of mines.44 The fall between national politics and capital proved to be disastrous to the national economy. Before privatization, copper production was estimated to be at 720,000 tonnes, while the mines employed about 50,000 people. By the year 2000, production had plummeted to 250,000 tonnes with an employment of about 20,000 people.45 The slump in the economy resulted from disinvestment by foreign companies. It resulted from failed reinvestment in the mining industry where mining equipment was never repaired, and the global copper prices fell. However, according to Miles Larmer, the obsession with controlling the country’s economy by some nationalists was not driven by the desire to redistribute wealth but rather an indigenous control of these institutions. Like many other African Nationalists in Africa, the vision of the national liberation movement in Zambia was framed based on the mines’ productivity. The failure of this industry also translated to the failure of these governments.46 The post year 2000 saw a boom again in the copper mining industry and a rise in the number of people employed by this industry mainly due to restructuring, which took place in the form of privatization initiatives, which included the selling of mines owned by the government. This process saw the de-industrialization back to the industrialization, from Zambianization to deZambianization.47 In short, the Zambianization project proved to be a failure, which put many Zambians out of employment and into poverty. However, despite this boom, Chinese-owned mines, for example, Chambishi Mine and Luanshya mine owned by China Nonferrous Metal Mining Ltd (CNMC), have recorded the most inhuman working conditions in the country, with its workers paid below the average wage by any Zambian.48 In June 2020, the government of Zambia was warned by Copper Energy Company (CEC) (a private energy sector company) not to interfere in the mining industry; it also said the focus should attract direct foreign investment. This came after the government had tried to repossess some of the mines after a payment disagreement. As of the year 2020, copper produced 75% of Zambian exports and employed about 65,000 people, while the government struggled with a USD11 billion debt from China.49 In 2011 the Human Rights Watch (HWR) published a damning report on the gross violations of workers’ rights by the Chinese-owned companies. More so, the report stated that Zambia was taking the route of the 1990s when the copper mining industry collapsed as a result of nationalization.50 In May 2020, the mayor of Lusaka in Zambia revoked some of the licenses given to the Chinese business people, accusing them of racism against the Zambian people. The hatred of the Chinese was further sparked by reports of mistreatment of Africans in China reported on BBC News on the 17th of

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April 2020, accused of spreading the coronavirus.51 Social media users and commentators have also lamented how the Chinese in Zambia treat the local black population. The Zimbabwean Experience The gold mines of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were a source of coerced labor and injustices against the native populations. It was a ruthless form of industry (more ruthless than the diamond mines and the gold mines of South Africa) where labor was captured from the surrounding territories and forced to work in these mines owned largely by European and American companies.52 The general relationship between the state and the capital made sure that the mines’ profits were attained through violent means. Chibaro also means (Chibaro is no longer in use) rape in the Shona language of then Southern Rhodesia, implying force and unwillingness. In this respect, van Onselen describes how labor touts, and their runners captured young people in Southern Rhodesia and Portuguese-run Mozambique for work on the diamond and later gold mines, with those who refused to have their homes destroyed. Their food stock burnt down as a way of forcing them to seek wage labor. Those who ‘voluntarily’ went to look for employment in the South African mines were often intercepted or captured and forced into Zimbabwe’s Chibarolabor. The mining industry in Rhodesia grew to become one of the vital economic spring-board for the southern African nation as it employed people from all over the region. Major foreign companies such as Rio Tinto, Lonrho (UK), Anglo American (USA), British South African Company (SA), the Rhodesian Selection Trust (UK), Union Carbide (USA),Messina Transvaal (SA), Falcon Mines (UK), Johannesburg Cons Inv (SA), Turner & Newall (UK) all involved in the extraction of minerals such as gold, copper, tin, nickel, iron ore, chrome, and zinc.53 In the early years of Zimbabwe’s independence, the political leadership and alliances sought to maintain the status quo in the mining industry by limiting the cost of labor, strengthening labor laws, controlling unions to attract foreign companies to invest in the country, indicating a hold of the capitalist models.54 During this time, the state and capital had a cozy relationship; after the 1970s global economic turmoil that affected many industries, the black government of Zimbabwe sought to give loans to mining companies as an incentive for them to stay and invest in the country; about 75% of the country’s capital assets were still in the hands of foreign companies during this time. According to Gilberthorpe, the 1990s was considered as the golden age of the mining industry as the industry attracted foreign investors and capital due to its profitability and favorable conditions of investments. In the period of the early and late 1990s, Zimbabwe was one of the leading producers of gold and chrome in Africa (Zimbabwe was 3rd in Africa and top ten in the

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world among the leading producers of gold), boosted highly developed mining infrastructure and higher levels of skilled labor in the mining sector. Structural adjustment programs introduced in the early 1990s were favorable with the mining companies. This saw the industry boom at its all-time high despite structural adjustments being criticized for being in favor of capital than the workers.55 Zimbabwe is popular for its indigenization project, which saw large tracks of lands being seized from white commercial farmers, and so do the mines whereby 51% of mining shares were to be handed to the government. However, the result of it saw Zimbabwe moving from being the economic powerhouse of Southern Africa to one of the poorest in the whole world, and this triggered a mass migration of its citizens to neighboring countries such as Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Swaziland, and Namibia. The failure of nationalization policies saw most of Zimbabwe reduced to a country of beggars and jobless people. The introduction of the controversial land reform program in Zimbabwe in the early year 2000 saw 14 major mining companies closing their operations and a decline in the extraction and production of the minerals.56 The Fast Track Land Reform (FTLR) program contributed to the collapse of the mining sector, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors as foreign investors pulled out of the country. In the mining sector, the conflict between Zimplats Holdings Limited (Zimplats) and the main South African companies led to a total collapse of the industry.57 Some argued that instead of benefiting the Zimbabwean companies, the mining industry’s restructuring saw more South African companies benefiting from this chaotic economic situation. According to Saunders, only regional companies in South Africa took advantage of foreign companies’ departure in Zimbabwe for fear of being blacklisted. They quickly occupied the role of being leading investor companies. Thabo Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy toward Robert Mugabe’s government benefited the South African business and investments.58 The dwindling of foreign currency reserves all affected the supply of raw materials and other services to the mines, which led to a near-catastrophic economic situation. The inflation rate skyrocketed to record levels. For example, in 2008, it was estimated that daily inflation rates amounted to 98% (80 billion percent on month-on-month bases), something which has never been experienced in the twenty-first century.59 Violence, expropriation, torture, killings, and intimidation became the order of the day, particularly in the farming communities. Like in Zambia (the Zambianization of mines), the Zimbabweanization of the economy was a total failure. The failure of the mainstream mining industry resulted in another problem of illegal mining. The beneficiaries of the indigenization project also faced a new reality, the shortage of foreign currency and new sanctions imposed by the Western countries and America.60 As the economic hardships continued to bite, more and more people sought employment in the informal sector, and illegal mining provided many people with necessary economic relief. But

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artisanal mining was marred by violence, killings, and intimidation. Powerful politicians and the army controlled much of these illegal operations around the country. The few black bourgeoisie produced by the ruling party ZANU PF controlled most of the country’s economic resources and sometimes partnered with the new superpower, China. China had continued to become the leading superpower in Zimbabwe since the fallout of relationships between Harare and London. China operated outside the influence of Western-imposed sanctions and was quick to fill the Western powers’ void. The current vice president of Zimbabwe, who was the mastermind of the coup that removed the long-time dictator Robert Mugabe has been receiving medical treatment in Beijing, and it was also rumored that he is being positioned to become the next president of the country by both China and the ruling party ZANU PF. The discovery of lucrative diamond deposits in Chiadzwa in 2006, in Mashonaland Province of Zimbabwe, saw many people killed, thousands displaced by the army while diamonds together with the Chinese companies were looted by army officials and government officials associated with Robert Mugabe regime. Thousands of people were used as slave labor in these heavily guarded mine sites by the army. Mineworkers have turned into slave laborers were reports of summary executions for those who opposed the takeover of these deposits.61 To date, Zimbabwe has been labeled as one of the poorest countries in the whole world, where human rights are violated daily, and democracy has been crushed by the security forces linked to the ruling ZANU PF elites.62 This led to the expulsion of Zimbabwe from the Kimberly Certification Process, which implied that diamonds produced in Marange Chiadzwa were considered as Blood Diamonds because of the nature at which they are extracted.63 Money from looted diamonds was also used to buy arms and fighter jets from China to crush the rising discontent among citizens and the opposition.64 Some believed that the Zimbabwean government’s capture was so deep that all political decisions were controlled and supervised by the Chinese government in Beijing.65 Furthermore, according to,66 Billions of aid money has been fronted by the Chinese to the government of Zimbabwe. Some human rights organizations have accused the government of looting the same money donated and crushing the opposition parties and descending voices.

China, the New Colonial Power in Africa Unlike in the days where coloniality and, in particular, coloniality of power, in general, was cantered in the global North (in London and Washington), now it looks like the power is slowly shifting to the East, in Beijing. The center is no longer holding anymore. China has developed some appetite for being a new colonial power by imposing its presence in Africa through various trade deals designed to strengthen its foothold in the continent. Capitalizing on the fall of direct colonialism and the rise of the continent’s nationalist movements, China has taken advantage of this radical change by positioning itself as the

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new master in the continent. It has also projected itself as the solution to the decolonial cries of all over Africa. Some have argued that China has become a better colonial power than the West because it offers a win–win development situation.67 The demand for African products and rising African markets has attracted the world’s populous countries such as India and China. It was estimated that more than 100 Chinese state-owned companies are operating in Africa and about 1600 small privately owned Chinese companies.68 Labor-intensive industries that employ more people in Africa through the Chinese and the Indian investment in Africa are increasing. Still, they also have been accused of gross inhuman treatment of black people in Africa. As in the coloniality of power, race is used as an organizing principle in labor relations and social relations. Despite employment creation, infrastructure development, investments in agriculture, mining, and construction, the Chinese companies have been accused of over-extraction of resources leading to extinction, destruction of the environment, and the destruction of domestic industry through the supply of cheap goods which some people have labeled as fake good, more so, in some cases, the outsourcing of labor from China whereby Chinese companies will bring their workers instead of employing the local people. The Chinese have been described as practicing a ruthless neo-colonialist authoritarian capitalism worse than Western colonialism. Furthermore, in Zambia in 2011, Hillary Clinton warned Africans that the Chinese took over African resources. The relationship was an exploitative one; more so, she acknowledges that the USA and China competed for global influence. In Nigeria, in 2011, the British Prime Minister David Cameroon warned that China was invading Africa.69 Chinese influence is felt throughout the African continent. In Zimbabwe, similar stories have been told where the Chinese mistreated local people through physical abuse and overworking their workers without payment. The political ruling class has been implicated in this as most of them stand accused of owning properties in China and Singapore. The Vice President of the country, Constantine Chiwenga, is seen to be close to the Chinese government. In South Africa, the relationship between the Gupta family and the former president Jacob Zuma and other ANC members has also been described as a corrupt one. President Zuma’s family is said to hold 183 company directorships.70 The project of black empowerment helped create a minority black bourgeoisie class. The Guptas owned several mines in South Africa, which also have been accused of overworking and underpaying its workers. In contrast, money has been siphoned to foreign bank accounts in Dubai and India. South Africa is a member of the BRICS, which is another global, regional economic block that is directly challenging the establishment of Western financial institutions, manufacturing industries, and coloniality of power from the West. By and large, this also raises a critical question for the African future: is it possible for Africa to move away from the coloniality of power foothold

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in the continent? This is a crucial question that the Africa Union should be dealing with, and every country should design policies that are pro-African development. The backlash of the Western powers on Chinas’ influence seems to be mainly motivated by the competition for looting Africa’s resources; for example, the US has labeled China’s investments as ‘rogue’.71 This is a clash of the titans, and as they say, when two bull elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers most, and in this case, Africa and Africans are the grass that is trampled upon by the coloniality of power. According to Hairong and Sauton, the US Ambassador to African Union, Michael Battle, warned the US government that if the US does not take up investment opportunities in Africa seriously, China and India will take everything, and the US will squander the golden opportunity of investment. This statement is critical because it also helps us to understand that both the US and China have no continent at heart; their intentions are mainly business and investment opportunities but not driven by the prospects of developing the continent and humanity at large. More so, if the Americans lose their foothold in the continent, they will probably use every means of returning their position as the superpower by toppling democratically elected governments and sponsoring armed rebellions. This same applies to the Chinese people when they are driven out of the continent.

The Role of African Elites The black ‘diamonds’ in the context of South Africa are often accused of taking money from the government meant for the tenders and using it to buy flashy cars and beautiful houses and overseas holiday trips while the majority of black people are languishing in poverty.72 Under these conditions, Africans and African countries are struggling to create their futures and shaping their destiny and configuring their development.73 The entrapment in the coloniality snares in the mining industry in South Africa has made it possible that mining shares are often allocated to people linked to the ANC’s top structures. A good example is former President Zuma’s nephew Khulubuse Zuma and the grandson of the former President Nelson Mandela, Zondwa Mandela, and Michael Hulley, Zuma’s lawyer. And all of them stand accused of human rights abuses at Aurora Mine.74 KhulubuseZuma was criticized for throwing an expensive wedding party while his mines faced a huge financial crisis and his mineworkers went without pay for months. During the time when his Aurora Mine was being closed down and facing liquidation due to lack of funding and mineworkers had not been paid for months, Khulubuse Zuma is also said to have donated one million Rands to the ANC party.75 Frederick Chiluba of Zambia looted the country coffers into foreign bank accounts. In contrast, the country suffered from deep economic depression due to the government initiative to nationalize the country’s mining industry.76 The looting of USD15 billion worth of diamonds from Chiadzwa in Zimbabwe by members of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF elites and the Chinese counterparts and the multiple farm ownership by Robert Mugabe and

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his cronies is a testimony that corruption is the biggest enemy of progress in the African continent. While elsewhere in Africa, in Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko was accused of plundering the country’s resources, in Nigeria, Sani Abacha was accused of siphoning money from the state coffers to foreign international bank accounts, in Angola, Jose Eduardo dos Santos plundered the countries coffers through a network of his daughter’s companies based abroad, in Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi was accused of channeling state money to foreign banks, and indeed Omar Al Bashir of Sudan was also accused of the same crimes. The list goes on and on. Black political leadership and the elites have all been part of the global capitalist system to make profits and an entry point for coloniality of power. In some cases, global capital has been influencing elections and sponsoring opposition political leaders, and sponsoring coups. To date, no one knows the origins and the rise of terrorist organizations around Africa and the recent victim being Mozambique after discovering large gas and oil reserve. Similarly, the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Al-Shabaab in the horn of Africa, and the Al-Qaeda in North Africa can be linked to the fight for control of Africa resources. The challenge of creating our future as Africans is limited because our future is determined by other people, not by the Africans themselves; decisions are made by the global institutions of power and enforced through the military might of the superpowers. Michael Neocosmos argued that the promotion of liberalism in other African countries had been done through force, and those opposed to this have either been killed or eliminated otherwise.77 In thinking through our future as Africans, we have to think through and navigate global coloniality. The African Union’s (AU) Agenda 2063 entails a future African embodied in pan-African unity, integration, and peace; more so, this vision acknowledges the fact that Africans must be the lead drives and forces that must operate within the global context.78 However, global snares have put Africans and African people in a difficult position. This is why corporate capital and global powers wield a lot of influence on our daily labor struggles and policies. In that regard, we have to be mindful that our African governments have failed in many cases, particularly in dealing with the issues of corruption and bad governance. Perhaps Frantz Fanon was true in his assessment of an African bourgeoisie when he said the African elite was good for nothing but to plunder his country for personal gains and banking his loot in foreign banks.79 A question must be asked, what is wrong with us as Africans? Furthermore, maybe Mahmood Mandani had a point when he argued that the Europeans left an unfinished Africa project.80 African elites have been implicated in the plundering of their economies with global powers’ assistance and, more so, even banking their loot in foreign countries. On the contrary, the continued interference in African politics by the USA, Russia, and Western powers and their support of these African dictators is concerned.81 But a deeper understanding of the coloniality of power and coloniality, in general, might give us the answers and

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the solutions we need. What is needed is to decolonize the institution that we inherited from the colonial powers. In most instances, decolonization has been replaced by deracialization, and deracialization is different from decolonization. Thus, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o talks about ‘decolonizing the mind,’82 which in itself is a very difficult process to achieve under the gaze of coloniality of power, which is coming from both the global North and from China. There is a need to decolonize the African ways of thinking and acting to achieve meaningful development on our terms.

Exploiting African Resources to Our Advantage and Development The South African, the Zambian, and the Zimbabwean situation gives us a practical example of the challenges the continent is facing regarding the restructuring of economies and infrastructure inherited from the colonial masters. First, the South African situation provides us with an economy that has been heavily reliant on the foreign corporate giants, and the economy is still fairly doing well; however, with the look east policy that the country is taking, it is easy to conclude that the result will be a total economic collapse as experienced in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Secondly, the Zambian situation provides us with an example of total economic failure after the nationalization calls and the subsequent recovery after the abandonment of the Zambianization project. Thirdly, in Zimbabwe, the country has experienced a total collapse of the economy due to the nationalization project, and the country’s population has been reduced to beggars. The Zambian and Zimbabwean scenarios tell a story of a total failure of African initiatives as a result of corruption, poor governance, looting, and coloniality as a result of sanctions. The exploitation of African resources needs coordination at the continental level in order to deal with the coloniality of power in the continent. Recently, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda have taken a bold stance toward the confrontation of coloniality of power by expelling the Chinese from these countries accused of mistreating the local population. For example, Tanzania’s president has recently canceled the trade deals signed between Tanzania and China, amounting to USD10 billion, accusing the Chinese of unfair and unethical trade deals. In the same vein, Kenya halted the Chinese deal of constructing a coal power plant.83 In this deal, China was to be given a 33year guarantee and a 99-year lease agreement, which the Tanzanians felt was an unfair deal meant to benefit China and keep China in a powerful economic position. This is a brave act of confronting coloniality head-on. If we want to be prosperous in our continent, we need leaders that think decolonial, leaders who think from and with the affected people of Africa. Trade deals must benefit most African citizens rather than a few African elites and their colonial masters. Cedric Robinson argued that for a struggle for black people to survive, it must be, in its terms, the collective wisdom and the experiences of that struggle.84 We need collective wisdom in Africa and an understanding

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of our history and where we are going. More so, Africa needs to develop and fund its financial institutions together with its project, and the AU must take a leading role in creating the conditions and infrastructure to fund projects; in the current situation, the majority of projects proposed by the AU are all funded and supported by the Western institutions. As Frantz Fanon would say, we need to create an African centered development and not aspire to be Europeans; we must envision another form of humanity. The continued division of African regions according to their former colonial masters, for example, the Anglophone, the Francophone, and the Lusophone regions, all creates problems of unity and regional cooperation in the continent. We also need to open borders and allow the free movement of goods, capital, and people across the continent. Africa continues to be closed to itself but opens to the outsiders. Africa needs to pull its resources together and craft its development and future without any colonial power interference. The policy should be coordinated at the Africa level to pursue the continent’s interests; pan-Africanism and decolonization should lead to economic and foreign policy. We need equitable sharing of knowledge globally; we must do away with the situation whereby knowledge from other continents is considered superior. Development must be defined in our terms, and we must refuse the colonization of global markets by neo-colonial superpowers. We do not need foreign solutions to our problems. We need to invest heavily in infrastructure development, knowledge and skills base, and eradicating poverty and illiteracy. However, as Ndlovu-Gatsheni argued, the coloniality of markets is necessitated by the demands for the extraction of Africa’s minerals at a large scale rather than industrialization and the advancement of technology that reduces Africa into a backward continent.85 We need to envision another form of modernity that is inclusive and fits our situation. In doing so, we need to guard against corruption, xenophobia, patriarchy, sexism, racism, tribalism, regionalism, and nepotism.

Conclusion The legacy of colonial conquest is alive in most African countries, and it is still influencing policy and redefining humanity and social relations. It is now complicated by the fact that new colonial powers are now taking over the continent. This is the same old wine in a new bottle. The development of Africa is still questionable many years after direct colonialism has left. Nothing has changed in terms of improving human dignity and the lives of many mineworkers and their families and African people in general. The mining companies and the super powers will use whatever means, be it through legal channels or unorthodox means of protecting their interests and most of the time using the state resources to protect them when vulnerable to angry workers who toil underground for a sub-wage. The various legislative measures to regulate mining in the many African countries are complicated because African political elites have chosen to abandon the African mandate in favor

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of incentives coming from both former colonial and neo-colonial partners. Big giant corporate companies have continued to enjoy profits and exploit cheap labor in Africa supported by corrupt African rulers whose interests are personal wealth and looting. The question of development must take the issues of human rights and dignity over profits and investments seriously. Both China and the West have the same economic interests. In the end, African resources are the ones being plundered bare and African lives compromised at will without any form of protection from the state as experienced with the massacre of 34 mineworkers at Marikana in South Africa in 2012. The mass killings and enslavement of illegal miners in Zimbabwe at Chiadzwa diamond deposits by state security forces is a reality and nature of an African bourgeoisie. The collaboration between the state and capital is becoming more and more desperate and toxic.

Notes 1. Adebajo, Adekeye. The curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War. University of KwaZulu Natal Press, Durban, 2010. 2. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. # RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at resilient colonialism in South Africa. Langaa RPCIG, 2016. 3. Hairong, Yan, and Barry Sautman. “‘The beginning of a world empire’? Contesting the discourse of Chinese copper mining in Zambia.” Modern China 39, no. 2 (2013): 131–164. 4. Mignolo, Walter. The darker side of western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press, 2011. 5. Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality and modernity/rationality.” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007): 168–178. 6. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. Empire, global coloniality and African subjectivity. Berghahn Books, 2013. 7. Grosfoguel, Ramón. “A decolonial approach to political-economy: Transmodernity, border thinking and global coloniality.” Kult 6, no. 1 (2009): 10–38. 8. Figueroa Helland, E. Leonardo, and Tim Lindgren. “What goes around comes around: From the coloniality of power to the crisis of civilization.” Journal of World-Systems Research 22, no. 2 (2016): 430–462. 9. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. Empire, 44. 10. Ibid., 181. 11. Helland, Leonardo, and Lindgren. “What goes around comes around”. 12. Grosfoguel, Ramón. “The epistemic decolonial turn: Beyond political-economy paradigms.” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007): 211–223. 13. Worger, William H. South Africa’s city of diamonds: Mine workers and monopoly capitalism in Kimberley, 1867–1895. Yale University Press, 1987. 14. Helland, Leonardo, and Lindgren. “What goes around”. 15. Capps, Gavin. “Victim of its own success? The platinum mining industry and the apartheid mineral property system in South Africa’s political transition.” Review of African Political Economy 39, no. 131 (2012): 63–84. 16. Yudelman, David. The emergence of modern South Africa: State, capital, and the incorporation of organized labor on the South African gold fields, 1902–1939.

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

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Cape Town, David Philip, 1984; Belinda Bozzoli, ed. Town and countryside in the transvaal: Capitalist penetration and popular response (1987): 151–239. Bakker, Karen. “The limits of ‘neoliberal natures’: Debating green neoliberalism.” Progress in human geography 34, no. 6 (2010): 715–735. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Decoloniality as the future of Africa.” History Compass 13, no. 10 (2015): 485–496. Yudelman, David. The Emergence. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Decoloniality in Africa: A continuing search for a new world order.” Australasian Review of African Studies, The 36, no. 2 (2015): 22. Worger. City of diamonds. Allen, Victor Leonard. The history of black mineworkers in South Africa: The techniques of resistance 1871–1948, Vol 1. The Moor Press, Yorkshire, 1992. Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton University Press, 2018. Magubane, Bernard. Race and the construction of the dispensable other. Unisa Press, 2007. Roberts, Brian. Kimberly: Turbulent City, Cape Town, David Philip Publishers, 1976; Worger. “South Africa’s city of diamonds”, 1987; Allen. “The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa”, 1992; Davenport, Jade. Digging deep: A history of mining in South Africa. Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2013; Van Zyl, Diko. The discovery of wealth, nineteenth century Heritage series, Don Nelson, Cape Town, 2013. Van Onselen, Charles. Chibaro: African mine labor in Southern Rhodesia 1900– 1933, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1976. Allen. “The history of black mineworkers in South Africa”, 1992; Harington, J.S., N.D. McGlashan, and E.Z. Chelkowska. “A century of migrant labour in the gold mines of South Africa.” Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 104, no. 2 (2004): 65–71. Magubane, Bernard. The political economy of race and class in South Africa. Vol. 167, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1979; Crush, Jonathan, Alan Jeeves, and David Yudelman. South Africa’s labor empire: A history of black migrancy to the gold mines. David Philip Publishers, 1991; Allen. “The history of black mineworkers in South Africa”, 1992; Mamdani. “Citizen and subject”, 2018. Cawood, Frederick T. “The Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002: A paradigm shift in mineral policy in South Africa.” Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 104, no. 1 (2004): 53–64. Minerals and Petroleum Development Act, No 28 of 2002 (MPRDA), Government Gazette, Republic of South Africa, 2002. Ibid. Booyens, Sarel Adriaan. “The scorecard for the broad-based socio-economic empowerment charter for the South African mining industry: A performance measuring instrument.” PhD diss., North-West University, 2006; Southall, Roger. “Ten propositions about black economic empowerment in South Africa.” Review of African Political Economy 34, no. 111 (2007): 67–84. Statista, 2019. Number of people employed by South Africa’s mining industry in 2019 by commodity. Available online at https://www.statista.com/statis tics/241420/south-african-mining-key-facts/.

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34. Corrigan, Terence. “Steering Mining into the Future”, 2019. 35. PWC Annual Report, 2019. Mine 2019: Resourcing the future. Available online at https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/energyutilitiesresour ces/publications/mine.html. 36. Alden, Chris, and Yu-Shan Wu. “South Africa and China: The making of a partnership”, 2014. 37. Ibid. 38. Jan Cronje. Moody’s cuts South Africa’s credit rating to junk. News24 online, 27 March 2020. Available online at https://www.news24.com/fin24/Eco nomy/just-in-moodys-cuts-south-africas-credit-rating-to-junk-20200327. 39. Harvey, Ross. “Nationalism with Chinese characteristics: How does it affect the competitiveness of South Africa’s mining industry?” 2014. 40. Ibid. 41. Sikamo, Jackson, Alex Mwanza, and Cade Mweemba. “Copper mining in Zambia-history and future.” Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 116, no. 6 (2016): 491–496; Limpitlaw, Daniel. “Nationalization and mining: Lessons from Zambia.” Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 111, no. 10 (2011): 737–737. 42. Sikamo et al. “Copper mining in Zambia”; Ferguson, James. “ ‘Global disconnect’: Abjection and the aftermath of modernization.” eds. Geschiere, Meyer, and Pels, Readings in modernity in Africa (2008). 43. Ferguson. “Global Disconnect”. 44. Sikamo et al. “Copper mining”. 45. Sikamo et al. “Copper mining”, 2016; Limpitlaw, Daniel. “Nationalization and mining: Lessons from Zambia” 2011; Larmer, Miles. “Historical perspectives on Zambia’s mining booms and busts.” In Zambia, mining, and neoliberalism, pp. 31–58. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2010. 46. Larmer. “Historical perspectives”. 47. Ferguson. “Global Disconnect”. 48. Ibid. 49. Simon Wolfe. The government of Zambia should step back. African Mining Market, 9 June 2020. Available online at https://africanminingmarket.com/ government-of-zambia-should-step-back/7097/. 50. Hairong, and Sautman. “The beginning”. 51. Danny Vincent. Africans in China: We face Coronavirus discrimination. BBC News, 17 April 2020. Available online at https://www.bbc.com/news/worldafrica-52309414. 52. Van Onselen. Chibaro. 53. Bradbury, John, and Eric Worby. “The mining industry in Zimbabwe: Labour, capital and the state.” Africa Development/Afrique et Développement 10, no. 4 (1985): 143–169. 54. Ibid. 55. Gilberthorpe, Emma. “Silver Bullets or White Elephants? An assessment of the effectiveness of Community Share Ownership Trusts in Zimbabwe’s Mining Industry.” PhD diss., Dissertation, University of East Anglia. Available at www. eastanglia.academia.edu, 2015. 56. Saunders, Richard. “Crisis, capital, compromise: Mining and empowerment in Zimbabwe.” African Sociological Review/Revue Africaine de Sociologie 12, no. 1 (2008).

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57. Gilberthorpe. “Silver Bullets”. 58. Saunders, Richard. “Crisis, capital”. 59. Nyamunda, Tinashe, and Patience Mukwambo. “The state and the bloody diamond rush in Chiadzwa: Unpacking the contesting interests in the development of illicit mining and trading, c. 2006–2009.” Journal of Southern African Studies 38, no. 1 (2012): 145–166. 60. Saunders, Richard. “Crisis, capital”. 61. Nyamunda, and Mukwambo. “The state and the bloody diamond rush in Chiadzwa” 2012; Maringira, Godfrey, and Tinashe Nyamunda. “Duty versus agency in the security state of Zimbabwe: soldiers’ deployment in Chiadzwa diamond mining.” The Extractive Industries and Society 4, no. 1 (2017): 172–179. 62. Saunders, Richard. “Crisis, capital”. 63. Nyamunda, and Mukwambo. “The state and the bloody diamond”. 64. Banerjee, Vasabjit, and Timothy S. Rich. “Diamonds and the Crocodile; China’s role in the Zimbabwe Coup.” The Diplomat 22 (2017); Asuelime, Lucky E. “A coup or not a coup.” Journal of African Foreign Affairs 5, no. 1 (2018): 5–24. 65. Banerjee, and Rich. “Diamonds”. 66. Ibid. 67. Alves, Ana Cristina. “China’s ‘win-win’ cooperation: Unpacking the impact of infrastructure-for-resources deals in Africa.” South African Journal of International Affairs 20, no. 2 (2013): 207–226. 68. Hairong, and Sautman. “The beginning”. 69. Ibid. 70. Southall, Roger. Liberation movements in power: Party & state in Southern Africa. Boydell & Brewer, 2013. 71. Hairong, and Sautman. “The beginning”. 72. Mbeki, Moeletsi. Architects of poverty: Why African capitalism needs changing. Picador, Johannesburg, 2009. 73. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. “Decoloniality as the future”. 74. Southall, Roger. “Liberation movements”. 75. Ibid. 76. Van Donge, Jan Kees. “The plundering of Zambian resources by Frederick Chiluba and his friends: A case study of the interaction between national politics and the international drive towards good governance.” African Affairs 108, no. 430 (2009): 69–90. 77. Neocosmos, Michael. From foreign natives to native foreigners. Explaining xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa: Citizenship and nationalism, identity and politics. African Books Collective, 2010. 78. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. “Decoloniality as the future”. 79. Fanon, Frantz. The wretched of the Earth London. Penguin, London, 1963. 80. Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and subject. 81. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. “Decoloniality as the future”. 82. Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. East African Publishers, 1986. 83. Sophia Yan. China’s ambition dealta blow ahead of G20 as Tanzania and Kenta projects grind to halt, The Telegraph, 27 June 2019. Available online at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/27/tanzania-sus pends-10-billion-port-project-new-blow-chinas-belt/.

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84. Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition. University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 85. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Decoloniality in Africa: A continuing search for a new world order.” Australasian Review of African Studies, The 36, no. 2 (2015): 22.

CHAPTER 17

It is Still Extractive Imperialism in Africa: Ghana’s Oil Rush, Extractivist Exploitation, and the Unpromising Prospects of Resources-Led Industrialization Jasper Abembia Ayelazuno and Emmanuel Graham Introduction Africa is neither marginalized by forces of the capitalist global economy nor bypassed by globalization. On the contrary, the continent is deeply integrated in the global economy for centuries.1 Forces of the capitalist global economy and neoliberal globalization have scrambled (and continue to scramble) for the continent’s natural resources, a time-honored tradition of the global order since the ignominious slave trade in the fifteenth century to the new scramble for Africa in the twenty-first century. However, the integration of Africa in the global economy has historically been on exploitative terms, something that has dealt a bad hand to the continent’s development. This is what Samir Amin conceptualized as the “(mal-)articulation of the economies of African countries with the capitalist global economy”.2 The ‘African “oil rush”’ is one of the signal examples of the continuity of the scramble for Africa.3 It illustrates that, far from bypassed by globalization, global capitals are rushing to accumulate profits in Africa, majorly in extractive industries.4 This contribution draws on the oil rush of Ghana to argue that the position of Africa in the present neoliberal global order can be better understood through the prism of the “new scramble” for the continent.5 By analyzing J. A. Ayelazuno (B) University for Development Studies(UDS), Faculty of Communication and Cultural Studies, Nyankpala Campus, Tamale, Ghana E. Graham Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_17

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the impact of the new scramble on the broader economies of resource-rich African countries we would know whether the position of Africa in the neoliberal world order has changed or not. Key to this analysis is the structural changes the new scramble engenders in the economies of resource-rich African countries. For example, we would know if the new scramble has led (or is leading) to a change in the international division of labor, and engendering structural changes in the predominantly commodities-dependent economies of African countries. Such changes will be dramatic, even revolutionary, and easily noticeable. Because they will transform the economies of African countries, which for centuries have operated mainly as monocultural and colonial trade economies,6 to manufacturing economies of scale and scope. As the experience of the advanced industrialized countries illustrates, these changes will have many beneficial spillover effects on the economies of African countries, with significant implications for the position of the continent in the neoliberal world order. The economies of advanced industrialized countries show that if the new scramble brings about the above-mentioned changes, the economies of African countries will be more productive, wealthier, bigger, and stronger. For example, Belgium is a tiny industrialized country with a population of 11.1 million people as of 2019. In this year, the wealth and size of its economy was 529.607 billion US dollars.7 In contrast, the population of Ghana for the same year was about 30.4 million, and the size and wealth of its economy a relatively tiny 66.984 billion US dollars.8 Many factors may be accounting for the wide gap in wealth between Belgium and Ghana, but a key influential factor is industrialization.9 A country’s development trajectory and the continent it emanates from dictates its position in the international system. Thus, the impact of the new scramble on industrialization in Africa can tell us a great deal about the position of Africa in the neoliberal world order. If it leads to industrialization, it will create jobs for the subaltern classes because of the features of industrialized economies described above. With the earning of incomes from these jobs, however menial and lowly paid they may be, the quality of life of the populace will improve significantly—all things being equal, to use that caveat of economist. If these conditions are spawned by the new scramble, then it has the potential to change the image of the continent as the home of the world’s most poor and miserable, as home of its “bottom one billion”, inflicted by bloody conflicts; all these happening despite its blessings with the abundance of natural resource wealth.10 As the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) human development reports have illustrated year after year, the advanced industrialized countries have the highest human development indicators and the lessindustrialized ones, such as African countries, have the lowest. For example, in 2019 Belgium was ranked among countries with the highest human development, placing 17th out of 189 countries. Ghana placed 142nd (UNDP 2019), at best, a medium human development country. Again, the reason for the wide gap in human development between Belgium and Ghana is industrialization.

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Industrialized economies of scale and scope generate many opportunities for people to improve the quality of their lives. For example, the capacity of the state to provide the infrastructure and public goods needed by their citizens to live good quality of life is enhanced by the productivity and wealth generated by economies of scale and scope. A prominent scholar of African international political economy labeled SubSaharan African states and their people as deprived, fragile and “subordinate.” He also argued that African states and their people are among those located at the lowest point of the global order in terms of influence, prominence, and stature.11 If the new scramble for Africa leads to the above-mentioned revolutionary changes in the international division of labor and the structure of the economies of African countries, this lowly and subordinate position of Africa will change. Rather than going, with cup in hand, begging for development aid, African states and their people will become respected actors of the neoliberal world order. As illustrated by countries such as China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia, the beneficial spillover effects of the structural transformation of their economies have elevated their positions in world politics and economics. Yet in the rest of the chapter, we will argue that, similar to the old scramble, the motor driving the new scramble is the insatiable thirst for African natural resources. Thus, the impact of the new scramble on Africa and its people is strikingly similar to the old scramble. As with the old scramble for Africa, the new scramble has not engendered any significant structural changes in the international division of labor. Nor has it yielded significant structural changes to Sub-Saharan African states economies. Despite the stupendous flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the extractive sector of Ghana, the beneficial spillover effects of economies of scale and scope delineated above are absent in the country; or are, at best, slight. The upshot of the analysis in this chapter is this: in the twenty-first century neoliberal world order, it is still the thirst for natural resources that is the major driving force of the new scramble for Africa. The continent still serves as a quarry for drawing raw materials to feed industries in the advanced industrialized and new industrializing countries such as China and India. Africa and its people are still victims of imperialist exploitation, thanks to the dynamics of global/continuous primitive accumulation.12

The New Scramble as Opportunity for Development? Viewed with the lens of business, The Economist, a leading mouthpiece of the neoliberal global order, describes the new scramble for Africa as benign, asserting that if “Africa handles the new scramble wisely, the main winners will be Africans themselves”.13 The Economist’s optimism about the benefits of the new scramble for Africans is neither an eccentric nor a marginal opinion. With respect to natural resources and the new scramble for them, major development actors share this optimism.

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Theoretically, some scholars have provided insights into why and how the scramble for African natural resources may be an opportunity for industrialization. A notable example is the research and theorization by Professors Mike Morris, Raphael Kaplinsky, David Kaplan, and other scholars of the Making the Most of Commodities Program (MMCP). Critiquing claims that extractive industries are essentially enclave economies in Africa, this oeuvre of work draws on the work of Albert Hirschman on linkages development, to show that there are huge opportunities for linkages from extractive industries to other sectors of the economies of African countries.14 They argue that if the right policies and steps are honed by governments to take advantage of these opportunities, the potential will arise for connections from the primary producing sector to give a substantial push for industrialization in the continent.15 The World Bank, perhaps, the most influential development actor in Africa, believes that that the diversification of the economies of this continent rests on its natural resources. “Africa’s industrialization”, The World Bank suggests, “is likely to be closely linked to natural resource endowments”.16 The World Bank and partners from the private sector believe that, besides offering host regimes or states with export earnings and royalties, a liberal mining sector full of foreign transnationals generates employment prospects for indigenous people, accelerates technology allocation, speeds up enhancements in development and infrastructure, leading to the increase in growth of downstream sectors.17 In the twenty-first century global order, the development vision of most African states is industrialization. They seek to accomplish this vision through industrial policies in which the state, not the market, guides industrialization.18 Natural resources are at the center of this new development thinking and practice.19 Similar to the World Bank’s view stated above, the credo driving this thinking is that natural resources are full of development opportunities which can be harnessed by countries endowed with them to transform their economies to manufacturing economies of scale and scope.20 This vision of development is captured in continental development frameworks such as Africa Union’s (AU’s) resource-based African industrialization and development strategy (RAIDS) and the 50-year Agenda 2063. Similarly, the Africa Mining Vision (AMV), RAIDS envisage industrialization in the continent through harnessing of the upstream, downstream, and side-stream value-chain activities of mining to engender the structural transformation of the economies of AU members. Essentially, the AU seeks to address the enclave economy problematic through forging mutually reinforcing linkages between mining and other core sectors of the economies of resource-rich countries.21 At the national level, resource-rich countries—Ghana, for example—are designing and implementing development policies which seem to be informed by these continental development blueprints. A well-cited example is the local content policies (LCPs). Oil-rich states such as Nigeria, Angola and Ghana, are striving to imitate the industrialization policies of the East Asian countries numerous years ago by designing and implementing LCPs.22 Fundamentally

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state-led, nationalist, and protectionist, LCPs are resource-led development policies that are based on the belief that oil/gas endowment is an opportunity for capable African states to leverage the structural transformation of their economies from raw material producers to industrial economies. To do this, states are expected to intervene directly in the oil/gas industry, through strategic policies that foster the forward and backward links between the petroleum sector and other sectors of the economy. Local ownership and participation across the value-chain of oil/gas production—upstream, midstream and downstream—should constitute the main driving force of these policies.23 For example, Ghana’s LCP on the oil/gas seeks, rather ambitiously, to deploy an operational local content and local input policy as the foundation for “achieving the goals for the oil and gas sector with full local participation in all aspects of the oil and gas value chain of at least 90% by 2020.”24 This thumbnail sketch of the development thinking and policies of African states and continental/regional bodies demonstrates that leading development actors seem to have embraced The Economist view that the new scramble is an opportunity for development. Acting on this belief, resource-rich states like Ghana are determined to attract foreign oil companies to their countries by giving generous, sometimes, ridiculous incentives to them.25 The reasoning is that, the high demand for Africa’s mineral resources in the world market, backed by the huge business interests of multinational companies who are rushing to invest in extracting these resources, could be channeled to promote industrialization in Africa, if the right policies like LCPs are implemented. There is a sense in which the “new extractivism” in Latin American is also alive and kicking in Sub-Saharan Africa.26

Twenty-First Century Global Economy and Extractivist Imperialism in Africa Critical perspectives of the global order are not so sanguine about the development prospects of the new scramble for Africa. Essentially, the new scramble is the rush by global extractive capitals to invest in extractive industries such as mining and oil production—henceforth, the natural-resources rush27 —to make super-profits. These global extractive capitals are the transnational corporations (TNCs), mostly from the Western industrialized countries and other countries from the global north, with the financial capital to invest in the exploration and production of natural resources such as gold, oil, coltan, and diamond. The natural-resources rush is driven by specific forces of the twenty-first century neoliberal global order and economy. Some of these forces may be specific to this order, but others are inherent to capitalism and the capitalist global economy; as such, are as old as capitalism and the global economy. These forces interact to make extractive capital and extractive industries in Africa “extractive imperialism,” a concept formulated to capture and analyze

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the Latin America natural-resource rush.28 Simply put, natural-resources rush in Africa is new imperialism writ large.29 There is no space here to discuss fully these forces and how they drive extractive imperialism in Africa. For this chapter, it will suffice to provide just a collage of them. For example, a major force driving extractive imperialism in Africa is the great powers such as USA, UK, France, and recently, China, that create and manage the international order. Norms are constitutive elements of international orders, designed to govern the behavior and relationships between actors in the global sphere. Yet these norms are often designed to serve the interest of the powerful states, and are even changed when they no longer serve their interests.30 Though, not necessarily beholden to the whims and caprices of these stronger states, some of the domestic policies of weak states—such as the liberalization and opening of their economies to foreign extractive capitals to invest in their natural resources sectors—are powerfully influenced by the powerful states, not just through the above-mentioned norms. But also, because weak states, such as those in Africa, receive development aid from the powerful states, as well as the international development institutions they control, making them malleable to the influence of these so-called development partners.31 Raw materials from Africa are still critical to the health and survival of the twenty-first century capitalist economy; specifically, the health and survival of the economies of the great powers mentioned above. Despite the talk of sustainable/green energy, fossil fuel is still what powers the global economy, dominated by the economies of the countries of these great powers. For example, fossil fuel is still the main source of energy in most of the advanced industrialized countries, both Western and non-Western. Oil is not just of critical economic interests to the powerful states (such as USA and China) but equally important to their security interests. It is the security and economic interests of these states in oil that drive the African oil rush.32 The twenty-first century global economy, similar to the preceding centuries, is dominated by monopoly capitalism, of which “monopoly-finance capital” is one of its major constitutive elements.33 The primary commodities boom and multiply crises of the global economy in this century has made extractive industries, such as gold and oil, magnets for monopoly-finance capital; as it roams around the world, seeking opportunities to accumulate super profits.34 The nineteenth-century scramble for Africa was driven partly by finance capital; namely, “numbers of wealthy entrepreneurs with money burning holes in their pockets looking for new sites and activities in which to invest”.35 Finance capital of the twenty-first century neoliberal order is similarly in need of opportunities to invest; especially, in the wake of the global economic crises, circa 2007/2008. The new scramble and extractive imperialism are touchstones of monopoly-finance capital in search for profits in Africa.36

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Despite talks of a new international division of labor, vestiges of the old international division of labor exist in the twenty-first century, of which the role of Africa in the global economy as a quarry for drawing raw materials is the clearest example. The talk of the new international division of labor, as observed by Robert Zoellick, is informed by changes in the global economy, leading to what is described as the “end of the third world” as “some developing countries are emerging as economic powers” and “others are moving towards becoming additional poles of growth.” These changes, it is believed, have made the North and South, East and West categories “points on a compass, not economic destinies”.37 While this observation is true of some countries in Asia and Latin America, it does not reflect the situation in Africa. Indeed, Robert Zoellick, who made this observation as the President of the World Bank was attuned to the peculiarity of Africa. He indicated that, many African countries continue to import small and basic items such as soap and basic consumer goods.38 Despite the benefits of industrialization discussed above, Africa’s manufacturing industries performance has been discouraging. For example, its “share of global manufacturing value added fell from 1.2% in 2000 to 1.1% in 2008, [whereas] in Asia, it rose from 13 to 25% over the same period”.39 The natural-resources rush in Africa is a continuity of the longue duree of imperialist exploitation, which by its nature, does not lead to industrialization.40 Lastly, the new division of labor that Robert Zoellick points to above has not changed the monopoly the core capitalist countries have over financial markets, technology, access to natural resources, media and communication, and weapons of mass destruction; a monopoly that has given them undue advantage over countries in the periphery.41 The new international division of labor has, therefore, not changed the unequal and exploitative power structures of the global economy that have shaped the economies of African countries as producers and exporters of raw materials.42 Extractive imperialism in Africa is enabled, perpetuated, and underpinned by these unequal and exploitative power structures. Characteristic of the neo-liberal global order and economy, these dynamics have formed and shaped the “links between imperialism, primitive accumulation, and [the] scramble” for African natural resources.43 Conceptualized as neo-colonialism, Nkrumah’s prescient observation in the 1960s about the super-exploitation of Africa by the forces of the capitalist global economy still rings true in the twenty-first century global order.44 Neo-colonialism, Nkrumah correctly noted, is worse than classical colonialism because, “[f]or those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.”45

Ghana’s Oil Rush as Extractive Imperialism In this section, we illustrate why Ghana’s oil rush is quintessential extractive imperialism. As Fig. 17.1 illustrates, there is a flurry of oil exploration and

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Fig. 17.1 Map showing the major oil fields of Ghana and exploratory activities (Source Ghana Petroleum Commission: https://www.petrocom.gov.gh/maps/)

production activities in Ghana’s oil basins, a clear manifestation of one of the oil rushes in Africa. Rather than rely on worn-out evidence, we provide fresh evidence to support the validity of the claim that Ghana’s oil rush is an example of extractive imperialism. In the rest of the chapter, we present and discuss this evidence in three main themes: inequality in the sharing of oil wealth, exploitative petroleum agreements/contracts, and emerging enclave oil economy with shallow/few industrializing linkages. Inequality in the Sharing of Oil Wealth Exploitation is the defining tenet and characteristic of imperialism, in which the dynamics of production and distribution of primary commodities, such as crude oil and unrefined gold, are arrayed against resource-rich countries. They receive relatively little of the benefits from the extraction of their natural resources, yet they bear the brunt of the social and environmental ravages of the extraction. It is a little bit of an exaggeration—and borders on the use of politically charged language—to argue that resource-rich countries are “looted” or their resources are “grabbed” from them by the forces of imperialism. However, these hyperboles are deployed deliberately to amplify the inequality between resources-rich, less-developed countries and foreign TNCs

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in the power of production and sharing of the natural resource wealth of these countries.47 The fundamental law of Ghana, the 1992 Constitution vests Ghana’s oil wealth in the state on behalf of the people. Article 257(6) of the constitution states: “Every mineral in its natural state in, under or upon any land in Ghana, rivers, streams, water courses throughout Ghana, the exclusive economic zone and any area covered by the territorial sea or continental shelf is the property of the Republic of Ghana and shall be vested in the President on behalf of, and in trust for the people of Ghana”.48 However, as illustrated in Table 17.1, the foreign oil companies (FOCs) own, at least, 80% of the three main oil fields in the Tano-Cape Three Points Basin. The national oil company, the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC), biggest share of ownership is the Sonkafa Field (20%), but owns less than that in the other fields: 15% of the TEN Field and 13.64% of the Jubilee. Ghana has sold its ownership of the oil fields to the FOCs who have the technological and financial capacity to explore and drill oil offshore, in the state’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Atlantic Ocean. Two of the primary sources through which Ghana gets its share of the benefits of the offshore oil industry are its share of the crude oil and the various revenues it captures through its upstream petroleum fiscal regime. Table 17.2 illustrates the inequality between Ghana and the FOCs in the share of crude oil produced and the share of oil-revenues between 2011 and 2018. It shows that since Ghana started producing oil in 2010, the people of Ghana have received a small share of the crude oil and the oil-revenues pie. Ghana’s share of crude oil has consistently fallen below 20% for all the eight years except 2014. As will be discussed further below, because of Ghana’s low capacity of refining crude oil to consumable products such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and jet fuel, a big part of its share and all the share of the FOCs are exported to the core capitalist countries such as the UK, US, and the emerging economies like China, and India. For example, rather using it as feedstock for Table 17.1 Inequality of ownership of three oil fields Oil company

Foreign/local

Jubilee field

TEN field

Sonkafa field

Tullow Oil Ghana Kosmos Energy Anadarko GNPC Petro SA Eni Vitol Total

Foreign Foreign Foreign National Foreign Foreign Foreign

35.48% 24.08% 24.08% 13.64% 2.73% – – 100

47.18% 17.0% 17.0% 15.0% 3.82% –

– – – (20%)

100

(44.44%) (35.56%) 100

Source Skaten (2018), Adadzi and Godson-Amamoo (2019) and Tullow Oil Plc (2020)46

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Table 17.2 Summary of oil production and revenues accrued from Ghana’s oil sector from 2011 to 2018 Year

Total quantity (barrels) lifted

2011

24,451,452.0 3,930,189.0 (16.1%) 26,351,278.0 4,931,034.0 (18.7%) 35,587,558.0 6,793.449.0 (19.1%) 37,201,691.0 7,681,120.0 (20.6%) 37,411,661.0 5,730,090.0 (15.3%) 32,297,780.0 5,856,921.0 (18.1%) 58,659,625.0 9,781,251.0 (16.7%) 57,078,861.0 9,692,795.0 (16.9%) 309,039,906.0

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Total

Quantity (barrels) and percentage to GoG/GNPC

Quantity (barrels) and percentage to partners/FOCs

Amount of revenue to Ghana (US$)

Amount of revenue to FOCs (US$)

20,521,263.0 (83.9%) 21,420,244.0 (81.3%) 28,784,109.0 (80.9%) 29,520,571.0 (79.4%) 31,681,571.0 (84.7%) 26,440,859.0 (81.9%) 48,878,374.0 (83.3%) 47,386,066.0 (83.1%)

444,124,724

2,319,494,441.6

541,623,740

2,346,070,745.5

846,767,185

3,586,568,862.1

978,017,692.70 3,769,641,009.7 396,172,910

2,193,192,514.8

247,175,395

1,118,434,522.1

540,411,436.04 2,246,663,031.3 723,549,247

3,557,807,244.1

4,717,842,330 (22.3%)

21,137,872,371.20 (77.7%)

Source Ouroilmoney.org, Petroleum Commission Ghana, GNPC49

refinery industries, Ghana’s first share of crude oil from the Jubilee field was sold straightaway on the international market in March 2011.50 The main revenue streams of Ghana are royalties, carried interest, additional interest, income tax, additional oil entitlements, surface rentals and other sources.51 In terms of Ghana’s share of oil-revenues over the eight years, Table 17.2 shows that the people of Ghana received a total of US$4,717,842,330 (22.3%) while the FOCs obtained US$21,137,872,371.20 (77.7%). From liberal, business perspectives, this huge inequality between Ghana’s share and that of the FOCs may be explained away with many theories, including the investment capital and other costs incurred by the FOCs, costs which need to be recouped. There is some validity to such an argument; but they fly in the face of the long history of the exploitation of Africa by global extractive capitals. Viewed against this historical backdrop, this inequality is, in situ, what it is: veritable evidence of exploitation. The billions of dollars the FOCs earn are not ploughed back to the broader economy of Ghana. In fact, this is not the imperative driving the investment the FOCs make in Ghana’s petroleum sector. Being part of the dynamics of accumulation by monopoly-finance capital, the imperative driving the FOCs to invest in Ghana is super-profits, and the freedom to repatriate same back

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home to swell the pockets and accounts of their shareholders. Thus, one of the most important things to FOCs in an oil contract is the terms on which they can repatriate their profits. Ghana’s oil contracts are so liberal and generous to the ridiculous extent that there are no limits to the quantum of profits and other revenues FOCs can repatriate to their home countries.52 Exploitative Petroleum Agreements: Generous Incentives and “Sweet” Deals The point stated above needs to be fleshed out in more detail because it elaborates extractive imperialism. Oil contracts or petroleum agreements (to be used interchangeably here) are, perhaps, the best index of extractive imperialism. Because they are the legal regime governing a gamut of complex issues of the upstream petroleum industry; such as the upstream fiscal regimes, which the FOCs and the government of the oil-rich country have agreed upon for the exploration and production of this primary commodity. The oil contract can be exploitative to a greater or lesser extent, depending on whether the resource-rich country has the expertise and scrupulous leaders to negotiate better terms which minimize, or not, the exploitation of its citizens by the powerful FOCs and their home states. As the recent Global Witness report on the Guyanese oil contract with the USA oil giant, Exxon, illustrates, oil contracts can be super-exploitative if the state’s negotiation team is inexperienced or corrupt or both. The report claims that the contract was exploitative, because it deprived the people of Guyana US$55 billion.53 On paper, Ghana has designed a wide range of laws and institution to govern its upstream oil industry in accordance with international best practices.54 Yet, as noted above, the country’s oil contracts are liberal in granting generous incentives to FOCs.55 The aggregate outcome of this is the award of ‘sweet’ deals to FOCs. This means Ghana’s oil contracts have not minimized the exploitation of Ghanaians by FOCs. On the contrary, they have foisted on Ghanaians the exploitation of extractive imperialism, the more reason why the new scramble for Africa has not changed the historical position of the continent in the international division of labor. It still remains a region whose natural resources wealth has inflicted it with the violence of imperialism, as the powerful states of the neoliberal international order compete for these resources. The ‘sweetness’ of Ghana’s oil contract is evidenced by the generous incentives the government of Ghana gives to the FOCs. Several of the contracts give the FOCs (contractors) lower tax rates and tax exemptions. For example, royalties are calculated based on gross production of crude oil, but vary by oil blocks, depending on the depths of water they are located.56 Royalties in Ghana’s petroleum agreements range between 3 and 12.5% (EY Law LLP 2019; PWC 2017; see also Table 17.3). Ghana’s royalty-rates are the lowest in comparison to Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Congo, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Uganda.57

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Table 17.3 A summary of taxation of some Petroleum Agreement (PA) from Ghana’s oil fields Contractor—year

Field of operations

Summary of taxation

GNPC, CAMAC Energy Ghana Ltd and Base Energy Ghana Ltd. (2014)

Expanded Shallow Water Tano Block

GNPC (EXPLORCO) and Spring field E&P (2015)

West Cape Three Points (WCTP) block 2

GNPC and AMNI International Petroleum Development Company Ltd. (2014)

Central Tano Block, Offshore

GNPC, Britannia-U Ghana limited, Hills Oil Marketing Company Ltd. (2014)

South West Saltpond Block

GNPC, Heritage Exploration and Production Ghana Ltd, Blue Star Exploration Ghana Ltd. (2014)

Offshore South-West Tano Block

GNPC, COLA Natural Resources and MEDEA Development Ltd. (2013)

East Cape Three Points

GNPC, A-Z Petroleum Products Ghana Ltd., ECO Atlantic Oil and Gas Ghana Ltd., Petrogulf Ltd. (2014)

Deepwater Cape Three Point West Offshore Block

● 12.5% Royalty to the State ● 35% CIT ● No import and export taxes for foreign employees (PA, pages 49–51) ● 12.5% (New Discovery) 10% for the existing discovery of GDP as Royalty ● 35% CITa ● 12.5% Royalty to the State ● 35% CIT ● No importation and exportation taxes for foreign employees (PA, pages 42–44) ● 10% Royalty to the State ● 35% CIT ● No import and export taxes for foreign employees (PA, pages 46–48) ● 12.5% Royalty to the State ● 35% CIT ● No import and export taxes for foreign employees (PA, pages 52–54) ● 10% Royalty to the State ● 35% CIT ● No import and export taxes for foreign employees (PA, pages 41 and 42) ● 12.5% Royalty to the State ● 35% CIT ● No import and export taxes for foreign employees (PA, pages 40–42)

a The scanned document ends on page 60. While the table of content shows a total of 100

pages. Therefore 40 pages are not available online at https://resourcecontracts.org/search?q=& country%5B%5D=gh&resource%5B%5D=Hydrocarbons (Resource Contracts 2019) Source Author’s compilation from Petroleum Agreement (PA)/Contracts66

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The corporate income tax of Ghana is pegged at 35% in Ghana’s petroleum agreements. On the surface, this is high and good for the people of Ghana because, more revenue can be captured from the FOCs. But if probed deeper, it is a generous incentive to the FOCs because of a number of reasons. For instance, the corporate income tax is computed net of all expenditures that the FOCs acquired in the oil and gas operations, agreed by the Petroleum Commission and the Ghana Revenue Agency as petroleum sector costs.58 The deductions allowed as petroleum cost are wide-ranging and betoken the ‘sweetness’ of Ghana’s oil contracts. They comprise rental fees, royalties, interest on fees and loans, expenditures on maintenance, repair or change of machinery, debts directly acquired in the conduct of petroleum activities, financial inputs into pension or provident funds accepted by the Petroleum Commission, capital allowance and losses from the previous year of assessment.59 Furthermore, the Petroleum Income Tax Law of Ghana allows for unlimited carried forward of losses by FOCs.60 This is a generous incentive that is exploitative. As correctly noted by Kankam and Ackah, because there is no limit to the deductible interest mentioned, FOCs can ‘siphon funds away under the cover of interest thereby reducing chargeable profit.61 ’ Yet, the two authors see the unlimited carry forward of losses and non-capping of the exploration and development cost recovery as a strength of Ghana upstream fiscal regime; the reason being that it will make Ghana’s oil industry investorfriendly.62 However, based on the history of extractive imperialism and the nature of the forces of the capitalist global economy discussed above, we consider this deductible part of the ‘sweetening’ of Ghana’s oil contract, and for that matter, it is also exploitative. As Table 17.3 illustrates, FOCs are also given a number of generous tax exemptions by the Government of Ghana. For example, oil contracts provide for exception from input into Ghana’s social security/pension for emigrant employees of the Contractor/Supplier and Subcontractor.63 Other exemptions are customs and import levies and duties related to import of equipment and other goods for oil and gas operations.64 The Value Added Tax (VAT) rate in Ghana is 17.5%. However, FOCs and their Subcontractors and Affiliates are exempted from paying VAT.65 Uncritical liberal perspectives of extractive industries in Africa see these ‘sweeteners’ of Ghana’s oil contracts as strategies of making Ghana’s petroleum sector attractive to FOCs; otherwise, the reasoning goes, they would be wooed by other oil-rich countries who may give them ‘sweeter’ deals. This sort of reasoning is part of the discursive apparatus of the neoliberal global order, that enables extractive imperialism, while simultaneously seeking to mask same by presenting FOCs as partners of Africa’s development. Situated in the longue duree of the scramble for Africa, these generous incentives are part of the exploitative mechanisms of the forces of extractive imperialism in Africa.

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Ghana’s Enclave Oil Industry: Shallow and Few Industrializing Linkages As discussed above, a good index of the change (or otherwise) of Africa’s position in the neo-liberal world order is the industrialization of the economies of resources-rich countries; based, partly, on the mutually reinforcing linkages between their extractive industries and other (non-extractive) sectors. This has led to industrialization of resource-rich countries like, Norway, Canada, Australia, and USA. Extractive industries have also played an important role in the industrialization of countries such as USA, Sweden, Germany, UK, South Africa, Malaysia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Trinidad, and Tobago.67 However, in most of resource-rich African countries, resources-based development is rare. Characteristic of extractive imperialism, the dynamics of accumulation by global extractive capitals in the neoliberal world order have perpetuated the ‘enclavity’ of extractive industries in Africa. As also discussed above, we are witnessing in the twenty-first century similar forces of the capitalist global economy that created the enclave extractive industries in Africa in the nineteenth century through classical imperialism and the old scramble for Africa.68 Perhaps, no one, other than James Ferguson, has described so succinctly, albeit, vividly, the ways in which global extractive capital tends to perpetuate the enclave economy of extractive industries in Africa. He writes, We have become used to a picture of Africa as a continent abandoned by global capitalism. But this is not quite right. In fact, there has been a significant expansion of capital investment in Africa in recent years. This investment has come only to certain countries, and it has been overwhelmingly in the area of mineral resource extraction. In the midst of what have been generally very hard times on most of the continent, mining and oil extraction have boomed in several countries. What is noteworthy is the extent to which this economic investment has been concentrated in secured enclaves, often with little or no economic benefit to the wider society.69

Though written fifteen years ago, Ferguson’s observation is accurate today, as it was then, about the inherent tendency of global extractive capital to create extractive enclave economies in Africa. As already noted above, the experience of resource-rich industrialized countries shows that the benefits of extractive industries to the wider society can be generated by wide and deep linkages between extractive industries and other sectors of the economy. As the linkages development theory touched on above illustrates, it is the ability of an African state to forge deeper and broader linkages between its petroleum sector and other sectors of the broader economy that can address the problematic of the enclave economy described above by James Ferguson.70 If this is done successfully, it will push the industrialization plan of such a country up significant notches toward accomplishing resources-led industrialization.

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On paper, the linkages the government of Ghana seeks to promote through its LCP—and the laws and institutions designed to effectuate it—have good prospects of deepening and widening Ghana’s petroleum linkages in depth and breadth respectfully.71 However, there is a big gap in the implementation of Ghana’s LPC because of a myriad of challenges, some of which are technological, human, and finance incapacities; and others institutional and political.72 Consequently, the development linkages created are few and shallow in the petroleum sector of Ghana, redolent with the general situation in the extractive sectors of resource-rich African countries. As one masterful survey of the state of development linkages in African extractive industries revealed that, both in depth and breadth (especially the former), the linkages ‘are generally limited and have even declined in some extractive industries in some countries.’73 While Ghana has low infrastructural, technological, human-resource, and financial capacity to implement and accomplish its LCP objectives,74 it is precisely this capacity that is critical to establishing the wide and deep linkages required to drive Africa’s resource-led industrialization vision. For example, a state’s ability to promote the establishment of oil refineries and other petrochemical industries, required to add value to its crude petroleum, depends greatly on these elements of its development capacity. This means that, unlike the resources-rich advanced industrialized countries (USA, Australia, and Norway for example), forward linkages from the offshore oil industry to other onshore factories will be difficult to create—even with the most aggressive and nationalistic LCP as Ghana’s. As a result, few downstream activities or value-addition factories have been established in Ghana since it discovered and started producing oil about a decade ago. For example, factories such as oil refineries and petrochemical plants have not been established to refine the crude oil to finished consumer products such as jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, synthetic rubber, plastics, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals. Indeed, Ghana’s only major oil refinery company, the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), has been bedevilled with many challenges, which have reduced its refining capacity. TOR, whose establishment predated the oil discovery in Ghana by several decades, has a low refining capacity of 45,000 barrel per stream day (bpsd), out of the national demand of 65,000 bpsd.75 Yet it does not operate at its full capacity, and by some accounts, its processing capacity has ‘collapsed below the efficient level’, with a production rate of 3.5% in 2015; and in 2017, it failed to produce “any reasonable petroleum products for the whole year.”76 Ghana’s crude oil production has been rising between 2010 and 2020 because of the discovery of additional oil wells, leading to the production of hundreds of thousands of barrels a day and hundreds of millions of barrels of crude oil annually. The daily production is forecast to increase from approximately 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2019 to about 420,000 bpd by 2023.77 Considering its low refinery capacity, most of Ghana’s oil, if not all, is shipped out to the core capitalist countries. Interestingly, Ghana is a net importer of both crude and refined petroleum products, the cost of

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which is increasing with the surge in domestics consumption of energy and petroleum products. Several millions of barrels of crude oil are imported for power generation and as feedstock for TOR.78 Despite its oil discovery and production, Ghana is, essentially, a petroleumimport-dependent country.79 It spends billions of dollars on these imports, an expenditure that has serious negative implications for the country’s trade balance and overall balance of payment (BOP) position, as the huge oil import bills are paid with foreign exchange earned from its primary commodities exports.80 The country’s petroleum imports dependency depicts a quintessential ‘paradox of plenty’ and ‘resource curse’ of Africa.81 The country is rich in oil, produces and exports oil; yet it depends on the import of petroleum products for domestic consumption. So much the worse for Ghana, it imports the expensive, value-added petroleum products—for instance, gasoline and diesel—from the core capitalist countries. Paradoxically, some of these countries are the destinations of Ghana’s crude oil exports, as well as the home countries of the transnational oil companies exploiting Ghana’s petroleum wealth. To reemphasize, the major cause of this situation is the shallow and few development linkages that have characterized the Ghanaian oil industry because of the challenges of implementing the LCP and the laws backing it. These are not just usual or ordinary challenges faced by oil-rich countries all over the world. They are peculiar to the developing countries, especially in Africa, which are technologically handicapped and financially poor; conditions engendered and shaped by the dynamics of imperialism and neo-colonialism.82 Thus, the unpromising development linkages described in Ghana illustrates the continuity of the forces and dynamics that have created the ‘enclave’ extractive industries by the old scramble under classical imperialism. Similar to the old scramble, the shallow and slight development linkages between the Ghanaian petroleum sector and other sectors of the economy is the inherent characteristic of extractive imperialism, the goal of which is not to develop, but to exploit Ghana.

Concluding Remarks Africa’s natural-resources wealth, this contribution argues, is the main factor shaping its position in the global order; as such, it is a good indicator of its position in the changing global order. Historically, Africa has been subordinated to the powerful states of the global order as a quarry for drawing raw materials to serve the industrialization and consumption needs of their countries. However, a new development thinking, natural resourcesled industrialization, has emerged, presenting the new scramble for Africa as an auspicious moment for development; namely, that Africa can leverage on the opportunities offered by foreign direct investment in extractive industries to industrialize. This suggests that Africa’s position has changed in the changing global order from a situation of neo-colonialist exploitation to one of

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opportunities of development. Rather than being losers of the exploitation of their wealth, Africans can become winners; rather than a ‘hopeless continent,’ ‘Africa is rising.’83 Problematizing this optimistic perspective of the new scramble, this chapter argues, despite its peculiarities, it is strikingly similar to the old scramble in so many ways. The powerful forces of the global order, such as the great powers and monopoly capitalism—spearheaded by monopoly finance capital, have not ceased driving the scramble for natural resources in Africa. Indeed, specific dynamics of the neoliberal global order such as financialization and its tendency to plunge the capitalist global economy into cyclical crisis have made Africa’s natural resources a magnet for global extractive capitals. Supported by finance capital, they rush to Africa to seek investment avenues to make super-profits. Thus, the imperative driving the new scramble is exploitation (not development), the thrust of which is the production and shipping of raw materials from Africa to the core capitalist countries. Contrary to the optimism of resources-led industrialization, this chapter argues that Africa’s position in the present global order has not changed. As the analysis of Ghana oil rush illustrates, Africa is still under imperialist exploitation, with gloomy prospects of industrializing on the back of its natural resources.

Notes 1. Ake, C. 1981, A Political Economy of Africa. Harlow, Essex: Longman. Amin, S. 1972, ‘Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa: Historical Origin.’ Journal of Peace Research 9, pp. 105–119. 2. Ayelazuno, J.A. 2011, ‘Continuous Primitive Accumulation in Ghana: The Real-Life Stories of Dispossessed Peasants in Three Mining Communities.’ Review of African Political Economy 38(130), pp. 537–550, 542. 10.1080/03056244.2011.633827. 3. Klare, M., and Volman, D. 2006, ‘The African ‘Oil Rush’ and US National Security.’ Third World Quarterly 27(4), pp. 609–628. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01436590600720835. 4. Wengraf, L. 2018, Extracting Profit: Imperialism, Neoliberalism and the New Scramble for Africa. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 5. Frynas, J.G., and Paulo, M. 2007, ‘A New Scramble for African Oil? Historical, Political, and Business Perspectives.’ African Affairs 106(423), pp. 229–251. Moyo, S., Yeros, P., and Jha, P. 2012, ‘Imperialism and Primitive Accumulation: Notes on the New Scramble for Africa.’ Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 1(2), pp. 181–203. 6. Amin 1981. 7. World Bank, Profile of Ghana. https://data.worldbank.org/country/ghana? view=chart, 2020. 8. Ibid. 9. Ayelazuno, J.A. 2014a, ‘Oil Wealth and the Well-Being of the Subaltern Classes in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critical Analysis of the Resource Curse in Ghana.’ Resources Policy 40, pp. 66–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2013. 06.009.

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Ayelazuno, J.A. 2014c, ‘The ‘New Extractivism,’ in Ghana: A Critical Review of Its Development Prospects.’ The Extractive Industries and Society 1(2), pp. 292–302. Mijiyawa, A.G. 2017, ‘Drivers of Structural Transformation: The Case of the Manufacturing Sector in Africa.’ World Development 99, pp. 141–159. Collier, P. 2007, The Bottom Billion. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Watts, M. 2009, ‘Oil, Development, and the Politics of the Bottom Billion.’ Macalester International 24(1), 79–130. Clapham, C. 1996, Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival (Vol. 50). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Araghi, F. 2009, ‘Accumulation by Displacement: Global Enclosures, Food Crisis, and the Ecological Contradictions of Capitalism.’ Rev.: J. Fernand Braudel Centre 32(1), pp. 113–146. Araghi, F., and Karides, M. 2012, ‘Land Dispossession and Global Crisis: Introduction to the Special Section on Land Rights in the World-System.’ Am. Sociol. Assoc. XVIII(1), pp. 1–5. Ayelazuno, J.A. 2011. Ayelazuno, J.A. 2019, ‘Land Governance for Extractivism and Capitalist Farming in Africa: An Overview.’ Land Use Policy 81, pp. 843–885. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.06.037. Moyo, S., Yeros, P., and Jha, P. 2012, ‘Imperialism and Primitive Accumulation: Notes on the New Scramble for Africa.’ Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 1(2), pp 181–203. Taylor, I. 2019, ‘Understanding Africa’s Extractive Sector.’ South African Journal of International Affairs 26(2), pp. 303–306. The Economist. 2019, The New Scramble for Africa: And How Africans Could Win it. March 9th–15. Morris, M., Kaplinsky, R., and Kaplan, D. 2011,‘“One Thing Leads to Another”’—Commodities, Linkages and Industrial Development.’ Resource Policy 37, pp. 408–416. Ibid. Hansen, M.W. 2014, ‘From Enclave to Linkage Economies? A Review of the Literature on Linkages Between Extractive Multinational Corporations and Local Industry in Africa’ (No. 2). DIIS Working Paper. Bush, R. 2004, ‘Undermining Africa’. Historical Materialism 12(4), pp. 173– 201, 179. https://brill.com/view/journals/hima/12/4/article-p173_7.xml (accessed 17 August 2020). Hilson, G., and Banchirigah, S.M. 2009, ‘Are Alternative Livelihood Projects Alleviating Poverty in Mining Communities? Experiences from Ghana.’ Journal of Development Studies 45(2), pp. 172–196, 178. Stiglitz, Joseph E., Justin Yifu Lin, and Ebrahim Patel, eds. 2013. The Industrial Policy Revolution II: Africa in the Twenty-First Century. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Buur, L., Therkildsen, O., Hansen, M.W., and Kjær, M. 2013, ‘Extractive Natural Resource Development: Governance, Linkages and Aid’ (No. 28). DIIS Report. African Development Bank. 2007, Africa Development Report 2007: Natural Resources for Sustainable Development in Africa. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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Ramdoo, I. 2015, ‘Resource-based Industrialisation in Africa: Optimising Linkages and Value Chains in the Extractive Sector. Discussion Paper No. 179.’ http://ecdpm.org/wp-content/uploads/DP-179-Resource-BasedIndustrialisation-Africa-September-2015-ECDPM.pdf (accessed 7 June 2017). ECA/AU. 2013, ‘Making the Most of Africa’s Commodities: Industrializing for Growth, Jobs and Economic Transformation.’ Addis Ababa: ECA. https:// www.uneca.org/publications/economic-report-africa-2013 (accessed 6 May 2018). Bush, R. 2010, Conclusion: Mining, Dispossession, and Transformation in Africa. In A. Fraser and M. Larmer (Eds.), Zambia, Mining, and Neoliberalism: Boom and Bust on the Globalized Copperbelt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 237–286, 261. Ovadia, J.S. 2016, ‘Local Content Policies and Petro-Development in SubSaharan Africa: A Comparative Analysis.’ Resources Policy 49, pp 20–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2016.04.003. Tordo, S., Warner, M., Manzano, O., and Anouti, Y. 2013, Local Content Policies in the Oil and Gas Sector. World Bank, Washington, DC. Ovadia, Jesse Salah. 2016, “Local Content Policies and Petro-Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Analysis.” Resources Policy 49, pp. 20– 30. Government of Ghana (GoG). 2019, Ghana Local Content Policy 2010. Available at: http://www.eisourcebook.org/cms/December%202015/Ghana%20L ocal%20Content%20Policy%202010.pdf, 2010 (accessed 4 March 2019). Ayelazuno, J.A. 2016, ‘Oil-Rush, Great Recession, and ‘Development’ Implications for Africa Possibilities, Constraints, and Contradictions of OilDriven Industrialization in Ghana’. Africa Insight 46(1), pp. 45–70. Ayelazuno 2016, ibid. Ayelazuno 2014a, p. 295. Wengraf 2018. Taylor, I. 2019, ‘Review Essay: Understanding Africa’s Extractive Sector.’ South African Journal of International Affairs 26(2), pp. 303–306. Veltmeyer, H. 2012, ‘The Natural Resource Dynamics of Postneoliberalism in Latin America: New Developmentalism or Extractivist Imperialism?’ Studies in Political Economy 90(1), pp. 57–85. Petras, J., and Veltmeyer, H, 2014, Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism’s New Frontier. Brill. Wengraf 2018. Taylor 2019. Mearsheimer, J.J. 2019, ‘Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order.’ International Security 43(4), pp 7–50, 10. Williams, D. 2012, International Development and Global Politics: History, Theory, and Practice. London: Routledge. Klare, Michael, and Daniel Volman. 2006, ‘The African “Oil Rush”and US National Security.’ Third World Quarterly 27(4), pp. 609–628. Frynas, Jedrzej George, and Manuel Paulo. 2007. “A New Scramble for African Oil? Historical, Political, and Business Perspectives.” African Affairs 106(423), pp. 229–251. Ghazvinian, J. 2008, Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil. 1 edition. Orlando: Mariner Books.

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Ayelazuno, Jasper Abembia. ‘Oil-Rush, Great Recession, and ‘Development’ Implications for Africa: Possibilities, Constraints, and Contradictions of OilDriven Industrialisation in Ghana.” Africa Insight 46(1), pp. 45–70. Yergin, D. 2012, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. Revised, Updated ed. edition. New York: Penguin Books. Foster, J.B. 2010, ‘The Age of Monopoly–Finance Capital.’ Monthly Review 61(9), pp. 1–13. Petras, J., and Veltmeyer, H. 2014. Ayelazuno 2016. Wily, L.A., 2013, Enclosure Revisited: Putting the Global Land Rush in Historical Perspective. In T. Allan, M. Keulertz, S. Sojamo, and J.W. Allan (Eds.). Handbook of Land and Water Grabs in Africa: Foreign Direct Investment and Food and Water Security. London: Routledge, pp. 58–91, 73 (cited from Hobsbawm 1987). Moyo et al., 2012. Zoellick, R.B. 2010, The End of the Third World? Modernizing Multilateralism for a Multipolar World. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2010/ 04/14/end-third-world (accessed 15 August 2020). Ibid. Mijiyawa, A.G. 2017, ‘Drivers of Structural Transformation: The Case of the Manufacturing Sector in Africa.’ World Development 99, pp. 141–159, 141. Wengraf 2018. Taylor 2019. Amin 1997, pp. 4–5. Zoellick, R. B. 2010. Taylor, I. 2020. ‘Sixty Years Later: Africa’s Stalled Decolonization.’ Vestnik RUDN: International Relations 20(1), pp. 39–53. Moyo et al. 2013, p. 185. Taylor 2020. Nkrumah, K. 1965, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. International Publishers, New York, p. IX. Skaten M. 2018, Ghana’s Oil Industry: Steady Growth in a Challenging Environment. OIES PAPER: WPM 77: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Adadzi, F., and Godson-Amamoo, N.S. 2019, Ghana—The Oil and Gas Law Review—Edition 7—TLR—The Law Reviews. https://thelawreviews.co. uk/edition/the-oil-and-gas-law-review-edition-7/1210105/ghana (accessed 15 August 2020). Tullow Oil Plc. 2020, https://www.tullowoil.com/our-operations/afr ica/ghana/jubilee-field/, https://www.tullowoil.com/our-operations/africa/ ghana/ten-field/ (accessed 15 August 2020). Panford, K. 2017, Africa’s Natural Resources and Underdevelopment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, p. 47. Republic of Ghana. 1992, Ghana’s 1992 Constitution. http://extwprlegs1.fao. org/docs/pdf/gha129754.pdf (accessed 15 August 2020). Adadzi, F., and Godson-Amamoo, N.S. 2019, Ghana—The Oil and Gas Law Review—Edition 7—TLR—The Law Reviews. https://thelawreviews.co. uk/edition/the-oil-and-gas-law-review-edition-7/1210105/ghana (accessed 15 August 2020).

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49. Authors computation with data from, Ouroilmoney.org, 2019, Our oil Money Revenues. Available at: http://www.ouroilmoney.org/revenues/ (accessed 18 March 2019). Petroleum Commission Ghana. 2019a, Crude Liftings—Petroleum Commission Ghana. Available at: https://www.petrocom.gov.gh/lifting-fig ures/ (accessed 18 March 2019). GNPC Ghana National Petroleum Corporation. 2019, Available at: http:// www.gnpcghana.com/index.html (accessed 18 March 2019). 50. Kopinski, D., Polus, A., and Tycholiz, W. 2013, ‘Resource Curse or Resource Disease? Oil in Ghana.’ African Affairs 112(449), pp. 583–601, 590. https:// doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adt056. 51. Kankam, D., and Ackah, I. 2014, ‘The Optimal Petroleum Fiscal Regime for Ghana: An Analysis of Available Alternatives.’ International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy 4(3), pp. 400–410. Quartey, P., and Abbey E. 2020. “Ghana’s Oil Governance Regime: Challenges and Policies.” In A. Langer, U. Ukiwo, and P. Mbabazi (Eds.). Oil Wealth and Development in Uganda and Beyond: Prospects, Opportunities, and Challenges. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 331–350. 52. Ayelazuno 2016, 64. 53. Global Witness. 2020, Signed Away: How Exxon’s Exploitative Deal Deprived Guyana of Up to US$55 Billion. https://www.globalwitness.org/en/cam paigns/oil-gas-and-mining/signed-away-exxons-exploitative-deal-deprived-guy ana/ (accessed 15 August 2020). 54. Panford 2017. Adadzi and Godson-Amamoo 2019. 55. Ayelazuno 2016. 56. Kankam and Ackah 2014. 57. Ibid., p. 410. 58. Adadzi and Godson-Amamoo 2019, p. 152. 59. Ibid. 60. Kankam and Ackah 2014, p. 403. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. PWC 2017, 2017 Tax Guide for Petroleum Operations in Ghana. Available at: https://www.pwc.com/gh/en/assets/pdf/2017-tax-guide-for-petrol eum-operations-in-ghana.pdf (accessed 30 March 2019). Resource Contracts. 2019, ResourceContracts.org—Search Contracts. Available at: https://resourcecontracts.org/search (accessed 24 March 2019). 64. Ayelazuno 2016. Adadzi and Godson-Amamoo 2019. 65. PWC 2017. PWC-Africa. 2017, Oil and Gas Tax Guide for Africa 2017 . Available at: https://www.pwc.com/gh/en/assets/pdf/oil-and-gas-tax-guide-for-africa2017.pdf (accessed 30 March 2019). 66. Resource Contracts. 2019, Available at: https://resourcecontracts.org/search? q=&country%5B%5D=gh&resource%5B%5D=Hydrocarbons. 67. Hansen 2014, p. 11. Sigam, C., and Garcia, L. 2012, Extractive Industries: Optimizing Value Retention in Host Countries. New York and Geneva: UNCTAD, p. 25.

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68. Bond, P. 2006, Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation. Scottsville, South Africa: Zed Books. 69. Ferguson, J. 2005, ‘Seeing Like an Oil Company: Space, Security, and Global Capital in Neoliberal Africa.’ American Anthropologist 107(3), pp. 377–382, 378. 70. Hansen 2014, Sigam and Garcia 2012. 71. Acheampong, T., Ashong, M., and Svanikier, V.C. 2016, ‘An Assessment of Local-Content Policies in Oil and Gas Producing Countries’. The Journal of World Energy Law & Business 9(4), pp. 282–302, 293. 72. Ablo, A.D. 2019, ‘Actors, Networks and Assemblages: Local Content, Corruption and the Politics of SME’s Participation in Ghana’s Oil and Gas Industry.’ International Development Planning Review 41(2), pp. 193–215. Ablo, A.D. 2015, ‘Local Content and Participation in Ghana’s Oil and Gas Industry: Can Enterprise Development Make a Difference?’ The Extractive Industries and Society 2(2), pp. 320–27. 73. Buur, L., Therkildsen, O., Hansen, M.W., and Kjær, M. 2013, Extractive Natural Resource Development: Governance, Linkages and Aid. DIIS Report 2013:18, Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies, p. 85. 74. Abudu, H., and Sai R. 2020, ‘Examining Prospects and Challenges of Ghana’s Petroleum Industry: A Systematic Review.’ Energy Reports 6, pp. 841–858, 844. Amoako-Tuffour, J., Aubynn, T., and Atta-Quayson, A. 2015, ‘Local Content and Value Addition in Ghana’s Mineral, Oil, and Gas Sectors: Is Ghana Getting It Right.’ Accra: African Centre for Economic Transformation. Skaten, M. 2018, ‘Ghana’s Oil Industry: Steady Growth in a Challenging Environment. OIES PAPER: WPM 77: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Acheampong et al. 2016. 75. Tema Oil Refinery (n.d). ‘Company Profile.’ Available at: http://www.tor.com. gh/about-tor/company-profile/ (accessed 12 August 2020). 76. Abudu and Sai 2020, p. 847. 77. Stephenson, P.K., and Banda, H. 2019, ‘Ghana Oil Production to Double to Over 400,000bpd in Next Four Years. The Africa Report.’ Available at: https://www.theafricareport.com/16814/ghana-oil-production-to-doubleto-over-400000bpd-in-next-four-years/ (accessed 12 August 2020). 78. Marbuah, G. 2017, ‘Understanding Crude Oil Import Demand Behaviour in Africa: The Ghana Case.’ Journal of African Trade 4(1–2), pp. 75–87, 76. Abudu and Sai 2020, p. 849. 79. Ibid. 80. Marbuah 2017, ibid. Abudu and Sai 2020, ibid. 81. Panford, K. 2017, Africa’s Natural Resources and Underdevelopment: How Ghana’s Petroleum Can Create Sustainable Economic Prosperity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 82. Taylor 2020. 83. Onuoha, G. 2016, A ‘Rising Africa’ in a Resource-Rich Context: Change, Continuity and Implications for Development.’ Current Sociology 64(2), pp. 277–292. Taylor, I. 2016, ‘Dependency Redux: Why Africa Is Not Rising.’ Review of African Political Economy 43(147), pp. 8–25.

CHAPTER 18

Sub-Saharan Africa in the International Trading System: Understanding the Recent Trends Tola Amusan

Introduction In layman’s terms, international trade is the exchanging of goods and services between different economic and political units in the international system, namely states and multinational corporations (MNCs). Using the concept of ‘exchange’, international trade encompasses the exportation and importation of goods and services.1 Trade has been a constant feature of group-togroup economic, social, political, and cultural relations throughout ancient and modern history. In their book, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium, Kevin O’Rourke and Ronald Findlay provide an exceptional analysis of the pattern and structure of world trade since the second millennium.2 According to Immanuel Wallerstein, the modern world trading system began in the sixteenth century with the creation of modern and sovereign capitalist nation-states through the treaty of Westphalia.3 Globalization, trade liberalization, and reduction in transportation and communication costs have transformed world trade and the world economy in general. Over the past two centuries, more trade has been done than at any time in world history. The liberal economic system has overseen wealth creation, economic crises, decreasing poverty, and increasing inequality. International trade has dynamically proliferated. In a globalized and interdependent world, nation-states’ engagement with foreign markets is a central component in the state’s economic development through its effect on productivity T. Amusan (B) University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_18

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levels, job creation, and economic growth.4 Considering modern examples, one can look at the apparent instance of China, India, Brazil, and the ‘four Asia Tigers’ (Hong Kong Autonomous Region, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan). Africa’s place in the global trading system has been a topic of debate between optimistic and pessimistic groups. However, one thing that cannot be denied is that sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), being ravaged by poverty and high unemployment, could and should benefit extensively from international trade. Sub-Sahara African economies have many internal and external factors that work for and against them. Most academics and statistics agree that Africa’s place in international trade is depressing at best, being regulated to a one-trick pony. This chapter highlights the general trends in SSA’s foreign and intraregional trade from 2000 to 2018. The theoretical framework to be used is the World-Systems Theory, with secondary data collected from international and regional organization databases. The main argument is that through the promotion of intra-Africa, SSA economies can address most of the trade issues they encounter.

Theoretical Framework World-system theory, a neo-Marxist approach pioneered by Immanuel Wallenstein, offers a valid explanation of how a capitalist world economy benefits some (core) while it disadvantaging other (periphery) regions and states.5 The core and periphery regions, which are essentially spatial entities of the world economy, have different roles. However, their relationship is one of exploitation (unequal exchange), where wealth is transferred from the periphery to the core.6 The world capitalist economy is characterized not only by the division of spatial regions but also by a division of labor in which specific areas specialize in producing certain products.7 The most profitable, advanced, and sustainable economic activities are concentrated in the core regions, while the most primitive economic activities are located in the periphery. Much of this is attributed to colonialization, which forced upon the periphery such a relationship. This is essentially the situation sub-Sahara Africa finds itself vis-à-vis the world, particularly the West and increasingly Asia. Walter Rodney’s brilliant book How Europe underdeveloped Africa is the go-to guide to illustrate how, before colonialization, Africa had a dynamic development process. Through colonialization and slave trade, Africa lost its labor force, which was transferred to the core as cheap labor, and the economies of African states were reduced to playing the role of suppliers of raw materials.8 Wallenstein accepted the idea of ‘unequal exchange’ first proposed by Arghiri Emmanuel in his book Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade. Wallerstein argues that developed countries’ highly-priced products are exchanged for low priced products produced by less developed countries. As such, there is a transfer of surplus from the core to the periphery.9 Developed countries are more capital-intensive and produce capital-intensive goods, while less developed countries are labor-intensive and produce labor-intensive

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goods. From this, there is a consensus that capital-intensive production creates more benefits as they ‘reap over time a disproportionate share of the gains from trade.’10 This played a dominant role in Europe’s industrial development. With the combination of cheap labor and raw materials, they built up their industrial base and produced value-added products. On the brighter side, in the case of sub-Sahara Africa, there is a lot of potential. This is shown by the growing optimism regarding Africa’s future and increasing participation in the international system. How can Africa raise itself from the pits of despair within the international capitalist economy? This chapter rejects the radial approach, which argues that less developed states need to cut ties with the capitalist world that exploits them. The case of the four Asian Tigers resolutely rejects this proposition. Instead, the chapter argues in line with the moderate dependency theorists that Africa can improve its standing in the international capitalist economy while being fully integrated into the capitalist system.11 This can be done by improving economic relations with one another centered around industrialization through economic regionalism. A shortcoming of World-Systems theory is that it pays little attention to the effects of globalization and is also state-centric, thus ignoring the importance of non-state actors. As such, it does not capture the complete essence of the twenty-first century.12 Another critique is that several developing countries were not subject to colonialization, such as Ethiopia and Liberia. Hence, the World-System Theory has less explanatory power in these situations. Additionally, it can be argued that the World-Systems Theory ignores the role internal factors play in the ailments of periphery countries.13 However, despite all these lapses, World-Systems theory is to be used because of its emphasis on the lingering impact of colonialism and the fact that the trade pattern that SSA economies experience vis-à-vis the world is something that was forced instead of being a natural occurrence. This pattern of trade has benefitted the core while leaving the periphery in a cycle of underdeveloped trade.

Sub-Saharan Africa International Trade Any successful developing economy needs to integrate itself into the global capitalist economy, with the emphasis of this chapter being on integration into the global trading system. When looking at the most successful developing economies, such as the Four Asian Tigers, China, Brazil, and India, we understand the crucial importance of international trade on states’ economic development. What these states have in common is that they engage in extensive trade-driven development. When analyzing SSA and international trade, one needs to ask two fundamental questions: how vital is foreign trade to SSA countries’ economies? And what is SSA’s relative position in the global trading system? The first question is relatively easy to answer, as several studies agree that trade is vitally important.14 This chapter looks at how much total trade (export plus import of goods and services) contribute to the Gross Domestic

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80 70

Percentage

60 50 40 30 20 10

Sub-Saharan Africa

Fig. 18.1

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

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0

World average

Trade as a share of SSA countries GDP (Source World Bank [2020])

Product (GDP) of SSA countries. This is illustrated in Fig. 18.1, where trade as a share of SSA economies GDP is compared to the world’s average. From the diagram, it is observed that trade is an essential contributor to SSA economies’ GDP, accounting for above fifty percent in the majority of the years.15 Compared to other regions of the world, as of 2018, SSA’s trade as a share of GDP is higher than that of Latin America and the Caribbean (47.2%) and North America (31%), while being lower than that of East Asia and the Pacific (57.4%) and the European Union (91%).16 Moreover, looking at the disaggregated data, various SSA states lie above or below the average of 54% for 2018. For instance, countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya fall below the average, while Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa lie above the average.17 Looking at the relative weight of exports and imports to SSA states GDP, imports contribute more to GDP than exports18 ; however, the difference between them is not that significant. Table 18.1 shows the average difference in the contribution of exports and imports to SSA GDP (2000– 2018) is very marginal. Thus, both are equally important. This gives a segue to look into who the more important trade partners from an aggregate perspective to a disaggregate view are. According to WITS data, from 2008 to 2018, eight countries accounted for 47.85% of SSA exports and 43.23% of imports. These countries are China, the USA, India, Japan, the United Kingdom (U.K.), Germany, the Netherlands, and France. Disaggregated, on average from 2008 to 2018, in terms of exports, China accounts for the most share with 12.53% followed by USA (10.69), India (7.20), Netherlands (4.73), and the U.K. (3.8). In terms of imports, China again has the largest share with 14.06%, followed by the

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Table 18.1 Relative weight of exports and imports to SSA GDP 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Average

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Exports (% GDP)

Imports (% GDP)

34.05078029 31.66515077 30.13157522 29.18401585 28.55347884 30.1906138 32.45239937 31.93248525 34.91874039 28.44715561 31.66318318 33.57776598 32.20706569 28.21982284 27.89696146 24.16683929 23.38246394 24.63076906 25.37098949 29.61275033

27.93338 31.20273497 29.40552262 29.75349289 27.80579641 28.81266742 28.78743846 31.41758003 33.50723624 31.3093672 30.44177023 32.14681458 31.04186885 30.97154972 30.05539132 28.99893253 27.24830192 26.24726263 28.26691276 29.75547478

Source World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) (2020)

USA (6.04), India (5.16), Germany (5.05), and France (4).19 These datasets show that SSA trade partners are highly concentrated as eight countries account for 45.5% of SSA extra-regional trade. Understanding SSA’s relative position in the global trading system is answered by outlining SSA share of international trade. This will be examined from 2000 to 2018 and then compared to other regions of the world. Figure 18.2 shows the share of global trade (sum of exports and imports/world sum total of exports and imports) by region from 2000 to 2018. Foreign trade is a crucial indicator of how well states and regions are integrated into the global economy. What is observed is that since 2000 sub-Sahara Africa has been the lowestranked region in the world in terms of its global share of total trade in goods and services. SSA has not once crossed the four percent threshold, while in recent years, particularly from 2014, there has been a decline in its share. From this, we can deduce that it is the least integrated region in the world economy, even in the face of accelerating globalization. This is even with SSA exports and imports increasing in absolute terms, as illustrated in Fig. 18.3. Additionally, from 2009 onwards, we see that SSA has imported more than it has exported, thus placing it in a current account deficit. SSA’s low share of international trade can be explained by its low share of international GDP and vice versa. Figure 18.4 illustrates the trends in SSA

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40 35

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East Asia & Pacific

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Fig. 18.2 Share of world trade (2000–2018) (Source WorldBank [2020]) 600 500 400

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Fig. 18.3

Export

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SSA exports, imports, and trade balance (Source World Bank [2020])

share on world GDP and its share of world trade. When looking at the relationship between trade and GDP (economic growth), there is a correlation, as countries with higher GDP growths tend to have higher trade rates.20 At the same time, other studies show that higher rates of foreign trade positively

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SSA international GDP and trade 2.5

Percentage

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SSA % international GDP

SSA % international trade

Fig. 18.4 SSA share of international GDP and trade trends (Source World Bank [2020])

impact countries’ GDP growth.21 Therefore, the correlation between GDP growth and foreign trade is bidirectional.

SSA Product Composition The product composition of SSA international trade is a much-discussed issue. The more conventional liberal theories of international trade, like absolute advantage (Adam Smith), Comparative advantage (David Ricardo), and the Heckscher–Ohlin Model (Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin), emphasize states exporting what they have in abundance and can produce at a low price.22 At the same time, importing commodities that require scarce inputs and are produced at a higher price. While the conventional trade theories can accurately explain SSA trade patterns, these theories do not consider the impact of colonialization, which forced the current trade patterns that SSA is subject to, which leaves SSA being a bottom feeder (periphery) in the international capitalist economy.23 These trade patterns are not natural, as these conventional theories suggest; instead, they are human-made and forced. The 2013 Economic Report on Africa stated that colonialism’s legacy has made it extremely difficult for African economies to go through modernization. The main explanation is that the very fabric of Africa’s economy and society was forcefully geared toward minerals and raw materials sectors.24 Below, the product composition of SSA external trade is examined. Figure 18.5 shows the import composition of SSA foreign trade (2000–2018). From the above diagram, it is observed that SSA states import more valueadded products. Data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) signals

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Consumer goods 35%

Raw materials 13%

Capital Goods 30%

Intermediate goods 22%

Fig. 18.5 SSA aggregate import structure (2000–2018) (Source World Integrated Trade Solution [2020])

that the top five importers for 2018 were: South Africa (31.7%), Nigeria (16.2%),Angola (11%), Ghana (4), and Côte d’Ivoire (3.1%).25 Most of the imports by SSA states are consumer goods bought by average consumers for consumption or usage. This is mainly due to the rising middle class and their accompanying purchasing power. Based on statistics from the African Development Bank (AfDB), in the past 30 years, the middle class increased to 313 million (34% of the population).26 Another factor is the provision of cheap consumer goods, to a highly price-sensitive African market, mainly from Asian countries. Capital goods, which are physical assets that are machinery and equipment used to produce other products, constitute 30% of SSA imports. This shows Africa’s lack of adequate technological and productive base.27 A study has shown that increasing the importation of these goods decreases the technological gap between SSA states and other more developed countries while also increasing the firms’ productivity that imports them.28 Hence, the importation of these capital goods is likely to play a significant role in the economic growth and development of SSA states. These imports are crucial as they compensate for SSA’s lack of capital abundance; they equally allow SSA firms to produce capital-intensive goods. However, dependence on capital imports does not bode well for the sustainable development of the African continent. With the fall of commodity prices, importing states’ purchasing power is expected to

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reduce, thus reducing SSA’s ability to import intermediate capital goods, negatively affecting their productivity.29 The productive capacity of SSA economies, therefore, depends on their importation of capital and intermediate goods. SSA export basket is weak as their economies are directed to sectors where raw materials are found. Based on data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the top five SSA exporting countries for 2018 were South Africa (27.4%), Nigeria (12.1%); Kenya (6%); Ghana (4.5%); and Tanzania (4%).30 Figure 18.6 gives an aggregate illustration of the SSA export basket from 2000 to 2018. Raw materials represent over half of SSA exports to other countries. This has resulted in SSA economies having very low economic complexities. Economic complexity measures the diversity of a country’s economy, generally measured by the number of goods the economy produces and exports.31 Data from the Atlas of Economic Complexity developed by Harvard University presents countries’ ranking based on their economic and product complexity. For the year 2018, SSA countries rank no higher than 62 out of 133. With South Africa coming in at 63rd place, the highest-ranking SSA country. While Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, came in 133rd place.32 In short, the economies of SSA countries are highly dependent on trade, as shown by their GDP percentage, and their trade exports are centered around raw materials. From this logic, it is conclusive that SSA countries live and die by primary commodities. This dependence on primary commodities has impeded upon SSA state’s socio-economic development and industrialization.33 One just needs to look Capital goods 7% Consumer goods 16%

Raw materials 54%

Intermediate goods 23%

Fig. 18.6 SSA aggregate export structure (2000–2018) (Source World Integrated Trade solution [2020])

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at the ‘resource curse’ and ‘dutch disease’ to get an idea of the political, social, and economic complications that arise from overdependence on primary commodities. Unilateral dependence on raw materials leaves SSA states vulnerable to volatile commodity prices, which indeed have a history of severe fluctuations. The volatility of commodity prices can either make or break a primary resource-dependent economy.34 Data provided by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) showed that commodity prices saw a boom from 2000 to 2010/2011, while from 2011 to 2016, commodity prices saw a bust. The fluctuations in commodity prices result from the level of global demand for these products, which is dependent on the level of global GDP growth. Looking at the bust period of 2011–2016, one can argue that due to the slow global GDP growth, the commodity prices have decreased. Slowed down GDP growth leads to reduced demand for foreign products, resulting in situations where supply exceeds demand. Using the fundamental law of supply and demand, commodity prices will decrease. The relationship between commodity prices and domestic economic growth is “strong and complex”.35 Low commodity prices are met with slowdowns in commoditydependent countries’ economic growth, while higher commodity prices are met with booms in economic growth. In SSA countries, commodity prices affect the level of output/production, investment, the character of macroeconomic and fiscal policies.36 A decrease in prices leads to a decline in profits, thus reducing incentives to produce and invest. This will be accompanied by increasing unemployment. Government revenues will decrease, potentially reducing government spending on public goods. Even to keep up with its expenditure, it will need to increase its borrowing activities from foreign entities/states, thus increasing its debts.37 To curb such dire effects, export diversification is needed to reduce SSA states’ vulnerability to external demands and prices fluctuation.38 However, as stated above, we cannot depend on comparative advantages as they have proven to be ineffective. Attempts to diversification should not be left to Eurocentric trade theories that seek to promote specialization that does not favor African states and most developing states in general. Instead, governments must create advantages through strategic industrial and trade policies to diversify their productions and exports.39 There are obvious challenges to promoting production and export diversification. Summarized, the UNCTAD stated that Africa’s export diversification is impeded by poor infrastructure, lack of finance for SMEs, Lack of market access, lack of adequate export policies, and high costs of doing business, weak export competitiveness, and complicated export systems.40 These impediments are a constant theme in much of the academic literature: • Access to infrastructure (physical, energy, and Information and Communication Technology) and services are crucial to export diversification.41 Africa has the poorest infrastructural makeup, thus reducing firms’ ability

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to explore new markets, sectors, and commodities to diversify their production and exports. Inadequate infrastructure (quality, quantity, and access) in SSA makes it the region with the highest cost of doing business and takes up most of the cost of engaging in production and trade.42 SSA states lack coherently designed and implemented policies to promote export diversification, thus dwarfing SSA economic abilities to diversify their production and exports of tradable goods.43 SSA states should strive to manipulate their commercial and domestic policies to alter their comparative advantage. While adopting liberal trade regimes, domestic policies should emphasize creating a stable macroeconomic environment that makes diversification conducive.44 Export rules and regulations of SSA economies tend to be cumbersome and highly bureaucratic, which discourages exports. Several studies have shown that African firms are negatively affected by custom and trade regulations, which slows down exports’ temporality.45 In comparison, the Economic Commission for Africa concluded that African firms were deterred from participating in Global Value Chains (GVCs) due to, but not limited to, poor business and regulatory environment.46 Governance and institutional arrangements are essential factors in determining the level of export diversification.47 A study has shown that resource-dependent countries, differentiated from resource-rich countries, fail to diversify their economies and export baskets.48 This can be attributed to the high level of corruption and elite interests that limit economic and export diversification. Elitist corruption is more prominent in countries where a few sectors dominate, particularly the resource sectors. As a government monopoly typically characterizes these sectors, elitist interests can be more easily aligned.49 The level of market access can offer another constraint on African export diversification. While SSA countries are placed on preferential trade treatment, they are only limited to developed countries; they still face high tariffs regarding their exports to developing countries. Additionally, the tariffs on SSA value-added products are higher than those of primary commodities.50 There is an overall constraint on Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), which are mainly found outside the realm of the resources sector and more dominant in the manufacturing industry and who have the potential to make significant contributions to job creation and growth. Thus, an increase in SMEs should result in the development of more sectors in the economy, particularly those of high-value-added goods and services. However, they are constrained by the cost of starting and conducting business due to the inadequate macroeconomic environment, corruption, lack of the necessary soft and hard infrastructure, and lack of general support from the government, particularly in finance.51 Assisting domestic SMEs to meet international standards and become more competitive in global markets should be the objective. The UNCTAD

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Secretariat stated that the degree of export competitiveness depends on domestic enterprises, particularly SMEs.52 With export diversification, SSA countries will be able to move up the Global Value Chain (GVC). GVC is defined by the OECD as the stages in the production process that states find themselves in. Simply put, GVC “refer to international production sharing, a phenomenon where production is broken into activities and tasks carried out in different countries.”53 The global economy is characterized by production process stages being located in different parts of the world. SSA economies usually find themselves at the bottom of GVC as their main task is to provide inputs needed for other countries’ exports. A research study indicates that GVC’s are essential components of the SSA economies. While SSA economies are participants in the GVC, their “per capita gross domestic product value of upgraded products, processes, and related functions is exceedingly low”.54 The goal is to ensure that domestic enterprises can competitively transform primary commodities into value-added products, thus moving up the GVC.

Intra-Africa Trade Regionalism is pursued for two reasons: Political unity and economic growth and development. The focus will be on the latter, which entails greater market integration that can solve the structural problems of SSA states. Intra-regional trade has become a prominent feature of the international capitalist economy. Different regions in the world have regional trade agreements; Europe has the European Union (E.U.), North America has North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Asia has the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and South America has MERCOSUR. Africa remains the last major region to fully ride the intra-regional trade trend, having signed its first significant Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) in 2019. This section looks into the intra-Africa trade and its potential benefits and challenges. Figure 18.7 shows the trends in intra-SSA trade from 2000 to 2018. An observation made is that intra-SSA trade has seen many ups and downs, with intra-trade being relatively stagnant, mainly post-global financial crisis. Intratrade has never crossed the 20% threshold and, as of 2018, stood at 17.92%. Various fluctuations are found in both imports and exports. The most significant of which is that imports from 2000 to 2014 dominated trade within SSA, then from 2014 to 2018 exports exceeded imports. In 2018, intra-SSA export was 18.25%, while imports were 17.59%. Figure 18.7 signals that SSA countries are highly dependent on the rest of the world regarding their trade and thus vulnerable to extra-regional shocks. Compared to other regions, intra-SSA trade is significantly low. Using 2018 as a benchmark, intra-America (North and Latin) exports and imports were 54.26 and 39.16%, intra-Asia exports and imports were 59.86 and 62.66%, intra-Europe exports and imports were 68.59 and 65.83%, and intra-Oceania

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25

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Fig. 18.7

Intra-SSA export

Intra-SSA import

Intra-SSA trade (2000–2018) (Source UNCTAD [2020])

exports and imports were 6.75 and 6.91%.55 As such, SSA ranks only above Oceania and significantly behind America, Asia, and Europe, thus exposing the lack of regional economic integration in Africa. Things become more cheerful when looking at intra-SSA subregional trade in 2016. The data shows that more trade happens within subregional communities than between sub-regional communities. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) intra-trade is highest with 84.9%, followed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which was 56.7%, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) was 49%, and East African Community (EAC) was 48.3.56 Additionally, observations indicate that compared to its trade with the external world, the product composition of intra-Africa trade shows more diversity, with manufactured products taking up most of the export products. In 2018 manufactured goods take up 43.95% of SSA intra-trade exports, while primary commodities took up 12.67%, and machinery and transport equipment took up 37.81%, respectively.57 Figure 18.8 illustrates the trend of intra-SSA exports of manufactured goods and primary commodities. The above discussion shows that SSA continues to be severely marginalized in the global trading system. A solution to prevent the continuation of this trend is to further regional economic integration, which can further entrench Africa into the global economy and build Africa’s industrial base. Africa’s proclivity toward integration has been well documented, as shown by the number of regional and subregional bodies present. However, this paper’s focus will be on the newly signed African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which has been met with renewed optimism and hysteria about

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100 90 80

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70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

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Fig. 18.8

Primary commodities

Intra-SSA exports (2000–2018) (Source UNCTAD [2020])

Africa’s future. The AfCFTA is meant to create a unified African economic community.58 This is mainly in accordance with the Abuja Treaty of 1991 that seeks to create an African Economic Community (AEC).59 If successfully implemented, the AfCFTA is set to become the world’s largest free trade area, with more than a billion people and a cumulative GDP of over US$3 trillion. The main objective of AfCFTA is the creation of a single continental market to ensure the smooth and free exchange of goods and services, people, and investments to create a customs union, instead of just a free trade area. According to the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area, Article 3, the general objective of the AfCFTA are: (a) Deepen economic integration through the creation of a single market for goods and services; (b) The single market characterized by liberalization; (c) Promote greater movement of capital, peoples, and investment building; (d) Be the bedrock of a Continental Customs Union; (e) Enhance and maintain sustainable and inclusive socio-economic development, structural transformation, and gender equality; (f) Improve the competitiveness of economies in the regional and global market; (g) Promote industrial development by ensuring diversification, improving regional value chain development, agricultural development, and food security;

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(h) Resolve the issue of multiple and overlapping memberships, and accelerate the process of integration.60 According to an IMF Staff Discussion Note, existing intra-Africa trade agreements have underperformed due to several factors, with the most crucial being a lack of comprehensive implementation due to the lack of a strong institutional framework.61 According to the African Union, trade that is supposed to promote economic growth development has not served its purpose. This is due to various reasons, one of which being the lack of intra-regional trade. Thus African economies have been unable to “harness the synergies and complementarities of their economies and take full advantage of the economies of scale and other benefits (such as income and employment generation) that greater market integration would have provided.”62 There are three broad categories of obstacles that deter intra-African trade: economies characterized by weak productive capacities and limited export diversification, high costs of trade due to tariffs, and high trade costs from the lack of soft and hard infrastructure, which deters business and trade facilitation.63 According to the AfCFTA, Intra-trade is to be facilitated by reducing tariffs to 97% of the tariff lines and other non-tariff barriers, equivalent to 90% of goods.64 It is important to note that removing trade tariffs is just the beginning of the step toward greater regional trade. However, in Africa’s case, the markets are highly fragmented with a range of non-tariff and regulatory barriers that increase transaction costs, thus limiting the movement of goods, services, and capital. Trade policy implementation within the different economic communities in SSA has been slow; thus, the liberalization of tariffs has also been slow (Gonzalez 2015). Even if tariffs were to be reduced, that does not necessarily mean that intra-African trade will increase, as African states’ tradable supply-side capacities are weak. This means that they lack adequate productive capacity and export diversification, limiting trade SSA countries have with each other. For this reason, it is essential to strengthening regional value chains, that is, tapping into SSA potential to transform primary commodities into processed value-added industrial products. This will bring about economic benefits, such as creating formal sector jobs and improving the SSA economies manufacturing base. The cost of trade needs to be reduced through the implementation of trade facilitation. Trade facilitation entails creating an enabling environment in which trade can occur and reduce transaction costs resulting from cumbersome custom administrations, document requirements, and border procedures—additionally, improvements to soft and hard infrastructure and improved bureaucracy and reduced corruption.65 When properly designed and implemented, AfCFTA can help promote diversification by stimulating the productive capacities, improving competitiveness, and promoting economies of scale of SSA states. A study by UNCTAD shows that the promotion of AfCFTA through the reduction of tariffs will increase welfare gains, increase output, employment, and intra-Africa trade

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growth.66 The next few points highlight some of the potential benefits that AfCFTA can bring: • According to the Economic Commission for Africa’s modeling analysis, the AfCFTA will stimulate intra-African trade, which, as highlighted earlier, is less than satisfactory. However, this is dependent on the liberalization efforts of the parties. The estimation of this increase will be between 15% (US$50 billion) and 25% (US$70 billion) by 2040.67 • World Bank estimations find that if successfully implemented, the AfCFTA could generate US$292–450 billion in potential income gains, bring 30 million people out of extreme poverty, and increase the incomes of 68 million people to US$5.50 per day by 2035.68 • In terms of welfare gains, the reduction of tariffs and non-tariff barriers should increase market access. An increase in market access increases competition, which improves the economies of scale (increasing returns to scale) of production as competing firms will want to achieve a cost advantage; thus, the average cost of production should decrease to be competitive.69 To achieve cost advantages, firms will be forced to increase their efficiency by improving the usage of scarce resources. This all culminates in a decrease in consumer prices. Consumers are said to benefit as they can access a more extensive variety of goods at a lower price. • The reduction of trade barriers should reduce the cost of doing business, thus benefiting SMEs. Additionally, an increase in intra-Africa trade is likely to spur on infrastructural development and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Accompanying this with increased market size and access will allow SMEs to reach their full potential as it increases their productivity and competitiveness. Thus, allowing SSA states to diversify away from the resource sector. • As mentioned above, the trade of value-added products makes up the majority of intra-Africa trade. Therefore, increasing intra-regional trade entails increasing exchanges of manufactured and processed goods. This potentially leads to lesser dependence on commodities and dependence on stable value-added products and services, thus insulating SSA economies from volatile commodity prices. The Economic Commission for Africa estimates that the increase in intra-Africa trade will be more visible in the industrial sectors, mainly textile, apparel, leather, wood and paper, vehicle and transport equipment, electronics, and metals. Depending again on the level of liberalization, industrial sectors will increase between 25% (US$36 billion) and 30% (US$44 billion).70 Regional integration also limits Africa’s overdependence on trade with the rest of the world, limiting its vulnerability to external events.

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Conclusion SSA’s international trade is relatively limited in both breadth and scope. The products that it exports are confined to a small basket dominated by raw materials, and eight developed countries dominate the market destination of its productions. This lack of product and geographical diversity leaves SSA vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices and adverse economic events in developed countries. While this is a result of historical events, colonialism, which according to the World Systems Theory, created a world capitalist economy characterized by core and periphery countries, it is not the only cause as internal factors also have a role to play. The lack of government commitment and empty promises severely limit SSA states from diversifying their economies and exports. As was argued above, SSA’s extra and intraregional trade is less than satisfactory, and the main solution to this problem is the promotion of intra-regional trade. With the promotion of regional trade, it can be expected that the cost of doing business and trade will decrease, thus giving various indigenous SSA enterprises, particularly those located in the value-added industries, the ability to produce and price products competitively. Cumulatively this would increase intra-regional trade, increase SSA share of global trade and move SSA economies up GVC.

Notes 1. Steven L. Husted and Michael Melvin, International Economics, 9th ed, The Pearson Series in Economics (Boston: Pearson, 2013), 3. 2. Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium, The Princeton Economic History of the Western World (Princeton, NJ; Woodstock, Oxfordshire [England]: Princeton University Press, 2007), 1. 3. Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, Studies in Social Discontinuity 1 (New York: Academic Press, 1974), 17. 4. African Union Commission and OECD, Africa’s Development Dynamics 2018: Growth, Jobs and Inequalities (Addis Ababa; Paris: AUC; OECD, 2018), 47, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264302501-en. 5. Stephen Hobden and Richard W. Jones, “Marxist Theories of International Relations,” in The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, ed. John Baylis and Steve Smith, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 206. 6. Hobden and Jones, 206. 7. Robert H. Jackson and Georg Sørensen, Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 172. 8. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1981), 149. 9. Arghiri Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade (New York; London: Monthly Review Press, 1972), xxii–xxiii.

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10. David A. Lake, “Power and the Third World: Toward a Realist Political Economy of North–South Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 31 (1987): 230, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600454. 11. Jackson and Sørensen, Introduction to International Relations, 189; Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino, eds., International Encyclopedia of Political Science (California: SAGE Publications, 2011), 628–30. 12. William I Robinson, “Globalization and the Sociology of Immanuel Wallerstein: A Critical Appraisal,” International Sociology 26, no. 6 (2011): 741, https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580910393372. 13. Thomas Shannon, An Introduction to the World-System Perspective, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group [distributor, 2018), 213. 14. Fredrick Ikpesu et al., “Growth Effect of Trade and Investment in SubSaharan Africa Countries: Empirical Insight from Panel Corrected Standard Error (PCSE) Technique,” Cogent Economics & Finance 7, no. 1 (January 1, 2019): 1607127, https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2019.1607127; Daniel Sakyi et al., “The Effects of Trade and Trade Facilitation on Economic Growth in Africa: Trade and Trade Facilitation,” African Development Review 29, no. 2 (June 2017): 350, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8268.12261. 15. Nicole Moussa, Trade and Current Account Balances in Sub-Saharan Africa: Stylized Facts and Implications for Poverty, Trade and Poverty Paper, No. 1 (New York: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2016), 213. 16. World Bank, “Trade (% of GDP) - Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, East Asia & Pacific, North America, European Union,” 2020, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?locations=ZG-ZJZ4-XU-EU. 17. World Bank, “Trade (% of GDP) - South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya,” 2020, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE. TRD.GNFS.ZS?locations=ZA-BW-NG-ET-GH-KE. 18. Evita Schmieg, Global Trade and African Countries Free Trade Agreements, WTO and Regional Integration, Working Paper RD EU/Europe (Berlin: German Institute for International and Security Affairs, 2016), 2. 19. World Integrated Trade Solution, “Sub-Saharan Africa Exports, Imports and Trade Balance By Country 2018,” 2020, https://wits.worldbank.org/Countr yProfile/en/Country/SSF/Year/2018/TradeFlow/EXPIMP/Partner/by-cou ntry. 20. Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, “Does Trade Cause Growth,” Our World in Data, October 22, 2018, https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-econ-growth. 21. Ondˇrej Dvouletý, “More Trade, More Wealth? Impact of Trade on the Economic Development of African Developing Countries,” in Globalization and Development, ed. Nezameddin Faghih, Contributions to Economics (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019), 241, https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-3-030-14370-1_10. 22. Husted and Melvin, International Economics, 44. 23. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 149. 24. Economic Commission for Africa, Economic Report on Africa 2013: Making the Most of Africa’s Commodities: Industrializing for Growth, Jobs and Economic Transformation (Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2013), 7.

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25. International Monetary Fund, “IMF Data Access to Macroeconomic & Financial Data,” 2020, https://data.imf.org/?sk=9D6028D4-F14A-464C-A2F259B2CD424B85&sId=1409151240976. 26. Africa Development Bank, “The Middle of the Pyramid: Dynamics of the Middle Class in Africa,” April 2011, https://www.afdb.org/fr/news-and-eve nts/africas-middle-class-triples-to-more-than-310m-over-past-30-years-due-toeconomic-growth-and-rising-job-culture-reports-afdb-7986. 27. Economic Commission for Africa, Economic Report on Africa 2019: Fiscal Policy for Financing Sustainable Development in Africa (Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2019), 12. 28. Eugene B. Nyantakyi and Jonathan Munemo, “Technology Gap, Imported Capital Goods and Productivity of Manufacturing Plants in Sub-Saharan Africa,” The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development 26, no. 2 (2017): 209, https://doi.org/doi/full/10.1080/09638199.2016.1233450. 29. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Economic Development in Africa: Trade Performance and Commodity Dependence (New York; Geneva: United Nations, 2003), 48. 30. International Monetary Fund, “IMF Data Access to Macroeconomic & Financial Data.” 31. Atlas of Economic Complexity, “Harvard Growth Lab’s Research and Data Visualization Tool Used to Understand the Economic Dynamics and New Growth Opportunities for Every Country Worldwide,” 2020, https://atlas.cid. harvard.edu/; Economic Commission for Africa, “Economic Report on Africa 2015: Industrializing through Trade” (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2015), 48. 32. Atlas of Economic Complexity, “Harvard Growth Lab’s Research and Data Visualization Tool Used to Understand the Economic Dynamics and New Growth Opportunities for Every Country Worldwide.” 33. United Nations Development Program, Primary Commodity Booms and Busts Emerging Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Africa, 2016), 4. 34. United Nations Development Program, 8. 35. United Nations and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Commodities and Development Report 2017: Commodity Markets, Economic Growth and Development (New York: United Nations, 2017), xiv. 36. United Nations Development Program, Economic Development in Africa: Trade Performance and Commodity Dependence (New York; Geneva: United Nations, 2003), 19. 37. United Nations Economic commission for Africa, Economic Report on Africa 2017: Urbanisation and Industrialisation for Africa’s Transformation (Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2017), 2; Benedicte V. Christensen, “Challenges of Low Commodity Prices for Africa” (Basel: Bank For International Settlements, 2016), 4. 38. Vera Songwe and Deborah Winkler, Exports and Export Diversification in SubSaharan Africa, Africa Growth Initiative Working Paper 3 (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2012), 5. 39. Jonathan Kirshner, “The Political Economy of Realism,” in Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War, ed. Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 72.

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40. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Export Diversification and Employment (Geneva: United Nations, 2018), 41–46. 41. Patrick N. Osakwe and Jean-Marc Kilolo, “What Drives Export Diversification? A New Evidence from a Panel of Developing Countries” (United Nation Conference on Trade and Development, October 2018), 3. 42. Olu Ajakaiye and Mthuli Ncube, “Infrastructure and Economic Development in Africa: An Overview,” Journal of African Economies 19, no. Supplement 1 (January 1, 2010): i5, https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejq003. 43. Omotunde E. G. Johnson, Economic Diversification and Growth in Africa (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016), 85, https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-3-319-30849-4. 44. Alemayehu Geda and Edris Hussein Seid, “The Potential for Internal Trade and Regional Integration in Africa,” Journal of African Trade 2, no. 1–2 (2015): 34, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joat.2015.04.001. 45. Oluyele Akinkugbe, “Trade Facilitation and Africa’s Manufactured Goods’ Export: A Panel Data Analysis,” Journal of Developing Areas 42, no. 2 (2009): 77; Abdoulaye Seck, “Trade Facilitation and Trade Participation: Are SubSaharan African Firms Different?” Journal of African Trade 3, no. 1–2 (2017): 25, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joat.2017.05.002. 46. Economic Commission for Africa, Trade Facilitation from an African Perspective (Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2013), 17. 47. Adam Elhiraika and Michael Mbate, “Assessing the Determinants of Export Diversification in Africa,” Applied Econometrics and International Development 14, no. 1 (2014): 147. 48. Addisu A. Lashitew, Michael L. Ross, and Eric Werker, “What Drives Successful Economic Diversification in Resource-Rich Countries?” The World Bank Research Observer (2020): 1, https://doi.org/10.1093/wbro/lkaa001; Osakwe and Kilolo, “What Drives Export Diversification? A New Evidence from a Panel of Developing Countries,” 15. 49. Petrus Olander, “Economic Diversification and Institutional Quality—Issues of Concentrated Interests,” Studies in Comparative International Development 54, no. 3 (September 2019): 354, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-019-092 87-0. 50. Alessandro Nicita and Valentina Rollo, “Market Access Conditions and SubSaharan Africa’s Exports Diversification,” World Development 68 (April 2015): 254, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.12.003. 51. Landry Signe and Chelsea Johnson, The Potential of Manufacturing and Industrialization in Africa: Trends, Opportunities, and Strategies (Washington, D.C: Africa Growth Initiative, Brookings Institution, 2018), 7–11. 52. UNCTAD Secretariat, “Promoting the Export Competitiveness of SMEs,” in Improving the Competitiveness of SMEs Through Enhancing Productive Capacity (New York; Geneva: United Nations, 2005), 143. 53. OECD, “Global Value Chains (GVCs),” 2020, https://www.oecd.org/sti/ ind/global-value-chains.htm; United Nations Industrial Development Organization, “What Are Global Value Chains and Why Do They Matter?” Industrial Analytics Platform, August 2019, https://iap.unido.org/articles/what-are-glo bal-value-chains-and-why-do-they-matter#:~:text=Global%20value%20chains% 20(GVCs)%20refer,back%20to%20Adam%20Smith’s%20time.

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54. Herman S. Geyer, “Global Value Chain Participation and Trade Barriers in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in Value Chains in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges of Integration into the Global Economy, ed. Sören Scholvin et al., Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019), 21, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-03006206-4. 55. UNCTAD, “Merchandise: Intra-Trade and Extra-Trade of Country Groups by Product, Annual,” 2020, https://unctadstat.unctad.org/wds/ReportFolders/ reportFolders.aspx. 56. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Economic Development in Africa 2019 Report: Made in Africa Rules of Origin for Enhanced IntraAfrica Trade (New York; Geneva: United Nations, 2019), 21. 57. UNCTAD, “Merchandise: Intra-Trade and Extra-Trade of Country Groups by Product, Annual.” 58. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Economic Development in Africa 2019 Report: Made in Africa Rules of Origin for Enhanced IntraAfrica Trade, 15. 59. For more on the objectives of the Abuja Treaty, see https://au.int/en/tre aties/treaty-establishing-african-economic-community, pp. 9–12. 60. African Union, “Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area” (Africa Union, 2018), https://au.int/en/treaties/agreement-establish ing-african-continental-free-trade-area. 61. Lisandro Abrego et al., The African Continental Free Trade Area: Potential Economic Impact and Challenges, IMF Stuff Discussion Note, SDN/20/04 (International Monetary Fund, 2020), 9. 62. Africa Union, Action Plan for Boosting Intra-Africa Trade (Addis Ababa, 2012), https://au.int/sites/default/files/newsevents/pressreleases/26498-praction_plan_for_boosting_intra-african_trade_f-english.pdf. 63. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Economic Development in Africa 2019 Report: Made in Africa Rules of Origin for Enhanced IntraAfrica Trade, 29. 64. Vera Songwe, “Boosting Trade and Investment: A New Agenda for Regional and International Engagement,” in Foresight Africa: Top Priorities for the Continent in 2019, ed. Brahima S. Coulibaly (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Africa Growth Initiative, 2019), 97. 65. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Economic Development in Africa 2019 Report: Made in Africa Rules of Origin for Enhanced IntraAfrica Trade, 29–30. 66. Mesut Saygili, Ralf Peters, and Christian Knebel, African Continental Free Trade Area: Challenges and Opportunities of Tariff Reductions, UNCTAD Research Paper No. 15 (New York: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2018), 1. 67. Economic Commission for Africa, “An Empirical Assessment of the African Continental Free Trade Area Modalities on Goods” (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2018), 3, https://www.uneca.org/publications/empiri cal-assessment-african-continental-free-trade-area-modalities-goods. 68. World Bank, The African Continental Free Trade Area (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2020).

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69. Songwe, “Boosting Trade and Investment: A New Agenda for Regional and International Engagement,” 98–99. 70. Economic Commission for Africa, “An Empirical Assessment of the African Continental Free Trade Area Modalities on Goods,” 3.

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Johnson, Omotunde E. G. Economic Diversification and Growth in Africa. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-308 49-4. Kirshner, Jonathan. “The Political Economy of Realism.” In Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War, edited by Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno, 69–103. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Lake, David A. “Power and the Third World: Toward a Realist Political Economy of North-South Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 31 (1987): 217–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/2600454. Lashitew, Addisu A., Michael L. Ross, and Eric Werker. “What Drives Successful Economic Diversification in Resource-Rich Countries?” The World Bank Research Observer 0, no. 0 (2020): 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/wbro/lkaa001. Moussa, Nicole. Trade and Current Account Balances in Sub-Saharan Africa: Stylized Facts and Implications for Poverty. Trade and Poverty Paper, No. 1. New York: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2016. Nicita, Alessandro, and Valentina Rollo. “Market Access Conditions and Sub-Saharan Africa’s Exports Diversification.” World Development 68 (April 2015): 254–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.12.003. Nyantakyi, Eugene B., and Jonathan Munemo. “Technology Gap, Imported Capital Goods and Productivity of Manufacturing Plants in Sub-Saharan Africa.” The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development 26, no. 2 (2017): 209–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638199.2016.1233450. OECD. “Global Value Chains (GVCs),” 2020. https://www.oecd.org/sti/ind/glo bal-value-chains.htm. Olander, Petrus. “Economic Diversification and Institutional Quality—Issues of Concentrated Interests.” Studies in Comparative International Development 54, no. 3 (September 2019): 346–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-019-09287-0. Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban. “Does Trade Cause Growth.” Our World in Data, October 22, 2018. https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-econ-growth. Osakwe, Patrick N., and Jean-Marc Kilolo. “What Drives Export Diversification? A New Evidence from a Panel of Developing Countries.” United Nation Conference on Trade and Development, October 2018. Robinson, William I. “Globalization and the Sociology of Immanuel Wallerstein: A Critical Appraisal.” International Sociology 26, no. 6 (2011): 723–45. https://doi. org/10.1177/0268580910393372. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1981. Sakyi, Daniel, José Villaverde, Adolfo Maza, and Isaac Bonuedi. “The Effects of Trade and Trade Facilitation on Economic Growth in Africa: Trade and Trade Facilitation.” African Development Review 29, no. 2 (June 2017): 350–61. https://doi.org/10. 1111/1467-8268.12261. Saygili, Mesut, Ralf Peters, and Christian Knebel. African Continental Free Trade Area: Challenges and Opportunities of Tariff Reductions. UNCTAD Research Paper No. 15. New York: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2018. Schmieg, Evita. Global Trade and African Countries Free Trade Agreements, WTO and Regional Integration. Working Paper RD EU/Europe. Berlin: German Institute for International and Security Affairs, 2016.

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Seck, Abdoulaye. “Trade Facilitation and Trade Participation: Are Sub-Saharan African Firms Different?” Journal of African Trade 3, no. 1–2 (2017): 23–39. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.joat.2017.05.002. Shannon, Thomas. An Introduction to the World-System Perspective. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group [distributor, 2018. Signe, Landry, and Chelsea Johnson. The Potential of Manufacturing and Industrialization in Africa: Trends, Opportunities, and Strategies. Washington, DC: Africa Growth Initiative, Brookings Institution, 2018. Songwe, Vera. “Boosting Trade and Investment: A New Agenda for Regional and International Engagement.” In Foresight Africa: Top Priorities for the Continent in 2019, edited by Brahima S. Coulibaly, 97–116. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Africa Growth Initiative, 2019. Songwe, Vera, and Deborah Winkler. Exports and Export Diversification in SubSaharan Africa. Africa Growth Initiative Working Paper 3. Washington, DC: Brookings, 2012. UNCTAD. “Merchandise: Intra-Trade and Extra-Trade of Country Groups by Product, Annual,” 2020. https://unctadstat.unctad.org/wds/ReportFolders/rep ortFolders.aspx. UNCTAD Secretariat. “Promoting the Export Competitiveness of SMEs.” In Improving the Competitiveness of SMEs through Enhancing Productive Capacity, 143–56. New York; Geneva: United Nations, 2005. United Nations and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Commodities and Development Report 2017: Commodity Markets, Economic Growth and Development. New York: United Nations, 2017. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Economic Development in Africa 2019 Report: Made in Africa Rules of Origin for Enhanced Intra-Africa Trade. New York; Geneva: United Nations, 2019. ———. Economic Development in Africa: Trade Performance and Commodity Dependence. New York; Geneva: United Nations, 2003. ———. Export Diversification and Employment. Geneva: United Nations, 2018. United Nations Development Program. Economic Development in Africa: Trade Performance and Commodity Dependence. New York; Geneva: United Nations, 2003. ———. Primary Commodity Booms and Busts Emerging Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa. New York: United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Africa, 2016. United Nations Economic commission for Africa. Economic Report on Africa 2017: Urbanisation and Industrialisation for Africa’s Transformation. Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2017. United Nations Industrial Development Organization. “What Are Global Value Chains and Why Do They Matter?” Industrial Analytics Platform, August 2019. https://iap.unido.org/articles/what-are-global-value-chains-and-why-do-they-mat ter#:~:text=Global%20value%20chains%20(GVCs)%20refer,back%20to%20Adam% 20Smith’s%20time. Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Studies in Social Discontinuity 1. New York: Academic Press, 1974. World Bank. The African Continental Free Trade Area. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2020.

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———. “Trade (% of GDP) - South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya,” 2020. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS? locations=ZA-BW-NG-ET-GH-KE. ———. “Trade (% of GDP) - Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, East Asia & Pacific, North America, European Union,” 2020. https://data.worldbank. org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?locations=ZG-ZJ-Z4-XU-EU. World Integrated Trade Solution. “Sub-Saharan Africa Exports, Imports and Trade Balance By Country 2018,” 2020. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/ en/Country/SSF/Year/2018/TradeFlow/EXPIMP/Partner/by-country.

CHAPTER 19

Africa in Global Trade Yiagadeesen Samy

Introduction This chapter examines the evolution of Africa’s post-colonial trade since the mid-1990s and its current position in global trade. The choice of this relatively more recent analysis period coincides with what has been characterized as Africa’s growth turnaround, which represents a marked shift from the lost decade of the 1980s and early years of the 1990s. This period allows us to analyze the contribution of trade when post-colonial growth and development in Africa have been better by historical standards. Indeed, despite a slowdown of economic growth in the past few years, average economic growth for sub-Saharan Africa has been 4.1% for the period 1995–2019, compared to only 2.2% for roughly the earlier equivalent period (1971–1994).1 While the boom in commodity prices explains part of that growth turnaround, the recent slowdown has similarly been attributed to lower global demand and lower commodity prices. However, a significant decline in armed conflicts, improved macroeconomic conditions, better policy choices and improvements in the overall business climate are other factors that have contributed to higher growth since the mid-1990s. We would, of course, be remiss not to mention the extraordinary circumstances that the world is currently facing as a result of the COVID-19 Y. Samy (B) The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA), Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_19

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pandemic. First and foremost, a health crisis that has claimed more than 1.8 million lives globally, it has also become an economic and social crisis.2 The World Bank’s Africa Pulse report expects sub-Saharan Africa to face its first recession in twenty-five years and that African countries that depend on oil exports and mining will be the most severely affected.3 By all accounts, this pandemic will cause a sharp decline in trade in goods and services in every region of the world due to both demand- and supply-side effects. Countries heavily dependent on trade, particularly the export of commodities, and tourism, are likely to suffer the most. We should note that even before COVID-19 began to spread around the world in early 2020, global trade had slowed down due to trade tensions between the United States and China, and a slowdown in global economic growth. The pandemic is testing the limits of global supply (and value) chains, as countries try to protect key sectors “including and relating” to agriculture, healthcare, and technology. It may further contribute to the backlash against globalization (especially from working-class citizens) that has been observed in advanced economies in the last few years. COVID-19 notwithstanding, there has been, and continues to be, a renewed interest in increasing global, and especially regional, trade to maintain the growth momentum across the continent. The chapter thus critically examines trade issues for African countries with one important goal in mind: how can the contribution of trade to Africa’s growth and development be improved? Answering this question allows us to consider both the opportunities and constraints that African countries face concerning trade. It also enables us to consider African countries as active agents that can chart their destinies in a global changing order. We argue throughout this chapter that several steps must be taken to ensure that trade can continue to improve living standards across the continent. One of the most important developments of the last century has been greater integration of national economies—a process more broadly described as globalization—and the ensuing global trade expansion. Following the predictions of traditional theories of international trade that emphasize differences in relative productivity and factor endowments, this process has allowed countries to specialize and export goods in which they have a comparative advantage. As a result, international trade has contributed to lifting millions of people out of poverty worldwide, but the impact has been felt differently across countries and regions. Furthermore, new trade theories, building on imperfect competition and economies of scale, have made the case that it is more difficult for developing economies to achieve the advantages of largescale production that already exist in advanced economies. These theories argue that governments have an interventionist role to play by strategically choosing and supporting industries. The benefits (reduced costs and increased variety of products) from trade liberalization that are possible according to new trade theories, though significant, are arguably more limited for small developing countries due to the nature of their trade. Unless protected in some way

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initially, for example by tariffs or subsidies, local industries will not be able to exploit economies of scale and be competitive, an idea that is reminiscent of the so-called infant industry argument. Irrespective of which theories and models one uses to explain the pattern of trade, the fact remains that African countries have taken much longer to integrate efficiently into the world economy. At less than 3%, the continent’s global trade share remains very low even as trade volumes have increased considerably. Indeed, until recently, African countries had not benefitted as much from the positive effects of globalization when compared to other regions; we might even argue that they were largely excluded from that process. As a result of inward-oriented development strategies in the early decades after independence, combined with low investments in physical and human capital, political instability, conflicts, and weak institutions, most African countries failed to capitalize on the potential growth and development benefits accruing from globalization. Starting in the 1980s, structural adjustment programs that included trade and investment liberalization led to increasing participation of African countries in the world economy. Still, until Africa’s growth turnaround began to happen, trade reforms did not translate into economic benefits due to the absence of factors such as good governance and proper macroeconomic policies, and a lack of complementary inputs such as human capital and infrastructure. Why the Focus on Trade? Why Now? There are several reasons for examining Africa’s position in global trade today. First, there is extensive scholarly literature on trade’s positive contributions to economic development, particularly from the East Asian experience. It would appear that Africa’s recent track record with trade has been more positive overall (though with some nuances as we will see later) when compared to the ones that occurred before and during colonialism, and in the early postcolonial years. For example, several researchers have documented how the slave trades had significant long-term detrimental impacts on economic, cultural, and social outcomes for the continent.4 It is also plausible that European colonization prevented African economies from diversifying into manufacturing by forcing them to produce and export commodities needed by the colonial powers.5 The contrarian view is that Africa’s abundance of land and natural resources meant that commodity specialization was consistent with comparative advantage and that African countries would eventually climb the technological and skill ladder. More importantly, the variation in the contribution of trade to Africa’s economic development over the post-colonial period can provide valuable lessons and insights. Second, the so-called “Africa rising” narrative has identified several signs of great potential and opportunities waiting to be unleashed further: a young, rapidly growing and increasingly urbanized population; several African countries among the fastest growing economies in the world; an emerging middle

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class; and improved business environments, institutions, and governance across various countries.6 However, the decline in commodity prices and a weaker growth performance across sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, coupled with the persistence of absolute poverty, have begun to cast doubt on the viability of Africa’s growth momentum. In the African case, what is also peculiar is the weak manufacturing base and deindustrialization that has accompanied growth. In other words, the type of manufacturing-led structural transformation that has been observed in East Asia is not a path that is currently observed in the African case. The extent to which deindustrialization is happening may be exaggerated due to informal manufacturing in many African countries. However, the concern remains that even if productivity in informal manufacturing is higher than in agriculture, it remains lower than in the formal manufacturing sector. Successful trade requires a successful reimagining of production and industrialization, and the coordination of industrial policies across countries, which is related to our next point about intra-regional trade. Indeed, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) went into force at the end of May 2019, and its operational phase was launched in July of that same year. The main objective of the AfCFTA is to boost intra-regional trade, which is low compared to other regions. This has implications for Africa’s ability to achieve scale economies (as discussed above) and also its dependency on the export of commodities, especially as only a few African countries have successfully diversified their production and exports in recent decades. Defining countries as commodity-dependent when commodities account for more than 60% of their merchandise exports, a recent report by UNCTAD finds that 89% of sub-Saharan African countries are commoditydependent, which is much higher than in other developing regions (namely two-thirds of countries in the Middle East and North Africa, half in Latin America and the Caribbean, half in East Asia and the Pacific, and a quarter in South Asia).7 Finally, China looms large in Africa’s trade relations. Its status as Africa’s largest trading partner—a position that it has occupied since displacing the United States in 2009—and various initiatives that blend its trade, development assistance, and investment activities across the continent, including filling important infrastructure gaps through its Belt and Road Initiative, is bringing significant benefits to African economies. Accordingly, the rest of the chapter proceeds as follows. The next section examines the evolution of Africa’s trade since the mid-1990s. We focus on overall trade flows, the structure and destination of that trade, and its evolution. This is followed by a discussion of the recently ratified AfCFTA and intra-regional trade, and an examination of China’s contribution to African trade. The final section of the chapter concludes with policy implications.

Evolution of Africa’s Trade: A Brief Analysis We should, of course, recognize the diversity of the African experience in all matters. There are important differences between North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa as well as regional and country levels in post-colonial trade. For

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example, while sub-Saharan Africa is home to several low-income countries, it also includes a few influential regional actors such as Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and several resource-rich countries. Overall, and accompanying decent growth rates, one can observe a significant expansion of trade flows across the continent and the sub-Saharan region from 1995 until 2008 (see Fig. 19.1). Over that same period, GDP growth for sub-Saharan Africa was 4.7%. Trade flows then declined due to the 2008–2009 global financial crisis but quickly rebounded before slowing down again in the last few years; GDP growth was 3.4% from 2009–2019.8 Much of this recent slowdown has been attributed to the decline in commodity prices, that is, the so-called end of the commodity supercycle, and also China’s economic slowdown. But while trade flows have expanded, Africa’s shares of world exports and imports have remained fairly flat at around or less than 3%, respectively, in recent years. This partly reflects African countries’ continued dependence on primary products and natural resources as their main exports, whereas much of global trade consists of manufactured goods. And although there has been a marked shift away from OECD countries toward rapidly growing emerging markets such as China and India, the composition of Africa’s trade has not changed significantly. However, while Africa’s world trade shares may be small, they hide the fact that trade is important for many African countries. Trade as a percentage of GDP is higher than 50% for most African countries, regardless of their income levels, and that trade is often more the result of high imports relative to exports. Most sub-Saharan African countries remain heavily dependent on one or a few commodities such as petroleum, gold, base metals, coffee, and cocoa on 700 600

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Fig. 19.1 Evolution of Merchandise Exports and Imports, 1995–2019 (Source Constructed using UNCTAD statistics)

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the export side. Manufactured goods exports have increased over the decades for sub-Saharan Africa but have plateaued slightly over 20% of total merchandise exports in the last few years. One promising aspect on the export side is the growth in processed and semi-processed manufactures that has been observed in recent years, compared to raw materials, an indication that there are certainly opportunities for African economies to move up global value chains (GVCs), that is, supply chains where value is added at each stage before crossing borders. Improvements in transportation, communication and technology have facilitated the fragmentation of production processes, giving rise to GVCs. The evidence accumulated to date indicates that while African countries participate actively in GVCs, their participation is driven by forward integration in unsophisticated products that do not create much value-added.9 On the import side, the source of imports has also shifted from traditional OECD markets toward emerging markets and China. Most of Africa’s imports consist of industrial equipment and manufactured goods, followed by fuels and agricultural products. Of particular concern is that despite hosting more than 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land, the continent continues to be a net food importer. The reasons for this state of affairs are many: population growth, a rising middle class, low agricultural productivity, policy distortions and poor infrastructure, among others.10 In line with global trends, the structures of many African economies have shifted significantly toward services, which account for a significant share of economic activity and employment. As a result, services trade has also been growing rapidly across the African region. African services exports are dominated by travel, followed by transport. The nature of services trade is different when compared to developed regions where financial, insurance, business, and intellectual property services are more important. This pattern is also observed at the sub-regional level, except for West Africa, where business services are more important. Compared to the exports of goods, services exports are more concentrated among a few countries. Services trade such as finance, logistics, and telecommunications can be beneficial for the competitiveness of economies and their export performance in other sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing. Services serve as inputs for other export activities and contribute to the diversification of African countries’ trade. Since the services sector employs many women and comprises many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), trade in services can empower women and help SMEs access foreign markets. Compared to trade in goods, trade in services is not a well-understood area in the African context, and this is further complicated by significant gaps in data about the extent of that trade. For example, we do not know enough about the challenges that African service firms face, nor do we know the African creative industry’s exact contributions, including films and music, to the global economy as much of it takes place in the informal sector. According to Nora Dihel and Arti Grover Goswami, further liberalization of trade in services and coordinated regulatory reform across various jurisdictions would go a long way toward boosting trade in services in Africa.11

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Overall, this examination of Africa’s trade evolution indicates that its experience has thus far been quite different from many Asian and Latin American countries that successfully diversified their exports. The fact that African countries export primary products and import manufactures is consistent with traditional theories of international trade based on specialization and comparative advantage. On the other hand, export diversification can foster structural transformation, job creation, and growth, as well as shield African countries from revenue instability that occurs as a result of fluctuations in commodity prices. While many other countries and regions have transitioned from agriculture to manufacturing and eventually services, the African continent has not seen the same level and type of manufacturing activity (and its persistence—even after accounting for high levels of informality) experienced in other regions such as East Asia and Latin America. This failure to industrialize and what has been described as premature deindustrialization explains the relatively low shares of manufacturing exports discussed above.12 But perhaps, as Richard Newfarmer, John Page, and Finn Tarp have argued, the manufacturing-led structural transformation that has happened elsewhere is not necessary for all African countries.13 A different structural transformation type is possible for job creation and economic growth as long as high productivity jobs are created; where the transformation happens matters less. Specifically, they have found that growth in various services that include ICT, tourism, and transport has been faster than the growth of manufacturing in many African countries since the late 1990s until 2015. Citing the examples of Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal, and South Africa (for ICT-based services), Rwanda (for tourism), and Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, and Senegal (global horticultural value chains as high-value agricultural exports), they argue that it is possible to encourage structural transformation because these sectors share the same characteristics with manufacturing firms. They identify three factors that have allowed for the expansion of manufacturing that could be applied to “industries without smokestacks” in the African context, namely: improving the investment climate by focusing on infrastructure, skills, and competition; adopting the right macroeconomic policies, regulatory reforms, and institutional changes to promote export capacity; and supporting agglomeration economies that allow firms to cluster together in special economic zones (SEZs).14 While their argument may be true, we contend that the same policies they are proposing could be implemented to boost the manufacturing sector, especially in resource-rich African countries where the boom in commodity prices created opportunities to invest in manufacturing and diversify their economies. And there are also examples such as Ethiopia and Rwanda, where political will and the right policies have led to growing manufacturing sectors in recent years. One advantage of manufacturing is that it is labor-intensive. A viable export-oriented manufacturing sector makes a lot of sense for the African continent, given its rapidly expanding demographics and the need to create millions of jobs to absorb the young population that will enter the labor market.

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AfCFTA and Regional Trade: The Missing Ingredient? There is a lot of optimism about the recently signed AfCFTA to promote trade among African countries further and make the region more competitive in global trade. However, regional economic integration is not new. It has been a key goal of African countries dating back to the earlier years of independence and the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. Given the vast geographical area that is covered by the 54 countries across the continent, many of which are small in terms of population and purchasing power, it has always been known that integration would allow them to achieve the economies of scale that are necessary to compete with other developing and developed regions around the world. Beyond the economic implications of promoting and diversifying trade, improving living standards, and helping the continent manage negative external shocks, integration can also contribute to peace and political stability among countries. Multiple regional blocs, known as regional economic communities (RECs), currently exist with overlapping memberships, and most are primarily trade blocs. The African Economic Community (AEC) Treaty, also known as the Abuja Treaty, was signed in 1991 and came into force in 1994. The idea behind the treaty—linked to that of Pan-Africanism—is that the AEC will be established over time by coordinating and harmonizing current and future RECs, ultimately leading to the creation of an economic and monetary union. But despite several plans and pronouncements over the years, economic integration has thus far only partially delivered the expected gains. High trade costs in the form of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, lack of unifying and integrated transport infrastructure, lack of complementary reforms, political instability, and conflicts have all historically proven to be significant roadblocks for integration. RECs have suffered from a lack of strong institutional frameworks to support the implementation of agreements. Overlapping memberships across RECs make harmonization and enforcement of rules of origin complicated. An Action Plan for Boosting Intra-African Trade (BIAT) was adopted by the African Union (AU) Assembly in 2011. A year later, in 2012, a decision to establish a Continental Free Trade Area by 2017 was adopted by African Heads of States at the AU summit in Addis Ababa. After several negotiating sessions, the AfCFTA was signed in Kigali in 2018, went into force a year later in May 2019, and entered the operational phase in July of that same year. The first phase of the agreement is well underway. It includes the liberalization of trade in goods and services, dispute settlement procedures, and other traderelated issues such as rules of origin and trade facilitation. This will be followed later by issues related to competition policy, intellectual property rights, and investment. Implementation of the first phase was scheduled to start on July 1, 2020, but this had to be delayed until January 1, 2021 due to COVID-19. The duty-free trading of goods and services thus officially started on January 1, 2021.

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The main objective of the AfCFTA is to create a single market and deepen economic integration on the continent, in line with Agenda 2063 of “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the international arena”.15 Will the AfCFTA deliver more than what previous initiatives did? Several studies have shown that the AfCFTA will increase intra-African trade significantly and will not have significant negative effects on non-member countries as a result of trade diversion.16 The AfCFTA has the potential to improve living standards across the continent. It should be pointed out that any estimation of the benefits from a potential free trade agreement ex ante is based on a number of assumptions such as the extent to which liberalization happens, whether external tariffs are harmonized and whether other measures related to trade facilitation are implemented. The ex post benefits will in addition to these factors be affected by exogenous events. The reality is that even if it has been increasing in recent years, intra-African trade is lower than in other advanced regions of the world. There is also a lot of heterogeneity across countries and subregions; for example, South Africa is a big player in intra-African trade, but other large economies such as Algeria and Nigeria are not. The nature of intra-African trade is also different from the trade the continent conducts with the rest of the world. As discussed in the previous section, Africa’s global trade footprint is dominated by the export of primary commodities and imported manufactured goods and industrial equipment. On the other hand, intra-African trade is dominated by agriculture and manufactured goods. Consider the case of manufacturing, which, as we discussed in the previous section, has not grown as much as in other regions. To the extent that trade liberalization due to the AfCFTA leads to increased exchanges of manufactured products across African countries, it can allow an efficient manufacturing sector to emerge due to access to a larger market and economies of scale. Once restricted by small domestic markets, firms would now produce for a larger regional market and become more competitive globally. Thus, the AfCFTA is an opportunity for African countries to develop regional value chains and diversify their trade, building on the RECs’ efforts. Pessimists will argue that the low levels of intra-African trade result from a lack of differentiation or trade complementarity among African countries as they tend to produce and export similar goods to the rest of the world, in addition to facing challenges such as poor domestic and regional physical (e.g., transportation and logistics) and digital infrastructures, non-tariff barriers (e.g., inefficient borders and customs procedures), and complicated rules of origin across different RECs with overlapping memberships. Tariffs for specific RECs are very low but remain fairly high for countries that belong to different RECs, thus limiting trade between them. Unless these problems are addressed, and domestic reforms to streamline regulations are implemented, the costs of trading within Africa will remain too high when compared to trade outside of the continent. As the latest World Development Report (WDR)

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from the World Bank makes clear, policies have an important role to play in GVC participation: Policies to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) can remedy the scarcity of capital, technology, and management skills. Liberalizing trade at home while negotiating trade liberalization abroad can overcome the constraints of a small domestic market, liberating firms and farms from the limits of domestic demand and local inputs. Improving transportation and communications infrastructure and introducing competition in these services can address the disadvantage of a remote location. And participating in deep integration agreements can spur institutional and policy reform, especially when complemented by technical and financial assistance.17

Speaking of the AfCFTA in particular, the WDR mentions the need to address non-tariff barriers to trade in goods and services and implement trade facilitation measures. The latter include various measures to simplify technical and legal procedures for goods that are traded across borders. We argue, building on the above quote from the WDR that the AfCFTA can have a transformative economic impact. However, this can only happen if a complementary set of domestic and regional policies, together with the necessary political will, are put in place. Overall, the AfCFTA is an opportunity for Africa to address the mismatch between its improved growth performance in the last two decades and its low share of global trade by increasing the volume of intra-African trade and improving the region’s competitiveness.

China–Africa Trade Relations It would be impossible to address Africa’s global trade position without considering China’s role and influence. Since China began to implement domestic economic reforms in the late 1970s and opened its economy to trade and foreign investment, there has been a steady increase in its bilateral trade with Africa. The gradual liberalization of its economy has led China to export more than it imports from Africa in most years from 1995 to 2018 (see Fig. 19.2).18 China’s exports to Africa increased from about US$2 billion in 1995 to reach a peak of US$156 billion in 2015, before declining to US$105 billion in 2018. Chinese imports from Africa were less than US$1 billion in 1995 and rose to US$80 billion in 2018. China overtook the US as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009. There are various reasons for these impressive numbers: China’s appetite for natural resources, its increasing engagement since the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2000, and the strategic use of development assistance to promote investment and trade. Traditional theories of comparative advantage are quite helpful in understanding China–Africa bilateral trade. Using an abundance of cheap labor and good infrastructure,

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Fig. 19.2 China–Africa Trade, 1995–2018 (Source Constructed using data from SAIS-CARI)

China was able to specialize in producing low-cost, labor-intensive manufacturing that it exported to the rest of the world. Given China’s one-child policy and rising labor costs, it has been argued that low-skill labor-intensive manufacturing will become less viable and move elsewhere, including Africa. But it is not clear that this will happen quickly as China’s population projections indicate that its labor force will continue to grow over the next decades. And even if wages were to rise in China, so would productivity, which, together with technological progress, would mean fewer workers are needed to meet the global demand for manufactured goods. It is also not clear that this outsourcing of low-skill labor-intensive manufacturing will necessarily end up in Africa as there are many other competitive destinations—in terms of labor costs and productivity—such as Bangladesh or Vietnam in Asia. On the African side, many of the economies are dominated by basic agriculture and service provision. Several African countries are producers of primary products and depend heavily on a few primary commodities’ exports. The general pattern of bilateral trade between African countries and China is characterized by the exports of primary products from Africa to China and the import of manufacturing products from China to Africa. The primary products that Africa exports to China include oil—which China desperately needs to support its growth and development—and minerals, wood, and cotton. At the country level, resource-rich countries such as Angola and South Sudan export mostly to China and do not have a diversified export portfolio. Angola’s case is interesting because it involves the so-called resources-for-infrastructure swaps. China has used such swaps to make infrastructure loans to resource-rich

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countries and obtain long-term supply contracts and rights to their resources in exchange. African imports from China, on the other hand, are more diversified and consist primarily of machinery, electronics, and light manufactures such as textiles and apparel. There is a concern that cheap imports of Chinese mass-produced (and including counterfeit) consumer goods are hurting local African producers of import-competing goods and preventing the emergence of a bigger manufacturing sector. Low-cost imports are a double-edged sword, though. While they can hurt local producers and thus output and employment, they benefit consumers (even if the gains may be lower if one adjusts for the quality of Chinese products) and importers of intermediate inputs or capital goods. It is to be noted that since most of Africa’s manufacturing is not exported, the effects are more likely to be felt on domestic markets. Cheaper access to intermediate inputs or capital goods could even give a boost to manufacturing. In theory, it is also possible for low-cost imports from China to have no impact on African output and employment if they are simply replacing imports from other countries. To the extent that the nature of China’s and Africa’s exports are quite different, competition in third markets may not be too significant. However, there are specific sectors where low-cost Chinese imports have had a negative impact. For example, Raphael Kaplinsky, Dorothy McCormick, and Mike Morris document how the clothing and furniture sectors in certain exporting economies such as Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, and Swaziland were hurt by China’s improved competitiveness in global markets.19 An earlier United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) study provided a more nuanced picture. Specifically, it argued that cheaper imports from China (and India) would increase the real income of the poor in countries such as Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania, and other exporters in third markets would be negatively impacted instead of domestic producers; however, it also made the argument that output and employment in Ethiopia and Nigeria would be negatively affected as a result of increased import competition.20 The Belt and Road Initiative, announced by the Chinese government in 2013 to further its economic and strategic interests, was welcome news for the African continent due to the massive infrastructure gaps that need to be filled. While there are genuine concerns that African countries will borrow massively and build up unsustainable debts, the hope is that these infrastructure projects—at both country- and regional-levels—will generate positive returns and lead to continued growth and development. As David Dollar has indicated, the heterogeneity of African experiences with the Belt and Road Initiative means that one should be careful about simple generalizations; if debt sustainability is indeed an issue, then others such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank can help countries manage their borrowing and provide more infrastructure financing, respectively.21 While much of the focus has been on physical infrastructure, there is also a digital component to the Belt and Road initiative (telecommunications, internet infrastructure, smart cities, and e-commerce) to further enhance and diversify

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Africa’s contribution to global trade and services. Like physical infrastructure, many sub-Saharan African countries suffer from poor access to the internet or its use for e-commerce and other digital technologies. Digitalization, whether it happens due to the Belt and Road initiative or otherwise, holds much promise. It will likely transform regional and global value chains, improve productivity, and allow countries to exchange a broader range of, and higher value-added, products. African countries must be part of a global phenomenon that is happening much faster elsewhere.

Conclusion Whether trade contributes to growth and economic development is an issue that has long been debated by economists. Specialization based on comparative advantage leads to a more efficient allocation of resources and enhances production and consumption possibilities. The exchange of goods and services allows countries to learn by doing and benefit from foreign ideas and technology, leading to long-run growth. Trade improves the welfare of countries overall but has distributional consequences that affect individuals and sectors differently. There is a lesson that we can learn from the recent backlash against globalization. In that case, it is that distributional consequences of trade liberalization must be taken into account by policymakers. Targeted government policies can alter comparative advantage and promote specific industries, but the key to success comes down to improved productivity; it is difficult to compete globally without better productivity. While we can debate the magnitude of the contribution of trade to growth and development, there is no question that trade, and especially Africa’s trade with China, has contributed to the continent’s growth turnaround. For example, Sabina Kummer-Noormamode shows that trade with China had a positive impact on African GDP for 37 African countries in the last decade of the period 1985 to 2012, and a bigger impact than trade with the European Union.22 Robert Mullings and Aruneema Mahabir also find Africa’s bilateral trade with China to be a significant factor explaining Africa’s growth for resource-rich, oil-producing and non-landlocked countries, even if private and foreign direct investments played a larger role.23 However, they also find that Africa-US trade had no significant effect on growth while Africa-EU trade had a negative impact on growth. According to the authors, these findings in the case of the US indicate that preferential access to the US market has not led to more trade due to “domestic supply side constraints, poor infrastructure, and weak policy environments”.24 In the case of the EU, preferential schemes were not successful due to strict rules of origin that outweighed benefits of lower tariffs.25 The boom in oil and commodity prices resulting from increasing demand for China explains much of Africa’s recent growth story, but it is not the only explanation. Fewer conflicts, political stability, a better macroeconomic environment, and an improved business climate have also contributed to both

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trade and growth. However, too much oil and commodities dependence are problematic, as the last few years have shown, and new engines of growth are needed. To create decent jobs for its rising population, the African continent must increase and diversify its trade, including in higher value-added products. Given the different structural change pattern that has taken place on the continent, there is scope to build a stronger manufacturing base and improve the productivity of the agricultural sector, on which more than 1 in 2 Africans depend for their livelihoods. The AfCFTA can be a real gamechanger in this regard, but as we have argued in this chapter, its success, and that of Africa’s position in global trade, will depend on several factors such as improving the investment climate and productivity by: investing in physical and digital infrastructure, skills and competition; further trade liberalization and improved trade facilitation; and political will to implement reforms. The latter is especially important because the AfCFTA, like all free trade agreements, will create winners and losers within countries. As a recent report by the World Bank made clear, “Labor market results would vary by country, and some workers would lose jobs even as others gain new job opportunities and higher wages…Policy makers will need to carefully monitor AfCFTA’s distributional impacts—across sectors and countries, on skilled and unskilled workers, and on female and male workers. Doing so will enable them to design policies to reduce the costs of job switching and provide effective safety nets where they are needed most.”26 In other words, the AfCFTA will succeed, and Africa’s position in global trade will improve, if the aforementioned complementary domestic measures, together with regional ones such as coordination of industrial policies are implemented and are backed by the necessary political will.

Notes 1. Our calculations using data from the World Development Indicators Database of the World Bank: https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-develo pment-indicators# (accessed on January 16, 2021). 2. This figure is as of January 3, 2021 and there are more than 420,000 active confirmed cases and more than 67,000 deaths in Africa on that date as a result of COVID-19. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-4a1 1d568-2716-41cf-a15e-7d15079548bc (accessed on January 3, 2021). 3. World Bank, Africa’s Pulse: An Analysis of Issues Shaping Africa’s Economic Future. Assessing the Economic Impact of Covid-19 and Policy Responses in SubSaharan Africa (Washington, DC: World Bank, April 2020a, Volume 21). 4. Nathan Nunn, “The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123 (February 2008): 139–176; Graziella Bertocchi and Arcangelo Dimico, “The Long-Term Determinants of Female HIV Infection in Africa: The Slave Trade, Polygyny, and Sexual Behavior,” Journal of Development Economics 140 (September 2019): 90–105; Yu Zhang and Shahriar Kibriya, “The Impact of the Slave Trade on Current Civil Conflict in SubSaharan Africa,” Working Paper, Texas A&M University (2016), Selected Paper

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6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

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Prepared for Presentation at the 2016 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Boston, Masschusetts, July 31–August 2, https:// pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00TH13.pdf. Ewout Frankema, Jeffrey Williamnson, and Pieter Woltjer, “An Economic Rationale for the West African Scramble? The Commercial Transition and the Commodity Price Boom of 1835–1885,” The Journal of Economic History 78, no. 1 (March 2018): 231–267. The Economist, The Hopeful Continent: Africa Rising (December 3, 2011). UNCTAD, State of Commodity Dependence 2019 (Geneva: United Nations, 2019). Calculations using data from World Development Indicators Database, World Bank. Anani Nourredine Mensah and Abdul-Fahd Fofana, “Global Value Chains and Upgrading in Economic Community of West African States Countries,” in Building a Resilient and Sustainable Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, eds. Abebe Shimeles, Audrey Verdier-Chouchane A and Amadou Boly (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 257–283. Manitra A. Rakotoarisoa, Massimo Iafrate, and Marianna Paschali, “Why Has Africa Become a Net Food Importer? Explaining Africa Agricultural and Food Deficits,” in Trade and Markets Division (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2011). Nora Dihel and Arti Grover Goswami, The Unexplored Potential of Trade in Services in Africa: From Hair Stylists and Teachers to Accountants and Doctors (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016). Dani Rodrik, “Premature Deindustrialization,” School of Social Science, Institute of Advanced Study Economics Working Papers (Princeton NJ 08540, 2015). Richard Newfarmer, John Page, and Finn Tarp, eds., Industries Without Smokestacks: Industrialization in Africa Reconsidered (Oxford University Press, 2018). Newfarmer, Page and Tarp, eds., Industries Without Smokestacks: Industrialization in Africa Reconsidered. African Union Commission, Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want (September 2015). See, for example, Simon Mevel and Stephen Karingi, “Deepening Regional Integration in Africa: A Computable General Equilibrium Assessment of the Establishment of a Continental Free Trade Area Followed by a Continental Customs Union,” Selected Paper for Presentation at the 7th African Economic Conference Kigali, Rwanda, 30 October–2 November 2012 (October 4, 2012); Baker McKenzie, AfCFTA’s Three Trillion Dollar Opportunity. Weighing Existing Barriers Against Potential Economic Gains (November 2019). World Bank, World Development Report 2020: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020b), 4. Data from the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI), which is based at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. See http://www.sais-cari.org (accessed on June 30, 2020). The SAIS-CARI trade data is sourced from the United Nations Comtrade database.

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19. Raphael Kaplinsky, Dorothy McCormick, and Mike Morris, “The Impact of China on Sub-Saharan Africa,” Institute of Development Studies Working Paper 291 (November 2007). 20. DFID, “The Effect of China and India’s Growth and Trade Liberalization on Poverty in Africa,” Final Report (May 2005). 21. David Dollar, “Understanding China’s Belt and Road Infrastructure Projects in Africa, Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World,” The Brookings Institution (2019). 22. Sabina Kummer-Noormamode, “Does Trade with China Have an Impact on African Countries’ Growth?” African Development Review 26, no. 2 (2014): 397–415. 23. Robert Mullings and Aruneema Mahabir, “Growth By Destination: The Role of Trade in Africa’s Recent Growth Episode,” World Development 102 (February 2018): 243–261. 24. Mullings and Mahabir, 258. 25. Mullings and Mahabir, 258. 26. World Bank, The African Continental Free Trade Area: Economic and Distributional Effects (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020c), 7.

CHAPTER 20

Africa in Global Trade: Tracking Performance and Mapping Future Pathways Theresa Moyo

Introduction The expansion and scale of global trade is one of the distinguishing features of the changing world order. Many studies converge on the position that participating in global trade yields significant gains such as increases in economic growth, access to technology and investments and opportunities for job creation, all of which can contribute to human and social development for the participating country. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)advances the notion that trade can be an ‘enabler’ in that it offers countries opportunities to achieve inclusive and sustainable development.1 This position is corroborated by the African Development Bank (AfDB), in its Africa Economic Outlook 2017 report, where it states that ‘trade between countries has the greatest potential for building sustainable development and integration.’2 This is also supported by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a global multilateral organization established to facilitate trade among countries.3 It adds that these outcomes can be realized through technology transfer and investments among countries that arise from trade.4 Vijayasri seems to sum it all up when he concludes that trade offers a ‘consumption possibilities frontier’ that is broader than the boundaries of a country’s production capabilities and that trade also enhances a country’s T. Moyo (B) Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership (TGSL), Polokwane, South Africa

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_20

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production capabilities through improved access to inputs, technology, and skills.5 In essence, these studies all suggest that trade can positively affect economic growth and development. Critics point out that trade will not necessarily lead to human development because that depends on how governments ultimately allocate export revenues. The United Nations (UN) & the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)6 (UN and FAO 2017, 4) give an example of Zambia, which enjoyed a GDP growth rate of 6.3%, on average, between 2002 and 2010. This was caused by rising copper prices. However, during the same period, poverty increased from 49.4–64.4%. Other studies also emphasize the positive impact of trade on growth.7 Another example is Nigeria, which experienced an average annual GDP growth rate of 10.8% from 2003 to 2009; the country’s poverty remained at a constant of 53.5% of the population. Other critics also argue that trade does not necessarily yield some gains to all countries. The reason lies in the unequal power relations that characterize the international trading and financial architecture, which has led to uneven distribution of gains between the more powerful advanced or industrialized economies and those still developing. This argument is discussed in greater detail in the theoretical framework section of the chapter. The changing global order has ushered in a global trading environment in which more countries (both the rich/industrialized/high-income/or Developed Countries (DCs) and the low-income/developing or Least Developed Countries (LDCs)), private and multinational corporations, bilateral and multilateral organizations are participating. The new global trading system is a rule-based order guided by the neoliberal ideology of free markets, a strong state that upholds market principles and seeks to promote free trade, competition, and trade efficiency among countries. The WTO, with over 164 members as of the end of 2016, symbolizes the shift from protectionism to trade liberalization and open economies (Schott 2008). Although Africa’s agency in international affairs has become more visible and stronger in the last decade or two, and even though the continent has made some progress in terms of integration to the global trading system, there are serious challenges that must be resolved. A major issue is the unequal nature of global trade. This inequality is reflected in the unequal power relations in governance and decision-making in trade matters and the disproportionate gains in trade between the richer and more industrialized nations and developing countries. Africa’s marginalization from the global trading system is a particularly distinct challenge for the continent because its trade gains have been limited8 Another pertinent issue is Africa’s production structure marked by commodity dominance and product concentration, which have increased the continent’s risk and vulnerability to global price and demand volatility. Therefore, the changing global order raises many questions concerning Africa’s participation in global trade; what is the continent’s position in the system in terms of governance and decision-making? What is the continent

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trading in? With whom? And on what terms? How has the continent benefited (or lost) in the process? What factors have contributed to the performance? Finally, what are the implications for Africa’s future participation in global trade? Therefore, this chapter aims to track Africa’s performance in global trade to map possible pathways into the future. Its main objectives are to analyze the nature of the global trading system within the changing global order; to locate and assess Africa’s position within that system in terms of governance and decision-making in rules/policies and practices pertaining to trade; to assess how Africa has or has not benefited from trade and finally, to map out possible pathways to Africa’s future in global trade. The chapter is divided into seven sections. Section “Materials and Methods” briefly outlines the materials and methods employed in writing the chapter. Section “Theoretical Framework: Review of Trade Theories and How They Explain Africa’s Position in Global Trade” articulates the theoretical framework that guides the study. Section “Literature Review” is a review of the literature on pertinent issues around Africa’s participation in global trade. Section “The Evidence: Tracking the Performance of Africa in the Global Trading System” presents findings from global trade statistics analysis on the patterns and trends in merchandise exports and imports, services and foreign direct investment, and Africa’s performance over time. The chapter also analyses emerging issues from that data. Finally, section “Conclusion and Recommendations” presents the conclusion and recommendations.

Materials and Methods The chapter adopts a qualitative research paradigm in which secondary data was extensively used. Scholarly journals, books, and reports were used to explore current debates and discourses around the role of trade in a country’s development and the factors that determine that participation. Trade statistics published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), among others, were used to assess Africa’s performance in global trade. The main indicators of performance included values and trends in exports and imports of goods; the structure of trade in terms of composition or mix between commodities and manufactured products, the concentration of exports index, values and trends in exports and imports of services, values and trends in inflows and outflows of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). In all these cases, Africa’s relative shares about global totals and other developing regions were analyzed.

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Theoretical Framework: Review of Trade Theories and How They Explain Africa’s Position in Global Trade To better understand the nature of Africa’s integration into the global trading system and factors that have determined the continent’s performance, it is important to review some theoretical perspectives that attempt to offer some explanations. The perspectives are diverse and have different implications regarding the pathways that the continent may consider in the future. This section briefly explains liberal classical and neoliberal perspectives that have shaped trade theory. It also discusses the more radical views of dependency theorists because their influence in Africa and other developing regions has been strong. David Ricardo and Heckscher and Ohlin are among the most well-known liberal theorists who have influenced international trade structure. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage countered Adam Smith’s theory of absolute advantage. He argues that even when a country may have an absolute advantage in the production of one or more goods, it does not imply that it should produce and trade all those goods and services for which it has absolute advantages.9 Rather, it should produce and export those goods and services for which it has a comparative advantage, meaning where it can produce them relatively cheaper than its trading partners. The theory argues that this would lead to efficiency and mutual benefit from trade.10 Whereas Ricardo’s model was based on a single factor, labor, the Heckscher–Ohlin theory took into account that, in reality, countries are endowed with more than a single factor endowment. A country’s relative factor endowments would determine trade. Because rich countries have an abundance of capital, they tend to produce capital-intensive goods while poorer countries produce labor-intensive goods because of their labor abundance.11 However, Leontief refuted this, who argued that there were cases where countries produced and exported goods in which they did not have an abundance. Leontief cited the United States case, which at some point, exported labor-intensive goods and imported capital-intensive goods even though it is an abundant capital country.12 That notwithstanding, the comparative advantage perspective has been influential in shaping the pattern of specialization in international trade. Comparative advantage theory has been widely criticized, especially by developing countries, for having fostered an international division of labor, which has created a production structure that has been detrimental to them because of the unequal terms of trade that result from it. It has led to a situation where most developing countries, including those in Africa, have a high commodity dependence level. They export raw material products or commodities and depend heavily on imported manufactured goods. UNCTAD states that more than half of all countries and two-thirds of developing countries were commodity-dependent as of the end of 2017. It also points out that in the period 2013–2017, 102 out of 189 countries (54%) were

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commodity-dependent.13 It defines a country as being commodity-dependent if commodities account for more than 60% of its total merchandise exports -in value terms.14 Even though commodity-dependent countries can benefit when commodity prices rise, such gains can be eroded when prices fall, and countries incur trade deficits, revenue losses and may go into debt. Another challenge is that because most of the export earnings of commodity-dependent countries are derived from a narrow range of commodities, this increases the risk and vulnerability to price and demand shocks. For instance, in 2014–2015, Zambia generated 86% of its export revenues from commodities, copper alone accounting for 80%. Such a concentration of exports and revenues carries enormous risks due to the high volatility of commodity prices. Nigeria and Zambia reveal the vulnerability of CDDCs to commodity booms and busts. For example, oil accounted for 80% of Nigeria’s annual export earnings in 2014, while copper accounted for 79% of Zambia’s total merchandise exports in 2014–2015. Owing to such high dependence of the Nigerian and Zambian economies on oil and copper, respectively, the slump in the prices of these two commodities had a significant impact on their economic performance, and thus on their development prospects.15 Thus, developing countries’ reliance on commodity exports is not viable for a long-term development strategy. Neoliberalism (sometimes referred to as Orthodox), quite similar to Classical market-based approaches, dominates contemporary trade. It is both a political and economic ideology based on market competition’s logic to allocate resources.16 They indicate that key pillars of neoliberalism include deregulation of domestic markets, removal of price controls, privatization of state-owned enterprises, liberalization of trade and financial markets, marketbased provisioning of services such as utilities, education, and healthcare. Like the liberal views of Ricardo and Heckscher, and Ohlin, neoliberalism endorses an international division of labor based on comparative advantage theory and competitive trade markets. Proponents argue that there are gains from trade, that it is ‘Pareto-superior,’ is ‘Pareto-efficient’ and that it is also superior to models which have various degrees of trade restrictions.17 The neoliberal perspective has shaped the current global trading order as the multilateral trading system moves up countries to free trade. As will be argued in the literature review section, the current system is moving toward adopting trade liberalization measures such as removing tariffs, non-tariff barriers and subsidies, and other support programs to producers as such measures are dimmed to stifle competition and efficiency. These measures are expected to create a more competitive global trading environment, expand trade among all countries, and facilitate their countries’ social and economic development. In essence, neoliberalism argues that free markets are the best mechanisms by which countries should integrate into the global trading system and that they will all achieve positive results in terms of economic growth and development. Ricardian and Neoliberal perspectives have been widely criticized for worsening African economies’ performance.18 Dependency critics have also been highly critical of neoliberal perspectives on international trade. They argue

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that Africa’s poor performance in trade has to be understood from a political economy perspective that locates Africa within an international financial and trading system in which power relations are unequal, a system in which rich nations have a dominant position that dates back to colonialism and imperialism. From their analysis, the economic and social stagnation in many parts of the African continent reflects the impact of the historically determined international division of labor that has locked the continent into a region of commodity producers and exporters and an importer of manufactured goods. In his work on A Structural Theory of Imperialism, Galtung19 aptly describes this as ‘structural violence’ and argues that it underscores the ‘asymmetrical interaction’ that characterizes the unequal exchange between the advanced or industrialized nations and Africa. Walter Rodney blames that kind of division of labor for the ‘development of underdevelopment’ in Africa.20 It is this unequal pattern of trade that has short-changed Africa in the global arena. Hout presents an extensive discussion of their perspective.21 Dependency theorists argue that trade between the rich and developing nations is highly unequal because of the unequal power relations between them, which can be traced back to colonization and imperialism. Dependency theory locates Africa within what Wallerstein22 refers to as a ‘World System’ in which, as a result of dominance and exploitation by more powerful nations (the center or core) in the past, the continent is a part of the ‘periphery.’ Other scholars have defined a world system as ‘a social system, one that has fewer boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimization and coherence characterized by conflicting forces which hold it together by tension’.23 Wallerstein’s World Systems View explains Africa’s underdevelopment and other regions that were once colonized in terms of a hierarchical relationship between the rich or powerful nations and the less powerful and poorer nations. Trade is based on an unequal exchange by virtue of the international division of labor that has over time shaped Africa’s trade patterns and other developing regions to be exporters of commodities and importers of manufactures. Although the historical epoch of colonization has ended, some scholars argue that the plunder continues because, among other factors, the structure of production between advanced and poor nations has not significantly changed. For example, Samir Amin, a Marxist critic, argues that the continent exists within a global economic system that is unequal and unjust. He views Africa’s marginalization from the global trading system as an integral part of capitalist accumulation strategy. Therefore, he dismisses Africa’s notion or any other developing continent that can benefit significantly from trade under the current global order. Even though he believes in the potential of trade as a development weapon for developing nations, this can only materialize when the global trading and financial architecture are transformed to become more democratic, equitable, and just. Samir Amin articulates this point most poignantly when he says:

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The global system is not “post-imperialist”. It is imperialist. It shares with other previous imperialist systems which always commanded the expansion of global capitalism several fundamental and permanent characteristics: it offers to the people on the periphery (the South, to use the current patois) no chance to “catch up” and benefit, for better or for worse, the “advantages” of the level of material consumption reserved for the majority of the people in the centres; it only produces and reproduces, the deepening of the “North/South” gap.24

Amin proposes that developing countries should ‘delink’ from the ‘core’ and pursue what he terms ‘auto-centric’ development, founded on ‘forms of globalization’ that lead to social progress, society’s democratization and social and economic development. As he emphasized, this has to be a regulated or controlled process-suggesting, contrary to neoliberal views, some measure of state intervention or control. It needs to be understood that the unavoidable auto-centric character of development does not exclude either the opening (on condition that it remains controlled) or the participation in ‘globalization’ (inter-dependence). But it conceives of these as needing to be formulated in terms that would permit the reduction-not the accentuation of the inequality of wealth and power between nations and regions.25

Amin’s analysis implies that Africa should pursue an alternative development path. Scholars such as Galtung26 had proposed a similar path in terms of ‘selfreliance.’ As dependency theorists have argued, the credibility of traditional and neoliberal perspectives on trade has widely been questioned based on the reality of the inequality that marks the current global trading system. Critics of dependency theory, such as Chuka Enuka, argue that the theory underestimates the responsibilities of developing countries for their own internal failures to achieve development. However, the evidence from more global review of the evidence (notably the works of Amin27 ), seems to suggest that the dependency theory’s more radical perspectives seem to be more plausible in explaining the genesis of inequality between the rich/industrialized ‘core’ and the relatively poorer ‘periphery.’ I would argue that, from a realist and pragmatic perspective, ‘delinking’ would not be an ideal solution. The ongoing reforms in the global trading system, coupled with Africa’s growing agency in international affairs and along with it, the emergence of new power blocks that are also keen to see balance and fairness in trade, these forces combined, suggest that Africa can achieve gains through integration into the global trading system. The idea of Africa’s growing agency is supported by Chipaike and Matarutse.28 The theoretical framework adopted for analysis in this chapter consists of aspects of dependency theory to examine patterns of trade between Africa and the Rest of the World. However, it does not endorse the ‘delinking’ alternative that some dependency theorists propose. The chapter argues that Africa can

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pursue strategies that can strengthen its position in the arena of global trade, transform its production structure and subsequently increase the gains it can reap from such exchange.

Literature Review The review focuses on critical issues such as the nature of the current international trading system and how it facilitates or hinders trade growth. Africa’s experience with operating under the system is analyzed. The literature review also analyses the state of knowledge regarding Africa’s position and performance in the global trading system and the factors contributing to the outcomes to date. The Nature of International Trade in the Changing Global Economic Order The collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War have created a new global order, characterized by many scholars as a multipolar world. Acharya describes the contemporary world order as a liberal international world order which is, however, in decline as the domination of big powers such as the United States and Europe, among others, is increasingly weakened.29 The author views the contemporary world order as a ‘limited international order’ rather than an ‘inclusive global order.’ He also argues that the rise of China, for example, coupled with the proliferation of Regional Trading Agreements (RTAs), plurilateral arrangements, private international institutions, SouthSouth partnerships and alliances, transnational corporations and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), for example, has led to the emergence of a ‘multiplex’ world. Contrary to the multipolar world of the immediate post World War II period, this ‘multiplex’ world, although more complex, is likely to have a positive impact on global governance in that it dilutes or weakens the dominance of the global order by any single power or country).30 It is a world characterized by inter-dependence and is much ‘denser’ because it revolves around finance, trade, global production networks, and supply chains. The complexity thus implies that power and decision-making are more dispersed. The rise of emerging powers such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil is changing the international trading system to tilting the balance of power in multilateral trade establishments concerning governance, decision-making, and participation. One of the most significant developments regarding international trade is the emergence of a rule-based multilateral trading system following the establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). By 2016, the organization had a membership of 164 countries. 42 out of 54 African countries are members, representing 22% of the total membership. Thirty-five percent of WTO members are developing countries.31 BRICS countries are also members of WTO. China acceded to the WTO in 2001 and have since become one of the leading global trade players. Its economy has grown by around 10%

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per annum in recent years.32 China has increased its trading partnerships with Africa and several developing countries. According to Kachiga, when China joined the UN Security Council in 1971, its underlying purpose was in promoting a multipolar international order, as well as in backing developing nations.33 So the multilateral trading system has brought together most of the United Nations members into the global trading system. Africa and the Changing Global Trading System The WTO has boosted trade between countries by reducing tariff barriers among them.34 In support of this argument, Acharya and Daly35 argue that free trade has facilitated the growth of trade in goods, services, and Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) flows around the globe. The WTO itself says that in 2000, total trade was twenty-two times the level of 1950 and partly attributes this to the creation of the organization.36 The authors also argue that the new trading system has significantly reduced trade impediments, mainly in tariffs. Free trade has facilitated the growth of trade in goods, services, and Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) flows around the globe.37 A 2017 study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) indicates that in some ways, Africa has benefited from the emergence of this new trading environment in that, under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Generalized System of Preferences, most African countries now benefit from preferential trade arrangements with developed countries. Developing African countries receive non-reciprocal preferential treatment for exports to a large number of developed countries. African least developed countries also receive dutyfree treatment from specific emerging economies such as Chile, China, and India.38 Under the United States of America Generalized System of Preferences, since 2000, the country has provided duty-free access for additional products to qualifying African countries (excluding North Africa) under the African Growth and Opportunity Act.39 The range of products under this AGOA provision includes apparel, footwear, motor vehicle components, steel, chemicals, and agricultural products. South-South trade has continued to expand under the new global order and now represents roughly 50% of developing country exports.40 Africa’s trade volumes with its emerging partners have doubled in nominal value over the decade and now amount to 37% of the continent’s total trade.41 This is supported by data from UNCTAD.42 The China-Africa Forum has been established and has become a platform for African economies to negotiate with China on trade and other matters. Recently, China pledged $60 billion toward Africa’s development.43 The rise of China has increased the demand for commodities. This triggered an upsurge in commodity, particularly during 2003–2011.44 This was an important factor contributing to high economic growth rates, ranging from 5–8% per annum, for some African countries. The period, popularly dubbed as the “commodity supercycle,” boosted the capacity

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of commodity exporters to expand their trade, owing to favorable terms of trade.45 It led to optimism about ‘Africa rising.’ However, this was short-lived as commodity prices plummeted. China has also contributed to infrastructure development on the continent, although there have been criticisms that such infrastructure is primarily tailored to facilitate natural resource extraction for the benefit of China.46 The trade is also dominated by commodities. The multilateral trading system is facing challenges. One is the stalemate that has resulted from the WTO members’ failure to reach an agreement on the Doha Development Round. Developing nations were demanding the removal of protectionist policies by the industrialized countries. For example, they were opposed to US agriculture support through subsidies and imposition of tariffs against products from Africa and other developing countries, yet the industrialized countries demanded the latter to liberalize their trade.47 Another challenge facing the system is that the slow progress in the implementation of WTO agreements is said to have led many countries, both developed and developing, to enter into bilateral, regional trade agreements (RTAs) and, in some cases, mega RTAS. Some critics have pointed out that the recent emergence of mega-regional trade agreements between large trading powers has implications for Africa’s industrialization agenda. According to as argued by UNECA-ATPC, based on their modeling, if implemented as currently planned, the three main mega-regional trade agreements, namely, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, will result in a loss of market share by African countries through preference erosion and competitiveness pressures.48 Africa would see its total exports reduce by $3 billion by 2022, compared with the baseline scenario without these agreements. These mega agreements will further marginalize Africa from the global trading system. These observations are also supported by Aribidara who argues that when these MRTAs are implemented, Sub-Saharan African countries will lose preference, resulting in trade diversion.49 This is because MRTAs will induce a shift from lower-cost products and services sourced outside the MRTA region to high-cost producers within the trading bloc, who can sell more cheaply since they no longer have to pay any import duty. More voices are calling out for reform of the multilateral trading system to resolve the challenges discussed above.50 The TTIP is likely to concern Africa the most, given that close to 40% of Africa’s exports are destined either for the USA or the EU market. Africa and other developing economies, on the other hand, have benefited much less because of several factors such as the dominance of commodities in their export baskets, dependence on import of manufactured goods, infrastructure and skills deficits, and the persistent balance of payments deficits that have resulted from their high level of commodity dependence.51

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The Evidence: Tracking the Performance of Africa in the Global Trading System A careful review of trade statistics from such credible sources as UNCTAD, AfDB and UNIDO reveals how Africa has performed in trade relative to other regions. Although there are positive developments in that Africa is trading globally, with advanced, emerging and other developing regions, the continent’s has the smallest shares in terms of exports, FDI inflows and services trade. The following are highlights of what the data reveal: a. Africa ranks lowest in terms of the value of its exports (2013–2018) Out of the global total of over $20 trillion in global export trade, Africa’s share was less than $1 trillion over 2013–2018. It was the lowest, not only in the world but also concerning other developing economies (Fig. 20.1). b. Africa’s exports growing although the lowest in terms of value Although the lowest in value, Africa’s exports have grown faster than for other developing regions. As of 2018, they grew by 14.7%. This was second to the 22.7% that was realized by Transition economies (Fig. 20.2). This is a positive development that demonstrates that Africa can trade and increase its export volumes. The continent can build on this success. As Table 20.1 shows, Africa’s export trade was $484 billion compared to a global total of $19.4 trillion. It was also well below the developing economies ($8.7 trillion). c. Africa has the least value in import trade over the period 2013–2018 Developed economies Transition economies and Oceania Developing economies: Asia Developing economies: America Developing economies: Africa Developing economies World 0

5000

Values (billions of US$) 2018

10000

15000

20000

25000

Values (billions of US$) 2013

Fig. 20.1 Africa and global export trade 2013–2018 (billions of US$) (Source Author-based on data from United Nations52 )

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22.7 14.7 9.7

10

World

Developing economies

9.2 Developing economies: Africa

Developing economies: America

9.8

8.7

Developing and Oceania economies: Asia

Transition economies

Developed economies

Fig. 20.2 Annual export growth by region 2018 (per cent) (Source Author based on data from United Nations53 )

Table 20.1 Africa’s share in global export trade (2013–2018) Region

2013

2018

Percent (%)

World Developing economies Developing economies: Africa Developing economies: America Developing economies: Asia and Oceania Transition economies Developed economies

18,971 8436 591 1118 6727 806 9708

19,453 8657 484 1086 7087 674 10,122

9.7 10 14.7 9.2 9.8 22.7 8.7

Source Author-based on data from United Nations54

Developed economies Transition economies and Oceania Developing economies: Asia Developing economies: America Developing economies: Africa Developing economies World 0

5000

Values (billions of US$) 2018

10000

15000

20000

25000

Values (billions of US$) 2013

Fig. 20.3 Africa in global import trade 2013–2018 (billions US$) (Source United Nations55 )

In terms of global imports trade, although Africa’s imports grew between 2013 and 2018, they had the lowest value in terms of total global imports (Fig. 20.3).

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d. Africa’s import trade growth over the period; registers net trade deficit Although imports grew by over 11%, Africa had a net trade deficit of −16% when exports are taken into account. On average, developing economies had a surplus of 4%, with Transition economies experiencing the largest surplus of 37%. Asia and Oceania followed by 7% (Fig. 20.4). e. Most African countries are commodity-dependent Even though Africa’s export and import trade has been increasing over the period, a serious issue of concern is that it consists mostly of commodity trade. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 89% of the countries were classified as commoditydependent. Only 11% were non-commodity dependent. Although high levels of commodity dependence characterized all developing economies, as Fig. 20.5 shows, Africa had the highest percentage of commodity-dependent countries. Advanced economies were 100% non-commodity dependent. Why is a high level of commodity dependence a problem? As discussed in the literature review, a high level of commodity dependence increases vulnerability to price and demand shocks. In periods where there are price booms, the region can benefit. However, when prices fall over time, the region’s export values fall, and they can experience trade deficits. According to UNCTAD,58 between 1998–2002 and 2008–2012, commodity prices increased substantially, but fell in 2013–2017, although they remained significantly higher than the prices registered in 1998–2002 or even in 2003–2007. But price increases varied by commodity group: the

37.1 7

4 10.1 -1

11

11.6

World

Developing economies

Developing -16 economies: Africa

10.8 -3.3

Developing economies: America

11 Developing economies: Asia

Annual growth 2018 (per cent)

and Oceania

9.4

9.4

Transition economies

-7.8 Developed economies

Trade balance ratio (per cent) 2018

Fig. 20.4 Africa in global import trade 2013–2018 (growth in per cent) (Source United Nations56 )

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120 100 80 60 40 20 0

Commodity dependent (per cent of total)

Non-commodity dependent (per cent of total)

Fig. 20.5 Distribution of commodity and non-commodity dependent countries within each geographic region 2013–2017 (Source Author based on data from UNCTAD57 )

prices of energy and minerals increased much more than those of agricultural and manufactured goods.

Source UNCTAD59 f. Export concentration is high for most African countries Africa also has the challenge that most of its exports have a high concentration level as measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) (commonly referred to as the Herfindahl index). The index measures concentration or anticompetitive behavior.60 It reflects how the exports and imports of a country or region concentrate on a few products or whether they are more

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1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

1995

2013-2017

2017

Fig. 20.6 Commodity export concentration for selected African countries: Herfindal-Hirschmann Index for selected African Countries 1995–2017 (Source Author, based on UNCTAD61 )

widely distributed among a broad range of products. The index value ranges from 0 to 1. The closer it is to 1 suggests that the economy is concentrated in a narrow range of goods or sectors. A value that is closer to 0 implies a more diversified portfolio. High values of the HHI suggest that an economy or region is likely to be vulnerable to trade shocks, whereas lower values imply less vulnerability. Figure 20.6 shows that apart from a few countries such as South Africa, Egypt and Mauritius, the HHI is very high, and so they exhibit a high level of export goods concentration. Thus, most of the continent is vulnerable to trade shocks. This is a challenge because trade performance is unpredictable. Along with it, export earnings, budget revenues, and ultimately planning for social and economic development become more difficult. g. Africa trade in services exports but has the lowest value for the period 2013–2018 (see Fig. 20.7). h. Africa’s trade in the export of services is growing but has the lowest share concerning the Rest of the World One of Africa’s fastest-growing sectors in the services sector (this consists of financial services, insurance, transport, tourism, medical services, and freight). Africa has succeeded in participating in the global services trade. According to the UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics,63 Africa’s services grew by 9.4% in 2019. This growth was slightly higher than the average of developing

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12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 World

Developing Developing Developing Developing and Oceania Transition Developed economies economies: economies: economies: economies economies Africa America Asia Value (billions of US$) 2013

Value (billions of US$) 2018

Fig. 20.7 Africa in global services trade: exports (billions of US$) 2013–2018 (Source Author calculation based on data from the United Nations62 )

economies, which grew by 9.4%. However, Africa’s services exports only constituted 2% of the global share of total services trade. This is a very small proportion compared to the 29.7% share by developing countries as a whole (Fig. 20.8). Other developing economies, for example, Asia and Oceania, fared better, with a 24.5% share and a growth of 10.4%. The share of developed economies was 67.9%, showing a greater proportion of the global trade in services exports. However, their growth was lower at 6.8%. Thus, although Africa’s export trade has been growing, its share in total global services exports is very small. It is also very small concerning other developing economies. i. Africa’s leading services exporters have a very small share in total services exports but registered increasing growth The leading service exporters from Africa are Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Ghana and Kenya. As Fig. 20.9 shows, their relative shares in the global services trade were very small. Egypt had the highest share at 0.4, while Kenya had the lowest at 0.09. This all shows that Africa has not penetrated the global trade in services exports. Equally so, the continent’s actual value of services imports was also the lowest globally and among developing economies (Fig. 20.10). Although higher than for services exports, the share in global services imports was also the lowest at 3.2% (Fig. 20.11). The annual growth rate of services imports was almost the same as that for exports.

20

Developed economies Transition economies

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AFRICA IN GLOBAL TRADE: TRACKING PERFORMANCE …

67.9 2.3

6.8 12.4

and Oceania Developing economies: Asia

24.5

Developing economies: America Developing economies: Africa Developing economies

10.4

3.3

1.7

2

9.4 29.7

World

Share in world services trade (per cent)

9.3 100

7.7

annual growth (per cent)

Fig. 20.8 Africa in global services export trade (share in world trade and annual growth in per cent) (Source Author calculation based on data from the United Nations64 )

j. Africa’s trade in services imports is growing but is second-lowest from the bottom in terms of the global totalSee Figs. 20.10 and 20.11. k. Africa second to the bottom in terms of FDI inflows In terms of Foreign Direct Investment inflows, Africa has the lowest inflows over the period 2013 to 2018 (Fig. 20.12). Its total inflows declined from $50 billion in 2013 to $46 billion in 2018. FDI inflows were much lower than developing economies, which improved performance as indicated by the increase from $653 billion in 2013 to $706 billion in 2018. The greater proportion of FDI inflows went to Asia and Oceania, where these flows rose from $418b to $513 billion over the same period. Thus, while Africa is now actively participating in global services trade, the monetary value of such shares and their relative share in global FDI inflows remain very small relative to other regions. FDI inflows in America’s developing economies constituted the highest proportion to GDP (above 2.5%) compared to other developing regions. Table 20.2 indicates that FDI inflows constitute a very small share of the GDP of Africa. The ratio also declined from 2.1 to 2% over the period (Fig. 20.13). As surveys by the World Bank (Doing Business surveys) indicate, the poor performance in attracting FDI inflows reflects Africa’s lack of

20.6

0.4

Egypt

1.3

9.4

Fig. 20.9 Africa’s leading exporters in services trade (shares in world trade and annual growth rates) (Source Author calculation based on data from the United Nations65 )

7

0.32

Morocco

0.27

14.7

0.13

South Africa

14.4

0.09

Kenya

2.02

Annual growth rate (per cent)

Ghana

Developing Africa

Share in world trade (per cent)

426 T. MOYO

20

427

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Developed economies Transition economies and Oceania Developing economies: Asia Developing economies: America Developing economies: Africa Developing economies World

Region 0

1000

2000

Value (billions of US$)

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

Value (billions of US$)

Fig. 20.10 Africa’s services imports -share of total services imports (Source Author calculation based on data from the United Nations66 ) Share in world services trade (per cent)

annual growth (per cent)

Developed economies Transition economies

7

59.4 7.8

2.8

and Oceania Developing economies: Asia

30.7

Developing economies: America

4

Developing economies: Af rica Develo ping eco no mies World

8.7 0.9 11.9

3.2

8.1

37.8 100

7.4

Fig. 20.11 Africa: share in world services imports and annual growth (per cent) (Source Based on data from the United Nations67 )

competitiveness largely because of the high costs of doing business. Inadequate infrastructure and logistics have contributed to constraints in doing business in Africa. High energy costs, poor road and rail infrastructure, corruption and customs inefficiencies are among the factors that make the business environment in Africa to be less attractive compared to other regions, for example,

428

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Developed economies Transition economies and Oceania Developing economies: Asia Developing economies: America Developing economies: Africa Developing economies World

0

200

400

600

2018

2013

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

Fig. 20.12 Africa and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows (billions of US$) 2013– 2018 (Source Based on data from the United Nations68 ) Table 20.2 Africa and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows (2013–2018) Region

World Developing economies Developing economies: Africa Developing economies: America Developing economies: Asia and Oceania Transition economies Developed economies

Value (billions of US$)

The ratio of inflows to GDP (percent)

2013

2013

2018

1431 653 50 184 418 84 695

1297 706 46 147 513 34 557

1.9 2.3 2.1 3 2.1 2.7 1.5

2018 1.5 2.1 2 2.8 2 1.5 1.1

Source United Nations69 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 World

Developing Developing Developing Developing and economies economies: economies: economies: Oceania Africa America Asia

ratio of inflows to GDP (per cent) 2013

Transition Developed economies economies

ratio of inflows to GDP (per cent) 2018

Fig. 20.13 Africa: Ratio of FDI inflows to GDP (per cent) 2013–2018 (Source Based on data from the United Nations70 )

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429

Developed economies Transition economies and Oceania Developing economies: Asia Developing economies: America Developing economies: Africa Developing economies World

0

200

400

2018

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

2013

Fig. 20.14 Africa and Foreign Direct Investment Outflows (billions of US$) 2013– 2018 (Source Author based on United Nations71 )

Asia and Oceania, which had the largest share of developing economies’ FDI inflows (Fig. 20.14). Research by the AfDB indicates that of the 25 countries with the lowest infrastructure scores in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index for 2017–2018, 19 are African.72 The study also revealed that close to a fifth of the firms surveyed in a study by McKinsey cited lack of electricity as one of the top three obstacles to their doing business in Africa. Concerning FDI outflows, the volumes for Africa, developing America, and Transition economies were very small. The regions that performed relatively well were Asia and Oceania, with an average of $400 billion worth of FDI outflows. Using the Competitive Industrial Performance (CIP) index, the United Nations Industrial Organisation indicates that most African countries are not competitive. The most competitive country, South Africa, had a CIP of 0.08.73 This was much lower than Germany’s most competitive economies, with a CIP of 0.5; Japan (0.4) and South Korea (0.39). Most of the other African countries had a CIP of below 0.03. In essence, the UNIDO analysis showed that most African countries are not competitive. While acknowledging that other important factors determine a country’s economic growth and human development, Africa’s limited performance in global trade could well contribute toward explaining its equally poor performance in terms of real GDP per capita in 2017 and 2018, implying less than optimal performance in terms of development (Fig. 20.15). Once again, for those two years, except for developing economies in America, Africa recorded the lowest real GDP per capita compared to all other regions. Although one cannot attribute all the development failures to poor performance in trade, it is also important to note that in terms of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Human Development Index (HDI), and the InequalityAdjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), both measures of human development, most African countries in the last ten years are ranked in the

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6 5 4 3 2 1 0 World -1

Developing Developing Developing Developing and Oceania Transition Developed economies economies: economies: economies: economies economies Africa America Asia

Annual growth Real GDP 2017

Annual growth Real GDP 2018

Real GDP per capita 2017

Real GDP per capita 2018

Fig. 20.15 Developing economies: Annual growth in real GDP and real GDP per capita 2017–2018 (Source Author calculations based on data from United Nations77 )

Low Human Development (LHD) category. In its 2019 Human Development Report, the UNDP shows that thirty-one out of the fifty-four African countries were classified in the LHD category and constituted the largest number of countries in that category than all other developing regions. The average HDI and IHDI for Africa for 2018 was 0.51 and 0.376, respectively, compared to 0.779 and 0.688 for developing countries in Europe and Central Asia; and 0.759 and 0.589, respectively for Latin America and the Caribbean.74 In terms of gender inequality, based on the UNDP Gender Inequality Index (GII), Africa had the highest gender inequality among developing countries. With a GII of 0.573, this was much higher than for other developing regions, although there were a few countries in the Medium Human Development (MHD) and High Human Development (HHD) category that fared worse. Gender inequality in Africa was higher than the average of 0.501 for the HHD group and higher than the 0.331 for countries’ HHD category.75 Although no sex-disaggregated data shows how men and women participate and gain from trade, there is a growing phenomenon of women in the trade as more women participate in cross-border trade, mostly as informal traders. A UN Women study finds that women in cross-border trade (WCBT) is a growing trend, and with the requisite support to remove the many obstacles that hinder their fuller participation, they can contribute toward the sustainable development of women and also the realization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA76 ). To summarize these findings, the evidence from the examined data confirms the conclusions made by other studies.78 They also add credence to the arguments made by dependency theorists like Amin,79 regarding inequality between the rich and industrialized nations and Africa and the marginalization of Africa in global trade. Africa’s performance in terms of all the indicators

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used (monetary values of export and import trade, monetary values of services exports and import trade, monetary values of FDI inflows and outflows). Africa’s shares concerning global trade and other developing regions were also analyzed for different indicators. On all counts, even though Africa’s trade was increasing, in most cases, Africa’s share was the lowest concerning the global total and also concerning other developing regions. However, the data do not statistically demonstrate a causal relationship between trade outcomes and Africa’s marginality. Perhaps this is a gap that could be filled by empirical studies in the future. Nonetheless, the picture that emerges is that Africa is indeed at the margins of global trade.

How Africa Is Responding to the Challenges The fact that Africa has managed to participate in all forms of global trade, goods, services and FDI and as argued in the chapter, its agency in the global trading system seems to be gathering momentum, particularly in the context of the South-South partnerships and also partnerships with the European Union through the EPAs. Also important are the emerging opportunities which the changing global order, opportunities for trade with emerging powers such as China, India, Russia and Brazil.80 Africa should consider exploring those opportunities and positioning the continent to increase its trade and mobilize resources to successfully implement the AfCFTA. But to avoid replicating the failures with current trade, Africa should intensify its efforts toward changing the structure of its trade toward a greater mix of intermediate and finished processed goods. Africa has begun to address many of the constraints which have limited the continent’s gains from global trade. For example, the African Union (AU) has initiated a widely accepted continental development agenda under the auspices of Agenda 2063,81 an agenda that has a wide range of targets, including industrialization, intending to change the production structure of the continent toward higher value-added manufacturing. A key pillar of the Agenda is establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).82 According to the AU and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) through its Africa Trade Policy Centre (ATPC), the AfCFTA will cover a market of 1.2 billion people and a gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.5 trillion, across all 55 member states of the African Union83 The Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Dr Vera Songwe, explains that signatories to the AfCFTA have committed to progressively remove tariffs on 90% of goods, eliminate non-tariff barriers and progressively liberalize services.84 She also points out that the agreement is expected to double Africa’s manufacturing sector to $1 trillion by 2025 and create 4 million jobs.85 The AfCFTA will be the world’s largest free trade area since the formation of the World Trade Organization and will boost intraAfrican trade, which is currently smaller than Africa’s trade with the rest of the world. Projections indicate that Africa will be a highly dynamic market

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with a population predicted to reach 2.5 billion by 2050 and that it will comprise 26% of the world’s working-age population. Africa’s economy is also expected to grow twice as rapidly as that of the developed world.86 At the regional level, Africa has initiatives for regional integration through Regional Economic Communities (RECs). Many of these RECS have developed strategies to facilitate structural transformation and industrialization to increase value addition and diversify production and exports. For example, in 2017, one of the largest regional groups in Africa, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), adopted its Industrialization Strategy 2017– 2026).87 The East African Community (EAC) is currently implementing it’s East African Community Industrialization Strategy 2012–2031 (EAC, 2020). The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) agreed on the West African Community Industry Policy (WACIP, 2015–2020) to prioritize the growth of four sectors, agro-industry, agro-business, the pharmaceutical, construction, and machinery industries.88 In March 2017, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit approved the SADC Industrialization Strategy and Roadmap.89 All these developments demonstrate the commitment and interest that Africa has to facilitate and increase intra-African trade and its trade with the rest of the w8orld. Coupled global optimism around the continent’s prospects, it is possible for Africa to improve its position in global trade.

Conclusion and Recommendations This chapter aimed to track Africa’s global trade performance and identify challenges to map possible pathways for the future. The evidence presented showed that although Africa is participating in global trade, its performance has been limited. Africa performed the worst in terms of trade in exports and imports, both in values and its share in the global totals. It was also observed that most of the continent’s trade consists mainly of commodities. For decades, Africa has expressed an interest through its continental, regional and national level policies and strategies to shift the production structure in favor of processing or manufacturing. Not only is the continent exporting commodities mainly, but most of those exports are concentrated in a few products and/or sectors; agricultural products, unrefined oil, raw minerals and ores. As many scholars have argued, the above patterns in Africa’s exports make them vulnerable to price and demand shocks, which has been the case in the last decade. The evidence reviewed also showed that Africa also had the lowest share in terms of exports in services and FDI inflows, even though both were increasing in growth. Over the period 2013–2018, Africa had the least amount of FDI inflows. In sharp contrast, other developing regions in Asia and Oceania were among the largest recipients. It was also clear that global trade in goods and services was dominated by developed economies with a larger share of total trade except for FDI

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inflows. They were, however, the largest exporters in terms of FDI outflows. Unlike Africa and most developing countries, trade by advanced countries is dominated by manufacturers. In short, the chapter makes the argument that although Africa is indeed ‘present’ in global trade, it is operating on the margins. This is not only confirmed by the data from the UN, UNCTAD, AfDB and Afreximbank but also from other studies on Africa in the era of globalization, for example, the work of Jome Kwame Sundaram, Oliver Schwank, and Arnim Rudiger.90 The question is whether the disappointing outcomes can be explained only by colonization and imperialism’s historical factors. This is because other developing economies with a similar history of colonization and imperial domination have performed relatively better, particularly in Asia and Oceania and the Americas. So, although critics dependency theorists and others have strongly blamed the inequality in power relations between the richer countries and Africa and other developing regions (forces which have led to the political and economic domination of the latter), and these factors are indeed important, there are other factors at play. Recognizing those factors is key for future improvement. Africa itself has acknowledged that some of the obstacles that hinder its success in terms of achieving high rates of economic growth and development are internal; poor or inadequate infrastructure and logistics (including trade infrastructure), bureaucratic redtape, limited capacity in terms of technical skills that are so central to trading in high-value goods and services, bad governance as reflected by indicators produced by Transparency International, Mo Ibrahim Governance Index and World Bank’s Doing Business Surveys. As argued by Samir Amin and proponents of the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ theorists, the evidence presented in the chapter supports their argument that Africa is marginalized from the global trading system largely due to historically determined inequality in power between industrialized/rich nations and the continent, along with other developing regions. That inequality is still evident in the negotiation processes within the multilateral trading system, for example, the stalemate around the Doha Development Agenda, the failure of the richer countries to fulfill their commitments to open up their markets to Africa’s agricultural products as well as manufactured goods and also the proliferation of RTAS and mega-RTAs, indicates a global trading environment which is not a level playing field and one that is likely to continue to marginalize Africa. Africa’s poor performance should not suggest that the continent should not participate in global trade because there are opportunities. The issue is for the continent to address the many obstacles it has encountered to enhance its capabilities to benefit from global trade. Some studies have projected demand for Africa’s products in the future and make a case that Africa can gain from trade. For example, Sulser, Mason-D’Croz and others,91 use the Impact Model to project Africa’s future GDP performance, focusing on agriculture. With the project between 2030 to 2050, most African countries will be able to achieve Middle-Income status. They also project that the demand for cereals, oilseeds,

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roots and tubers will double by 2050. And that total consumption of pulses, fruits and vegetables will triple. They argue that this is an opportunity for Africa to expand production in agriculture to meet this rising demand and increase agricultural value addition and trade. Mapping Future Pathways In response to the challenges that have been presented concerning Africa’s limited performance in global trade, the chapter proposes a few key recommendations. Firstly, in collaboration with other developing regions, Africa should consider intensifying efforts in lobbying for a more equitable and fairer trading regime than is the case at present. Specifically, these include the need to reach an agreement on the negotiations around the outstanding ‘development’ issues embodied in the Doha Development Round and the full implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), which was meant to increase access to developing countries to the markets of advanced countries and also to strengthen the technical capacity of members in trade negotiations. The TFA came into effect on 22 February 2017. It is expected that full implementation of the FTA is likely to increase access to foreign markets by 39% for developing countries and 60% for Least Developed Countries, with potential gains of up to US$50 trillion per annum for African exports.92 Participating in Global Value Chains (GVCs) can expand the share of the continent’s share in global trade.93 However, it will be important for the continent to ensure that it invests capacity in producing high value-added goods because currently, its participation is largely at the lower-value end of the chains. The emergence of the BRICS, which has added its weight to the developing economies’ voice, should encourage countries to intensify their lobby. Secondly, the AU and its partners should prioritize the full implementation of the AfCFTA because of Africa’s marginalization from the global trading system; as the chapter has argued, the AfCFTA must succeed (my own words) because it offers Africa that ‘golden’ opportunity to a breakthrough in trade and if successful, it will likely expand its role in trade at the global level. It is encouraging that a Secretariat is now in place (based in Ghana) to implement the agreement. As emphasized by the AU, UNECA-ATPC,94 ‘consolidating the African continent into one trade area provides great opportunities for trading enterprises, businesses and consumers across Africa and the chance to support sustainable development in the world’s least developed region.’ The UNECA estimates that AfCFTA can both boost intra-African trade by 52.3% by eliminating import duties and double this trade if non-tariff barriers are also reduced. Of particular note, because most intra-African trade largely consists of intermediate and manufactured goods, the AfCFTA is seen as the mechanism by which African can achieve its agenda for structural transformation and industrialization. Over time, if such a goal can be realized, this should also transform the structure of Africa’s trade with the rest of the world, improve its terms of trade and ultimately gains from international trade.

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Thirdly, because the new global trading system has become intensely competitive, African economies should seriously consider developing and implementing policies that target several issues. The success of AfCFTA will critically depend on Africa investing in the development of infrastructure and logistics that relate to trade. Afreximbank95 estimates that $130–170 billion will be required to close the continent’s infrastructure gap. Rapid implementation of the African Union’s programs such as the ‘Boost Intra-Africa Trade’ (BIAT), the Programmes for Infrastructure Development for Africa (PIDA), and Accelerated Industrial Development for Africa (AIDA), are of strategic importance to realize the benefits of the AfCFTA. Improvement of trade logistics coupled with enhanced productive capacity for high value commodities, should improve the continent’s intra-continental and also external trade.96 It will also be critical for the continent to improve governance quality, especially concerning the formulation of appropriate policies to promote the structural transformation to increase production and export of manufactured goods. Finally, Africa should also consider investing more extensively in human capacity development. In a paper on human capital development for Africa’s industrialisation, Theresa Moyo suggests the speedy implementation of initiatives such as the (AU) Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA), the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), to develop the capacity for Africa’s industrialization. STISA aims to transform Africa into a knowledge-based and innovation-led society.97 Thus, although Africa is currently marginalized from the global trading system, there are bright prospects for a turn-around. The continent commits itself to implementing the various initiatives it has already embarked on.

Notes 1. UNCTAD. 2014. The Role of International Trade in the Post -2015 Development Agenda. Trade and Development Board. Trade and Development Commission. Sixth Session. Geneva, 5–9 May, p. 10. 2. African Development Bank (AfDB). 2017. Africa Economic Outlook Report 2017. Cote d’Ivoire: AfDB. 3. World Trade Organisation. 2003. ‘Trade and Development’. In the World Trade Report. http://www.wto.org. Accessed 10 April 2020, p. 81. 4. Ibid., p. 89. 5. Vijayasri, G.V. 2013. The Importance of International Trade. International Journal of Marketing, Financial Services and Management Research 2 (9): 111–119. https://i-scholar.in/index.php/ijmfsmr/article/view/45425. Accessed on 15 April 2020, pp. 112, 113. 6. United Nations (UN) and Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) 2017, p. 4. 7. Ikpesu, Frederick, Dakare, Olamitunji, and Nsiah, Christian. 2019. Growth Effect of Trade and Investment in Sub-Saharan Countries: Empirical Insight from Panel Corrected Standard Error (PCSE) Technique. Cogent Economics and Finance 7 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.219.1607127.

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8. Afreximbank. 2018. African Trade Report 2018 Boosting Intra-African Trade: Implications of the African Continental Free Trade Area. Cairo: Afreximbank, p. 17. 9. Siddigui, Kalin. 2018. David Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage and Developing Countries. Journal of International Critical Thought. Myths and Reality 8 (3): 426–452. 10. Costinot, Arnaud and Donaldson, Dave. 2012. Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage: Old Idea, New Evidence. American Economic Review. Papers and Proceedings 102 (3): 453–458. 11. Blaus, Mark. 2009. The Heckscher-Ohlin Theory of International Trade. London: Cambridge University Press. Journal of International Critical Thought. Myths and Reality and Hout, 2003. Op.cit. 12. Clements, 2011, p. 16. 13. UNCTAD. 2019a. Economic Development in Africa Report: Made in Africa: Rules of Origin for Enhanced Intra-African Trade. New York: United Nations, p. 2. 14. Ibid., p. 2. 15. UNCTAD. 2017. Evolution of the International Trading System and Its Trends from a Development Perspective. Trade and Development Board. Sixty-fourth session. Geneva, 11–22 September 2017. Geneva: UNCTAD, p. 71. 16. Gertz, Geoffrey and Khoras, Homi. 2019. Beyond Neoliberalism: Insights into Global Economy and Development. Brookings. www.brookings.org. Accessed 23 April 2020, pp. 8–9. See also Caffentzis, George. 2002. Neoliberalism in Africa, Apocalyptic Failures and Business as Usual Practices: Alternatives. Turkish Journal of International Relations 1 (3): 89–104. Cohen, Benjamin, J. 1973. The Question of Imperialism: The Political Economy of Dominance and Dependence. New York: Basic Books. 17. Hout, Wil. 1993. Capitalism, and the Third World: Development, Dependence and the World System. London: Edward Elgar, p. 31. 18. Mkandawire, Thandika. 2005. Maladjusted African Economies and Globalization. Africa Development 30 (1&2): 1–33. See also Hout, 1993, op.cit., p. 29. 19. Galtung, Johan. 1971. A Structural Theory of Imperialism. Journal of Peace Research 8 (2): 81–117. 20. Rodney, Walter. 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle L’ouverture Publication. 21. Hout, 1993, op.cit. 22. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, p. 374. 23. Coccia, Mario. 2018. World Systems Theory: A Socio-Political Approach to Explain World Economic Development in a Capitalist System. Journal of Economic and Political Economy 5 (4): 459–465. 24. Amin, Samir. 2003. The Alternative to the Neoliberal System of Globalization and Militarism Imperialism Today and the Hegemonic Offensive of the USA. https://nodo50.org. Accessed 25 April 2020. 25. Ibid., op. cit. 26. Galtung, op.cit. 27. Amin, 2003, op.cit.

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28. Chipaike, Ronald and Matarutse, Knowledge. 2018. Question of African Agency in International Relations. Cogent Social Sciences 4 (1): 1–16. 29. Acharya, Amitav. 2017. After Liberal Hegemony: The Advent of a Multiplex World Order. Ethics and International Affairs. 31 (93): 271–285, p. 271. 30. Ibid., p. 273. 31. Frieden, J. and Trachtman, J. 2018. U.S Trade Policy: Going It Alone vs. Abiding by the World Trade Organization. https://econofact.org/u-s-tradepolicy-going-it-alone-vs-abiding-by-the-world-trade-organization. Accessed on 18 January 2020. 32. Alege, Philip O. 2011. Multilateral Trading System and the Potential for SinoAfrican Trade. African Economic and Business Review 9 (2): 1–37, p. 2. 33. Kachiga, Jean. 2013. China in Africa: Articulating China’s Africa Policy. New Jersey: Africa World Press, p. 9. 34. Friedman, J. and Trachtman, J. 2018, op.cit. 35. Rohini, Acharya and Michael, Daly. 2004. Selected Issues Concerning the Multilateral Trading System. World Trade Organization. Discussion Paper No 7. Geneva: Switzerland. 36. World Trade Organisation, 2003. ‘Trade and Development’. In the World Trade Report. 2003. http://www.wto.org. Accessed 10 April 2020. 37. Ibid. 38. United Nations, Africa Trade Policy Centre and Overseas Development Institute. 2017. Transforming African Economies Through Smart Trade and Industrial Policy. Addis Ababa: UNECA, p. 5. 39. Ibid., p. 5. 40. Bellmann, Christophe, Hepburn, Jonathan, and Wilke, Marie. The Challenges Facing the Multilateral Trading System in Addressing Global Public Policy Objectives. Geneva: International Graduate Institute. https://doi.org/10.4000/pol dev.1012. Accessed 16 April 2020. 41. Ibid. 42. UNCTAD. 2017. Evolution of the International Trading System and Its Trends from a Development Perspective. Trade and Development Board. Sixty-fourth session. Geneva, 11–22 September 2017. Geneva: UNCTAD and UNCTAD. 2019. Economic Development in Africa Report. Made in Africa: Rules of Origin for Enhanced Intra-African Trade. New York: United Nations. 43. Wong, Chun Han, and James T. Areddy. China’s Xi Pledges $60 Billion Toward Africa’s Development, Waives Some Debt. The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 3 September 2018. www.wsj.com/articles/chinasxi-pledges-60-billion-toward-africas-development-waives-some-debt-153598 5008. Accessed 27 March 2020. 44. UNCTAD, 2017, op.cit., p. 6. 45. Ibid., p. 6. 46. Dijk, Meine P. 2011. The New Presence of China in Africa. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 11–12. 47. Apecu, Joan. 2013. The Level of African Engagement at the World Trade Organisation from 1995–2010. Reviue internationale de politique de dévelopment 42 (20): 29–67. 48. UNECA, ATPC and ODI, 2017, op.cit., p. 16. 49. Aribidara, Ayo Kunnumi. Towards a Convergence Between Strong Trade Agreements and Weak Trade Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. https://ssrn.com/dx. doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3057400/. Accessed 15 March 2020.

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50. Schott, Jeffrey J. 2008. The Future of the Multilateral Trading System in a Multi-polar World. DIE Discussion Paper, 8/2008. Bonn: Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik gGmbH. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn: de:0168-ssoar-362398/. Accessed on 18 January 2020. 51. UNCTAD, 2017 and 2019, op.cit. 52. United Nations. 2019 Handbook of Statistics. UNCTAD. Genera: United Nations, p. 18. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. UNCTAD. 2019. World Investment Report 2019. Geneva: UNCTAD, p. 3. 58. UNCTAD, 2017, op.cit., p. 8. 59. Ibid. 60. UNCTAD, 2017, op.cit., p. 8. 61. Nahanga, Verter. 2017. International Trade: The Position of Africa in Global Merchandise Trade. Chapter from the book ‘Emerging Issues in Economics and Development’. Available at https://www.intechopen.com/books/eme rging-issues-in-economic-anddevelopment, p. 77. 62. United Nations, 2019, op.cit., p. 36. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. United Nations, 2019, op.cit., p. 54. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid. 73. UNIDO. 2017. Competitive Industrial Performance Report 2016. Vol. 1. Vienna: UNIDO. 74. Ibid. 75. UNDP. 2019. Human Development Report, 2019. New York: UNDP, p. 311. 76. Ibid., p. 319. 77. UN Women. 2019. Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs in the Context of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Nairobi: UN Women. https://unwomen.org/. Accessed 10 April 2020. 78. Afreximbank. 2018. African Trade Report 2018 Boosting Intra-African Trade: Implications of the African Continental Free Trade Area. Cairo: Afreximbank. See also: Sundaram, J. Kwame, Schwank, Oliver, and Arnim, Rudiger. 2011. Globalization and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. DESA Working Paper. No. 102. ST/ESA/2011/DWP/102. February. www.un.org. Accessed 13 April 2020 and United Nations, 2019, op. cit. 79. Amin, 2003, op.cit. 80. South China Morning Post. China’s Trade with Africa Grows. https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3046621/chinas-trade-africagrows-22-cent-2019-us208-billion/. Accessed 10 April 2020. 81. African Union Commission. 2015. Agenda 2063: Africa We Want. Addis Ababa: African Union.

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82. African Union. 2018. Africa Launches the AfCFTA. https://au.int/sites/def ault/files/newsevents/. Accessed 26 February 2020. 83. AU, UNECA/ATPC. 2019. African Continental Free Trade Area: Questions and Answers. https://www.au.org/. Accessed 25 November 2019. 84. Songwe, Vera. 2019. Intra-African Trade: A Path to Economic Diversification and Inclusion. Brookings Institute. https://brookings.edu/research/intra-afr ican-trade-apath-toecon.diversification+inclusion. Accessed 25 March 2020. 85. Ibid. 86. AU, UNECA/ATPC, 2019, Op.cit. 87. Trade Law Centre (Tralac). 2017. COMESA Industrialization Strategy Adopted. https://www.tralac.org//. Accessed 26 April 2020. 88. Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). West African Common Industry Policy (WACIP, 2015–2020). https://www.ecowas.int//. Accessed 27 April 2020. 89. Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). 2017. Action Plan for the Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap. https://www.sadc.int/. Accessed 26 April 2020. 90. Sundaram, J. Kwame, Schwank, Oliver, and Arnim, Rudiger. 2011. Globalization and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. DESA Working Paper No. 102. ST/ESA/2011/DWP/102. February. www.un.org. Accessed 13 April 2020. 91. Sulser, Timothy, B., Mason-D’Croz, Daniel, Islam, Shahnila, Robinon, Sherman, Wiebe, Keith, and Rosegrant, Mark. W. 2014. Africa in the Global Agricultural Economy in 2030 and 2050. In Beyond a Middle-Income Africa: Transforming African Economies for Sustained Growth with Rising Employment and Incomes. Annual Trends and Outlook Report 2014, eds. Ousmane, Badiane and Tsitsi, Makombe. Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS). Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. 92. Batibonak, Paul. 2017. Africa and the Implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement. Bridges Africa 6 (3). https://www.ictsd.org/bridges-news/bri dges-africa/news/leveraging-trade-facilitation-to-drive-africa%E2%80%99s-reg ional. Accessed 23 February 2020. 93. Conde, Corles, Heinrigs, Philip, and Sullivan, Anthony. Tapping the Potential of Global Value Chains for Africa. Organization of European Cooperation and Development (OECD). https://www.weforum.org/. Accessed 23 April 2020. 94. AU, UNECA and ATPC, 2019, op. cit. 95. Afreximbank, 2018, p. 26. 96. Isler, Philippe. 2017. ‘Factory Africa’. Time to Get Serious About Red Tape at Africa’s Borders. https://weforum.org. Accessed 26 April 2020. 97. Moyo, Theresa. 2018. Development of Human Capital for Africa’s Industrialisation: Drawing on Experiences of Best Performers. Africa Development XLIII (2): 107–127.

CHAPTER 21

Global Governance of Finance and African Relations with the World Tinuade Adekunbi Ojo and Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba

Introduction This chapter examines the relationship between the global governance of finance and African development trajectories. The global financial of finance is anchored within the international development institutions put in place after the Second World War. The Bretton Woods institutions, namely the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were charged with helping countries grappling with macroeconomic problems and development challenges (Onimode 1989). One of the main challenges of African economies since independence is the lack of capital to finance infrastructure and deliver public good such as social services like education, health water and sanitation. This resulted in seeking credit from advanced countries, international financial institutions, and private lending organizations such as the London and Paris Clubs. Although many of the African states got debt relief from creditor countries and international financial organizations in the early 2000s, there is a new turn to debt accumulation in African countries. The chapter examines the T. A. Ojo (B) Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa S. O. Oloruntoba Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Thabo Mbeki School of Public and International Affairs, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_21

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debates on the global and continental context of finance and African relations with the world. The chapter examines the implications of global economic crises on Africa’s economies. Situating the African financial crisis and development within the International Monetary Fund as a point of interrogation, the paper analyzes the appropriateness of IMF loans to African countries, determine the conditions of these loans and highlight the internal functioning of IMF itself. The chapter shows that the global governance has varied implications for economic development in different countries in Africa. The overall postcolonial economic environment also differs from one part of the continent to the other. While some countries such as South Africa, Botswana, and Mauritius appeared to have performed relatively well in terms of economic growth, others such as Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia have posed contrasting development outcomes on growth and human development. After this introduction, the rest of this chapter proceeds as follows. The next section presents a political economy interrogation of Africa in the global capitalist system. The third analyzes the financialization of the global economy and the implications of this on global the global governance of finance as well as its relations with other African countries. Sections “Overview of the Global Financial Crisis in African Countries” and “IMF Intervention in Africa” critically engage with the financial crisis in Africa and the role of the International Monetary Fund in addressing this. The scorecard of the interventions of the Brettonwood institutions in Africa is that they have worsened the over economic performance through imposition of policies and programs that are not conversant with the local peculiarities of the various African countries.

Political Economy Analysis of Africa Intersection in the Global Capitalist System Political economy concept continue to be a widely debated topic which till date is multifaceted. Mcloughlin states that political economy addresses and promotes developmental interventions such as policies and realistic strategies situated amid political and economic structures in society.1 He further argues that political economy practically centers around incentives, relationships, distribution, and contestations of power between groups and individuals in society. Political economy supports more political feasibility in terms of realistic strategies and timeframes, which determines development strategies and realistic expectations around what can be achieved in a specific timeframe and the risks involved in it.2 Adler argues that political economy explains the combined and interactive effects of the political and economic structures and processes.3 Mosco states that political economy is a social science concept, focusing on power relations and crucial concepts of production, distribution, and consumption of resources.4 The new political economy is relevant to this paper, as it assists in explaining the relationship between the distribution of power and wealth among groups and individuals in the economy. It divides the disadvantaged and excluded

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groups from the privileged and included group of people in the economy. The new political economy is categorized according to two primary characteristics, namely “economic theory” and “empirical validation”.5 In terms of economic theory, the government acts as benefactor, which disembodies the historical, social, and political context and internalizes all relevant conflicts of interest.6 The new political economy has suppositions about any government failures or institutional deficiency, as it focuses on the use of diverse eternal policy instruments.7 This has enabled the governance, regulations, corruption, and institutional foundations of the policy to become an issue of concern affecting macroeconomic policies, investment priorities and trade reforms in the South African economy. For empirical validation, the new political economy reflects developmental debates in empirical methods and investment in data generation.8 Political economy theory can be divided into three ideologies, namely Liberalism, Marxism, and Economic Nationalism.9 Liberalism explains the concept of labor and exchange, which includes the use of labor and capital to produce durable goods. Liberalists maintain that economics is essential for societal benefit and improvement on the individual standard of living. Marxists, on the other hand, explain inequality among the different classes in society and how wealth is spread from labor and exchange. Marxism believes that private ownership of resources is unjustified, as it leads to inequality and favors the needs of the upper class or wealthy elite in society.10 Marxist theory asserts that capitalism contributes to and perpetuates poverty. Pettinger, like many other scholars, argues that only a selected few (the elite) gain the benefits of the capitalist system, at the expense of the poor.11 This leads to the consensus made by economic scholars when they agree that the capitalist system is based on exploitative relationships.12 The understanding of poverty by traditional Marxism came from the variations of production and capitalist concepts such as class diversity, labor, production, and so on are integrated. Secondly, there is a possibility that Africa’s political economy of development can change, if the global capitalist system stop being the operational tool which may facilitate the development of sovereign national and regional projects.13 To achieve this, African countries, must build a unified financial system which challenges the unbalanced economic relations which exist in the liberal capitalist regime. Solidarity should be cognizant of the fact that; the monopolization of power, trade relations, technologies, and weapons produced a history of unequal patterns of accumulation on a world scale. As Amin further argued, there is no counter strategies which has been developed by African peoples and governments that may be like what some Eastern Asian countries have been deploying. In that frame, it is assumed that globalization does not offer Africa any solution to its nagging development problems. The alternative suggested is that the African community combine the building of auto-centered economies, social structures, and societies to participate more equally and fully in the global economy.14 According to Nagar, African Political Economy relates to the context of African integration to the circuit of global capital.15 This can be traced to the

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Trans-Atlantic slave trade over five centuries ago. Even though parts of Africa are associated with other regions of the world such as Asia, Europe, and Arabs through trade, what significantly changed the relationship across the continent and the global arena was the trans-Atlantic slave trade.16 Ngugiwe Thiong’o also articulated how Africa has been kept captive by capital from the time of the slave trade to the current age of debt slavery.17 Under the slave trade regime, Africa became a commodity for the colonialists, as able-bodied men and women were used as unpaid labor for the sugar and cotton fields in Europe. This abled-bodied men and women would have contributed to African development if they have not been forcefully taken. Furthermore, Africa were forced to supply raw materials—gold, diamonds, copper, uranium, coffee, and cocoa—without having control over the prices during colonialism.18 Even so, with the new global situation of debts, debt servicing, and conditionality, Africa is weighed down by debt slavery. Just as Africa became a net exporter of the labor needed for its own development and the net exporter of minerals and raw materials it most needed for its own development, today, under debt slavery, Africa becomes the net exporter of the very capital it most needs through illicit financial flows. In relation to Africa, slavery is the continuous theme in the journey of capital: the plantation slavery dissolved into colonial rule which in turn dissolved into debt slavery.19 The two concepts on slavery and racial capitalism gave birth to structural inequality reflected in post-colonialism. The connection between slavery and capitalism and the growth of the British empire was highlighted by Williams.20 Literature shows that most Europeans industrial take-off was financed through overt and clandestine operations of shipping companies, insurance houses and banking.21 It is important to know that capitalism has been accepted as an integral part to Africa’s development without historicizing anti-black racism. Throughout the period of colonialization of the African social formations, the colonial authorities instigated and intensified the transformation of the precapitalist economies, through the various efforts of structural adjustments on the working conditions of the workers in African communities, making them to adhere to capitalist system and mode of production. The historical account on the triple heritage of slave trade, colonialism and post-colonialism relates to the structure, nature, and delineation of the political economy of Africa.22 Rodney argues on the overarching influence of Trans-Atlantic slave trade on Africa, he stated that more than twelve million Africans were captured during the four hundred years of slavery. This led to the shortage of able-bodied men and women who were supposed to contribute to the development of Africa.23 This position was supported by Taiwo, who argued that majority of the men and women in Africa who were so forcefully carted away were reputable people, among whom are inventors, artists, agronomists, and other professionals.24 Most importantly, the act of violence which occurred between Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade affected the African communities as it created distrust and conflicted

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environment. This undermines the peace of the communities and hindered the collective efforts needed to innovate, plan, and achieve development. As mentioned earlier, another fundamental factor in African political economy was colonialism. The colonialists propounded a wage economy system and cash crop farming in exchange for the normal mode of production and social relations of production in Africa. This was a strategy to build the war-destroyed metropolitan economies through the creation of access to raw materials. In the process, able-bodied Africans were forced to move from rural areas to urban areas in search of wage labor. Basic infrastructures were built to achieve the extractive objectives. Railways were constructed to link the sources of raw materials to the ports of exports. The colonial state and its mechanism of accumulation in Africa was explained by Bracking and Harrison as: Colonial states determined the socio-economic structure through which African societies engaged with the global political economy. The colonial states constructed many strategies set to dominate and colonize the African states. Acts such as: reduction of complex social forms to basic national templates: the “zoning” of agricultural production, the reduction of varied cultures of ownership and norms of trade to chieftaincy’ and the regulation of marketing boards; and the construction of local and long-distance trade networks to the road and rail links from region to ports, capital city, and customs office. ...to some extent, colonialism have left a profound historical transition with a historical possibilities of independence. Even though it was unable to complete the task of converting the African community into a self-contained national economy malleable to the designs of international capital.25

Financialization of the Global Economy The concept of financialization is an important facet of Financial growth and development in any economy.26 According to Prabahkar, financialization is about the central role of financial markets in economic and social life.27 Oloruntoba further cites Epstein’s definition of financialization as “the increasing role of financial motives, financial actors and financial growth and development in the operation of the domestic and international economies”.28 Scholars have argued that not only has financialization become an important feature of the regime of accumulation in the global capitalist system embraced over the last three decades.29 Financialization presents an individual’s “lived experiences,” which involves the process of people needing money to live in an economy that is socially financed.30 Financial growth and development may be the key to the successful implementation of financialization in the financial system to promote people’s participation and expose them to financial risks that advance the process of financialization.31 Scholars have argued that “financial growth and development de-risks the state” from any financial risks and increases individual risks among the people in the financial system.32 Secondly, it narrates the “lived reality of money”, in which people need money

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for daily survival in terms of rent, food and education. The result of the “lived reality of money” is that the financially excluded individuals cannot be investors in the financial market, due to insufficient income.33 This is an important focus of study in the research. Critics argue that financial growth and development is part of a neoliberal agenda that exposes people to risks associated with financial markets instead of having collective security, which is safer.34 The constant debates in the context of financialization identify international institutions such as the IMF, institutions in the United States and the World Bank as the domineering authorities in charge of the global financial sector. This position is supported by the United States government, who states that only International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have the capacity and responsibility to deliberate and take actions on global financial matters.35 As a result of this, financialization has led to global inequalities in the past four decades, with global implications due to change in the regime of accumulation to financial oligarchy in global capitalism. The inherent contradictions in the global financed economic sector have led to crises across the globe. This statement was supported by the United Nations in 2009, as they gave a report stating that financial crises resulted from the faulty theoretical and philosophical structures of international institutions, policies, and practices, which were unethical and unaccountable within the system.36 To date, financial inequality remains one of the issues affecting all classes across the globe. The most affected are the “underclass”, “deprived”, “vulnerable (women and children)” and the “poor economies, especially Africa”.37 Financialization has resulted from reallocation of resources from manufacturing. The desire for profit maximization has led to shift in industrial bases from the US, Britain to China. Low wages in China and other Asian countries served as attraction for relocation of these industrial concerns. Given the control that developed countries exert on international financial institutions, financialization became an article of faith, as emphasis was placed on services, through financial innovations, derivatives, and spots. While these innovations have contributed to economic growth and in fact increased wealth, they have also led to several cyclical crisis of global capitalism.

Public Debt in African Economies Public debt remains a plague that African states must deal with in their economies. Despite most African countries getting debt relief from creditor countries and international financial organizations in the early 2000s, there is a new turn to debt accumulation in African countries. Akinsola argues that lack of good governance aside many macroeconomic factors is a causative factor on debt accumulation in Africa. This poses a great challenge to any country’s economic growth. For her, to promote public debt which facilitates economic growth, there is a need for transparent economic management models and quality of institutions.38

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The African economies usually faced with budget deficit most often seek for aid either domestically or externally. Several developing countries has currently embarked on policies that recede external debt with domestic debt.39 Analyses have shown that countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Mauritius, and Botswana have more domestic debt stock than external debt stock since it reduces currency risk associated with public debt.40 Even so, the continent continues to experience low or negative growth rate per capita income as these countries currency devaluate.41 There has been an increase in lending from the Chinese government to accelerate economic growth for Africa with a huge problem of credit risks. According to Moody’s Report (November 2018), Africa loan from Chinese government has escalated from 1 billion US$ to 10 billion US$ between 2012–2017. The loans were taken to build infrastructure in the communication, power, and transport sectors but lack of transparency in the conditionality of the loans and the insufficient monitoring from the government and multilateral lenders such as IMF and World Bank poses a serious cost on African states.42 Till date, Nigeria pays 20% of its revenue on interest from loans from China and so with many other countries. Statistics attest that out of 41 countries indebted to Bretton Woods Institutions, 33 are African countries.43 Bretton Woods Institutions The Bretton Woods Institutions consists of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund established in 43 countries with the aim of assisting individual countries to rebuild a damaged post-war country promoting international cooperation. Each country representative meets annually in New Hamsphire in the United States to debate on global financial issues. Both the World Bank and IMF work together with the World Trade Organizations to achieve this aim and establish the rules on commercial and financial relations. The Bretton Woods Institutions came to Africa’s rescue by reversing the debt and large cuts in the Education and health sector which had affected Africa’s socio-economic sector between 1980’s and 1990s. The institutions play a vital role to provide solutions that coordinate, monitors, and regulate Africa’s development activities.44 The aim of Bretton Woods Institutions (IMF and the World Bank) is to offer debt relief to countries committed to good governance, poverty alleviation and providing social services. Even so, the level of corruption and mismanagement of funds in African states has made this task unachievable.45 Since most African countries revenue also relies on commodity price shocks, when there are low commodity prices the government seek for external debt to finance the public expenditure. This means that, most African countries expenditure is on debt servicing and repayment rather than focusing on social services and economic development that promotes employment creation and eliminates poverty level. There are more people living below the poverty level in Africa, yet the debt rate is on the increase. This means that debt

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relief does not translate to good governance and better development in the continent. There is need for a proper economic reformation which will facilitate a sustainable society. High debt results in higher taxes and inflation that confines productivity and economic growth. Akinsola, relates Karl Marx position that explains the impact of external debt on the countries. She explained that common result on external debt include exploitation of labor and special program granted to the lending nations by the lender central banks as a favor for money lending.46 In fact, continuous credit deficits result in ruin, war, waste, higher taxes, inflation poor productive capacity and disaster of any great nation.

Overview of the Global Financial Crisis in African Countries The year 1970s, through to the 1980s, brought about low development in African economies with socio-economic crisis coupled with weak public institutions which attracted the global financial institutions to export liberalism regime into Africa.47 The liberalist culture was implemented to reduce state power and promote a capitalist economy by influencing the price in the market and commodities sold. According to Adebayo Adedeji, the former Executive Secretary of the Addis Ababa-based UN Economic Commission for Africa the 1980s was the era of the lost decade with several conflicts and wars in several African countries.48 The GDP per capita fell by 2.6% annually and 1% of the world trade output coupled with war in Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia not to mention a few.49 Despite this, several countries on the continent recorded an impressive economic growth emerging from the conflicts and civil wars victorious. Countries such as Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Liberia went through an economic growth through structural transformation especially in the services sector.50 Leaders like Adedeji argued that Africa can only be independent nationally if it aligns itself to transform the production structures inherited during colonialism which was built on the exportation of raw materials.51 For him, Africa-centered development should be interwoven with massive socio-economic transformation and economic growth. Adedeji was part of the critics who argued against the Berg’s report on Bretton Woods institutions’ tactic on “growth without development” and the export-led integration of African states into the world economy on massively unequal terms.52 The Washington Consensus became popular in the 1980s when John Williamson presented a paper in 1989 on “The Decalogue of Policies” which till date became the beginning of economic wisdom aligned with liberal democracies.53 Initially the Washington consensus was centered on Latin America when there was a huge record of debt in American economy and there was a call to move the dominant economic development policy paradigm away from the state and rely more on the market.54 It became more intensified to address the corrosive and generalized huge debt which have affected the continent and launch it into a phase of “lost decade” of

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economic slumps. Initially, the Berg’s report presented by World Bank’s staff “Élliot Berg” in 1981 brought about a political shift in African economic policies toward economic liberalization.55 The report explained the severity and complexity of problems facing the different economies and the different attempts used to improve the economic standard of living. The report main consensus is that; (a) there should be suitable trade and exchange rate policies; (b) increased efficiency of resource used in the public sector and (c) improvement in agricultural policies for all African economies. The proposed strategy to address these reformations would be to ensure that the state provide strategies in the public sector which work effectively and engage with the private sector to address local needs. Even so, the report did not offer any general interventions on how to address the problem as it states that Africa is multifaceted and too diverse politically, culturally, and philosophically to adopt a single strategy.56 Hence, any intervention policies should be addressed and formulated on individual African countries in line with their area of need either financial lending or provision of basic infrastructure. The result of this report led to the structural adjustment programs (SAPS) which suggested that specific conditions should be made on loans lending to African countries with a strong inducement for them to follow free-market policies.57 The SAP is divided into two, the pre-structural adjustment programs and the post-structural adjustment programs. The pre-structural adjustment programs indicate the period of 1980s–2012 where the kind of debt burden Africa went through before the program was initiated. As at the 1980s, the debt in Africa has doubled and amounted to $270bn due to compounding factors in the continent.58 And at the same time, Africa’s debt-to-GNI ratio escalated from 49% in 1980 to 104% in 1987.59 Different factors such as highly expansionary fiscal policies, oil prices shock between 1973–1974 and 1979–1980, 1980 global recession, rise in interest rate among many that have been mentioned were events leading to high increase in public debt within the period 1980s–1990s.60 As a result, structural adjustment programs were initiated such as “Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC)”61 and “Multi-lateral Debt Initiative”62 were raised by the Bretton Wood institutions (IMF and World Bank) to erase the lumpsum debt.63 In total $99bn dollars were raised to eliminate 36 countries debt in which 30 were African countries. The 2008 global financial crisis was a major crisis which also had a great impact on the continent at large. Common factors that led to the global financial crisis were issues such as, credit expansion, trade- export, portfolio capital flow, inflationary pressure, remittances, and commodity prices. Most African countries were impacted by the high inflation caused by the tax and rates placed on goods and commodities including the importation of goods which led to reduction in credit rates for most African countries. As a result, the external demand and remittances in Africa dropped drastically, which was attested by World Bank as a drop between 5 to 8% in the year 2009.64 Furthermore, the drastic drop on the remittances led to unequal income distribution, abject poverty, and limited foreign exchange services. Even though countries like South Africa appear to

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be immune to the crisis due to the policies and financial regulations set in place and the risk management practices adopted in the country, most African countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya suffered the loss especially because of reduction in the oil prices.65 Till date, Nigeria is still being impacted on the aftermath effects of the global financial crisis as it still suffers from challenges on exchange rate and weak price commodities. However, countries like Congo were able to recover faster due to the financial aid provided by international donors using fiscal and monetary policy.66 The post-structural adjustment programs had history repeating itself as most African economies collapsed and were in huge debt. The World Bank Report highlighted an increase of 37–56% public debt on the African economies GDP. This high increase was recorded from 2012–2016 and by 2018, more than 40% of African states were in high-risk debt. Most economies have diverted from receiving loans from the IMF and World Bank to bi-lateral lenders such as China. China has become a prominent bi-lateral lender for most African economies. As many countries that do not belong to the “ParisClub”,67 they rather tune to China for financial aid. As a result, China owned more than 20% of public debt in Africa while multilateral institutions (IMF and World Bank) owned 35%. The high-risk debt of African economies has raised the fear of debt crisis which critics have argued will become a cause for concern and lead to unsustainable loans in African countries. Figure 21.1 relates the current state of African economies on public debt as reflected in their GDP. Despite all these arguments, some economists argue that state might still have power to influence the market price in terms of price fixing or distortion for the economic growth. Furthermore, finance has contributed to human development over the years, the UNDP report of 1996 focused on development that is people centered, equal in socio-economic benefits and environmentally friendly.69 Even so, the basic aim is to eradicate poverty for human development. Along the decades due to the basic factors raised, climate change also contributed to the global financial crisis which occurred in 2012.

Fig. 21.1 2017 Government debt as a percent of the GDP in African Economies (Source IMF 2018. Regional Economic Outlook68 )

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The global governance to human development is in two phases: (1) determining the roles of multilateral, regional and national development banks in supporting global communities for continued inclusive and sustainable growth (2) analyzing the impact of developed economies’ fiscal and monetary policy versus the developing and emerging economies growth potential.70 These two factors are a pre-condition for achieving more and better human development. However, looking at the current situation in the global economy, these two factors are not effective and natural crisis such as the global pandemic have crippled the economies reducing human development to nothing.71

IMF Intervention in Africa International monetary fund (IMF) has placed Africa as a frontline on its policy-based lending for over 30 years. However, till date Africa has failed to fully implement and facilitate appropriate development in all the regions despite the intensive engagement with all the financial institutions. There is no cognizance achievement on economic growth or policies needed for IMF. Most of the African states have been involved in their own market-distorting policies which affects the poor and marginalized people favoring the owners of capital. The policies initiated by the states rather promote the flight of human and financial capital which encourages corruption and reduces income across board. Statistics recorded in 1990 stated that 28 Africa countries had under 1$ per day and 15 countries above 3$ per day. Even so, between 1980 and 2000, more than 14 African countries had massive increase in the real per capita GDP.72 Most importantly, between the two decades (1980–2000) due to the regional crises, political instability, weak governance; foreign debt rose from half of the GDP to 1.2 times of the GDP which surpass the 10% increase of the GDP. IMF and World Bank along with other financial institutions came to the rescue of African communities by setting up conditions for funding and proposing certain interventions; the IMF propose that African communities should try to devalue the currency, privatize their economy, raise inflation, or interest rate, deregulate the economy. Due to the degenerated economy of the African community, the countries had no option but to accept the conditions attached to securing the loans. This notion was also supported by Oloruntoba and Falola as they state that. …As the debt crisis increased in African countries, the states became dependent on the financial institutions for loans, based on a conditionality, which must be adhered to. At the same time, the African economy were forced to embrace different market-oriented reforms such as privatization of the public sector, deregulating the economic sector, liberalization of trade and finance regime and currency devaluation.73

As a result, most African countries embarked on privatization programs to solve the effectiveness, production on commodities and diversification of

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goods and services within their communities. The centered focus of the IMF reform packages for African countries was the reification of market principles. African countries continue to be a challenge to IMF as it represents an impoverished and misgoverned region in the world. The IMF has tried to implement programs to dismantle the policies constraining the effectiveness of the securing funding. Critics such as Stiglitz and Easterly have argued that IMF programs are more harmful to African communities than being beneficial. The debates here attest to the aim of this study which is to identify the appropriateness on IMF loans and the conditionality affecting IMF loaning conditions.74 Vreeland argued that IMF programs have hindered economic growth which redistribute wealth from the marginalized because of the various conditions affecting the African communities.75 For him, each African country involvement with IMF stipulates a different shift to allocate income which benefits the owners of capital than the majority irrespective of the national economies encouraging corruption and promoting flight of human and financial capital. Therefore, for IMF to continue to provide financial aid and give repeated lending to poorly governed societies who fail to reform themselves creates a matrix of dependency, unwise decisions on economic policies and leads to stagnant development. However, Stone argued otherwise that if the problem affecting effective implementation of IMF policies in African states is the conditions attached to the loans, then the solution will be to reform IMF policy-based lending conditions and remove the institutional obstacles that restrain its effectiveness.76 To achieve this; the question of the conditions or mode of enforcement by IMF on African states to secure funding is an important notion to be analyzed. The basic aim of IMF fund was to lend money that justifies its budget and increase the organizational stack by acquiring new clients and satisfying old ones.77 The loans are approved based on certain conditions before it is been approved. The major actors or principal donors involving industrial countries (suppliers of IMF resources) agree to these conditions and influences or try to enforce these conditions on IMF policy-based lending which is not the Fund’s priority. These conditions serve as a compromise on the effectiveness of IMF funding.78 Some of the conditions are linked with the kind of political constraints and structure of governance in the country seeking for the loan. An example was that South Africa could only qualify for international aid after apartheid while Zimbabwe was disqualified because of land exploitation recorded in the country from the white farmers. Many examples of countries who have defaulted and disqualified but reinstated again when they align themselves to the foreign donors’ policies. Although loans were given to countries by private institutions under IMF, the countries remain the same. There is no adequate scrutiny, misappropriation of funds, high inflation, increase of poverty massive job losses while the poor remain poor and the rich become richer.79 The funding was politicized both by IMF on the conditionality of the funds and the African state in disbursing of

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the fund received. An example was President Olusegun Obasanjo who paid up more than 32 billion dollars out of the debt Nigeria owned the IMF remaining 3 billion debt. Even so, till date the debt owned by Nigeria is doubled the amount initially paid out. Decolonial thinkers have argued that there is a universal power that has ensured the continuity of post-colonialism through the misuse and extraction of valuable resources in Africa despite the end of colonialism at the political level.80 These scholars further agree with Nipun, that the process of globalization is obscured under neoliberal market ideas.81 As a result, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization have taken the initiative of ensuring African economies are provided with a logic of global capital. This places the IMF and the World Bank dutifully assuming the role of high priests of development discourses and policies over most parts of Africa. A role these institutions still assumes till date by providing policy advice and instructions to bureaucrats in the best way to govern their respective economies. The IMF and World Bank also have offices in the Presidencies or Ministries of Finance of different African countries to assist any way they can. Oloruntoba also reiterated on this by saying. The pursuit of geopolitical interests through financialization has informed the use of international institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as well as private rating agencies to maintain the current dominance of global finance.82

Another important issue raised by Stiligtz was the fact that there is no proper consultation made by IMF representatives and the Bank on the developing countries. This is because most consultation made do not involve the marginalized and realities of the poor in the society.83 Most often government representatives from the financial sector along with the owners of capital, philanthropists and policymakers are involved in the consultation in big star hotels with representatives of the Brettonwood institutions.84

Africa and the Economic Reform Regimes Akinola in his paper, “Economic Reform in Africa: A Critical Appraisal” debated on the importance of economic reforms in Africa. According to him, the concept of economic reform relates to the national adjustment processes which highlights the broader socio-political and economic changes in a country.85 For him, the aim of reform is to ensure there is an increase on the productivity level that gives reduced price to the taxpayers.86 Every country with economic crises is expected to implement strategies on economic reform to stabilize the economy. Economic reform is most often directed to each country’s internal and external balances by adopting different liberal strategies such as privatization, deregulation, and trade liberation as suggested by Brentwood Wood institutions to promote economic growth. Economic

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reform assists nations to remove structural challenges associated with state intervention due to the workings with the markets.87 As mentioned earlier, the international financial institutions oversee monitoring and direction of programs that influences reformation process. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund along with other donor outputs facilitate these processes. Oloruntoba and Falola argued that, despite a decade of economic reforms, Africa is still considered as an underdeveloped continent with no evidence of economic improvement or good standard of living for the poor.88 An example is the land reform initiatives in South Africa, which is still a bone of contention. The sample experience applies to Ghana, which is still struggling with oil reform subsidy.89 Over the decade, African Scholars and other neoliberal critics continue to criticize Bretton wood institutions and other global financial institutions, as manipulators of African economies to promote capitalism. Even though their intervention is at the bequest of the African leaders with economic crisis, the critics argued that their interventions is not properly conducted and implemented.90 The same applies with the structural adjustment programs framed within the Washington Consensus. Critics have argued that SAPs was not properly equipped to address and promote development of market institutions in the continent.91 Likewise, the revised SAP implemented on policy deregulation has failed to promote development and effectively address oil reformation in oil producing countries. Instead, the elite and foreign capital interest are the ones being protected directly or indirectly in every economy. IMF continue to lend money to African countries while most states depend on the public debt to facilitate economic growth. Almeida, Soto, and Martin wrote a piece on current IMF disbursement of $488m to Angola to reduce the country’s dependence on oil and lower its debt burden for sustainable development in the country.92 IMF is currently assisting many countries that have been affected by the global recession on the current Covid-19 pandemic. The institutions set aside the $100billion to assist member countries in the fight to reduce poverty and economic recession.93 Most African countries have benefited from this lumpsum loans delving them deeper into debt. And at the same time there are lots of scandals already recorded in African economies such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Congo on the disbursement of these relief funds for the marginalized and poor in the countries. Africa continue to be underdeveloped while the public debt keeps increasing despite the Brettonwood conditions and policies being reformed and aligned to enforce the countries to comply to the conditionality of the policy-lending. The conditions continue to be a bone of contention and an issue to be redressed by future scholars. The failure of the neoliberal economic principles to ensure sustainable development calls for a new thinking on development policy in Africa. The state needs to be involved in redistribution of resources and reducing inequality. This could be through providing public good such as education, health, and water. Education provides opportunity for social mobility. Differences in initial conditions

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of people necessitate the intervention of the state in providing support to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Beyond the provision of appropriate investment climate, the state also has a role in exercising appropriate regulatory oversight over capital and business, in ways that will ensure innovation lead to more employment, decent wages, and sustainable environment.

Conclusion The chapter has examined global governance of finance and structural transformation of the economy in Africa. Despite years of reforms, there have been limited spillover effects in terms of inclusive economic development. Although there have been some growth spurts in terms of Gross Domestic Product, these have not led to structural transformation. Most of the African states have been involved in their own market-distorting policies which affects the poor and marginalized people favoring the owners of capital. The policies initiated by the states rather promote the flight of human and financial capital which encourages corruption and reduces income across board. The year 1970s, through to the 1980s, brought about low development in African economies with socio-economic crisis coupled with weak public institutions which attracted the global financial institutions to export liberalism regime into Africa. IMF and World Bank along with other financial institutions came to the rescue of African communities by setting up conditions for funding and proposing certain interventions; the IMF propose that African communities should try to devalue the currency, privatize their economy, raise inflation or interest rate, deregulate the economy. Due to the degenerated economy of the African community, the countries had no option but to accept the conditions attached to securing the loans. The chapter examines the implications of global economic crises on Africa’s economies. Situating the African financial crisis and development within the International Monetary Fund as a point of interrogation, the paper tends to analyze the appropriateness of IMF loans to African countries, determine the conditions of these loans and the highlight the internal functioning of IMF itself. The discussions presented to align the literature with the objectives of the study. Even though every country with economic crises is expected to implement strategies on economic reform to stabilize the economy. Economic reform is most often directed to each country’s internal and external balances by adopting different liberal strategies such as privatization, deregulation, trade liberation as suggested by Brentwood Wood institutions to promote economic growth. Till date, some countries are still being impacted on the aftermath effects of the global financial crisis as they still suffer from challenges on exchange rate and weak price commodities. Depending on their internal dynamics, African countries new mix of economic policies and political economic arrangements that can ensure more endogenous approaches to formulation and implementation of economic policies. Depending on externally oriented economic policies that are not rooted in local realities is not appropriate for economic development in the long run.

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Notes 1. C. Mcloughlin. Political Economy Analysis Topic Guide. Birmingham, UK, 2014. 2. Mcloughlin, Ibid., 2014. 3. P. Adler. Political economy. USA, 2009. 4. Mosco. The Political Economy of Communication. Sage, 2009. 5. Adam & Dercon. Ibid., 2009. 6. Adam & Dercon. Ibid., 2009. 7. G. Therbon. The Killings Field of Inequality, 2013. 8. Adam & Dercon. Ibid., 2009. 9. D.F. Meyer & H. Van Der Elst. ‘The Interventionist Role of the State in Socio-Economic and Political Development in Democratic South Africa (1994– 2014)’; S. Nipun, Role of the Government in a Market Economy | Economics, Economics Discussion, 2020. 10. Corporate Finance Institute (CFI). Political Economy—Definition, Components, and Theories, 2015. 11. T. Pettinger. Neoliberalism—Examples and Criticisms—Economics Help, 2018. 12. G. Hart. ‘Beyond Neoliberalism? Post-Apartheid Developments in Historical and Comparative Perspective’, 2006; V. Lowndes, D. Marsh & G. Stoker. Theory and Methods in Political Science, 2017. 13. I. Taylor. ‘The Political Economy of Africa’, in The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy, 2020. 14. S. Amin. ‘Understanding the Political Economy of Contemporary Africa’, 2014. 15. M.A. Nagar. ‘Historical Political Economic Approach to Africa’s Economic Development: A critique of Thandika Mkandawire’s Interest and Incentives, Ideas and Institutions’, 2020. 16. W. Rodney. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, London and Tanzania, 1981. 17. N. wa Thiong’o. Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening. Random House, 2016. 18. E.B. Ishola. The Palgrave Handbook of African Politics, Governance and Development, 2020. 19. N. wa Thiong’o. Ibid., 2016. 20. Rodney. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 2018. 21. Rodney. Ibid., 2018. 22. O. Taiwo. How Colonialism Pre-empted Modernity in Africa, 2010; Rodney, Ibid., 1981; Ake, Ibid., 1981. 23. Rodney. Ibid., 2018, 1981. 24. O., Taiwo. ‘Why Africa Must Become a Center of Knowledge Again’, 2017. 25. S. Bracking & G. Harrison. Africa, Imperialism & New Forms of Accumulation, 2003. 26. S. Oloruntoba. ‘Politics of Financialisation and Inequality: Transforming Global Relations for Inclusive Development’, 2015; R. Prabhakar. ‘Financial Growth and Development: A Tale of Two Literatures Article Accepted for Publication in Social Policy and Society’, 2019. 27. Prabhakar. Ibid., 2019. 28. Oloruntoba. Ibid., 2015. 29. Oloruntoba, Ibid., 2015; Prabhakar, Ibid., 2019. 30. Prabhakar, Ibid., 2019.

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31. C.P. Berry, ‘Citizenship in a Financialised Society: Financial Growth and Development and the State Before and After the Crash’, 2015. 32. Berry. Ibid., 2015. 33. Prabhakar. Ibid., 2019. 34. Prabhakar. Ibid., 2019. 35. Oloruntoba. Ibid., 2015. 36. Oloruntoba. Ibid., 2015. 37. Oloruntoba. Ibid., 2015. 38. F. Akinsola. ‘The Global Financial Crisis and African Economy’, 2020. 39. Akinsola. Ibid., 2020. 40. Akinsola. Ibid., 2020. 41. World Bank. Global Development Finance, 2012. 42. Akinsola. Ibid., 2020. 43. International Monetary Fund (IMF). What IMF Does? 2020; Akinsola. Ibid., 2020. 44. S.O. Oloruntoba, ‘Beyond the Fetishism of Gross Domestic Product (Mis) Governance and the Challenges of Poverty Reduction in Nigeria’, 2016. 45. Akinsola. Ibid., 2020. 46. Akinsola. Ibid., 2020. 47. World Bank. ‘Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action’, 1981; Oloruntoba. Ibid., 2015. 48. M.A. Nagar. ‘Historical Political Economic Approach to Africa’s Economic Development: A critique of Thandika Mkandawire’s Interest and Incentives, Ideas, and Institutions’, 2020. 49. M.A, Nagar, Ibid., 2020. 50. Corporate Finance Institute (CFI). Political Economy—Definition, Components, and Theories, 2015. 51. Nagar. Ibid., 2015. 52. World Bank, Ibid., 1981; S.O. Oloruntoba. ‘A Wave of Destruction and the Waves of Relief: Issues, Challenges and Strategies’, 2005. 53. F. Fukuyama. ‘Democracy and the Quality of the State’, 2013. 54. A. Adedeji. Africa in the Nineteen-Nineties: A Decade for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation or Another Lost Decade?, 1991; A. Adedeji. ‘The Travails of Regional Integration in Africa’, 2012. 55. World Bank, Ibid., 1981. 56. World Bank, Ibid., 1981. 57. T. Mkandawire. ‘Thinking About Developmental States in Africa’, 2005. 58. C. Goldsmith. Is a New Debt Crisis Mounting in Africa? World Finance, 2019. 59. C. Goldsmith. Ibid., 2019. 60. C. Onyekwena & M.A. Ekeruche. Ibid., 2019. 61. Initiatives provided for debt relief by IMF and World Bank. 62. Initiatives provided for debt relief.—by Bretton Wood institutions. 63. C. Goldsmith. Ibid., 2019. 64. World Bank. World Bank Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography, 2009. 65. World Bank, Ibid., 2009. 66. World Bank, Ibid., 2009. 67. The Paris Club consists of group of major creditor nations, including the US, the UK, Japan and many more, that coordinates lenders in cases where countries can no longer repay their debts.

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68. IMF. Regional Economic Outlook: Capital Flows and the Future Economic of Work. IMF, 2018. 69. J.D. Von Pischke. Finance and Human Development in Human Resources and Development, Vol. II, Frontier Finance International Inc, Washington, DC, USA, 1998. 70. S. Griffith-Jones. Global Governance and Growth for Human Development. 2016 UNDP Human Development Report. 71. S. Griffith-Jones, Ibid., 2016. 72. R.W. Stone. ‘The Political Economy of IMF Lending in Africa’, 2004. 73. S.O. Oloruntoba & Falola. Ibid., 2018. 74. J. Stiglitz. Globalization and Its Discontents, 2002; W. Easterly. The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, 2001. 75. J.R. Vreeland. ‘The IMF and Economic Development’, 2003. 76. Stone. Ibid., 2004. 77. Stone. Ibid., 2004. 78. Stone. Ibid., 2004. 79. Oloruntoba. Ibid., 2015; Mkandawire. Ibid., 2001; T. Mkandawire & C. Soludo, Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment, 1999. 80. S. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘Perhaps Decoloniality Is the Answer? Critical Reflections on Development from a Decolonial Epistemic Perspective’, 2013; S. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization, 2018; R. Grosfoguel. The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-Economy Paradigm, 2007. 81. S. Nipun. Role of the Government in a Market Economy | Economics, Economics Discussion, 2020. 82. S.O. Oloruntoba. Ibid., 2015. 83. J. Stiglitz. Ibid., 2001. 84. J. Stiglitz. Ibid., 2001. 85. A.O. Akinola. ‘Economic Reforms in Africa: A Critical Appraisal’, in The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy, 2020. 86. Akinola. Ibid., 2020. 87. Akinola. Ibid., 2020; Oloruntoba, 2015. 88. Oloruntoba & Falola. Ibid., 2018. 89. Akinola. Ibid., 2020. 90. Akinola. Ibid., 2020; Oloruntoba & Falola. Ibid., 2018; Akinsola. Ibid., 2020. 91. Mkandawire. Ibid., 2001; Oloruntoba. Ibid., 2015. 92. H. Almeida, A. Soto, & E. Martin. IMF to Disburse $488m to Angola as It Seeks to Curb Debt. MoneyWeb (12 January 2021). 93. International Monetary Fund (IMF). IMF Annual Report, 2020.

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Fritz, V., Levy, B. & Ort, R. Problem-Driven Political Economy Analysis: The World Bank’s Experience. Washington, DC: The World Bank (2014). https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/16389/ 9781464801211.pdf. Accessed 17 February 2019. Fukuyama, F. ‘Democracy, and the Quality of the State’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 24, No. 4 (2013): 5–16. Griffith-Jones, S. Global Governance and Growth for Human Development: UNDP Human Development Report (2016). Grosfoguel, R. The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-Economy Paradigm (2007). Hart, G. ‘Beyond Neoliberalism? Post-apartheid Developments in Historical and Comparative Perspective’, in In the Development Decade, ed. Padayachee, V. Pretoria: HSRC Press (2006). Heywood, A. Political Ideologies: An Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2007). Hoogvelt, Ankie, ‘Postmodern Intervention and Human Rights Report of the Commission of Africa’, Review of Africa Political Economy (2005): 106, 595–599. International Finance Corporation. Digital Access:The Future of Financial Inclusion in Africa, International Finance Corporation. Available at: https://www.ifc.org/ wps/wcm/connect/96a4f610-62b1-4830-8516-f11642cfeafd/201805_Digital-Acc ess_The-Future-of-Financial-Inclusion-in-Africa_v1.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID= mdz-QF0. Accessed 21 November 2019. International Monetary Fund (IMF). What IMF Does? (2020). https://www.imf. org/external/work.htm. Accessed 5 January 2021. International Monetary Fund (IMF). IMF Annual Report (2020). https://www.imf. org/external/pubs/ft/ar/2020/eng/. Accessed 13 January 2021. Ishola, E.B. The Palgrave Handbook of African Politics, Governance and Development by Oloruntoba, S.O. & Falola, T. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2020). Klapper, L., Singer, D., Ansar, S. & Hess, J. The Global Findex Database. Washington, DC (2017). Lowndes, V., Marsh, D. & Stoker, G. Theory and Methods in Political Science, 4th edn, ed. Lowndes, G., Marsh, V. & Stoker, D. UK: Macmillan (2017). https://books.google.co.za/books?id=AJc3DwAAQBAJ&dq=behavioural+ theory+definitions&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s. Accessed 2 May 2019. Mcloughlin, C. Political Economy Analysis Topic Guide. Birmingham, UK (2014). www.gsdrc.org. Accessed 17 Febuary 2019. Meyer, D.F. & Van Der Elst, H. ‘The Interventionist Role of the State in SocioEconomic and Political Development in Democratic South Africa (1994–2014)’, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences. Mediterranean Center of Social and Educational Research, Vol. 5, No. 7 (2014): 74–84. Mkandawire, T. ‘Thinking About Developmental State in Africa’, Paper Presented at the UNU-AERC Workshop on Institutions and Development in Africa held at the UNU Headquarters, Tokyo, Japan on (October 1998): 14–15. Mkandawire, T. ‘Thinking About Developmental States in Africa’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 25 (2001): 289–313. Mkandawire, T. & Soludo, C. Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment. Dakar, Senegal: CODESSRIA (1999).

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CHAPTER 22

Aid-Dependence and the Emancipation of Africa Victor Fakoya, Bolaji Omitola, and Dayo Akintayo

Introduction This chapter analyzes the political economy of African states’ development sub-Saharan African states share similar political and economic experiences. Since independence, the sub-Saharan African states have been contending with numerous problems. The states’ economies took a hit from neopatrimonialism and economic mismanagement leading the region to become dependent on foreign assistance. Beginning from late1979, “the system of liberalization, privatization, and tax cuts as first introduced in Britain prompted the conditions necessary for spontaneous economic globalization. The liberalization of international exchange was followed by a period of rapid expansion and intensification in international trade and finance” (Smith 2013, 12).1 During the initial phase of joining the global market, sub-Saharan African economies were affected positively until the debt crises began to impact.

V. Fakoya (B) Department of Political Science, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. Omitola Department of Political Science, Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria D. Akintayo College of Management and Social Sciences, Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_22

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The literature of development is replete with debates on the causes and causal processes of Africa’s economic and political crises. However, after several decades of debates, sub-Saharan Africa remains the poorest region in the world. Industrial and technological revolutions are reshaping the terrain of global economic relationships with diverse consequences for different countries. But sadly enough, the developed nation’s behavior has called into question the motives for encouraging trade liberalization. To be sure, “The circumstances of African trade with Europe were unfavorable to creating a consistent African demand for technology relevant to development, and when that demand was raised it was ignored or rejected by the capitalists. Skeptics of the global market assume that capitalism has always discouraged technological evolution in Africa” (Rodney 2010, 108).2 Despite the seeming asymmetrical nature of the international political economy, African states expected to reap trade liberalization dividends. Meanwhile, as more countries enter the international market arena, an opportunistic asymmetry permeates relative gains becomes prominent. But, how does this explain Africa’s endemic poverty? To put it differently, what role, if any, did the international market dynamics play in the eventual debt crises? To analyze the potential effects of the international market on African economies, it is important to understand the social and political underpinnings of production and distribution in the global economic platform. It has been documented that symbiotic relationships exist between the economic condition and political stability of a state. There is no better description of the scenario than Gilpin and Gilpin (2001) exposition thus: “Most political economists would agree with the distinguished economist Joseph Schumpeter that economic analysis progresses until it inevitably encounters social, political, and psychological factors that economics cannot explain” (Gilpin and Gilpin 2001, 75).3 It has been observed that economic and political conditions constitute a double-edged sword problem for the post-colonial African states right from the outset of self-rule. After the agricultural industry’s failure, African states shifted their attention to resource exportation4 (Bates 1981). Shortly after the region’s debut into the global market, sub-Saharan Africa suffered economic setbacks resulting from trade imbalances and price elasticity shock. Even the resource-rich states gradually descended into deepening economic chaos. The question is, why? Many factors may contribute to economic decadence. First, as a leading sector of Africa’s pre-industrial economy, agriculture generates revenue and foreign exchange. Using the price-setting power of the monopsonistic marketing agencies, the states have made cash crops a significant part of their tax base and have taken resources from them without compensation (Bates 1981, 18–19).5

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Theoretical Framework: Institutional and Political Economy Theories In the literature of international economy and development studies, there are abundant explanations for the dynamics and the effects of foreign aid on Africa. Nevertheless, for the purpose of this analysis, we explore institutionalism and political economy theory. This section aims to discuss the relevant theories that can provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the associations between the political environments (domestic and international) that shape the relationships between the actors in the international economic relations and the impacts on domestic economies. Institutionalism Concerning the institutions’ potential role, it is significant to ask, of what importance are institutions’ role to international economic relations? An institution can be defined as a relatively enduring collection of rules and organized practices, embedded in structures of meaning and resources that are relatively invariant in the face of turnover of individuals and relatively resilient to diverse preferences and expectations of individuals and changing external circumstances (March and Olsen 2006).6 Thus, an institutional theory is a grand analytical construct that explains the political system’s spectrum from the viewpoint of structural paradigm and adherence to rules. Theoretically, a state may have effective social-economic policies and enjoy political stability if it establishes and maintains viable institutional structures and rules. Imperatively, the institutional theory assumes that political-economic growth and stability in a state depend on how the government’s structures and rules serve the legitimate and collective rather than particularistic interests. However, it is noteworthy that the success of the institutions depends on the extent to which the affected actors adhere to the rules and the feasibility of their enforcement. In fact, “political scientists like to think that politics is ‘sui generis’ meaning that an autonomous institutional realm in which the exercise of power gives shape to the social and economic worlds”.7 Understandably, in a political system where open political oppositions are suppressed or marginalized, it is difficult for outside observers to understand the factors that influence autocratic leaders’ decision-making calculus (Schultz 2001, 17).8 Similarly, it has been well documented that the assumption that institutional structures persist unless there are external shocks underestimates both intra and interinstitutional dynamics and sources of change (March and Olsen 2006).9 There is an internal aspiration level pressure for change caused by enduring gaps between institutional ideals and institutional practices in an ideal context. Therefore, a functional institution ought to be equipped with

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rules and enforcement mechanisms that guarantee the protection of its role and enhance the state’s capacity. Inarguably, weak institutions tend to permeate inapt behaviors such as circumvention of policy implementations, mismanagement of the economy, depletion of social trust. The significance of institutional capability cannot be overstated. For instance, it is worthy of note that, “a new institutionalist approach has brought together methodological individualist and historical materialists around a common concern with the interactions of political institutions and processes” (Bratton and Van de Walle 1997, 41).10 The critical question is, how do politics affect the functional capability of institutions in Africa, and how what impacts do the effects have on the economy? We analyzed data on development indicators of ten sub-Saharan states to determine how the political system affects the economy to address these questions. Did institutional capability influence the factors that triggered Africa’s debt crises? Political Economy The theory of political economy focuses on the impacts of political dynamics on the economy. For the classical political economy philosophers, the explanations for the relationships between politics and the economy are ingrained in the history of primitive accumulation and its concomitants impacts on the social relations that determine the process of production and distribution. The debate between the neoclassical and political economy theorists has been further illuminated thus, “The economic domain is associated with the production, use, exchange, management, and valuing of resources” (Christoff and Eckersley 2013, 17).11 In fact, as it has been articulated in one of the most persuasive explanations on the subject of primitive accumulation, the dispossession of the wealth of workers and the construction of laissezfare are intertwined. That exposition lends credence to Marx’s description of the expropriation phenomenon as primitive accumulation (Perelman 2000).12 Thus, the phenomenon cannot be easily reduced to a mere constructivist conjecturing. Therefore, the science of political economy thesis rests on the intersection of certain essential elements, including utility, wealth, value, commodity, labor, land, and capital. Although “the neoclassical economic theories and methods are important, they are not in themselves sufficient to explain the nature and dynamics of the global economy. The most fundamental difference between neoclassical economics and the study of political economy can be found like the questions asked and of the answer given” (Gilpin and Gilpin 2001, 74).13 Furthermore, of vital significance to political economy are the modes and relations of producing and distributing commodity when it is capable of several uses. For instance, most of the sub-Saharan African states are agrarians. Thus, any problem arising from the attempts at estimating agricultural products’ value tends to have inevitable effects on the other sectors of the economy.

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To this end, the mode of production and distribution is a characteristically complex network of inequitable relationships. In tandem with the above, Mills and Birks (2014) has emphasized that utility and value are the most crucial elements in any trade relationship.14 So, the disputes on the value of natural resources in the global political economy arena reinforce human nature’s Hobbesian characterization. In other words, international actors act on individualist instincts. This viewpoint is corroborated by the second assumption of realism that the states’ goals as a rational actor are to advocate national, not international interest. This is grounded in the reasoning that relative gain is more alluring to the individuals than absolute gain in the anarchic international political economy arena (Mearsheimer and Alterman 2001).15 That accounts partly for challenges surrounding the issue of a universally accepted standard for accurately measuring the utility. It seems conceivable that this is one of the underpinning factors that underscore international trade agreements (Busse and Hefeker 2007).16 Furthermore, in explaining the chaotic nature of international economic relations, John Stuart Mills drew attention to the centrality of values in international trade, specifically pointing attention to the unsung role of politics. Overall, the political economy’s core argument is that “Politics is very much at the center of trade agreements” (Maggi and Andres 2007, 1).17 Interestingly, recent studies have documented the logic of international economic relations, debt crisis, market failure and other related problems. Market failure refers to: “a situation in which the outcomes of the market mediated interactions are suboptimal, given the utility functions of actors and the resources at their disposal” (Keohane 2005, 82).18 According to a prominent school of thought, international relations’ political economy provides the framework for analyzing the conditions that shape international trade relationships. Furthermore, some analysts have described the variants between the neoclassical and political economy positions thus: “The neoclassical economists believe that the market is autonomous, automated, and governed by its laws. Conversely, political economists argue that markets are embedded in larger socio-political structures (Gilpin and Gilpin 2001, 74–75).19 Hence, “Whereas economics is primarily concerned with efficiency and the mutual benefits of economic exchange, international political economy (IPE) is interested not only in those subjects but also in a broader range of issues. IPE is particularly interested in the distribution of gains from market activities; neoclassical economics is not” (Gilpin and Gilpin 2001, 77).20 The contemporary analysts have corroborated the notion that political pressure bears a significant influence on institutions. They also note that as rational actors, the states often sought to leverage their bargaining power in international economic relations. That assertion is based on the notion that “political institutions and economic development indisputably affect government behavior” (Besley and Burges 2000, 24).21 Against the backdrop of the above, we analyzed five development indicators (see Figs. 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4, and 22.5) to determine how trade liberalization as a political economy strategy impacted sub-Saharan

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Africa’s debt crises. Contemporary scholars have provided in depth explanations on how the ambiguities hoovering on the IFIs’ policy process affect the poor indebted nations. For instance, it has been observed that in the absence of clear new preference set by the major countries, a paradigm reorientation could come only from within. Yet not many incentives exist at that level either. In the case of the World Bank, its increased resources serve only to reinforce its disbursement imperative and approval culture, its general malady of clientilism (Güven 2012, 881; Weaver 2008, 118–120).22

Method of Analysis The Context The context of this analysis is sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, we obtained development indicators data on ten sub-Saharan African states, including five among the richest and five among the poorest states. The richest African states included in this analysis are Angola, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. We also include five of the poorest African countries, including Burundi, Central African Republic, Malawi, Niger, and Somalia. The underpinning factors that we considered in our selection of countries include recipient of aid, poverty, and unemployment. Each of the cases analyzed in this chapter has all of the yardsticks. Data and Method Data for this analysis were obtained from secondary sources including, journals and book articles, newspapers, periodicals, and online datasets (Mills and Birks 2014).23 The data were used to construct graphical charts of various variables (see Figs. 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4, 22.5, and 22.6). The relevant proxies for explaining the impact of foreign aid on the selected African states are Gross Domestic Product growth (GDP), Gross Domestic Product per capita growth (GDP), External Debt Stock % of GNI, and unemployment. Additionally, we included a proxy for economic recovery. The method of analysis for this chapter is a qualitative historical narrative approach. According to Büthe (2002), “Historical narrative approach is appropriate for presenting information about the causal processes because it contextualizes the steps that make the entire process visible rather than leaving it fragmented into analytical stages.” (p. 486).24 The historical narrative is supported with descriptive graphical charts (see Figs. 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4, and 22.5). H1: Developing countries whose political institutions are weak are likely to depend on foreign aid to offset budget deficit, which in turn causes debt crises.

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H2: There are no relationships between weak political institutions, dependence on foreign aid and debt crises. Aid-Dependence and Debt Crises in Africa Historically, financial aid has been successfully used in the process of economic reconstruction. In 1945 the Bretton Woods institutions under the group name International Financial Institutions (IFI) consisting of International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), World Bank (WB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided aid to the war-ravaged European countries as a support for their reconstruction projects after the World War II. The $20 billion recovery aid package from the United States for Austria, Great Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherland, and Norway was indisputably successful. The provision of reconstruction assistance engendered the revitalization of the economies of those European countries. Perhaps we should find out if the terms of the aid provided to African countries since the 1960s and those provided to European states in the 1940s were the same. If the terms are different, what are the implications of the variants? The underlying assumption is that politics is the underpinning determinant of financial aid, especially those given to developing countries. In fact, “the political economy of the United Nations Security Council provides a controlled setting that shines a light on the obscured trades of money for political influence on the global stage selection bias” (Vreeland and Dreher 2014, 26).25 While aid might have worked for the European countries, apparently aid has not been working in Africa?26 African countries have consistently ranked as the poorest region among the developing countries. The 1960s was a significant landmark in sub-Saharan African history for two main reasons. First, the majority of African states were granted independence. Secondly, by the mid-1960s, the economies of the nascent sub-Saharan African states were already degenerating. So, they were flooded with aid. How was aid supposed to work when the institutions were not working? By 1965, four African countries (Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, and Malawi) have received an aggregate of $1.350 billion in aid, up from about $100 million at the beginning of the 1960s. About one decade later, African debt amount increased to $36 billion designated for transportation, communication, water, social services, infrastructural projects, and poverty alleviation programs. Although the governments’ revenue generation depended significantly on export earnings, the farmers’ impact later proved to be more significant than the governments realized. Meanwhile, “during the critical period 1985–1996 when many African countries were contending with the austerity measures, the percentage of government revenue derived from income taxes declined to 25 percent” (Herbst 2014, 120).27 So, as the foreign aid debt increased, did the money allocated for debt service burden.

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By the mid-1970s, African debt service cost was $2 billion. That amount increased rapidly to approximately $8–$12 billion in 1982 (Moyo 2009).28 The problem was further exacerbated by the dramatic shift from democratic to military rules. Therefore, in spite of the fact that most of the sub-Saharan African countries are resources-rich, they continue to languish in poverty persistently through the late 1990s (see Figs. 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4, and 22.5). Unfortunately, the effects of authoritarian and military rule in most sub-Saharan states were devastating for economic recovery and development. Interestingly, studies have shown that the post-colonial African states continue to struggle with deepening economic and political crises even after many decades of receiving foreign financial aid that was supposed to stimulate development. Hence, it is appropriate to ask the question, if indeed aid can stimulate economic growth, why do many African states continue to wallow in debt crises even after they have borrowed so much from the IFIs? Evidently, despite the dismal conditions of African states’ economies, the Western lenders encouraged them to request more loans to solve their debt crisis. The answers are located in the relationship between borrowers and lenders and the lenders’ capabilities to pay back. Scholars within the international development regime circle have criticized the bank’s neoclassical economic orthodoxy underpinning the bank’s lending strategy for the failure of past structural adjustment policies to engender equitable and sustainable growth, particularly in Africa. “Meanwhile, a change in the ideational environment of aid posed another threat to the bank’s dominance of development lending. The development paradigm was shifting, and the bank risked losing its leadership role” (Weaver 2008, 145).29 In a similar vein, another critic of the IFIs aggressive campaign opines that “Many have argued that advertising creates needs that people would not have cared about otherwise” (Chwe 2013, 41).30 Moreover, the IFIs introduced an initiative for the poverty-ridden debtors. In 2008 the IMF announced that the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative launched jointly with the World Bank in 1996 was intended to help mitigate the debt burden that the borrowers cannot manage. Additionally, as part of the initiative, $42 billion was earmarked for debt relief to Nineteen African countries, among the Thirty-Three African states considered for the total package of $80 billion. In spite of the numerous complaints against IMF policies during the debt crisis and the era of structural adjustment, the IMF would rather adhere strictly to the dictates of its norms rather than paying attention to the pleas until the emerging market economies joined the chorus of criticism against the IMF.The goal was to help “reduce the debt burden of heavily indebted poor countries in Africa and free up additional resources for poverty-reducing and social expenditures” (Weaver 2008, 145).31 To benefit from the initiative’s largesse, the borrowers must satisfy a mandatory two-step process. The first step, designated as the decision step, involves the fulfillment of the four decision points. The second step, known as the completion point, entails the presentation of evidence of satisfactory

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performance, implementation of key reforms, and the adoption and implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) for at least one year (IMF 2020). Nevertheless, one can safely ask whether all those African countries are now debt-free or not?

The Analysis To address the question above, we examined data on the economic conditions of selected sub-Saharan African states. The states are Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Ghana, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Africa, and Tanzania. The conventional argument is that the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) goal is to assist in reversing the economic calamities of the African countries (Hawkins et al. 2008, 54).32 As noted in the previous section, because the economies of the post-independent sub-Saharan African states were heavily dependent on the exportation of commodities including timber in Gabon and Liberia, minerals in Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Africa, oil in Nigeria and Angola, and agricultural products such as coffee in Ethiopia, tea in Kenya, cocoa in Ghana, palm oil in Nigeria, cotton in Mali, groundnuts in Senegal, and sisal in Tanzania (Bates1981, 11)33 they were adversely impacted by price shock in the global market. Thus, African countries were entangled in the economic doldrums. Therefore, despite the steady increase in the number of export commodities, the protracted decline in food production exposed African economies’ fragility. Hence, the scarcity of locally produced foods of the 1970-the 1990s that led to a sharp decline in food supply forced the governments across the sub-Saharan region to spend a significant portion of their export revenue on importing food (Moyo 2009).34 During that period, the reliance on importing food and misplaced urbanization projects impacted governments’ budgets for essential public goods. Consequently, African states established “monopsonies that purchased agricultural goods directly from farmers” (Bates 1981, 12).35 Through the monopsonies, they exploited the farmers by dictating the prices without the farmers’ input. Remarkably, the farmers’ plights did not contend favorably on the priority lists of the governments. Perhaps because they failed to foresee the danger of substituting famers’ interests to promote industrialization and urbanization. In fact, “the desire to promote the fortunes of industry and appease the urban areas was responsible for adopting anti-farmers’ policies” (Bates 1981, 31–45).36 It is worthy of note that most of these projects that the newly independent African states leaders introduced were funded with commodity and natural resources export earnings. Aside from political independence, the late 1960s was economically and politically promising for the newly independent African states. By the mid-1970s, commodity prices declined internationally. Consequently, the sub-Saharan African states’ economies started crumbling. The systemic degeneration occurred so rapidly in the region that some states

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suspended and even in some cases abandoned many of their economic developmental programs. As a remedy, they turned to international donors for assistance. Meanwhile, the farmers complained bitterly about the agricultural sector’s abandonment while the governments continued spending lavishly on urban infrastructure projects. The states’ monopsonies would have been a good system but for the problems of price determination. A further evaluation of the depth of the crises that bedeviled African economies indicates that it evolved from “burgeoning balance of payments crisis, fiscal deficit, stagnation of agricultural production, and the inability of the small industrial sector to compete with imports” (Van de Walle 2001, 1).37 Sadly, among other things the IFIs misled the poor borrowers by failing to prioritize the ability of those borrowers to repay their loans. Against the backdrop of the above, it is conceivable that the most debilitating factor was the governments’ failure to incentivize farmers (Van de Walle 2001).38 Exacerbating the problem, a rise in minerals and natural resources price combined with military usurpation began from the late 1970s grounded agricultural sectors to a halt. But rather than addressing the root causes of the declining interests in farming, the states turned to foreign countries for financial assistance. It is intriguing that even when the aid started flowing in, the governments remained undaunted about the agricultural sector’s plights. Meanwhile, the region’s economy remained in turmoil because of the misplaced priorities and unmitigated corruption (Joseph 2014).39 Contrary to expectation, in the 1970s, African states entered the new phase of a deepening food shortage crises from which the region is yet to recover fully till the present moment. Among other things, the sub-Saharan borrower states continued to contend with hard choices culminating in austerity measures and high debt repayment unabatedly. In some cases, the debt services payment can be as high as 50% of a state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI). In tandem with the unsustainable debt-to-wealth ratio is the unending be an upsurge in unemployment to employable population ratio across sub-Saharan Africa (see Fig. 22.5). Furthermore, government irrationalities or lack of restraints in borrowing continued to plunge African economies deeper into the abyss, making a recovery and development efforts impossible. Unfortunately, the IFIs were complicit because they seldom apply the necessary parameters to ensure the ability to repay loans. To this end, it has been observed that “The bank over time has proven quite adept at buffering itself from external pressures and in some instances shaping external interests in its favor” (Weaver 2007, 504).40 The situation was further exacerbated in the late 1980s when the net reverse cost of debt repayment and servicing rose to $15 billion annually (Moyo 2009).41 In fact, nearly all sub-Saharan African states’ Gross domestic product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI) have been encumbered by the debt crisis burden. Therefore, as previously noted, the IMF complicity

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is yet another evidence of why aid has not to work in Africa. It is quite instructive, interestingly, that the African economic decline or stagnation scenario was that the deepest curve of the most depressing downturn spiral occurred during the intermix of steady aid flow, military dictatorship, and or civilian authoritarian rulership (Oyediran 1979; Joseph 2014).42 The contemporary argument, as Van de Walle (2001) pertinently noted, was that African economic crises emanated from the synthesis of bad economic policies, disproportionate government expenditure, overvalued currency exchange rate and excessive involvement of government in the economy. The above postulation situated all the blames on African states while minimizing or outrightly ignoring the lenders’ roles’ covariate effects.43 Meanwhile, evidence abounds that the lender and borrower relationships have been marred by certain malpractices (Weaver 2007).44 That viewpoint is well documented in the literature of African economic challenges and development. For instance, (Kankwenda 2000) appropriately noted that “the relationships between donors and recipients, particularly for access to World bank structural adjustment loans and IMF structural adjustment facilities … depend largely on the LDCs meeting adjustment condition imposed on them…The weak administrative and institutional capacities of many countries remain an obstacle to local appropriation and execution of reform and development programs” (p. 28).45 In the next segment below, we analyzed the selected cases’ development indicator data (see Figs. 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4, 22.5, and 22.6). Figure 22.1 entails a graphical illustration of the sub-Saharan GDP between 1990 and 2018. The GDP of sub-Saharan African states, as shown above, has been volatile since the early 1990s. The Gross domestic product (GDP) from the expenditure side is made up of household final consumption expenditure, general government final consumption expenditure, gross capital formation (private and public investment in fixed assets, changes in inventories, and net acquisitions of valuables), and net exports (exports minus imports) of goods 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 -10

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and services. Such expenditures are recorded in purchaser prices and include net taxes on products (Worldbank 2019).46 According to this chart, in 1990, Nigeria recorded the highest GDP growth at 11.78%, followed by Tanzania at 7%, Malawi at 5.7%, Burundi at 3.5%; and Ghana at 3.3%. Angola, Central African Republic, Niger, and South Africa recorded negative GDP growth. This coincided with the period when the African states’ economies started feeling the impact of the international price shocks, and the governments responded to the problems by applying for more loans from the IFIs. Understanding that in such a scenario, the consumer economies suffer the most, it is surprising that African states were unable to climb out of the debt holes easily. In fact, the positive growths were short-term benefits from the inundation of the region with loans. The availability of loan money allowed governments to increase budgets to continue public infrastructural projects and other government expenditures. Sadly enough, the countries with negative GDP growth also followed similar steps by asking foreign lenders for more loans. By 1994, the GDPs of three among the countries that enjoyed the short-term boost degenerated. During that same period, other countries experienced a steep decline in their GDP. These include Burundi at −3.82%, Malawi at −10.24%, and Nigeria at −1.81%. It was not until 2002 that sub-Saharan African states started looking elsewhere other than foreign loans with harsh conditionalities for economic recovery. By 2018 all countries studied were on the right track to modest positive growth except Angola and Somalia (see Fig. 22.1). Figure 22.2 depicts the real effects of the economic condition on the individuals. It is imperative to note that the accurate measurement of the impact of economic performance on the population can be better understood by examining the GDP per capita. Remarkably, the data for GDP per capita in Fig. 22.2 above shows that the period 1990–1994 was more devastating for the region than the rest of the periods examined even despite the moderate rebounds observed in 1994. Similarly, the GDP per capita for the countries examined shows that unlike what we see in the national GDP growth recovery in 2018, the per capita GDP for Angola, Burundi, Nigeria, and South Africa remained 40 30 20 10 0 AGO

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in the negative terrain period. Moreover, the analysis of the effects of external debt stocks and repayment on the economic wellbeing of average citizens of the countries studied, as demonstrated in the chart above (see Fig. 22.2). To clarify the parameter, “Annual percentage growth rate of GDP per capita is based on constant local currency. The aggregates are based on constant 2010 U.S. dollars. GDP per capita is the gross domestic product divided by midyear population. GDP at purchaser’s prices is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources” (Worldbank 2019).47 As shown above, rather than experiencing robust development during the 1980s–1990s implementation of reform policies, there was excruciating economic decline occasioned by a sharp increase in unemployment and concomitant protests against governments in countries including Nigeria, Uganda, Congo/Zaire, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Cameroon, Congo Democratic Republic. In support of the above argument Van de Walle (2001) concisely stated that “Over the last three decades, several hundred billion dollars have been transferred from the developed countries to sub-Saharan Africa. However, the institutional context of aid has profoundly conditioned the economic and political impact of aid in the region” (p. 189).48 Therefore, there seems to be inadequate support for positive correlations between aid and economic development. Despite the dynamics of the impact highlighted above, the IFIs maintained only trivial attention to the borrowers’ ability to utilize the money as recommended and repay promptly. One of the possible reasons for setting aside the essential conditionalities was the global context among the world superpower for sovereignty. During that period, the United States desperately needed the global south’s support to consolidate the internationalization of capitalism and liberalization of the global economy. Therefore, the global contest for geostrategic spheres of political influence led both the United States and the defunct Soviet Union into scrambling for alliances with developing countries. The African governments, consisting mostly of military dictators and civilian authoritarianists, “became skilled at winning external support by declaring ideological affinity with an international patron or threatening to cross over to a rival camp” (Bratton and Van de Walle 1997, 135).49 Additionally, when the international political arena’s hegemonic competition ended in favor of the west and the United States emerged as the unipolar power, the rationale for irrational lending faded rather rapidly. Consequently, the IFIs started instituting more stringent conditionalities to minimize default. It is thus remarkable that the sudden return to the status quo made intensified the effects of austerity measures and structural adjustment for the sub-Saharan African states’ economies. Hence, it came as no surprise that the period that followed has been described as the epoch of economic crisis in Africa. Realizing the impact of their flaws, the IFIs reversed course by facilitating multiple stabilization initiatives under the guidance of the IFI’s.

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Notable among those programs is the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). Ever since the debt crisis erupted and began to wreak havoc on the African economies in the early 1980s, many critics of the IMF have advocated major reductions in the affected states’ debt burdens. However, the campaigns of the 1980s concentrated mainly on commercial and bilateral borrowings rather than on loans from multilateral institutions. One incontestable fact regarding of the most debilitating impact of loan conditionalities on the borrowers is that the SAP instruments were devastating and counterproductive for their economy. Such was the experience of Nigeria during 1986–1993. It has been documented that, the instruments of SAP include external debt management strategies, second-tier (Foreign Exchange Market) operations removal of subsidies on petroleum products and fertilizer, privatization, and commercialization, trade liberalization, and interest rate deregulation. The effects of SAP vary across African states (Anyanwu 1992).50 Nevertheless, the overall assumption is that the program contributed immensely to the debt crisis in 1982. The shift from loose to tight monetary policy to control hyperinflation in 1979 precipitated a crisis. The consequent debt crisis during the 1980s had a devastating impact on a large number of developing countries and subsequently and also had profound consequences for the economic policies of the Less Developed Countries (LDCs), the role of IMF in economic development, and the relations between industrial and developing economies (Gilpin and Gilpin 2001, 313).51 In the above (Fig. 22.3) graphical chart of the ten countries studied, the positive trend in the External Debt Stocks percentage of the GNI shows economic decay signs. This stance’s logic is that if states reduce their external debt burden by reducing reliance on foreign loans and consistently paying down their debt, the amount of money devoted to loan payment will decline.52 Therefore, the fact that the external debt stocks percentage of all of the ten countries examined except South Africa increased sharply in 1994 compared with 1990 showed that those states were heavily dependent on External debt stocks (% of GNI) 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 AGO

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Fig. 22.3 African States debt stocks percentage of Gross National Income (1990– 2018)

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foreign loans (see Fig. 22.3) during that period. For example, when Senegal received a structural development loan from the World bank in 1979, it was the first African country. After Senegal, almost all of the sub-Saharan African states followed in the step of Senegal. Seeking financial aid has become a new normal in the developing countries generally and Africa in particular. Surprisingly, the above countries’ assessment shows that African economies declined between the early 1990s and early 2000. The problem directly associated with foreign loan-dependence is that as the debt increases, so is the lender’s power over the borrower. As it has been observed, “A central purpose of foreign aid is to exert their preferences by influencing the recipient’s policy choices or other behavior. Preference heterogeneity can be understood as distributional conflict since it means that different principals prefer different outcomes” (Hawkins et al. 2006, 111– 142).53 Unfortunately, African economies were further deepened into crises beginning from the mid-1990s when the governments adopted the idea that securing more loans from foreign sources would facilitate economic growth and get them out of their debt burden. Thus, the lenders through the IFI lending conditionalities were able to legitimately shape the trends in the borrowers’ economies. Figure 22.4 shows the impact of debt service on African states’ economies. Accordingly, until late 2000, only Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa have made significant efforts to maintain their loan services obligations. Ghana and Tanzania only showed insufficient commitments to loan repayments, while Burundi, Central African Republic, Malawi, Niger, and Somalia did not demonstrate sufficient commitment to their loan services. This phenomenon accounts partly because these four countries were among the loan defaulters that qualified for debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. The IFIs to categorized of some poor defaulting countries as highly indebted poor counties while country like Somalia could not to make the list. One anecdotal explanation for the exclusion of Somalia Debt service on external debt, total (TDS, current US$) 70000

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in the 1996 initiative was the fact that Somalia was at the time a failed state with no credible institutions and effective government (IMF 2020).54 Emerging from the preceding phenomenon the sub-Saharan African states entered the new decade of the 1990s with a bourgeoning debt, and enormous debt services obligation averaged approximately $15 billion. In effect, the debt crises signaled the failure of the development strategy based on import-substitution. However, the LDC’s debt crises, more than any other development issues, led to the triumph of the doctrine of neoliberalism and the policy of structural adjustment (Gilpin and Gilpin 2001).55 By the mid-1990s, it was apparent that the sub-Saharan African countries cannot emancipate themselves economically with aid money. Although many African countries, just like their counterparts in other regions, received some form of loan forgiveness for portions of their debt, the effects of the debt crisis on domestic economies persisted unabated. Numerous factors account for the stagnation of African economies amidst the aggressive efforts to rebound. For instance, the politics of lending and the conditionalities56 attached served the lenders’ interests, not the borrowers. The banks’ disbursement and approval processes drive the bank’s culture that has proven perhaps inadvertently oblivious to the ravaging debt crisis that is still hindering African countries’ development (Weaver 2007, 506).57 Besides, African states under their erstwhile patrimonial political elites lacked the requisite capabilities for building solid economies free from dependence on foreign aid debt trap and develop their economies. As one study has illustrated, “political institutions hold the explanatory key to the African crisis, and there will not be successful economic reform without a prior reform of the region’s politics” (Van de Walle 2001, 14).58 What the above (Fig. 22.5) shows is the rate of unemployment during the time examined. Inarguably, employment and unemployment ratios are veritable indicators for measuring the performance of a state’s economy. The question that we addressed in this section is: How did the debt crises affect employment in the selected countries during the period 1990–2018? Based Unemployment, total (% of total labor force) (modeled ILO estimate) 250 200 150 100 50 0 AGO

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Total unemployment percentage of total labor force (1990–2018)

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on the data analysis, it is probable that large economies were more impacted than the smaller economies in Africa. To be precise, Angola’s unemployment rose from 3.81% in 1994 to 7% in 2018. Burundi’s unemployment remained around 2% between 1994 and 2018. The Central African Republic shows a persistent average of 4% unemployment rate between 1994 and 2018. In Ghana, unemployment declined from 6% in 1994 to 4% in 2018. Malawi shows a steady unemployment rate of around 6% between 1994 and 2018. In Niger, unemployment hover persistently around 2% between 1994 to 2018. In Nigeria, unemployment increased from 3.76% in 1994 to 8.24 in 2018. Tanzania recorded a decline from 3.5 in 1994 to about 2% in 2018. South Africa’s unemployment rate seems to be declining gradually from 30.14% in 1994 to 26.92% in 2018, but still very high. In Somalia, unemployment remained stubbornly high, around 11% between 1994 and 2018. Interestingly, however, the data above show that sub-Sahara African states have started rebounding since the early 2000s, as evident in the trends among the other indicators analyzed above. Figure 22.6 demonstrates the percentage of remittances that the states received from their citizens in the diaspora. The question addressed in this section is: What impact would remittance money have on the economy? Remittance is admittedly one of the most prominent sources of revenue generation for the states. The chart above shows that the inflow of remittances to Angola was less than $0.5 billion in 2018. In Burundi, remittances decreased from $1.7 billion in 2010 to $1.5 billion in 2018. Remittances in the Central African Republic was less than $1 billion in 2014. Remittances received by Ghana increased from about $0.3 billion in 1994 to $5.4 billion in 2018. Malawi remittances increased from $0.4 billion in 2006 to $6 billion in 2018. In Niger, remittances received rose from $0.6 billion in 1990 to $3.2 billion in 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 AGO

BDI

CAF 1990

Fig. 22.6

GHA 1994

1998

MWI 2002

NER 2006

NGA 2010

SOM 2014

ZAF

2018

Personal remittances received percentage of GDP (1990–2018)

TZA

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2018. Remittances received in Nigeria increased from $1.6 billion in 1994 to 6.11 billion in 2018. In South Africa, remittance remained stagnant between $0.23 billion in 2002 to $0.26 billion in 2018. Tanzania received remittances between $1.7 in 2010 to $0.71 in 2018. There is no record for Somalia during the period 1990 and 2018. This section’s relevance is that countries that received remittances can reduce aid-dependence if the countries can create a system for equitablye utilization of the revenue generated from that source. This viewpoint has been corroborated in the literature of African studies. Evidently, African states, like their counterparts in the Middle East and Latin America, seldom collect taxes from all their eligible citizens and entities. As Herbst (2014) aptly puts it, “African governments did not work energetically to change their revenue structure. For instance, in Nigeria, since independence… the taxation system set up by the colonial governments have been all but dismantled, particularly at the local level” (p. 120).59 The rationale for such thinking is that the neopatrimonial system prevents the government from collecting adequate taxes from all eligible citizens. Perhaps because neopatrimonialism is attractive to regime loyalists under military, authoritarian and “anocratic” governments.60 Similarly, scholars have found that remittances from Africans in the diaspora can also be a source of loan for the government without the excruciating conditionalities that Kagame and a few other African leaders have referred to as scandalous and unworthy of the choices that African states have had to make to qualify for loans (Moyo 2009).61 Unfortunately, African leaders have persistently failed to consider the possibility of incentivizing the senders of remittance in other to make it a steady source of the much-needed foreign currencies instead of perpetual reliance on foreign aid. But can we really expect a different outcome from the existing structure of global financial flow? Imperatively, the global financial global flow is a situation that has been described as awkward connections given because its fluidity communicates a sense of total and uniform connectedness eventhough that is simply not the experience of the less developed countries (Ritzer and Dean 2015, 19).62 Meanwhile, the relations between donors and recipients depended largely on the LDCs meeting adjustment conditions imposed on them. The situation is further compounded by the fact that “The weak administrative and institutional capacities of many countries remain obstinate impediments to appropriation and execution of reform and development programs” (Kankwenda 2000, 28).63 For example, in 2008, sixteen sub-Saharan African countries have reliable stock markets (Moyo 2009, 4).64 Ultimately, any finance source that reduces the hold of the IFIs on the sub-Saharan states tends to engender a welcome alternative to the status quo. Leveraging the opportunity of remittances from the diaspora by incentivizing transfer of foreign currencies through low-interest charges could ease African states’ economic burdens.

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Concluding Remarks This chapter examined the political economy of African dependence on freeing aid for its economic development. The question addressed in this chapter is, how did aid-dependence affect African strive for economic emancipation? The goal is to investigate the circumstances that precipitate and sustain the sub-Saharan African states’ endemic poverty situated within the contexts of aid-dependence and the dynamics of the global market’s political economy. Hence, we explore materials on the operations of the IFIs and the economic development indicators of ten sub-Saharan African states. Additionally, literature shows that the dramatic upsurge in lending was motivated by two main reasons. First, the need to preserve the relevance of the IFIs as an institutional base for liberalization of the global market. Secondly, it was used as an inducement tool to achieve the two opposing powers’ hegemonic goals during the cold war. Based on the above analysis (Figs. 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4, and 22.5), our study supports the previous findings that aid cannot facilitate development where the political-institutional substructures are grossly deficient. Hence, we conclude that the debt crisis period was demystified by low GDP per capita, increase in the external debt stock, increase in debt service percentage on external debt, and unemployment coincided with the long period of political upheavals and institutional decay. The findings call into question the essence of the massive loans that have been channeled to Africa through the IFIs. It is deducible that both the borrowers and the lenders started with wrong motives hence the failure to transform African economies. So, lending to African states was a necessary political strategy for the interest of the advanced economies. Based on the findings demonstrated in Figs. 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4, and 22.5, we reject the hypothesis that there is no relationship between weak political institutions and foreign aid failure. We accept the hypothesis that developing countries whose political institutions are weak are likely to depend on foreign aid to offset budget deficit, which in turn causes debt crises. Furthermore, this analysis confirms that African economic growth under aid-dependence was anemic and incapable of engendering economic emancipation in the region. Buttressing the above, President Mkapa of Tanzania in 2005 referred to foreign aid conditionalities and the impact on sub-Saharan African economies as “scandalous given the fact that African states are forced to choose between providing basic healthcare and education for their citizens or debt repayment. Similarly, Rwandan president Kagame lamented that the primary reason that there is little to show for aid flow to Africa in terms of economic growth and human development is that much of the aid is spent on creating and sustaining client regimes with minimal regard to the developmental outcome on Africa” (Moyo 2009, 26–28).65 The critical views have been corroborated further by the Senegalese president when he noted that no country could develop its economy with aid (Moyo 2009, 149).66 Thus, while

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financial aid can support recovery, it cannot be relied on as the main economic development catalyst. It is imperative to note that while the interests of the IFIs and the borrowers are antithetical, African states institutional incapacity contributed significantly to the debt crises and the economic decadence that has been ravaging the region since the 1960s. Therefore, it is conceivable that African states may remain at the bay of economic emancipation if they continue to depend on foreign financial aid. That is further exacerbated by the fact that the states’ political institutions that ought to shape policies were embedded in the neo-patrimonial system. Thus, until African states liberate their institutions from neopatrimonialism’s tutelage, the weakness from within will continue to impede economic emancipation interests and efforts. In the final analysis, given that aid-dependence has not facilitated the development of any African state’s economy, we conclude that it is time for African states to start looking for alternatives to foreign aid for their economic recovery and development.

Notes 1. Smith, Keri E., ed., Sociology of Globalization: Cultures, Economies, and Politics (Westview Press, 2013). 2. Rodney, Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Perspectives on Africa (Blackwell, 2010), 439–449. 3. Robert, Gilpin and Jean M. Gilpin, Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 75. 4. Bates, Robert H., Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Los Angeles: University of California, 1981). 5. Bates. Ibid., 2001, 18–19. 6. March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen, “Elaborating the “’new institutionalism’.” The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions 5 (2006). 7. Michael, Bratton and Nicholas Van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 20. 8. Schultz, Kenneth A., Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17. 9. March and Olsen. Ibid., 2006. 10. Bratton, and Van de Walle, Ibid., 1997, 41. 11. Peter, Christoff and Robyn Eckersley, Globalization and the Environment (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013), 17. 12. Michael, Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (Duke University Press, 2000). 13. Gilpin and Gilpin. Ibid., 2001, 74. 14. Jane, Mills and Melanie Birks, Qualitative Methodology: A Practical Guide (Sage, 2014). Monroe, Alan, Essentials of Political Research (Westview Press, 2008). 15. Mearsheimer, John J. and Glenn Alterman, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).

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16. Matthias, Busse and Carsten Hefeker, “Political risk, institutions and foreign direct investment.” European Journal of Political Economy, 23 (2007). 17. Giovanni, Maggi and Andres Rodriguez-Clare, “A political-economy theory of trade agreements,” American Economic Review 97 (2007): 1. 18. Keohane. Ibid., 2005, 82. 19. Gilpin and Gilpin. Ibid., 2001, 74–75. 20. Gilpin and Gilpin. Ibid., 2001, 77. 21. Timothy, Besley and Robin Burgess, “The political economy of government responsiveness: Theory and evidence from India,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (2002): 2–4. 22. Güven, Burak A., “The IMF, the World Bank, and the global economic crisis: Exploring paradigm continuity,” Development and Change 43 (2012): 881. Weaver. Ibid., 2008, 118–120. 23. Mills and Birks. Ibid., 2014. 24. Tim, Büthe, “Taking temporality seriously: Modeling history and the use of narratives as evidence,” American Political Science Review (2002): 486. 25. Vreeland, James R. and Axel Dreher, The Political Economy of the United Nations Security Council: Money and Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 26. 26. Susan, Park and Antje Vetterlein, eds., Owning Development: Creating Policy Norms in the IMF and the World Bank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 163. 27. Jeffrey, Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control, Vol. 149 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 120. 28. Dambisa, Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (Macmillan, 2009). 29. Weaver. Ibid., 2007, 145. 30. Chwe, M. Suk-Young, Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 41. 31. Weaver. Ibid., 2007, 39. 32. Hawkins, Darren G., et al., Delegation and Agency in International Organizations (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 54. 33. Bates. Ibid., 1981, 11. 34. Moyo. Ibid., 2009. 35. Bates. Ibid., 1981, 12. 36. Bates. Ibid., 1981, 31–45. 37. Van de Walle. Ibid., 2001, 1. Thacker, C. Strom, “The high politics of IMF lending,” World Politics (1999): 41. 38. Van de Walle. Ibid., 2001. 39. Joseph, A. Richard, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria, 56 (Cambridge University Press, 2014). 40. Weaver, Ibid., 2007, 504. 41. Moyo, Ibid., 2009. 42. Oyediran, Oyeleye, Nigerian Government and Politics Under Military Rule, 1966–79 (Lagos: Macmillan, 1979). 43. Van de Walle. Ibid., 2001. 44. Weaver. Ibid., 2007. 45. Mbaya, Kankwenda, Poverty Eradication: Where Stands Africa? (Economica Limited, 2000), 28.

486 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

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World Bank. Ibid., 2019. World Bank. Ibid., 2019. Van de Walle. Ibid., 2001, 189. Van de Walle. Ibid., 1997, 135. John, Anyanwu, “President Babangida’s structural adjustment program and inflation in Nigeria,” Journal of Social Development in Africa 7 (1992): 1. Gilpin. Ibid., 2001, 313. Drezner. Ibid., 2008, 119. Hawkins, Ibid., 2006. “IMF Factsheet” Last modified 2020. https://databank.worldbank.org/sou rce/world-development-indicators#. Gilpin and Gilpin. Ibid., 2001. “IMF Factsheet.” Ibid. Weaver. Ibid., 2007, 506. Van de Walle. Ibid., 2001, 14. Herbst. Ibid., 2014, 120. Systemicpeace. Org. Polity IV. for a detailed discussion on the characteristics of the types of governments that are categorized as anocracies. Moyo. Ibid., 2009. Ritzer and Dean. 2015, 19. Kankwenda. Ibid., 2000, 28. Moyo. Ibid., 2009, 4. Moyo. Ibid., 2009, 26–28. Moyo. Ibid., 2009, 149.

References Adekanye, J. Bayo. “Military occupation and social stratification. Inaugural lecture.” University of Ibadan (1993). Anyanwu, John. “President Babangida’s structural adjustment program and inflation in Nigeria.” Journal of Social Development in Africa 7 (1992): 1–5. Bates, Robert H. Markets and States in Tropical Africa. Los Angeles: University of California, 1981. Bauer, Steffen. “Darren G. Hawkins, David A. Lake, Daniel L. Nielson, and Michael J. Tierney (eds.): Delegation and Agency in International Organizations.” The Review of International Organizations 2, no. 3 (2007): 305–307. Besley, Timothy, and Robin Burgess. “The political economy of government responsiveness: Theory and evidence from India.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (2002): 1415–1451. Bratton, Michael, and Nicholas Van de Walle. Democratic experiments in Africa: Regime transitions in comparative perspective. Cambridge university press, 1997. Busse, Matthias, and Carsten Hefeker. “Political risk, institutions and foreign direct investment.” European Journal of Political Economy 23 (2007): 397–415. Büthe, Tim. “Taking temporality seriously: Modeling history and the use of narratives as evidence.” American Political Science Review 96, no. 3 (2002): 481–493. Christoff, Peter, and Robyn Eckersley. Globalization and the Environment. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013. Chwe, Suk-Young M. Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.

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Drezner, Daniel W. All Politics Is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Epperson, Ralph. The New World Order, Publius Press, Lookout Mountain, USA, 1990. Gilpin, Robert, and Jean M. Gilpin. Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Güven, Ali Burak. “The IMF, the World Bank, and the global economic crisis: exploring paradigm continuity.” Development and Change 43, no. 4 (2012): 869–898. Herbst, Jeffrey. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Vol. 149. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. IMF. “Debt relief under the heavily indebted poor countries initiative.” Accessed January 29, 2020. https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2016/08/ 01/16/11/Debt-Relief-Under-the-Heavily-Indebted-Poor-Countries-Initiative. Jevons, William Stanley. The Theory of Political Economy. Macmillan, 1879. Joseph, Richard A. Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic. Cambridge, 1987. Joseph, Richard A. Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria. Vol. 56. Cambridge University Press, 2014. Kankwenda, Mbaya. Poverty Eradication: Where Stands Africa? Economica Limited, 2000. Keohane, Robert O. “Theory of world politics: structural realism and beyond.” Neorealism and Its Critics 158 (1986): 190–197. Keohane, Robert O. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Maggi, Giovanni, and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. “A political-economy theory of trade agreements.” American Economic Review 97 (2007): 1374–1406. March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. “Elaborating the ‘new institutionalism’.” The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions 5 (2006): 3–20. Martins, Nuno. “The revival of classical political economy and the Cambridge tradition: From scarcity theory to surplus theory.” Review of Political Economy 23 (2011): 111–131. Mearsheimer, John J. “Structural realism.” International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity 83 (2007): 77–94. Mearsheimer, John J. “Reckless states and realism.” International Relations 23 (2009): 241–256. Mearsheimer, John J., and Glenn Alterman. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: WW Norton & The company, 2001. Milios, John. “Social classes in classical and Marxist political economy.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 59 (2000): 283–302. Mills, Jane, and Melanie Birks. Qualitative Methodology: A Practical Guide. Sage, 2014. Monroe, Alan. Essentials of Political Research. Westview Press, 2008. Momani, Bessma. “IMF staff: Missing link in fund reform proposals.” The Review of International Organizations 2 (2007): 39–57. Moyo, Dambisa. Dead AID: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa. Macmillan, 2009.

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O’Brien, Robert, Anne M. Goetz, Jan A. Scholte, and Marc Williams. Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Oya, Carlos. “The political economy of development aid as the main source of foreign finance for poor African countries: Loss of policy space and possible alternatives from East Asia” (2006). Oyediran, Oyeleye. Nigerian Government and Politics Under Military Rule, 1966–79. Lagos: Macmillan, 1979. Park, Susan, and Antje Vetterlein, eds. Owning Development: Creating Policy Norms in the IMF and the World Bank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Perelman, Michael. The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation. Duke University Press, 2000. Ritzer, George, and Paul Dean. Globalization: A Basic Text. Wiley, 2015. Rodney, Walter. “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” London and Dar es Salaam: Bogle-L’Ouverture and Tanzania Publishing House, 1972. Rodney, Walter. “How Europe underdeveloped Africa.” Perspectives on Africa. Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2010. Schmidt, Vivien A. “Institutionalism.” The Encyclopedia of Political Thought (2014): 1836–1839. Schultz, Kenneth A. Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Smith, Keri E., ed. Sociology of Globalization: Cultures, Economies, and Politics. Westview Press, 2013. Systemicpeace. Polity IV. Accessed January 10, 2020. https://www.systemicpeace. org/polity/polity4.htm. Thacker, Strom C. “The high politics of IMF lending.” World Politics (1999): 38–75. Thacker, Strom C. “The high politics of IMF lending.” Globalization and the Nation State 5 (2006): 111–508. Thelen, Kathleen. “Historical institutionalism in comparative politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1999): 369–404. Van de Walle, Nicholas. The Politics of Permanent Crisis: Managing African Economies, 1979–1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001. Vreeland, James R., and Axel Dreher. The Political Economy of the United Nations Security Council: Money and Influence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Waltz, Kenneth N. “Realist thought and neorealist theory.” Journal of International Affairs (1990): 21–37. Weaver, Catherine. “The world’s bank and the bank’s world.” Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 13 (2007): 493–512. Weaver, Catherine. Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Weiss, Thomas G. International Organization and global Governance. Routledge, 2013. Wendt, Alexander. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Willetts, Peter. Non-Governmental Organizations in World Politics: The Construction of Global Governance. Vol. 49. Routledge, 2010. World Bank. “World Development Indicators.” Retrieved on March 2020 from https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators.

CHAPTER 23

Between Heterochthonous Laissez-Faireism and Autochthonous Organic Farming: Africa’s Lazarus Global Food Security Challenges Lere Amusan

Introduction Until the turn of the mid-twentieth century, Africa was only perceived as a continent of misery, diseases, economic and political instability and a continent that was only relevant when the game of numbers in various international organisations was needed.1 Hence, the Cold War global system that crawled into the political and economic arrangements of the world used Africa as a mere surrogate and led many autocratic leaders to remain in power despite their illegitimate ascendancy to power. This may be in the form of a barrel of a gun or through questionable one-party system of government. The end of the ideological war and the subsequent global food were globally experienced coupled with the need to find alternatives to the Middle East fossil fuel hegemonic power brought Africa to prominence as the last destination where land could be acquired by foreign nationals to produce biofuel, feeds for animals, and food for their home states.2 MNCs public corporations through sovereign wealth fund (SWF) and private individuals are active in large-scale farming in the continent.3 Fishing is another area that has become a prominent means of feeding the continent, but foreign trawlers are not working towards the development of Africa as this chapter is going to examine. These brought about large-scale farming owned by some locals4 and foreign owners.

L. Amusan (B) Food Security and Safety Research Niche Area, North-West University, Mahikeng, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_23

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Environmentally, economically, and socio-culturally, large-scale farming continues to be agent of underdevelopment in Africa. Though, in many cases, it serves as a means of foreign exchange as experienced by many southern African states with particular focus on South Africa, Zimbabwe’s post-Mugabe, Zambia, and Mozambique. Despite the advantages as a source of foreign exchange, this comes at a cost because more emphasis is on cash crops as against consumable crops for the host communities and beyond in other African states coupled with mechanised farming.5 Environmentally, many MNCs and private companies that embark on large-scale animal husbandry (piggery and poultry) businesses are agents of inorganic food that are not contributing to the sustainable health status of Africans. Their activities also polluting the environment through methane that their animals release to the air with its implications on the health hazard of farmworkers and those that stay around such farms.6 Also of environmental challenge is the application of inorganic fertilizer, herbicides, insecticides for quantity crop production. This is against nature as documented by many scholars; the use of insecticides not only leads to the near extinction of bees, the most vital source of food security for humanity; as if every insect is our enemy in food production.7 Soil aeration through different types of worms and other insects is good for land fertilis ation organically with emphasis on land fallow system that the Western, Asian, and many other land grabbers considered as underutilisation of land and idle land in many African states. The use of insecticides is an agent of destabilisation of the global commons with more accent on biodiversity. Ecosystem and biodiversity in many African states have been challenged through destructive innovation in modern agriculture.8 Many insecticides and herbicides are not only inimical for insects that are contributing to soil enrichment, but many of them are also health hazards to final consumers as well as those who are applying the chemicals in farms. Cases of Roundup hazards are ongoing in America against Bayer (formally known as Monsanto) because many Americans that applied the chemicals on their farm as owners and labourers were infected with various types of cancers and lung infections. Issues that come up with these developments are multifarious and complex. The Marrakesh agreement of 1994 led to the institutionalisation of World Trade Organisation (WTO); some of the attributes of the new international regime is the concretisation of capitalism where forces of demand and supply determine who has access to land; a commodity that ought to be for rent but has turned to a commodity that could be bought. Though the issue of land grab is not new in Africa for farming, and mineral exploration and exploitation, before and during colonialism, colonialists took land away from Africans either forcefully or by dubious negotiation.9 In South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Mozambique, land were taking from initial owners and many of the disposed of landowners sometimes faced genocide, forceful eviction without compensation, or forceful relocation where they become “others” in the era of nationalism, tribalism, ethnicism, and xenophobia.10 This caused many indigenous peoples to lose their land to “foreigners” who claimed to be Africans

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based on the principles of utis possidentis, conquest through war, effective occupation, and principle of terra nullus.11 The Basarwas, the Khois, the Sans, the Maasais, the Ogieks, the Berbers (Amazigh), and Twa, to mention a few were dispossessed of their land at different times in the history of Africa. This is despite relevant instruments such as International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), and the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), among others.12 Broadly, this chapter aims is to examine the concepts of indigenous peoples in Africa from Africa context; how the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights accommodate indigenous peoples in the continent; and how to protect the indigenous peoples with relevant continental and domestic laws and regulations. This equally explains why the same people of the same culture, language, religion, and economic activities found themselves in different countries. For instance, Chikanda in Nigeria and Chicadou in Benin Republic share the same affinities and how these people are on a daily basis cross borders without an international passport to farm on their family land without molestation. Any attempt to release land from any side of the country for large-scale farmers Botswana and South Africa.13 Lovale tribe in North-Western Zambia and North-Eastern Angola are also of the same people, same religion, same culture, and the same economic activities, but the only difference is when it comes to the language of global communication, English and Portuguese, respectively. Very close to the issue of land grab at a geometrical level in Africa is the question of virtual water to the North with little impact on the socio-economic development of the continent. Not only that some states, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia have been farming with the use of irrigation through large-scale farming and the concretisation of a new Green Revolution through Washington Consensus has intensified exportation of African water to the rest of the continents with an emphasis on the Middle East, Europe, and Americas.14 The long-term effects of these are multifarious and complex. The complexity of it is that with the application of chemical fertilizers, rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans (the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean) are daily polluting with adverse effects on fishing and drinkable water.15 Table water that is less sustainable in many states is a question that students of food politics and development studies are grabbing with, to date.16 The mining sector is another area that is changing the dynamics of the global economy with reference to the African situation. There is no doubt that Africa is the last destination of mineral resource extraction with impunity. The laws that are guiding the extraction of minerals are developed from the West with a special focus on America, Britain, and France.17 There is no regard for environmental issues. MNCs that engage in the drilling of oil and gas, extracting platinum, diamond, coltan, and copper in Southern Africa without consideration of sedentary farmers who are producing organic food is a serious challenge that Africa is contending with. In many cases, they would be evicted without alternatives. Through the adoption of transformative theory, this

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chapter examines alternative routes that could be taken by Africa and Africans in ensuring sustainable development in the age of globalisation that cannot be reversed. A need for the modification of the rules is essential for the twentyfirst century to be for Africa as claimed severally both in the South and the North.

Transformative Theory The transformative theory is part of the social conflict theory that shares similar variables with liberal structural theory as represented by the works of Ross (1993) and Johan Galtung’s (1990) structural violence thesis.18 The area of departure of the theory is the belief that as long as resources are scarce, there tends to be competition for the same at individuals, groups, societies, cultures, institutions, and states for such resources.19 This may lead to conflict and sometimes war between those who are competing for the same, mostly if it is finite. The core of this theory is human and environmental reactions to change either positively or negatively. In his submission, Anthony Giddens (2009) believed that transformationalists are in-between the sceptics and the hyperglobalisers.20 Sceptics are of the view that the state is the only credible centre of power as against hyperglobalisers who are of the view that state’s roles in the conduct of international system are marginal; and that in the age of globalisation, activities of multinational corporations (MNCs) matter as against state-centric approach to the study economic development of a state, for this study, in the area of the food value chain. For the transformtionalists, they are in-between the two dominants schools. The theorists opine that globalisation is a reality and it is here to stay, but at the same time, some old patterns are here to remain. For instance, state as the central forces regarding the authoritative allocation of value continue to have a say in the activities of MNCs and other financial institutions that promote commerce and investment in any state.21 Despite the notion that the state continues to be the last resort of values allocation, it is sometimes influenced by external forces that are not within the control of state governments. For instance, the introduction of the structural adjustment programme (SAP) to the African states has many attributes that are alien to the continent but forced to abide by its conditions.22 In line with this theory, states continue to have almost a total grip on politics, culture, and personal life of its subjects. Like globalists, these theorists question international boundaries because the global system is being reduced to a global village; a dynamic system, but a continuous process, which may not be as fast as globalists see it and not as static as sceptics conceptualise its anti-globalisation position. It is a process that can be reversed. This is salient when one examines the 2007/2008 economic implosion at the global level when the architects of globalisation, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States of America (US) embarked on stimulus packages to revive the economy of Washington and London.23 A process that eventually, led to the resurgence of nationalism, neo-mercantilism, and autarky

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at best.24 Giddens validates this when he observed that transformative theory “is developing in a contradictory fashion, encompassing tendencies the that frequently operate in opposition to one another…(the theory sees globalisation) not a one-way process but a two-way flow of images, information, and influences”.25 The theory is in line with the normative perspective of studying social sciences. It addresses issues of transitional justice, social justice, and restorative justice. It is, like constructive theory, focuses on a need to adjust extant theories that fail to address the plights of the vulnerable such as the indigenous peoples, women, girls, youths, and disabled that need special attention for their development. This theory is against a newly crafted and institutionalised world of MNCs such as agribusiness and multinational pharmaceutical companies (MPCs).26 Another attribute of the theory is that it questions the tyranny of the minorities against the majority. This is in the form of a clique of elected corrupt politicians who subscribed to pressures from lobbyists that are all over states’ capitals working for the interest of MNCs and other groups to change laws of states in their favour. In many cases, their position is to the detriment of electorates socially, culturally, economically, and health-wise.27 From a geographical perspective, the theory is also critical of the impacts of the North against the South through the diplomacy of arm-twist, threat, and character assassinations or outright politico-economic instability of targeted states with an emphasis on “small and low-income countries”.28 Despite the usefulness of this theory in re-adjusting the global system, its attributes of critical/Marxist theory of dialectical materialism is a challenge. Since the introduction of glasnost and perestroika to the global system through the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), a final nail was administered to the coffin of socialism; but with some states that are practising it, albeit with a superfluity of challenges in the era of WTO.29 The transformative theory is more sympathetic towards constructivists’ views and violates post-positivists position. It also fails to accommodate unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity arrangements of the post-Marrakesh international system. Despite all these challenges, this chapter is going to employ the theory to examine the problem under consideration. The next section in this chapter will examine the trans-Atlantic capitalism and its impacts on Africa’s agriculture and food sovereignty.

Laissez-Faireism and Its Impacts on Africa Agriculture from the Beginning The first contact with the Europeans generated the economic disarticulation in the African continent.30 Explorers and merchants that came to the shores of Africa empires and kingdoms only came for spices; the industrial revolution and the need for industrial inputs and to sell the excess that could not find a market in Europe brought about selling and exchange of goods with human beings in the form of slave trading.31 The uprooting of the able men and

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women (between 15 and 50 years of age) that were productive implied that a lacuna had been created in the form of homegrown technological development because those that could see to the development of their environment were shipped to the New World and plantations in Europe, for raw materials production.32 Further development in technology through the British Industrial Revolution translated into a to lord–servant relationship as it is the practice in the global unequal exchange. The need for the lords of the feudal system in the new liberal order called for liberal politics for them to be relevant in the new system dominated by the middle class. This concretised liberal political and economic system. Private ownership of factors of production where land was for rent, capital for profit, and labour for wages was enforced. This commenced the commodification of human power against the contemporary “world without mind” due to the “threat of big tech”,33 which started from the time of under-borrowing theory imposed on fossil fuel-producing states in the developing areas with an emphasis on Africa.34 The IMF conditions imposed on Africa through a reorganisation of Americo-European world perspective in the form of liberal order brought about a movement away from import substitution and de-emphasis on food production in Africa. Before this time, Africa was forced to produce what its citizens did not consume and consume what they hardly produced. This was in the form of forcing the agrarian societies to produce for industrial states of Europe through carrot and stick diplomacy.35 This explains why West Africa specialised in Cocoa, Coffee, Cotton, Groundnut, and Rubber plantation while East Africa was forced to embark on cash crops such as Sisal, Coffee, and Tea to the detriment of food crops. This eventually, as this chapter is to fully discuss, led to the importation of acclaimed fortified, but low nutrients food with questionable health hazards to the advantage of multinational pharmaceutical companies (MPCs).36 In actualising colonial ambitions in Africa, the land was expropriated to the government in a guise of national interest and the need to develop the colonies through “civilising mission”. This brought about the issue of land ownership question in many African states after the political independence of many states in the continent. In line with an edited book by Derman et al. (2007), land and water access by Africans for the production of food continue to generate crisis because of land and water grabs that are ongoing without any solution in sight.37 Such development breeds xenophobic attitudes in many parts of the continent due to privatisation of factors of production, to the detriment of the Africans because of forceful eviction of people to other communities where they will be addressed as “others”; a phenomenon that, according to Robert Sapolsky, generates “the biology of us and them”.38 It is also causing conflicts between herders and sedentary farmers in the Sahelian region of Africa. Lack of clear-cut distinction between tribal, government, clan, families, and secondary ownership of land continues to generate clashes in many states. While the government is said to be the last resort in adjudicating on the land issue, at the local level and primarily in the rural areas, clan and family’s authorities are

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still in operation, which sometimes overrides by government misty policies on land ownership. The issue of secondary ownership is another area of differences. In Ivory Coast for instance, land ownership and political power constituted instability that led to more than 3,000 dead when the nationality of Alassane Quatarra was contested.39 While the government in power led by Laurent Gbagbo claimed that Alassane Ouattara was a foreigner in Abidjan despite his position as former foreign affairs minister in the country. His original home was claimed to be Burkina Faso. The implication of conflicts that arise out of land ownership on food security is not only the inability for farmers to farm at the time, but also germane was the contest between us and them. Those who were considered to be others perceived to have originated from Mali and Burkina Faso even though these people have been in the country prior to colonial time, and occupied positions in government in various capacities. Based on relevant law about land ownership, venturing into cash crop farming without any challenge about the use of land translate to ownership of cash crop farmers; those who are not allowed to embark on cash crop farming as the case in many West African states only produce as tenants (servant) without their full capacity for food production.40 Movement of the people during the colonial time was easy as contract labourers from different parts of the continent. These contract workers would end up having a new place called home and settled permanently. After colonial rule, many could not go back to their ancestral home and their children and grandchildren saw the new place as their home as a result of social cohesion that took place over time. Ironically, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren suddenly found out that they did not belong to their so-called home and country. Hence tension about land ownership was ensured in many parts of Africa such as the incessant clashes between Fulani herdsmen and the people of Plateau State in Nigeria. Liberalism and neoliberalism are twin sisters of the same attributes in many cases. Their line of departure is to create access for the West to move to any part of the world for the production of goods and services without the basic ingredients of sovereignty as push forward by many students of international relations, though highly contested.41 This was first introduced through the 1970s Green Revolution programmes when hybrid seeds and animals were introduced to Africa. Initially, this could not achieve the Western world objectives as against its success in Asia and Latin America. The reason behind this was that the continent was ill-prepared for it. It was when the African governments were forced to take ownership of land through Land Acts and Land Degrees, based on the type of government in place, that privatisation of land was made easy for foreign direct investment (FDI) Before FDI in food production, many African states such as Liberia, Tanzania, Ghana, and Guinea Bissau were in alliance with China to improve food and cash crops, unfortunately, these turned out to an elephant project.42 This chapter describes FDI as controversial because many of these entities came to Africa who later approaches their embassies and consulate offices to

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link them with local banks to secure loans for the establishment of their businesses. Secured loans are for the importation of technology for production with an emphasis on large-scale farming that hardly benefits the host states as discussed below. Economically, large-scale farming is a source of foreign exchange as alluded above, the question that agitates students of political economy, development studies, sociology, and environmental politics is the issue of the long-term effects of large-scale farming on the host communities and final consumers. Many people were disposed of their land through dubious means with the help of traditional rulers, government officials, and enabling environment through the military Decrees and Parliamentary Acts, which encourage largescale farming. This led to the eviction of peasant farmers who are known as sources of organic food with or without compensation. It should be known that compensation given to many of these farmers is not enough to cater to their immediate family and to embark on any sustainable economic self-empowerment.43 While millions of hectares of land in Ghana, Sudan, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Mali have been allocated to foreigners, the brunt of this is at the doorsteps of “the wretched of the earth” who have been farming the land for ages, but evicted from their ancestral land without prior informed consent (PIC) as recognised by relevant international law.44 Some would be evicted, in many cases, with the use of armed forces.45 In line with the Land Matrix Initiative, about 8302 million hectares of land have been cornered in developing areas while Africa shares were 56.2 million hectares as of 2010.46 Many people with an emphasis on the indigenous peoples are the most affected ones in the continent. Because of their inability to claim their rights on the issue of land, their commonwealths have been cornered started from the colonial era when many of their fertile lands have been turned to games reserve, reserve for timber, mining, and many more in a guise of forest conservation in the form of a national park.47 This brought about the dispossession of land in Korup National Park in Cameroon; other states in central Africa that experienced the same are Equatorial Guinea (EG), Central African Republic (CAR), Congo (Brazzaville), and Gabon.48 The captured rain forest area that has been the source of livelihood for the indigenous peoples such as the pigmies in the central part of Africa as shown in Table 23.1. From Tables 23.1, 23.2 one may deduce that hungry for land in Africa is no doubt a done deal in a continent of lawlessness, land grabbers are of the view that the last destination to acquire land without following due process is only in Africa. Asia–Pacific that ought to be the first place of destination is facing a plethora of challenges such as lack of available fertile land that the West and other states could venture into. In Latin America, America has already made the continent a sphere of its influence from the eighteenth century as captured in an edited book by.49 In a guise of World Bank’s “Agriculture for Development”, SAP that was introduced to Africa supported globalisation of food production and an expectation that the continent ought to follow WW Rostow’s incremental approach to development.50 Hook, line, and

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Table 23.1 Indigenous Forest Turned to Games Reserve in Selected Countries in Central Africa

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Name of National Park

Country

Total Area km2

Korup National Park Lake Lobeke Dzanga-Ndoki Nsoc Gamba Protected Area Complex Ipassa-Minggoulli Biosphere Reserve Noubale Ndoki Odzala

Cameroon Cameroon CAR EG Gabon

1259 4000 1220 5150 7000

Gabon

100

Republic of Cong Republic of Congo

3865 5090

Sources Author’s compilation and Schmidt-Soltau (2003)

Table 23.2 Hungry for land: Global distribution of agricultural land

Asia–Pacific China India Africa L.America & Caribbean N.America Europe Total

Agric. land No. of (1000s ha) farms (1000s)

No. of small farms (1000s)

Small farms as % of all farms

Agric land in the hands of small farmers (1000s ha)

% of agric land in the hands of small farmers

Average size of small farms (ha)

1,990,228 521,775 179,759 1,242,624 894,314

447,614 200,555 138,348 94,591 22,333

420,348 200,160 127,605 84,757 17,894

93.9% 99.8% 92.2% 89.6% 80.1%

689,737 370,000 71,152 182,766 172,686

34.7% 70.9% 39.6% 14.7% 19.3%

1.6 1.8 0.6 2.2 9.7

478,436 474,552 5,080,154

2,410 42,013 608,962

1,850 37,182 562,031

76.8% 88.5% 92.3%

125,102 82,337 1,252,628

26.1% 17.4% 24.7%

67.6 2.2 2.2

Note that the same Table 23.2 was adapted in my Inaugural lecture delivered at the North West University, South Africa on 15 November 2019 Sources FAOSTAT (http://faostat3.fao.org/faostat-gateway/go/to/home?E. Accessed 23 September 2019)

sinker modernization perspective without considering environmental factors as pushed forward by social constructivists theory of development and prosperity is an agent of the western idea of food security and hidden hunger that pervades Africa. In this guide, it was believed that with food security and ensuring higher agricultural outputs and sustained growth, the following should be religiously followed as pushed forward by the World Bank (2017), which is equally echoed by Ray Maconachie:

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facilitating agricultural markets and trade; improving agricultural productivity; investing in public infrastructure for agricultural growth; reducing rural vulnerability and insecurity; and improving agricultural policy and institutions.51

Socio-culturally, the captured expanse of land that turned to national parks not only aggravate poverty in many African states, it is also a source of neutralising African herbs known to have been effective in combating series of diseases on the continent. As documented by Imevbore many plant species are known for ages for treatment of malaria, sexually transmitted diseases, skin infections, abdominal pains, diabetes, dysentery, various forms of cancers, snakes and scorpion stings, and many more.52 Due to the introduction of parks through eviction and resettlement of people into a “new world” is not only a violation of their rights to their buried loved ones, but it is also moving them away from their ancestors as their beliefs in consultation with the dead families in line with the rights of the indigenous peoples are on daily basis violated. This is well captured by a project sponsored by the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights, International Labour Organization (ILO), and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The project narrates how indigenous economic means for survival are daily trampled on, by implications; also affect their cultural identity, spiritual, and social well-being.53 Practising mix-cropping is known in Africa before colonialism was imposed on them. With the introduction of large-scale farming, monocropping and the use of chemicals for quantity production is not only a source of cultural loss, but it is also a means of starvation in case if there is a failure of a particular crop due to climate change and lack of weather predictability by the government who, at theoretical level ought to focus on the security of the state and leave the production of goods and services to the private businesses based on the forces of demand and supply. In some cases, many farmers are practising both farming and animal husbandry as it is common in the Sahelian and Savannah areas of the continent. This is to ensure food sovereignty with less dependency on humanitarian food aid that is always accompanied with a string attached, a weapon that is common among developed states to aggravate the underdevelopment of food sustainability in Africa. Land grabbing that turns landlords to tenants in the belief that economics of scale will release “overpopulation” in the agricultural sector to others such as industrialisation is not only a myth because of relevant training for diversity and easy switch, but an attempt to immortalise poverty amid plenty. The introduction of “terminator seeds”54 claimed to be fortified in a composition that will give consumers the necessary nutrients needed for healthy life continue to generate academic discussion.55 Research shows that many GM seeds introduced are not only sources of diseases unknown in the continent before the imposed monocropping agricultural system, it is also a means to promote MPCs interests as hidden hunger continues unabated in

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the continent.56 Exportation of farm outputs, both cash and food crops, for foreign consumption is ongoing, as inputs for industrial use such as animal feeds raw materials and as a means of an alternative to fossil fuels perpetuate virtual water.57 Virtual water and irrigation systems of large-scale farming before appreciable harvest add pressure on the impact of climate change on the environment and the availability of water for local and organic food for Africans. For Africa to address the myriads of large-scale farming there is a need to embark on a transformative approach to the problem of organic food available for the people in the continent. Not too far from this is the need to ensure that the basic tenets of relevant international law and conventions put in place to protect the indigenous peoples, women, and other vulnerable, when it comes to the issue of food security, are put in place. This is going to receive attention in the next section where the agroecological approach to food sovereignty will dominate the section’s discussion.

Agroecological Approach to Food Sovereignty and Women’s Roles Food security is a means of access to adequate food quantitatively and qualitatively at the global, national, local, and household levels in a sustainable manner; taking into account issues of availability, affordability, accessibility, stability, and utilisation. This may come in different forms such as local production, importation from other countries, or through humanitarian supply. This analysis excludes locally produced food that is subjected to exportation to other states. On the other hand, food sovereignty, for this chapter is defined as availability, affordability, accessibility, and stability of qualitative/utilisation and quantitative food in a state and at household levels that are produced within a state without a need to rely on importation and humanitarian assistance. This definition also accommodates organic food that is nutritious for the body development of consumers. In trying to address issues of food sovereignty, which is going to be the focus of this section, there is a need to extend the issue to quality food in the form of having “access to sufficient dietary energy, nutritionally diverse diets, clean drinking water, sanitation, and (sustainable) health care”.58 Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthful food in line with cultural appropriateness and ecologically sustainability maintained at all the time.59 As discussed below, the definitions of food security and food sovereignty can only be achieved provided an agroecological approach to food production, distribution, and consumption are put in place. Distribution of food that is are sustainable and nutritious can only be achieved if the transportation of food to the final consumers is within a very short distance to avoid pollution of fresh or cooked food due to the negative impacts of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and over refrigeration of perishable foods. Regenerative farming is being documented as one of the means of keeping soil fertile and ensuring a balanced ecosystem. The application of chemicals to improve soil fertility as discussed above has lots of challenges to the soil,

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plants, and labourers who are working on the farm. This has been looked into by various students of food security.60 As against the misleading concept of food security been introduced to Africa hook, line, and sinker, there is a need for Africa to embark on self-sufficiency in food production that will be enough for the continent and export the excess to the rest of the world. There is a say that the next destination for food production in the world is Africa because of the arable land with easy access for grabbing. The theory employed in this chapter deals with a need to embark on an alternative to the perceived globalised theory of neoliberalism, which only sees everything from the West as the authentic and sustainable means of development. Following WW Rostow’s incremental approach to development, there is a need to transform the existing theory to accommodate the latecomers in the international system. In doing this, African feminism, social constructivism, and some flavour of critical theory are adopted as analytical tools. To ensure food sovereignty, there is a need for women empowerment in farming. In Africa, since the introduction of cash crop farming, men would travel out of their ancestral home to look for fertile land for cash production either as the owner of a plantation or serve as labourers in cocoa, cotton, sisal, coffee, tea, and palm oil plantations, among others because of the economics of disarticulation imposed on the continent.61 Women are always into food cropping and they are known as the custodian of culture and heritage in the form of seeds preservation for the next planting season. They are also good at sharing their experiences during planting season in their villages, unlike men. Sharing and preservation of seeds is a confirmation of transformative models in farming as they are into anti-extinction of wild vegetables and other plants that could have been wiped out of their communities due to large-scale farming that focuses, in most cases on monocropping as discussed above. Their approach to farming is to among others, ensures biodiversity and keeping insects that are friendly to food products such as bees and different types of worms for soil aeration. Due to women’s attachment to their environment, they are good at the identification of allocation of infrastructural amenities such as boreholes and health centres, because they are the ones that are in charge of holding the forte when their husbands are away for cities for paid employed job. On many occasions, when women are engaged in their husbands work, they also have a small farm in their backyard in the form of urban farming. This brings about a need to improve on this through vertical farming in the cities, which is a source of income for some of them. Vertical and rooftop farming are other types of urban farming where organic food can be produced for the family as against committing scarce resources on inorganic food that of health crises as discussed above.62 Women are good at vertical and garden farming where they plant preserved organic seeds for their family consumption and sell or share excess in their communities. Though, vertical and rooftop farming are not pronounced in many regions of Africa except for Southern Africa. There is a need to encourage this to improve urban food sovereignty. With simple demand and supply theory, if the production of

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vegetables in urban areas is promoted, the excess produced will be a source of foreign exchange since many states prefer organic vegetables in Europe against the American chemically produced fruits and vegetables for export. Mixed farming is common in Africa. However, government should create an enabling environment to encourage backyard farming where animals and fish farming will be practised encouraging the local supply of protein for children’s development.63 This will replace the imposed hormones and anti-biotic feeding chicken from the West. When America realised that developing states through BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) were actualising south–south cooperation dream, through AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) meant for the development of Africa was equally used to force importation of GM chicken on South Africa for instance.64 A petition by an NGO, Compassion in World Farming, in July 2020 petition the UK government on the rationale behind a need to import meat from the USA where the welfare of animals is secondary to the profit motive of farmers as if animals are not sentient. Feeding animals with antibiotics and hormonetreated beef are the sources of drug-resistant bacteria, which is common among foreign farms in Africa. This is to achieve economies of scale through feedlots; this is unlike organic chicken and beef on free-range that cannot compete with inorganic’s in the market as the latter is cheaper than the former.65 Another way of preserving the flora and fauna of the continent is through mixed-cropping; it is also known as polyculture or co-cultivation where plants are interdigitated. The advantages of this system of farming have been tested severally as environmental benefits against the large-scale monocropping that is not sustainable. Farmers will be able to harvest series of crops in one place to feed the family and make the rest available for the communities around and sell to the urban areas where there is much needed to have food as medicine as against medicine as food. At the same time, it is a means of maximising plots of land under cultivation; since different plants are due for harvesting at different times, this is a way to maximise farmland and ensure financial resources availability for farmers always against monocropping. Also of import is the polyculture approach to farming where leguminous crops are plated with other crops such as maize, sorghums, and millet. In this wise, aeration from leguminous crops such as groundnuts and sweet potatoes are veritable means of maintaining fertile soil in the age of climate change and its adaptation strategy.66 Weeding is another problem that farmers are facing and this is the reason why those who call for large-scale farming with the application of herbicides such as Roundup usually argue that weeding is one of the challenges in farming; with the adoption of co-cultivation, suppression of weeds, pests, and likely diseases that may consume farmers harvest will be under control. Very close to this system is when a farmer keeps animals and plants at the same time. Manure from animals is the source of organic fertilizer for plants. This type of integrated farming is common among women and smallholders farmers in rural areas. It is also a common practice in Southern Africa where after crops

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are harvested, farmers will release their animals to graze in the field; through these natural processes, the land will be fertile for another planting season. Women are known to be active in aquaculture/aquafarming. In the littoral states of West, Sothern, and East Africa, women engage actively in value chain fishing business. Though in some cases and because of the crises of illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing by multinational trawlers, with emphases on China, Japan, and European Union states, aquaculture has run into a problem because continental shelves that should be preserved for artisanal are also illegally fishing on by foreign trawlers with the cooperation of government officials.67 In southern Africa, artisanal is always facing the wrath of government with a special focus on South Africa. The government prefers to support international trawlers who pay to the government coffers as against economic development of small-scale coloured and black artisanal whose livelihood is being mortgaged to pave ways for Africa’s resources pillage. Through broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE), there should be easy access to fishing licence for the blacks to redress the lopsided apartheid economy of the exclusion system.68 This has not come into effect because of the structure of the economic system put in place to the disadvantage of the blacks despite the majority government put in place after 1994 under the African National Congress (ANC). To encourage agroecological farming in the form of regenerative farming, there is a need to address the issue of land ownership. In West Africa, there is an understanding that those who engage in farming from other communities or countries are always focused on annual and bi-annual crops farming. This is in line with the relevant ownership of land in the African traditional system. The tenants are not allowed to embark on cash crops farming as this may translate to ownership of land due to the perennial cropping system.69 MNCs should come to the aid of African farmers in the form of corporate social responsibilities (CSRs). For instance, the introduction of women empowerment in food production since they are the custodian of food baskets in rural areas as alluded to above. They are also a veritable source of the green economy through organic farming due to their relatively low access to relevant inputs in embarking on medium and large-scale farming. Religion, custom, and lack of collateral security to access loans from private banks need total overhauling by the government through the empowerment of fundamental human rights irrespective of gender, creed, ethnic, and religious affiliations.70 As the Bank prescribed, the government should provide an enabling environment through social amenities such as an unperturbed supply of electricity to refrigerate perishable crops, and the graded road to transport farm outputs to urban centres. Irrigation is very important in the age of climate change for farmers to optimise their capacity in production and to ensure ready market to absolve farm products through cooperative societies and marketing boards. Agricultural extension officers should be adequately informed about the latest information regarding planting season, what to plant in particular soil texture, and the right time to harvest. To achieve these, the abandoned irrigation

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system that was in place during the colonial and post-colonial Africa needs urgent attention. River Basin Authorities such as the Niger River, Chad Basin, and Mano River need a rejuvenation. There is a need in southern Africa to come up with equal exchange in the management of the Limpopo, Zambezi, and Vaal rivers for small-scale farmers to have access to an unperturbed supply of water to irrigate plants. In the Eastern and Northern regions of the continent, the Nile River needs to be accessible for farmers from Ethiopia and Egypt for sustainable agriculture and hydroelectricity generation. The multiplier effects of these are invaluable for the general development of food security on the continent. With these and having the plights of women in mind, there is going to be food sovereignty in Africa where excess will be export to Asia, Europe, and the Americas. This can be achieved provided the above-discussed transformative theory is religiously followed.

Conclusion and Recommendations The transformative theory calls for equity and justice in the allocation of resources. This is pertinent when one observes the roles it plays in transitional justice, social justice, and restorative justice. It is a theory that focuses more on the plights of the vulnerable in any society. It captures the plights of women and rural dwellers who are always disposed of their heritage because of globalisation. The theory is in line with the assumptions of social constructivism and has variables in common with critical theory. Therefore, this is the reason why the issue of organic farming is appropriately discussed against the unequal exchange of chemical farming of a large-scale approach to food security. This chapter is not against large-scale farming, but it has to be in line with agroecological farming for sustainable development. Globalisation is here to stay, but there is a need to introduce human face into it. The need for this is to take care of the plights of Africans in a sustainable manner. The present global arrangement is to the advantage of a few from the North; food sovereignty as against food security ought to be the focus of various international organisations and governments in Africa. To achieve food sovereignty, there is a need to encourage agricultural science from primary school to high school. This will facilitate the interest of children from their formative years on a need to move closer to their source and produce what they eat as against over-reliance on unsustainable and insatiable GMO food. Women as discussed above are more into food production that needs to be considered by every government as the source of quality food producers. On the question of indigenous peoples, there is a need for the government to observe relevant international laws that protect their identities and means of food production. In an event where the government has to use parts of their land, there is a need to follow basic procedures such as PIC and access sharing benefit (ASB), among others as recognised by Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Indigenous Biological Resources (IBR), if these are encouraged by the government, there will be development in the

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continent holistically without compromising globalisation of food production, but through transformative perspective.

Notes 1. At the United Nations General Assembly, unlike in the UN Security council, every sovereign state has only one vote irrespective of economic and geographical size. 2. Lorenzo Cotula, The Great African Land Grab?: Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System (London and New York: Zed Books, 2013); Pearce Fred, The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012). 3. Lere Amusan, Luqman Saka, and Adedoyin J. Omede, “Sovereign Wealth Fund and Fiscal Federalism in Nigeria (2011–14): An Assessment of Contending Issues,” Regional & Federal Studies 27, no. 4 (2017): 441–63. 4. Retired and serving civil servant, army generals, and politicians have moved into farming, not because of the profit or a love for it, but as a means to embark on disguise employment so that they will remain with their ill-gotten wealth from the government. Many of them can be described, at best, as telephonic farmers who scantily visit their farms. For more explanation on this, see Lere Amusan, “Politics of Contiguity in International Relations: South Africa–Zimbabwe in Perspective,” Nigerian Journal of International Affairs 34, no. 2 (2008): 119– 46. 5. For this chapter, cash crops are not limited to crops such as cocoa, timber, coffee, tea, cotton, kola nut, and sisal for example, it also includes some crops such as maize, soya beans, and groundnuts. This is because private businesses that are in a large production of the perceived food crops export the same for industrial inputs and alternatives to fossil fuel. For more information on this, Paarlberg (2013). 6. Lere Amusan, Feeding the People, Uplifting the Continent: Nigeria and South Africa in the Struggle for Food Security in Africa (South Africa: North West University (Mafikeng Campus), 2019); Ray A. Goldberg, Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Julie Guthman, Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism (California: University of California Press, 2011); Philip Lymbery and Isabel Oakeshott, Farmargeddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014); Robert Paarlberg, Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Water’s Manifesto (New York: Penguin Books, 2008). 7. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 2002); Mark Hassenkamp, “Get Ready to Profit from Plant- and Insect-Based Protein,” Farmer’s Weekly 15, no. November (2019): 30–31. 8. A.M.A. Imevbore, “Alleviating Poverty Through Biodiversity Prospecting,” in Poverty Alleviation from Biodiversity Management, ed. Matt F.A. Ivbijaro (Ibadan: Book Builders, 2012), 11–49. 9. Henning Melber and Roger Southhall, “A New Scramble for Africa?,” in A New Scramble for Africa?: Imperialism, Investment and Development, ed. Roger Southhall and Henning Melber (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2009), xix–xxvii.

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10. Yael Tamir, “Building a Better Nationalism: The Nation’s Place in a Globalized World,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 2 (2019): 48–53. 11. Lere Amusan, “Boundary Demarcation and Delimitation in Africa: Sources of Economic Underdevelopment, Political Instability and Migration Challenges,” Transylvanian Review XXVI, no. 24 (2018): 6519–27. Terra nullus This is common to the pastoralists who moved around for water and green grass for their cattle in East Africa, West Africa, and Central Africa. 12. Patricia Kameri-Mbote and Elvin Nyukuri, “Climate Change, Law and Indigenous Peoples’ in Kenya: Ogiek and Maasai Narratives,” in Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies, ed. Randall Abate and Elizabeth A.K. Warner (Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2013), 535–60; George M. Wachira, “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Land and Natural Resources,” in Perspectives on the Rights of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Africa, ed. Solomon Dersso (Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press, 2010), 297–347; George M. Wachira and Tuuli Karjala, “The Struggle for Protection of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Africa,” in Handbook of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, ed. Corinne Lennox and Damien Short (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 394–413. 13. Bernard K. Mbenga, “One Ethnic Community Straddling an International Border: Tshidilamolomo Villagers in South Africa and Botswana” (Border Regions in Sub-Saharan Africa, Joensuu, Finland: University of Eastern Finland, 2017). 14. Lere Amusan, Thulisile Mphambukeli, and Victor O. Okorie, “Blue Economy, Brics and the Challenges of Food Security in the Western Indian Ocean,” Journal of Reviews on Global Economics 8 (2019): 1567–75. 15. Lymbery and Oakeshott, Farmargeddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat. 16. Paarlberg, Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know. 17. Tom Burgis, The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systemic Theft of Africa’s Wealth (London: William Collins, 2015); George J. Frynas, “The Oil Boom in Equatorial Guinea,” African Affairs 103, no. 413 (2004): 527–46. 18. Marc Ross, The Management of Conflict: I nterpretations and Interests in Comparative Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Johan Galtung, “Cultural Violence,” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 291–305. 19. Stephen A. Faleti, “Theories of Social Conflicts,” in Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies in West Africa, ed. Shedrack Gaya Best (Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 2006), 35–60; Petra Kuenkel, Stewarding Sustainability Transformations: An Emerging Theory and Practice of SDG Implementation (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019). 20. Anthony Giddens, Sociology (London: Polity Press, 2009). 21. Lere Amusan, “Multinational Corporations’ (MNCs) Engagement in Africa: Messiahs or Hypocrites?,” Journal of African Foreign Affairs 5, no. 1 (2018): 41–62. 22. SAP was imposed on almost every African state in the mid-1980s with conditions such as privatisation, commercialisation, upholding of human rights, multi-party democratic system, and forces of demand and supply to determine the exchange rate of a currency. For more understanding of this, see Lere Amusan and Samuel Oyewole, “Global Democratisation and Capitalism:

506

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24. 25. 26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

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Discovering the Third World States in the Era of Limited State and Unlimited Quest,” Canadian Social Science 8, no. 5 (2012): 57–64; Eric Toussaint, The World Bank: A Critical Primer (London: Pluto Press, 2008). Lere Amusan, “Social Sciences as Imperialism: Analysis of the Global Economic Crisis of 2008 and Development Gaps in the Third World States,” Journal of Administrative Sciences 14, no. 27 (2016): 13–31. Tamir, “Building a Better Nationalism: The Nation’s Place in a Globalized World.”. Giddens, Sociology, 139. Lere Amusan, “Imposed Socially Responsible Pricing on AIDS/HIV in Developing Areas: South Africa and Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies,” Indian Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2015): 67–79; David C Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (Oakland, CA: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015); Philip H. Howard, Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). Corteva, Bayer, and DowDuPont are examples of agribusinesses MNCs that always employ the services of lobbyists and plethora of foundations such as Belinda and Bill Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation to champion their profit motives through developing states’ executive and legislature to accommodate their products. For more information on this, see Michael Moran, Private Foundations and Development Partnerships: American Philanthropy and Global Development Agendas (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). Soobramanien Teddy, “Economic Diplomacy of Small and Low Income Countries,” in The New Economic Diplomacy: Decision-Making and Negotiation in International Economic Relations, ed. Nicholas Bayne and Stephen Woolcock (Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011), 187–204. Vishwas Satgar and Langa Zita, eds., New Frontiers for Socialism in the 21st Century: Conversation on a Global Journey (Johannesburg: Co-operative and Policy Alternative Center (COPAC), 2009). Claude Ake, A Political Economy of Africa (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 1982); Bade Onimode, Africa in the World of the 21st Century (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 2000). Rodney Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Oxford: Pambazuka, 2012). Walter. Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech (New York: Penguin Books, 2017). Despite that states such as Nigeria was financially buoyant in the 1970s due to the positive aspect of Yom Kippur war and the increase in the price of crude oil, which made Nigeria embark on spree diplomacy, the West with emphasis on the IMF, the Bank, and USA confused and convinced the state to borrow money from international financial institutions. For more information on this, see Onimode, Africa in the World of the 21st Century; Bade Onimode, ed., African Development and Governance Strategies in the 21st Century: Looking Back to Move Forward (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004); Damien Millet and Eric Toussaint, Who Owes Who? (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004). Lere Amusan, “Africa in the Global Trading System,” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Politics, Governance and Development, ed. Samuel O.

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Oloruntoba and Toyin Falola (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 695– 708. Bailey F. Norwood and Tamara L. Mix, Meet the Food Radicals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Bill Derman, Rie Odgaard, and Espen Sjaastad, eds., Conflicts Over Land & Water in Africa: Cameroon, Ghana, Burkina Faso, West Africa, Sudan, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania (Oxford: James Currey, 2007); Padraig Carmody, The New Scramble for Africa (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016); Julia Ismar, “How to Govern the Global Rush for Land and Water?,” in Handbook of Land and Water Grabs in Africa: Foreign Direct Investment and Food and Water Security, ed. Tony Allan et al. (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 712–44; Pearce, The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth. See Table 23.2 for more information regarding land grab at the global level, which Africa is the hardest hit. Robert Sapolsky, “This Is Your Brain on Nationalism: The Biology of Us and Them,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 2 (2019): 42–47. Beth E. Whitaker and Koffi P. Charles-Hector Yao-Kouame, “This Is What You Need to Know About Xenophobia and This Sunday’s Elections in Côte d’Ivoire,” The Washington Post, October 20, 2015, https://www.washingto npost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/10/19/this-is-what-you-need-toknow-about-xenophobia-and-this-sundays-elections-in-cote-divoire/. David Balgley, “Assembling Land Access and Legibility: The Case of Morocco’s Gharb Region,” in The Politics of Land, ed. Tim Bartley (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 2019), 123–48; Camilla Toulmin, “Negotiating Access to Land in West Africa: Who Is Losing Out?,” in Conflicts Over Land & Water in Africa, ed. Bill Derman, Rie Odgaard, and Espen Sjaastad (Oxford: James Currey, 2007), 95–115. Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Soroos Marvin S., Beyond Sovereignty: The Challenge of Global Policy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1986). Fredrick Gaye, “China-Liberia Agricultural Technology Center in Central Liberia: Prospect, Opportunities and Challenges,” 2018, https://africachi nareporting.co.za/2018/07/china-liberia-agricultural-technology-center-incentral-liberia-prospects-opportunities-and-challenges/; Michael F. Lofchie, “Agrarian Socialism in the Third World: The Tanzanian Case,” Comparative Politics (1976): 479–99. Luqman Saka, “BRICS, Land Grabbing and the Crisis of Food Security in SubSaharan Africa: An Assessment,” African Renaissance, no. Special Issue (2019): 33–49. Geertrui Van Overwalle, “Protecting and Sharing Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge: Holder and User Tools,” Ecological Economics 53 (2005): 585– 707. Cotula, The Great African Land Grab?: Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System. Saka, “BRICS, Land Grabbing and the Crisis of Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Assessment.” Burgis, The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systemic Theft of Africa’s Wealth.

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48. Kai Schmidt-Soltau, “Conservation-Related Resettlement in Central Africa: Environmental and Social Risks,” Development and Change 34, no. 3 (2003): 525–51. 49. Gerardo Otero, Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2008). 50. World Bank, World Development Report, 2008: Agriculture for Development (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007). 51. World Bank, “Agriculture in Africa: Telling Myths from Facts,” 2017, https:// www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-myths-and-facts.; Ray Maconanchie, “Agriculture,” in The Routledge Handbook of African Development, ed. Tony Binns, Kenneth Lynch, and Etienne Nel (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 511. 52. Imevbore, “Alleviating Poverty through Biodiversity Prospecting,” 31–34. 53. University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights„ International labour Organization, and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Overview Report on the Project by the International Labour Organization and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights on the Constitutional and Legislative Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 24 African Countries (International Labour Organization and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 2009), viii. 54. Terminator seeds are the seeds that MNCs such as Bayer and Corteva introduced to farmers seasonally for planting that cannot be saved for another planting season, unlike organic seeds that farmers with special focus on women share among themselves. Preservation of such seeds may not germinate or fail to produce the same quantity during harvest. For more information on this, see Amusan, Feeding the People, Uplifting the Continent: Nigeria and South Africa in the Struggle for Food Security in Africa; Goldberg, Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust; Lymbery and Oakeshott, Farmargeddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat; Gerardo Otero, The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2018). 55. Guthman, Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism. 56. Nigel Crisp, Turning the World Upside Down: The Search for Global Health in the Twenty-First Century (London: Royal Society of Medicine, 2010); Aya Hirata Kimura, Hidden Hunger: Gender and the Politics of Smarter Foods (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013); Otero, The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People. 57. Victor Ogbonnaya Okori, Lere Amusan, and Thulisile Numisile Maphambukeli, “Exploring the Political Economy of Water and Food Security Nexus in BRICS,” Africa Insight 48, no. 4 (2019): 21–38. 58. Global Report on Food Crises, “2020 Global Report on Food Crises In Brief,” 2020, https://www.fsinplatform.org/sites/default/files/resources/ files/GRFC_2020_KM_200420.pdf. 59. Otero, The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People. 60. Cotula, The Great African Land Grab?: Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System; Lymbery and Oakeshott, Farmargeddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat; Otero, The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People; Paarlberg, Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know; Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Water’s Manifesto.

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61. Ake, A Political Economy of Africa; Philip McMichael, Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Thousand Oaks (USA): Sage, 2017); Onimode, Africa in the World of the 21st Century. 62. Hamlet Hlomendlini, “Do Small-Scale Farmers Need a Different Financing Model?,” Farmer’s Weekly 15, no. November (2019): 30–31. 63. Okori, Amusan, and Maphambukeli, “Exploring the Political Economy of Water and Food Security Nexus in BRICS.” 64. Amusan, “Feeding the People, Uplifting the Continent: Nigeria and South Africa in the Struggle for Food Security in Africa. 65. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwJWjBjcbXhlsLdDVZX TJbHzrhP, accessed 9 July 2020. 66. Danielle Smyth, “The Advantages & Disadvantages of Mixed Farming,” November 21, 2018, https://bizfluent.com/list-6876302-examples-hazard ous-agricultural-waste.html. 67. Amusan, Mphambukeli, and Okorie, “Blue Economy, Brics and the Challenges of Food Security in the Western Indian Ocean.” 68. Charles Mather, “Sustainability and Fisheires Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Geography 92, no. 3 (2007): 221–30. 69. Toulmin, “Negotiating Access to Land in West Africa: Who Is Losing Out?” 70. Lere Amusan and Oluwole Olutola, “Contextualising African Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture: Challenges from Climate Change and Mineral Extraction Perspectives,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 18, no. 4 (2017): 117–30.

References Ake, Claude. A Political Economy of Africa. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 1982. Amusan, Lere. “Africa in the Global Trading System.” In The Palgrave Handbook of African Politics, Governance and Development, edited by Samuel O. Oloruntoba and Toyin Falola, 695–708. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. ———. “Boundary Demarcation and Delimitation in Africa: Sources of Economic Underdevelopment, Political Instability and Migration Challenges.” Transylvanian Review XXVI, no. 24 (2018): 6519–27. ———. Feeding the People, Uplifting the Continent: Nigeria and South Africa in the Struggle for Food Security in Africa. South Africa: North West University (Mafikeng Campus), 2019. ———. “Imposed Socially Responsible Pricing on AIDS/HIV in Developing Areas: South Africa and Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies.” Indian Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2015): 67–79. ———. “Multinational Corporations’ (MNCs) Engagement in Africa: Messiahs or Hypocrites?” Journal of African Foreign Affairs 5, no. 1 (2018): 41–62. ———. “Politics of Contiguity in International Relations: South Africa–Zimbabwe in Perspective.” Nigerian Journal of International Affairs 34, no. 2 (2008): 119–46. ———. “Social Sciences as Imperialism: Analysis of the Global Economic Crisis of 2008 and Development Gaps in the Third World States.” Journal of Administrative Sciences 14, no. 27 (2016): 13–31.

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Amusan, Lere, and Oluwole Olutola. “Contextualising African Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture: Challenges from Climate Change and Mineral Extraction Perspectives.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 18, no. 4 (2017): 117–30. Amusan, Lere, and Samuel Oyewole. “Global Democratisation and Capitalism: Discovering the Third World States in the Era of Limited State and Unlimited Quest.” Canadian Social Science 8, no. 5 (2012): 57–64. Amusan, Lere, Thulisile Mphambukeli, and Victor O. Okorie. “Blue Economy, Brics and the Challenges of Food Security in the Western Indian Ocean.” Journal of Reviews on Global Economics 8 (2019): 1567–75. Amusan, Lere, Luqman Saka, and Adedoyin J. Omede. “Sovereign Wealth Fund and Fiscal Federalism in Nigeria (2011–14): An Assessment of Contending Issues.” Regional & Federal Studies 27, no. 4 (2017): 441–63. Balgley, David. “Assembling Land Access and Legibility: The Case of Morocco’s Gharb Region.” In The Politics of Land, edited by Tim Bartley, 123–48. Bingley,UK: Emerald Publishing, 2019. Burgis, Tom. The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systemic Theft of Africa’s Wealth. London: William Collins, 2015. Carmody, Padraig. The New Scramble for Africa. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 2002. Cotula, Lorenzo. The Great African Land Grab?: Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System. London and New York: Zed Books, 2013. Crisp, Nigel. Turning the World Upside Down: The Search for Global Health in the Twenty-First Century. London: Royal Society of Medicine, 2010. Derman, Bill, Rie Odgaard, and Espen Sjaastad, eds. Conflicts Over Land & Water in Africa: Cameroon, Ghana, Burkina Faso, West Africa, Sudan, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania. Oxford: James Currey, 2007. Faleti, Stephen A. “Theories of Social Conflicts.” In Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies in West Africa, edited by Shedrack Gaya Best, 35–60. Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 2006. Foer, Franklin. World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. New York: Penguin Books, 2017. Frynas, George J. “The Oil Boom in Equatorial Guinea.” African Affairs 103, no. 413 (2004): 527–46. Galtung, Johan. “Cultural Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 291–305. Gaye, Fredrick. “China-Liberia Agricultural Technology Center in Central Liberia: Prospect, Opportunities and Challenges,” 2018. https://africachinareporting.co. za/2018/07/china-liberia-agricultural-technology-center-in-central-liberia-prospe cts-opportunities-and-challenges/. Giddens, Anthony. Sociology. London: Polity Press, 2009. Global Report on Food Crises. “2020 Global Report on Food Crises In Brief,” 2020. https://www.fsinplatform.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/ GRFC_2020_KM_200420.pdf. Goldberg, Ray A. Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Guthman, Julie. Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism. California: University of California Press, 2011. Hassenkamp, Mark. “Get Ready to Profit from Plant- and Insect-Based Protein.” Farmer’s Weekly 15, no. November (2019): 30–31.

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Hlomendlini, Hamlet. “Do Small-Scale Farmers Need a Different Financing Model?” Farmer’s Weekly 15, no. November (2019): 30–31. Howard, Philip H. Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Imevbore, AMA. “Alleviating Poverty Through Biodiversity Prospecting.” In Poverty Alleviation from Biodiversity Management, edited by Matt FA Ivbijaro, 11–49. Ibadan: Book Builders, 2012. Ismar, Julia. “How to Govern the Global Rush for Land and Water?” In Handbook of Land and Water Grabs in Africa: Foreign Direct Investment and Food and Water Security, edited by Tony Allan, Martin Keulertz, Suyi Sojamo, and Jeroen Warner, 712–44. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Kameri-Mbote, Patricia, and Elvin Nyukuri. “Climate Change, Law and Indigenous Peoples’ in Kenya: Ogiek and Maasai Narratives.” In Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies, edited by Randall Abate and Elizabeth A.K. Warner, 535–60. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2013. Kimura, Aya Hirata. 2013. Hidden Hunger: Gender and the Politics of Smarter Foods. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013. Korten, David C. When Corporations Rule the World. Oakland, CA: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015. Krasner, Stephen D. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Kuenkel, Petra. Stewarding Sustainability Transformations: An Emerging Theory and Practice of SDG Implementation. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019. Lofchie, Michael F. “Agrarian Socialism in the Third World: The Tanzanian Case.” Comparative Politics, 1976, 479–99. Lymbery, Philip, and Isabel Oakeshott. Farmargeddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Maconanchie, Ray. “Agriculture.” In The Routledge Handbook of African Development, edited by Tony Binns, Kenneth Lynch, and Etienne Nel, 506–15. London and New York: Routledge, 2018. Mather, Charles. “Sustainability and Fisheires Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Geography 92, no. 3 (2007): 221–30. Mbenga, Bernard K. One Ethnic Community Straddling an International Border: Tshidilamolomo Villagers in South Africa and Botswana. Joensuu, Finland: University of Eastern Finland, 2017. McMichael, Philip. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017. Melber, Henning, and Roger Southhall. “A New Scramble for Africa?” In A New Scramble for Africa?: Imperialism, Investment and Development, edited by Roger Southhall and Henning Melber, xix–xxvii. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZuluNatal, 2009. Millet, Damien, and Eric Toussaint. Who Owes Who? London and New York: Zed Books, 2004. Moran, Michael. Private Foundations and Development Partnerships: American Philanthropy and Global Development Agendas. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Norwood, Bailey F., and Tamara L. Mix. Meet the Food Radicals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

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Okori, Victor Ogbonnaya, Lere Amusan, and Thulisile Numisile Maphambukeli. “Exploring the Political Economy of Water and Food Security Nexus in BRICS.” Africa Insight 48, no. 4 (2019): 21–38. Onimode, Bade. Africa in the World of the 21st Century. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 2000. ———, ed. African Development and Governance Strategies in the 21st Century: Looking Back to Move Forward. London and New York: Zed Books, 2004. Otero, Gerardo. Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2008. ———. The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2018. Paarlberg, Robert. Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pearce, Fred. The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth. Boston: Beacon Press, 2012. Pollan, Michael. 2008. In Defense of Food: An Water’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin Books, 2008. Ross, Marc. The Management of Conflict: Interpretations and Interests in Comparative Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Saka, Luqman. “BRICS, Land Grabbing and the Crisis of Food Security in SubSaharan Africa: An Assessment.” African Renaissance, no. Special Issue (2019): 33– 49. Sapolsky, Robert. “This Is Your Brain on Nationalism: The Biology of Us and Them.” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 2 (2019): 42–47. Satgar, Vishwas, and Langa Zita, eds. New Frontiers for Socialism in the 21st Century: Conversation on a Global Journey. Johannesburg: Co-operative and Policy Alternative Center (COPAC), 2009. Schmidt-Soltau, Kai. “Conservation-Related Resettlement in Central Africa: Environmental and Social Risks.” Development and Change 34, no. 3 (2003): 525–51. Smyth, Danielle. “The Advantages & Disadvantages of Mixed Farming,” November 21, 2018. https://bizfluent.com/list-6876302-examples-hazardous-agriculturalwaste.html. Soobramanien, Teddy. “Economic Diplomacy of Small and Low Income Countries.” In The New Economic Diplomacy: Decision-Making and Negotiation in International Economic Relations, edited by Nicholas Bayne and Stephen Woolcock, 187–204. Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011. Soroos, Marvin S. Beyond Sovereignty: The Challenge of Global Policy. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1986. Tamir, Yael. “Building a Better Nationalism: The Nation’s Place in a Globalized World.” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 2 (2019): 48–53. Toulmin, Camilla. “Negotiating Access to Land in West Africa: Who Is Losing Out?” In Conflicts Over Land & Water in Africa, edited by Bill Derman, Rie Odgaard, and Espen Sjaastad, 95–115. Oxford: James Currey, 2007. Toussaint, Eric. The World Bank: A Critical Primer. London: Pluto Press, 2008. University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights, International labour Organization, and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Overview Report on the Project by the International Labour Organization and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights on the Constitutional and Legislative Protection

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of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 24 African Countries. International Labour Organization and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 2009. Van Overwalle, Geertrui. “Protecting and Sharing Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge: Holder and User Tools.” Ecological Economics 53 (2005): 585–707. Wachira, George M. “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Land and Natural Resources.” In Perspectives on the Rights of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Africa, edited by Solomon Dersso, 297–347. Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press, 2010. Wachira, George M., and Tuuli Karjala. “The Struggle for Protection of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Africa.” In Handbook of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, edited by Corinne Lennox and Damien Short, 394–413. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Walter, Rodney. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Oxford: Pambazuka, 2012. Whitaker, Beth E., and Koffi P. Charles-Hector Yao-Kouame. “This Is What You Need to Know About Xenophobia and This Sunday’s Elections in Côte d’Ivoire.” The Washington Post, October 20, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/10/19/this-is-what-you-need-to-know-about-xen ophobia-and-this-sundays-elections-in-cote-divoire/. World Bank. “Agriculture in Africa: Telling Myths from Facts,” 2017. https://www. worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-myths-and-facts. ———. World Development Report, 2008: Agriculture for Development. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007.

CHAPTER 24

Global Public Policy Paradigms and the Socio-Economic Transformation Trajectories of Africa Michael Kpessa-Whyte and Kafui Tsekpo

Introduction Ideas are the currency of public policy. In Africa, much of the efforts to understand social policy, and design appropriate policy interventions have focused more on interests and institutional constraints, but less so on the ideational paradigms that foreground problem definitions and policy solutions deployed by governments.1 Ideas are not only the cognitive perspectives that translate intentions and visions into visible edifices; they also constitute sources of policies and programs designed to engineer social transformation. As Beland and Cox noted, “ideas shape how we understand political problems, give definition to our goals and strategies, and are the currency we use to communicate about politics. By defining our values and preferences, ideas provide us with interpretive frameworks that make us see some facts as important and others as less so”.2 This underscores the importance of understanding the role of ideas in the pursuit of socio-economic development processes. This chapter provides an analytical discussion of Africa’s development trajectories in the postcolonial era in the context of major ideational paradigms. It shows that Africa’s place in the changing global order is partly manifested in how its socio-economic transformation processes have been shaped by an interface of ideas inspired by Keynesian modernization ideas in the early postcolonial era (the 1950s to 1970s), and later by an ideational paradigm based on neoliberal ethos since the 1980s. Framing radical policy shifts in African countries M. Kpessa-Whyte (B) · K. Tsekpo Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_24

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within the context of policy paradigm shades light on the epistemic foundations of policies promoted and adopted in Africa over time. In addition, such a framing also provides a conceptual lens within which to situate policy successes and failures, as well as the transitional impediments encountered in the reform processes. To move beyond the conceptual mapping of the paradigms and illustrate the forms in which they were manifested, the chapter also drew on examples from few countries to discuss how both Keynesian modernization and neoliberalism were activated in African countries. The idea of policy paradigms naturally evokes periodization, which helps to properly contextualize historical events and processes “giving them meaning and importance, and conditions our images of the past” while helping not only to generate the necessary abstractions that sustain the analysis, but also provide the necessary protocols to validate scholar analyses as exercises in knowledge production.3 Given the study of paradigms involves a significant historical analysis, periodization helps navigate the “complex interplay of intellectual, institutional and ideological dynamics”, although it is not always easy (ibid.).4 As noted earlier, Africa’s postcolonial public policy experience so far can be situated within two broad periods. In what follows, the first section provides a conceptual explanation for the notion of policy paradigms to situate the discussions of the major paradigms around which policymaking had accrued in postcolonial Africa. While the second section discusses conceptual issues relating to the Keynesian modernization paradigm, the third section sheds light on the manifestations of that paradigm regarding policy formation and implementation, drawing on examples from policy approaches in the early postcolonial period. Similarly, section four analyzed the ideas and concepts embedded in neoliberalism, and how those activated in economic policy and political reforms in the real policy world in Africa were the focus in section five. In the conclusion section, we briefly discussed the mechanisms through which these global policy paradigms were diffused in African countries in both the Keynesian modernization and neoliberal eras.

Conceptual Perspective of Policy Paradigms Policy paradigms are the broad ideational frameworks or cognitive concepts that serve as roadmaps at the foreground of policy discourse and practice at a given time. The origin of the word “paradigm” is traced to the works of Kuhn (1962 1970), which now constitutes an integral part of the philosophy of the social sciences.5 Kuhn used the word in two broad characterizations. First, to denote the scientific community’s shared values and principles in their judgments and decisions about what constitutes reality and how it is to be investigated. Second, the whole system of beliefs that constitute the foundation of social reality and how that changes over time.6 The central observations of Kuhn’s analysis are consistent with other scholarly works by Polanyi, Hanson, and Qunie, among several others.7 In the 1990s, as scholars

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struggled to understand policy challenges and changes being adopted by policymakers in response to challenges, the word “paradigm” was deployed as a device for explaining policy shifts from ones based on Keynesian ideas to options based on neoliberalism (Hall 1993).8 The popularization of paradigm as an explanatory concept began with Hall, who used the term to explain policy changes as social learning processes (ibid.).9 He further argued that policy changes involve three levels of shifts and transitions: first, regular adjustments made to existing policies, second, the less frequent policy changes that alter “the instruments of microeconomic policy without radically altering the hierarchy goals behind the policy”, and third, “different process, marked by the radical changes in the overarching terms of policy discourse” and practice.10 This third type of policy change is associated with a paradigm shift in how Kuhn used the term. Hall (1993) argued further that while the firstand second-order policy changes usually “preserves the broad continuities” in the original design of a policy, third-order changes in producing their paradigmatic effect turn to be disjunctive and associated with “periodic discontinuities in the policy”.11 Consistent with Kuhnian tradition, Chilisa also argued that a paradigm represents “a particular way of thinking and seeing the world that is shared by a community of scholars, researchers, or scientists and also one that is used to represent commitments, worldviews, beliefs, values, methods, and approaches that are shared across a discipline. A paradigm is a way of describing a worldview that is informed by philosophical assumptions about the nature of social reality (ontology), the ways of knowing (epistemology) and ethics and value systems (axiology)”.12 In the fields of comparative public policy, the phrase policy paradigm is used to denote the broader frames of thinking about public policy in terms of the ideas, values, and interests that provide necessary tools and instruments for problem definition, design, and mode of delivery as the disposition of actors involved in the policy processes, and “why they pursue the strategies they do”.13 In Carson’s view, a policy paradigm is a cognitive disposition collectively shared by a community of actors based on a specific understanding of social problems and as an inspiration for devising policy remedies to solve those problems.14 It, therefore, consists of a fairly wellestablished coherent system of thought that serves as the mind’s compass, providing directions to ideas about what constitutes a social problem at any given time, and how it can be resolved, thereby shaping design, content, and delivery of public policies.15 As social constructs, policy paradigms explain the continuity of policy content and discourse over some time. O’Sullivan therefore argued that: Policy paradigms, therefore, are frameworks that govern the policy process. They embody linguistic, normative, epistemic, empirical, and methodological dimensions: They regulate what is to be defined as a meaningful problem; how it is to be thematized and described; what is to be considered worthy as data; who is to be recognized as a legitimate participant, and with what status; and how

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the policy process is to be enacted, realized, and evaluated. Policy paradigms are powerful regulatory forces in the generation and enactment of policy. Their boundary maintenance function, by which terms, themes, problems, data, and personnel are excluded from consideration, is a critical feature of their regulatory power. (p. 247)16

The experience of public policies across the world has shown that paradigms are not permanent; instead, they are intervallic with a lifespan spreading over several decades before they ran out of their currency and new ones emerge. In public policy, the attraction to the study of policy paradigm is foisted by a desire among scholars to have a better appreciation of the dynamics of policy change; and here, ideas are seen as important starting points for understanding the factors that facilitate policy change and stability as well as any inherent patterns and processes.17 A major feature of the focus on policy paradigms is the growing interest in studying ideas to understand policy changes. Ideas are perceived as causal mechanisms, cognitive maps, strategic weapons that consciously and unconsciously shape how actors understand the world and relate to it.18 Beland and Cox note that ideas are products of the human mind shaped by connections and interpretations of the material world around us, and therefore they “shape how we understand political problems, give definition to our goals and strategies, and are the currency we use to communicate about politics” while providing us “with interpretive frameworks that make us see some facts as important and others as less so” based on the values and preferences embedded in their paradigm of origin.19 Daigneault (2014) argued that paradigmatic ideas are characterized by four intertwined principles which include (1) “values, assumptions and principles about the nature of reality, social justice and the appropriate role of the State”; (2) “a conception of the problem that requires public ‘intervention’”; (3) “ideas about which policy ends and objectives should be pursued”; and (4) “ideas about appropriate policy ‘means’ to achieve those ends”.20 In a nutshell, as Beland and Cox argued, ideas are paradigmatic when their fundamental values become widely shared ways of thinking about public policy challenges and the appropriateness of policy responses.21 While paradigms have become the central thesis for understanding policy changes and stability in the advanced industrialized countries, this chapter is probably one of the few if not the only one that takes up broad policy changes in Africa from a paradigmatic perspective.

Keynesian Modernization Paradigm Independence in African countries occurred when Keynesian paradigm guided public policy in advanced industrialized countries. It emerged against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Africa’s early postcolonial public policy was therefore shaped by Keynesian paradigm but framed largely in modernization discourses. In developing his ideas, Keynes raised concerns about the inability of existing public policies to solve the problems associated with economic

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depression and cautioned governments about the adverse effects of blind capitalism, while pointing to the state’s central role in economic development.22 At the core of this approach to development is the idea of Effective Demand, which according to Keynes is the equilibrium at which the aggregate supply of production in an economy; the total price of goods produced by employing a certain number of persons converges with aggregate demand; for goods as a result of employing “N” number of persons.23 Fundamentally, this proposition holds that employment adds to an increase in money value to instigate economic growth. He further notes that to foster economic growth, such measures would lead to the propensity to consume.24 As such, “this nonlinear notion of consumption posits that not all income is automatically spent on the consumption of finished goods as persons will as a rule, people will save a greater proportion of income as real income increases”,25 because consumers make rational decisions based on changes in wage earnings and net income, time discounting, as well as future income expectations. Governments were admonished to create more job opportunities on the assumption that added employment would lead to the payment of more wages, increasing the amount of money in society’s hands for investment. It thus was argued that fixed investment would offset consumption propensity, producing an aggregate demand that intersects the economy’s aggregate supply function. At this equilibrium, Keynes argued that full employment is achieved to shore up development.26 Keynes’s ideas of promoting development were against the backdrop that private sector investment decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore advocated for active policy responses by governments through the public sector spending, including monetary policy actions by Central Banks and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.27 Keynesian economics thus advocates a mixed economy, including the private sector, but with a large government role through the public sector. This prescription served as the economic model for several new countries in Africa after independence due in part to the post-second World War economic expansion (1945–1973). With increasing economic downturn resulting in high unemployment and potential output losses in the Global North, African governments struggled to kick-start development as inflows from exports continued to dwindle. Governments resorted to Keynes’ reasoning of instituting investment policies and programs to increase the aggregate demand and consumption of economic commodities through state-sponsored economic programs for development, such as investment in infrastructure.28 Also, to reduce interest rates and cure the inflationary pressures of the time, Central Banks adopted stabilization policies to reduce the cycle of meltdowns. Accordingly, as Blinder noted, the underlying ideas of government investment were to inject income, resulting in more spending in the economy and stimulating more production and investment for economic growth.29 The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.

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In the period immediately after independence, African countries were perceived as lagging in terms of socio-economic change. Modernization was promoted and pursued by countries in the region regarding political restructuring and economic policies. The content of modernization policies promoted were heavily influenced by Keynesian paradigmatic ideas. Modernization defined the challenges faced by countries in Africa during the early post-colonial era by drawing on experiences of the advanced industrialized world in a manner that compared and contrasted what were seen as traditional and modern societies; with the former referring to African countries and later to the economically advanced industrialized nations in the Global North. First was the attempt to explain why African countries have failed to develop, focusing on what its proponents claimed were cultural and economic conditions in the Global South that hindered development. Second, to provide a “non-communist” solution to deprivation and poor economic progress in the developing world and how economic change will take place with the introduction of Western values.30 Modernization scholars understood and framed social change in African countries as a linear process of cultural reengineering modeled on Western value systems. Public and private resources were provided for researchers and students to understand the problems of social and economic development, political stability, and cultural change in the “underdeveloped” world.31 The output of such academic enterprise was a string of ideas to suggest that societies develop in fairly predictable stages: from primordial modes of production to complex consumption-driven production, to become industrialized.32 This understanding of human progress in such societies was drenched in Western experience, which influenced thinking about the nature of social, political, and economic change. This received wisdom characterized the intellectual tradition of knowledge production and policy prescriptions by academics and policy actors originating from and domiciled in Western academic and Transnational Policy Institutions and Networks and their local conspirators in Africa. Such forms of knowledge robbed African societies of any agency and ways of knowing for self-actualization. The universalization of Western cultural ethos as a means of advancing human progress become known as Developmentalism. Scholars of this school of thought begun to grasp the full impact of colonial dislocations of developing societies by European conceptions of industrialization. Scholars such as Rostow, reflecting on the history of development in North America, reasoned that development is a process that involves industrialization, urbanization, rationalization, bureaucracy, and mass consumption. Impliedly any approach to development must draw on the worldview of North America and Western Europe. Thus, for African countries to develop, they had to discard their culture and embrace the modernizing values and norms in relation to transitions from backwardness to a “modern” developmental state through a series of stages.33 Principally, the cultures of non-Anglo-European societies were demonized and tagged as anti-developmental.34 It was argued that economic conditions of societies are fundamentally shaped by their culture

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values, and from this perspective, African cultural norms were portrayed as anti-developmental,35 and unattractive to capital and technology especially given the levels of low skilled workforce, political instability, lack of domestic capital, and weak institutional capacity of the newly independent African countries.36 Thus, African states were viewed as traditional, primordial political entities in need of “modern” norms of relations and (re)production to attain a state of “development”. Supporters of this school of thought conceived the internal conditions of specific countries in the developing world as backward and unproductive. Conversely, Western culture was seen as a superior with an ability to allowed societies to develop from backward countries to modern entities. To develop therefore African countries they must adopt Western culture, they argued.37 Modernization theorists, therefore, viewed the process of development as a sequence of Western value-driven change. The spread of modernization ideas in developing countries was principally viewed in terms of surplus labor. According to Lewis, developing countries in the Global South had excess labor in the informal sector that governments must devise means of integrating into the state’s formal economic structures to kick-start their development processes.38 Hence, the ideational foregrounding for the transformation of economies in the Africa hinged on policies implemented to increasingly move labor from the traditional agricultural sector to the industrial sector. With the unlimited supply of labor from the traditional sector, these transferred workers will continually receive subsistence wages, and the excess of formal sector profits over wages is reinvested to expand and generate further economic growth.39 This was premised on the assumption that all profits would be reinvested, and the mistaken belief that the transfer of labor to modern forms of employment will automatically result in rapid expansion in the formal sector. Therefore, the idea of savings and investments was promoted as a means to the structural transformation of African economies by steadily accumulating physical and human capital. These were considered necessary conditions for economic growth and development.40 In early postcolonial Africa, various governments expressed modernization ideas through the adoption of singularly mandated institutions that mirrored those of the United States or their European Colonizers in their forward march to development.41 These institutions were a part of the “pre-condition” for development, to mobilize the productive tools, and facilitate a modernized means of economic production and societal organization for the benefit of all, at least in the aspirational intent conveyed.42 This unilineal ideational diffusion occasioned the establishment of institutions mirroring “blueprints based on idealized versions of Anglo-American institutions, the applicability of which is presumed to transcend national circumstances and cultures”.43 However, the evidence available shows that very little was achieved beyond the intent of development that was a firm underpinning of such institutions’ creation.44 The uninspiring effect of modernization ideas on the economic development of the “late” industrializers is summarized by Gerschenkron’s note of caution about the copy-paste policy paradigm expression of modernization as: “institutional

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innovations would circumvent the establishment of market-based relationships by mapping out the boundaries of the firm, type of finance likely to be appropriate for late industrializers, the role of the state and so on. Institutions would be designed to skip certain stages or telescope certain processes, allowing the latecomers to move much faster than was suggested by the linear theory of history”.45 In essence, context-specific institutions are needed as developing economies ought to transform and meet their respective states’ survival needs and advancement. Thus, African countries resorted to creating Anglo-American like political and economic institutions to service or manage the borrowed policies and practices from their copy destinations. In other words, instead of establishing governance and economic institutions based on the lived realities of postcolonial African societies, policymakers resorted to mimicking the practices of Western institutions in an endless cycle of experimentation. In essence, the application of modernization ideas in Africa sought to “obstruct rather than promote the understanding of processes of economic progress”.46

Keynesian Modernization Policy Paradigm in Action Considering the state’s dominant role in public policy processes as a starting point, modernization scholarship offered a strong defense of the need for early postcolonial African countries to mobilize the diverse ethnic nations to bequeath by the colonial regime into modern nation-states. Policymakers in the early postcolonial period demonstrated their commitment to addressing the hopes and aspirations of the people, especially in the form of uniting the citizenry through social provisioning.47 According to Anderson, the creation of modern nation-states leads to an “imagined political community” without which members of the “new” nation will never be able to effectively socialize and “know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in their minds, each lives the image of their commonality”.48 Accordingly, efforts by both independence leaders and policymakers in the immediate decade after independence were made toward the creation of imagined political communities, necessary to dismantle the many ethnic-nations forming the modern nation-state in Africa, in order not to dissipate the aspirations of the many that sacrificed their lives and those that kept faith with the liberations struggles in the hope of living a dignified life thereafter. Aina reflects this position as a strong “social policy initiative tied to a constructionist approach to economic development, that is, the building of physical and social as well as human infrastructures”.49 The provision of social infrastructure, for instance, was designed to include the direct provision of housing, social security, education, income, health, and employment services to the citizenry by the postcolonial governments. The pursuit of nation-building through social policy meant the commitment of substantial resources to that public sector. Thus, nationalist leaders in the early independence period instituted policy programs in health, education, and housing, and devoted significant resources

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to building a modern nation-state inhabited by a citizenry, bonded together by civic affinities and loyal to the new state given the context of multiethnic nations in which people’s loyalties are primarily to their primordial publics.50 Therefore, nation-building programs such as national service and linguistic harmonization were instituted in many African countries. Military and nonmilitary compulsory national service was instituted in some African countries. Mandatory military conscription for secondary school and university graduates was introduced for students in Angola, Eritrea, and Sudan purposely to integrate citizens. As reported by Bandyopadhyay and Green, Angola in 1993 instituted a required two years military service for all citizens, 20 years and over, while Sudan’s National Service Act, 1992 assigned a maximum of 2 years of national service from all citizens, depending on one’s level of education; 18 months and 12 months for high school and university graduates, respectively.51 Also, on attaining independence in 1994, Eritrea obligated all citizens to perform 18 months of military service as the government aimed to “foster national unity among our people by eliminating subnational feelings”.52 Similarly, nonmilitary national service was instituted in Ethiopia, Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia. Both Ghana and Nigeria instituted compulsory national youth service schemes in 1973 for all university students. It was designed to promote national unity by posting graduates from their respective tertiary institutions to rural areas outside of their home regions or areas of domicile for one year. Prior to this, there was a deliberate decision on the part of policymakers in both countries to post-professional Teachers, Nurses, Personnel of the State Security Services, and other newly employed graduates to other parts of their countries other than their places of origin. In 1964, Ethiopia, the Ethiopian University Service mandated a year’s break for all third- and fourthyear tertiary students to serve in a rural area for one year before completing their education.53 In Guinean, the government began a political education program in 1961 for secondary school students to raise civic consciousness. However, the nature of the program was altered, and by 1971 participants were made a part of the popular national militia with an overt purpose to “guard national frontiers” and “patrol public morality”.54 In Zambian, the National Service program was redesigned in 1975 to shift its focus from primary school graduates to include all university students for 20 months, with teachers and party leaders also obligated, but for a lesser duration.55 Another means adopted by the early postindependence policymakers in their attempt at building a modern nation-state based on civic values was the adoption of one-party states and the centralization of public authority in the administration and policymaking processes ostensibly to kill the inherited competing ethnic nations. Upon independence, several African states such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda inherited monarchs or caliphates with significant authority who historically wielded control over parts of the modern states or ruled on behalf of the colonizers but posed a divisive threat to the postcolonial state. First, in Central Africa, both Burundi and Uganda became independent with a traditional king as their head of state

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but were later abolished in 1966 and 1967 to foster national cohesion. In Ethiopia, the Derg administration abolished the Emperor position in 1975 to avoid disunity as he was seen as biased toward the Amharic ethnic group. Secondly, Ethiopia and Eritrea’s federated state at independence in 1950 was disbanded in place of recentralized Ethiopia in 1962; likewise, in Sudan, the Southern Regional government formed as part of the Addis peace agreement outlawed in 1983 in favor of a united Sudan. Similar actions were taken in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon. For Cameroon, the inherited federal states for English-speaking West Cameroon and French-speaking East Cameroon in 1961 was reversed by President Ahidjou to a unitary state, the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972.56 The first-generation political leaders and policymakers approached socioeconomic development by establishing the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) as a key condition for modernizing and consolidating the new state. The relative success of Keynesian modernization approaches to development in Europe and Western Europe inspired nationalist leaders and policymakers in independent Africa confronted with the urgency of transforming their economies with the little resources at their disposal. Thus, they adopted a statist development approach that was inspired by the dominant Keynesian modernization perspectives on development praxis at the time of socialist or capitalist economic development.57 Countries such as Ghana and Tanzania adopted the Socialist model, while Kenya, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Senegal went the capitalist way.58 Although countries differed in their needs for independence, degree of natural resource endowments to meet their economic and social objectives, they nonetheless embarked on state-led development to a degree of uniformity: instituting policies to accumulate physical and human capital to raise the level of national income and citizens welfare; investment in technology to boost production and international trade through the establishment of import-substitution industries.59 The pursuit of ISI through social policy meant the commitment of substantial resources to the public sector as captured in the strategic National Development Plans of many African countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, etc. As such, in line with Keynesian principles, central planning of development was used to ensure that scarce resources were allocated to priority sectors of the economy to boost industrialization. Thus, statism was the policy of choice as consistent with the Keynesian modernization principles. In any case, the private sector in most African countries at the time was either non-existent or in its nascent stages. Thus, policymakers embarked on structural transformation of their respective economies using Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) as a major trade and policy to grow domestic production and replacing imports with locally manufactured goods.60 The underpinning logic of ISI was for African countries to reduce their reliance on foreign goods and services through local production.61 Thus, policymakers in postcolonial Africa, riding on modernization ideas, through their annual public

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expenditures and development plans financed industrialization to transformation their respective economies from predominantly agrarian and primitive into modern economies less dependent on international markets. As noted by some scholars, this industrialization policy presented African governments with an original route to utilize their local capabilities to compete in the world market.62 Ultimately, this approach was to reverse the colonial export-oriented structure of their economies based on obsolete farming and use import substitution to transform the societies by expanding and diversifying the production basis of their economies through state-led industries in Agriculture, Mining, Construction, Electronics and Electricals, and Transportation. Foreign direct capital was channeled into parastatals that produced basic consumer goods, and industries that produced goods that could not be imported, such as construction materials and, that of industry and mineral processing. According to Goldar (1986), studies on “productivity for the industrial sector of developing countries have indicated that increases in total factor productivity (TFP), are an important source of industrial growth”.63 As such, Goldar (1986) argued further that ISI results in “a higher growth rate in output, other things remaining the same, would enable the industry to attain a higher rate of technological progress and create a situation in which the constituent firms could take greater advantage of scale economies”.64 Accordingly, Pearson provides a dataset that shows industry grew considerably during ISI in Africa. In DR Congo, the average annual growth rate of industry was 11% between 1948 and 1959; with Zimbabwe recording annual growth rates of about 8.7% between 1948 and 1963; during the same period, the share of manufacturing in GDP rose from almost 3% to 20%, while that of mining declined from about 13 to 7%, while agriculture also witnessed a dip from 20 to 12%.65 In Nigeria and Kenya, the average growth was 6% between 1950 and 1957 and 5% between 1956 and 1963, respectively.66 Thus, through ISI policies, state officials establish local industries to drive economic growth and development by increasing employment and generating income for the state through taxation for further investment in the economic and social sectors of the economy in their quest to build a modern state. Keynesian modernization ideas foregrounded state-run industrialization through economic planning to rapidly improve living standards and foster economic transformation.67 It was also a symbolic act of proving the government of the day was capable, nonetheless, in their efforts to bring about the development promised during the struggle for independence (Mkandawire 2000; Green 1965). For instance, in Nigeria, policymakers believed that: “nature’s rich endowment – in the shape of the country’ lands, rivers, its underground wealth, the resources of its oceanfront, and, above all, its virile population have scarcely yet been developed to a degree sufficient to alleviate the poverty of the bulk of the people”.68 In sum, central planning was ultimately aimed at harnessing natural endowments of African countries to stimulate development and enhance the general welfare of citizens.

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Beyond the fact that the provision of such services by the state was deemed to compensate for the ills of colonialism, the design and delivery of socioeconomic program in this era was also targeted at courting the loyalty and solidarity of the citizenry to the new nation-states.69 Hence, the nationalists presented services like education and healthcare as fundamental to the overall development of newly independent African countries.70 Public investments in education were seen as a tool aimed at nationalism, development, and improving human capital to increase productivity, open possibilities for innovation, and provide lifelong opportunities to reduce the number of people falling into poverty.71 This was the justification for implementing free and compulsory education for all in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania. For instance, in education, Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania invested in universal primary education to improve the citizenry’s literacy and employability for national development. Universal access to primary education was a distinct objective of various governments, including Ghana, southwestern Nigeria, and Tanzania. This expansive approach to education provisioning coincided with rapid economic expansion.72 While in countries such as southwestern Nigeria and Botswana (from about the 1970s onward) where financial resources were scares at the initial stages, policymakers demonstrated a firm commitment to providing universal access to publicly funded primary education from the very meager resources they could manage from their fiscal resource management regime.73 Available data shows investment in education as a percentage of gross national product (GNP) rose significantly from 1960 to early 1974.74 Calculations of average government expenditure in public education for 21 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries stood at 21.1 percent of their respective GNPs in the first decade of attaining independence.75 Similarly, the provision of affordable public housing in both urban and rural areas in Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia were provided with significant budgetary resources to provide residential comfort for public sector workers to increase productivity, help grow the embryonic constructions industry, and manage urban and rural spaces for population growth.76 In Ghana, the provision of affordable public housing was boosted by establishing the State Housing Corporation and the Tema Development Corporation with respective mandates for providing public affordable housing units for different segments of the population (Kpessa forthcoming). Likewise, governments in many SSA countries extended the supply of potable water to urban and rural communities. To ensure the government achieved its policy goals, the government of Nigeria created the Federal Ministry of Water Resources in 1975, about a decade after independence, to strategize and oversee the rapid expansion of water services to all parts of the country, together with the establishment of 11 River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs) to complement the existing water boards.77 As a result, between 1960 and 1985, communities with pipeborne water increased from 67 to 350, with about 86 percent of the supply channeled to urban areas due to deliberate policy measures adopted by the postindependence government to extend potable water to more areas through

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RBDAs.78 In Ghana, the postcolonial policymakers made it a primary government goal to provide clean water to citizens at the lowest possible cost. The Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation (GWSC) was tasked with the responsibility to actualize this goal. Therefore, by 1960, 33.7 percent of urban Ghana and 10.8 percent of the rural spaces had access to clean water for use.79 Further attempts at increasing the reach of potable water led to incorporating the rural water supply division into the GWSC in 1965. However, this could not materialize as fiscal pressures slowed the government’s financial input into the water sector. Overall, the economic health of African states during this period was assumed to reside in the health and might of the citizenry, as the set of skills needed for development were thought to depend on the quality of public social services such as education, clean water, healthcare, etcetera, the citizenry receives.80 In nutshell, the disposition of early postcolonial government in Africa in terms of socio-economic transformation was shaped by a variant of modernization that shared basic beliefs in Keynesian paradigmatic ideas.

The Turn of Liberal-Neoliberal Policy Paradigm Starting from the 1970s, African countries began to experience severe economic challenges that arose primarily from the decline in global demands for raw materials produced by countries in the region as the countries in the Global North that served buyers of the raw materials shift were compelled by oil price hikes to reprioritize. The crisis undermined Keynesian modernization’s ideas and practices as state policy planning were blamed for the challenges and provided an opportunity for liberal ideas lurking in the margins to spring up as a new paradigm. Liberal ideology is partly a political philosophy based on the notions of liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law.81 Generally, liberalism espouses the principles of free market, free trade, limited government, individual rights including universal civil rights and human rights, capitalism, democracy, secularism, gender equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of association and religion.82 The expression of liberalism is set in the spread of ideas that constitute what may be termed “political rationalism”, “anti-autocracy”, “cultural pluralism” instead of conservatism and tradition in general, “tolerance”, and “individualism” to catalog a few. Generally, the contribution of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty was to provide most of the ideas of liberalism that influenced the practice of politics and economics. Read together, both thinkers addressed the impetuses for organizing society through economic activities that cause prices and the distribution of wealth, and the associated policies frameworks state should adopt to maximize wealth.83 To its advocates, liberalism presents the surest way of joining social, political, and economic forces of production to advance a state’s

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course. Therefore, development rests on creating a liberal order through politics, which allows the factors of production to freely interact in the market. The equilibrium at which these factors operate would orchestrate development.84 As applied in the social sciences, neoliberalism is the idea associated with economic liberalism and free-market capitalism. According to Harvey, neoliberalism is “a theory of political, economic practices that proposes that human wellbeing can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade”.85 It denotes a conceptual paradigm that explicitly seeks to atone for the failures of classical liberalism. Thus, its core principles are set in moderation compared to that of classical liberalism. The term gained popularity largely from the 1970s among a section of left-leaning academics as a response to a late twentieth-century effort by global policy and industry actors to condemn social-democratic reforms in place of free-market ideas.86 Others think of the term as a “rejection of laissez-faire policies and its emphasis on humanistic values”.87 However, for Brennan and Magness (2019), the concept is a purposefully vague adoptive term to rally or oppose a wide range of economic and political beliefs by their adherents.88 Thus, “such lack of specificity reduces its capacity as an analytic frame. If neoliberalism is to serve as a way of understanding the transformation of society over the last few decades, then the concept needs unpacking”.89 Barring its contested meaning or emphasis, neoliberalism is commonly connected with economic liberalization policies, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity, and reductions in government spending to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society with the state as an institutional mediator. Liberal economic ideas such as individual liberty, freedom, and equality found resonance in the political arena, emphasizing constitutional democracy that encourages persons’ civil and political liberties. By its construction, democracy allows for all forces within a polity to repeatedly realize their interests and devolves power from dominant groups of people to a set of rules.90 In sum, we can argue that democracy is a social and political system of governance characterized by a degree of personal and political liberty, manifested in regular, free, and competitive elections, protected by a legal system determined by a working constitution.91 Hence, democratic states have a political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections with the active participation of its citizens in civic life, protection of the fundamental human rights of all citizens regardless of their class, creed, race, or status society; the application of laws and procedures equally to all citizens. The end of World War II in 1945 occasioned the spread of liberal democratic ideals. The dominant thinking at the time was that liberal democracies were less likely to go to war with each other; hence, the more the world adopted liberal democratic principles in the organization of state–society relations, the more democratic states there are, the more developed the world

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will become.92 This principle shaped somewhat the introduction of democratic practices and institutions by the European states in the colonies, albeit grudgingly.93 This notwithstanding, and besides the institutionalization in North America, Western Europe, and India, the idea of liberal democracy only gained the necessary currency in the mid-1990s globally. In his view, Diamond suggests dictatorship was the dominant form of governing the state in most parts of the world as of the mid-1970s.94 He further notes that about a scanty number of independent states selected their governments through any form of competitive, free, and fair elections before the 1990s.95 Hence, democracy as a way of governing competing interests and relations within a given state only began to be internalized by 1995. Democracy through its changing forms is cast as dealing with the many grievances that mark state–society relations, including the treatment of minority interests, fear from want and personal safety, high prices of goods and services, taxes, and social services, among others. In modern-day Africa, the spread of democratic ideas on how to mediate norms of relations and the advancement of development concentrated on the introduction and support for parliamentary and presidential reforms, electoral and institutional reform, by arguing that such reforms emphasize and safeguards natural rights and popular sovereignty for the collective good. As such, significant foreign and domestic resources have been injected into such reforms spearheaded by the Bretton Woods Institutions and other bilateral organizations with little to show for in terms of institutional enhancement and development outcomes as depicted by numerous uprisings in the past two-decades, low rate of acceptance of election results, and governance and development reports on Africa by organizations both on and outside the continent. This quagmire requires a new form of introspection into the politics of transformation in contemporary times on the continent.

Manifestations of the Neoliberal Paradigm in Africa Neoliberal policy paradigm referred to in contemporary times as the Washington Consensus spearheaded by the Bretton Woods Institutions, is a catch-all buzzword for describing a “seemingly ubiquitous set of marketoriented policies as being largely responsible for a wide range of social, political, ecological and economic problems”,96 gaining global currency from the market-oriented policies of Presidents Regan and Thatcher of the US and UK, respectively. Neoliberal influenced policies manifest as “eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers and reducing state influence in the economy, especially through privatization and austere measures”.97 In Africa, the tone for implementing these pro-market ideas was set in the Burg Report (1981) Towards Accelerated Development in SubSaharan Africa commissioned by the World Bank. The report argued that the lack of development of African economies was due to the crisis of governance and governments’ economic policies that were anti-liberal and distorted the

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markets.98 It argued for a standardized measure to “get the price right” and corresponding institutions to achieve the same.99 To the Bretton Woods Institutions, the standard set of economic policy prescriptions would reform and promote development in the crisis-ridden African countries. The structural adjustment reforms championed by the BWIs were targeted at reducing the role of the state in the economic sphere, the commodification of services, financial liberalization and devaluation, privatization, recalibrating financial institutions such as Central Banks and Finance and economic planning departments. By the beginning of the 2000s, many countries had been forced by the BWIs to buy into the “good institutions” mantra.100 As reported by Mkandawire, the Central Banks of many countries had been made autonomous, hundreds of state-owned industries had been privatized across the continent, legal reforms with resources from the World Bank had been carried out to strengthened property rights to lure in Western private capital, stock markets had been set up, and bureaucracies had been trimmed down after several Civil Service Improvement and Reform projects to produce the desirable “lean and mean state”.101 As such, institutions such as Central Banks in Africa were made to function as autonomous institutions with a narrow function of banking regulations and fiscal stabilization, with no interest in their respective jurisdictions’ political economy. On the trade and economic front, African governments were forced to divestiture parastatals with significant state interest to private owners by the BWIs. The divestiture program was crafted to offload state interest in economically viable State-owned Enterprises (SOEs), including the Ghana Ports and Harbors Authority (GPHA), Ashanti Goldfields, Ltd., and other similar institutions in the mining, consumables, and services sectors of the economy both in Ghana and other countries. For instance, in Ghana, a total of 255 SOEs had been partially or fully privatized by the end of 2000 (Obono 2007).102 In the agricultural sector, African governments undergoing structural adjustment were forced to remove subsidies on agricultural inputs beginning in the late 1990s; similar policies were extended to the utility sector to create independent utility commissions to ensure consumers pay market rates to attract private capital. In the early 1990s, many African countries started imposing Value-Added Tax (VAT) to shore up revenues to stabilize their fiscal regimes; and from the late 1990s, focus begun to shift toward MediumTerm Expenditure Framework for annual budgets with a similar framework for serving as a single-vehicle for multilateral donor-budgetary support.103 The monopoly of state marketing boards in the export of commercial or cash crops was broken, and private firms were permitted into the trade during this period. Several civil service reform programs were initiated between 1987 and 1995 to build the capacity of the African civil service to ensure effective implementation of SAPs. The banking sector was liberalized in many African countries, with permits granted for operating private banking services starting from the mid-1990s. Equally, governments were asked to sell off shares in large, stateowned banks and privatize the remaining banks. Hence, the state’s role was

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cut back from the performance of any meaningful role in the economy; the market’s invincible forces were to lead the charge. By the end of the 1980s, the evidence was clear in favor of the failures of Structural Adjustment Policies. Its proponents called for democratizing the political space in Africa if progress was to be made. The failure of adjustment policies by the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI) to bring the needed development in Africa was diagnosed as a problem of democratic deficit. The principal architect of this agenda, the World Bank, noted they had “ignored institutional infrastructure, without which a market economy simply cannot work”,104 while the IMF claimed: “Our approach is to concentrate on those aspects of good governance that are most closely related to our surveillance over macroeconomic policies—namely, the transparency of government accounts, the effectiveness of public resource management, and the stability and transparency of the economic and regulatory environment for private sector activity”. This notwithstanding, others argued that limited success of adjustment in Africa was made under quasi-democratic regimes,105 and contrary to the propositions made by scholars such as Lipset, Rueschemeyer et al., and Boix and Stokes that economic development provides the necessary incentives for democratization.106 It was argued in various academic and policy circles, mostly facilitated by the BWI, that African countries needed to transition into democratic political regimes. The argument put forward was for substantive political changes hinged on independent political and economic institutions insulated from political controls by the executive or legislative arms of government and protected by the constitution. By the end of the first decade of adjusting African economies, the discourse began to emphasize the need for democratizing the political space as the panacea to wealth creation and economic growth for the commonwealth. This began with the call for multiparty elections and active civil society participation in governance.107 By 1991, a number of African countries, including Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, and Nigeria, had started holding a national conference in preparation for multiparty dispensations.108 This modest beginning would soon become a norm in many African countries by the end of the century, with a modest number of countries to have held at least two elections by 2001. The opening up of the democratic space was accompanied by the springing of civil society organizations with labelings such as “democratic”, “economic”, and “governance” centers and institutions primarily focusing on market reforms and democratic pluralism such as the Institute of Economic Affairs in Kenya, Center for Democratic Development in Ghana, and similar institutions in Nigeria, Senegal, and Zambia. With support from the World Bank and other donor organizations, these civil society organizations become important hubs on the continent for the diffusion of neoliberal political and economic ideas through donor-driven policy engagement. Through their NGO conspirators, the idea of Democratization by the BWI shifted, emphasizing institutional reforms.109 This was conceptualized as good

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governance; how public institutions conduct affairs of the state in the management of public resources according to constitutional provisions. Resorting to the CSO platform, liberalizing the media landscape, and guaranteeing press freedom become a part of the donor mantra. Numerous workshops were held across the continent in the 1990s and early 2000s to promote press freedom and ensure transparency on the part of African governments. Further, the CSOs were made consulting partners in many African states involved in the “deepening” of democratic and constitutional processes of decision-making and implementation by government agencies to affirm the principles of participation, the rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus politics, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, and accountability measures. In effect, the CSOs only become a route for the BWI to have more space and build policy legitimacy for foreign political capital to serve their interests in Africa. Arguably, the activities of some CSOs were not for the intrinsic values of liberal democracy that ground with the people and portend for the development of the continent.110 At the community level, the role of the state was further weakened with the active promotion of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who, through various funding channels from BWIs and other donor agencies, were made the providers of hitherto services provided by the state, with the state as a mere facilitator of such arrangements, especially in Ghana and Uganda. As argued by Joon-Chang: generally speaking, the poor countries of today have better institutions than the industrial countries had at similar levels of economic development.111 This naturally raises the question, why haven’t the ideational transplanting through the many economic and political reforms in Africa since independence generated the needed development for the common good?

Conclusion A major question that arises from the foregone discussion is: how do paradigms diffuse to and among African countries given that ideas that formed the foundation of these paradigms were not incubated on the continent? Policy paradigms tend to serve as templates through which public policy problems and responses are reasoned through, designed, and implemented by countries across a given space and time. For instance, during the era of Keynesian modernization, the practice in its variants was a common trend across all postcolonial states irrespective of governments’ self-professed ideological leaning at the time. The same pattern was observed since the 1980s following Ghana’s adoption of neoliberal economic reforms; several countries in the region moved in the same direction, although they may differ in the specifics. The standard explanation in the comparative public policy literature for the diffusion of global policy paradigms is that policymakers often copy what is considered innovative from other countries. There are two main types of policy learning: rational learning and cognitive heuristic learning. In both types of learning, policymakers are assumed to be driven by self-interest.112

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In the rational learning model, the emergence of a problem triggers a frantic search for solutions through a thorough scan of relevant information within the international system. If any foreign ideas or practices demonstrate superiority over existing policies, such innovations are adopted (ibid.). Rational learning is defined as the process of acquiring new and relevant information that allows policymakers to update their beliefs about the impact of a new policy.113 In cognitive heuristic learning, policymakers are assumed to be limited in their ability to learn and understand everything about a policy and rely mostly on useful information about a policy adopted by an early innovator. The difference is that instead of updating their beliefs about the policy, they rely on “cognitive shortcuts” by resorting to availability, representativeness, and anchoring.114 Thus, in this model, learning is not very effective because policymakers prefer to “replace the laws of chance by heuristics, which sometimes yield reasonable estimates and quite often do not”.115 The implication is that innovations may attract dissimilar attention from other countries. The adoption of new policy ideas is more likely to be based on the promise of the innovation than on its demonstrated success and effectiveness. While learning occurs at all times and may explain aspects of the diffusion of both the Keynesian modernization and neoliberal policy ideas in African during their respective periods, other major factors were at play. In reference to the era of Keynesian modernization, Mkandawire reflects how early postcolonial African governments relied heavily on expatriates as mentors and admirers from whom a lot of intellectual inspiration or affirmation were derived.116 Many of such advisors saw the independence of countries in Africa as a new opportunity to spread their ideas. For instance, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, relied on the expert advice, of several expatriates such including Arthur Lewis, Thomas Hodgkin, and Pan-Africanist scholars such as W. E. B, Dubois, and George Padmore. Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding president also had a close circle of foreign Fabian intellectuals who had unimpeded access to him, while Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia relied on his intellectual associate John Hatch for expert advice on his Humanist Philosophy. So much was the access and influence of such expatriate advisors that African political actors and policymakers were accused of “surrounding themselves with foreign advisers” at the expense of local intellectuals.117 Indeed, because African countries’ social, economic, and political conditions were farmed in the modernization language of “lagging behind”, policymakers in the region submitted to this labeling and accepted the prevailing ideas of development seen largely in industrialization as reflected in Global North as their mission. As such, policymakers in African countries opened their doors to advisors, especially from their former colonial metropolis, to diffuse and socialize the policy processes with Keynesians’ ideas. Thus, in the early postcolonial period, Keynesian modernization ideas were spread through active and direct participation of individual policy advisors employed by the postcolonial governments to offer advice on various development policy options. Mkandawire observed that the shortage of qualified Africans with

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the requisite expertise compelled most policymakers at the time to rely on expatriates for public policy advice, and they were instrumental in designing the first generation of national development plans.118 Thus, in the early postcolonial years, reliance on foreign expertise was justified either as a response to the absence of skilled indigenous experts or, increasingly, as evidence of “the colonial mentality” which assumed that “our erstwhile colonizers knew better”.119 The deployment of such expatriates was central to the diffusion of ideas embedded in the Keynesian modernization across countries on the continent in the early years. The diffusion of neoliberal policy paradigm also involved the use of foreign expatriates, but it witnessed a deepened participation of major financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, and the use not necessary of advice but the imposition of policy ideas in a manner that took advantage of the unequal power relations as well as the economic vulnerabilities of African countries. In doing this, the World Bank and the IMF used a number of strategies. First, they attached access to financial support in the form of loans, grants, and aids for development support in African countries to adopt and implement the neoliberal policy ideas they prescribed. As Owen and Dobbin et al. argued, the force associated with policy imposition is exercised by international organizations, governments, and nongovernmental actors utilizing sanctions and threats, monopolizing information or expertise, and inducement through manipulation of economic cost and benefits strategies.120 Brooks notes that, downloading neoliberal policy options was more likely to occur in countries that benefit from loans and development assistance provided by these international financial institutions.121 As a policy diffusion strategy, coercion or imposition of the neoliberal ideas in African countries was successful largely because it involved power asymmetries that Western countries and the global financial institutions exploit to impose their policy options on African countries through threats of withholding financing assistance or inducement with attractive incentives. Secondly, the diffusion of neoliberal paradigm was also facilitated by a deliberation of actions on the part of the World Bank and the IMF who assumed unilateral leadership role by coordinating the development assistance-related actions of all other transnational actors and ensuring such assistance are filtered through the neoliberal framework. As Dobbin et al. note, unilateral policy leadership is crucial in coordinating solutions to policy problems.122 Weaker nations are more likely to follow an influential actor’s lead when the need for policy coordination arises. In doing this, the Bretton Woods Institutions ensure they have a presence in all African countries where they persistently engage policymakers and remotely whip African governments in line when necessary. With their permanent presence in African countries, these global policy actors often insect themselves into the domestic policy discourses and often push pass elected officials to take their policy ideas directly to the citizenry in a manner intended to mobilize against governments who prefer to exercise agency and policy autonomy. To further exert pressure on domestic

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policymakers, the World Bank and the IMF, as diffusers of neoliberal paradigm development, established linkages with like-minded epistemic communities, empowered to serve as the neoliberal conveyors and defenders of ideas. Therefore, it is no surprise that one of the enduring legacies of the neoliberal paradigm in African countries is the proliferation of epistemic communities in the form of think tanks that advocate policy based on neoliberalism.

Notes 1. Thandika Mkandawire, “The Spread of Economic Doctrines and Policymaking in Postcolonial Africa,” African Studies Review, 2014, 171–98. 2. Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox, “Introduction: Ideas and Politics,” Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, 2011, 3–20, pg 3. 3. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, “African Studies and Universities since Independence,” Transition: An International Review, 2009, 110–35, pg 112. 4. Zeleza. Ibid., 2009. 5. Kuhn S. Thomas and S. Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: University of Chicago Press,” Original Edition, 1962; Kuhn, Thomas, 1970. “Postscript – 1969”. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 174–210. 6. Kuhn. Ibid., 1962. 7. Norwood Russell Hanson, Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science, vol. 251 (CUP Archive, 1958); Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object. New Edition (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1960). 8. Béland and Cox, “Introduction”; Grace Darlene Skogstad, Policy Paradigms, Transnationalism, and Domestic Politics, vol. 35 (University of Toronto Press, 2011); Peter A. Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain,” Comparative Politics 25, no. 3 (1993). 9. Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain.” 10. Hall. Ibid., pg 279. 11. Ibid. 12. Bagele Chilisa, “Postcolonial Indigenous Research Paradigms,” Indigenous Research Methodologies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012), 98–127, pg 34. 13. John Hogan and Michael Howlett, Policy Paradigms in Theory and Practice: Discourses, Ideas and Anomalies in Public Policy Dynamics (Springer, 2015), pg 5. 14. Marcus Carson, “From Common Market to Social Europe?: Paradigm Shift and Institutional Change in European Union Policy on Food, Asbestos & Chemicals, and Gender Equality” (PhD Thesis, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2004). 15. Pierre-Marc Daigneault, “Reassessing the Concept of Policy Paradigm: Aligning Ontology and Methodology in Policy Studies,” Journal of European Public Policy 21, no. 3 (2014): 453–69. 16. Denis O’Sullivan, “The Concept of Policy Paradigm: Elaboration and Illumination,” The Journal of Educational Thought (JET)/Revue de La Pensée Educative, 1993, 246–72.

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17. Orion Lewis and Sven Steinmo, “Taking Evolution Seriously in Political Science,” Theory in Biosciences 129, no. 2–3 (2010): 235–45. 18. John L. Campbell, “Ideas, Politics, and Public Policy,” Annual Review of Sociology 28, no. 1 (2002): 21–38. 19. Béland and Cox, “Introduction.”, pg 3. 20. Daigneault, “Reassessing the Concept of Policy Paradigm.”, pg 461. 21. Béland and Cox, “Introduction.” 22. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Springer, 2018). 23. Keynes. Ibid. 24. Keynes. Ibid. 25. Keynes. Ibid., pg 97. 26. Keynes. Ibid. 27. Sullivan Arthur and Steven M. Sheffrin, “Economics: Principles in Action,” Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 7458 (2003): 173. 28. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. 29. Alan S. Blinder, “Through the Looking Glass: Central Bank Transparency,” 2002. 30. W. W. Rostow, “Lesson of History,” Africa Today 7, no. 7 (1960): 5–8. 31. Dean C. Tipps, “Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A Critical Perspective,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 15, no. 2 (1973): 199–226. 32. Walt Whitman Rostow, “Politics and the Stages of Growth,” Cambridge Books, 1971. 33. Rostow, “Lesson of History.” 34. John Brohman, “Universalism, Eurocentrism, and Ideological Bias in Development Studies: From Modernisation to Neoliberalism,” Third World Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1995): 121–40; Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (Routledge, 2012). 35. Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” The American Political Science Review 53, no. 1 (1959): 69–105. 36. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics 49, no. 2 (1997): 155–83; Patrick Chabal, David Anderson, and Carolyn Brown, Political Domination in Africa, vol. 50 (CUP Archive, 1986). 37. Barbara Ingham, Economics and Development (McGraw-Hill Book Company Limited, 1995). 38. William Arthur Lewis, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” 1954. 39. Lewis. Ibid. 40. Thandika Mkandawire, “Thinking About the Developmental States in Africa,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 25 (2001): 289–313; Lewis, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour.” 41. Peter Evans, “Development as Institutional Change: The Pitfalls of Monocropping and the Potentials of Deliberation,” Studies in Comparative International Development 38, no. 4 (2004): 30–52. 42. Mkandawire, “Thinking About the Developmental States in Africa.” 43. Evans, “Development as Institutional Change,” pg 30.

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44. Mkandawire, “Thinking About the Developmental States in Africa.” 45. see Thandika Mkandawire, “Institutional Monocropping and Monotasking in Africa,” Good Growth and Governance in Africa: Rethinking Development Strategies, 2012, pg 1. 46. Mkandawire, “Institutional Monocropping and Monotasking in Africa.” 47. see Kwame Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom (London: The African Publication Society, 1962). 48. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso books, 2006), pg 6. 49. Tade Akin Aina, “Introduction: How Do We Understand Globalization and Social Policy In Africa,” in Globalization and Social Policy in Africa, ed. Tade Akin Aina, Chachage S. L. Chachage, and Elisabeth Annan-Yao (Dakar, Senegal: Codesria, 2004), pg 13. 50. Michael Kpessa, Daniel Beland, and Andre Lecours, “Nationalism, Development, and Social Policy: The Politics of Nationbuilding in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 34, no. 12 (2011): 2115–33; Michael Kpessa and Daniel Beland, “Mapping Social Policy Development in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Policy Studies 34, no. 3 (2013): 326–41; Daniel Béland, Rosina Foli, and Michael Kpessa-Whyte, “Social Policy as NationBuilding: Identity Formation, Policy Feedback, and Social Citizenship in Ghana,” Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 52, no. 1 (2018): 19–36. 51. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay and Elliott Green, “Nation-Building and Conflict in Modern Africa,” World Development 45 (2013): 108–18. 52. Gaim Kibreab, Eritrea: A Dream Deferred (James Currey; Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2009), pg 44. 53. Bandyopadhyay and Green, “Nation-Building and Conflict in Modern Africa.” 54. Clive Harber, Politics in African Education (Macmillan Education, Limited, 1989), pg 145, 154. 55. Bandyopadhyay and Green, “Nation-Building and Conflict in Modern Africa.” 56. Bandyopadhyay and Green. 57. Claude Ake, “Explanatory Notes on the Political Economy of Africa,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 14, no. 1 (1976): 1–23; Mkandawire, “Thinking About the Developmental States in Africa.” 58. Africa’s Blue Economy UNECA, “A Policy Handbook,” UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Addis Ababa, 2016. 59. UNECA. 60. Mkandawire, “Institutional Monocropping and Monotasking in Africa”; HaJoon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (Anthem Press, 2002). 61. Mkandawire, “Thinking About the Developmental States in Africa.” 62. P. Thandika Mkandawire and Charles Chukwuma Soludo, Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment (Idrc, 1999); Peter Kilby and Bruce F. Johnston, Agriculture and Structural Transformation: Economic Strategies in Late-Developing Countries (Oxford University Press London, 1975). 63. Bishwanath N. Goldar, Productivity Growth in Indian Industry, 39 (Allied Publishers, 1986), pg 143.

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64. Goldar, pg 148. 65. Lester B. Pearson, “Partners in Development,” Partners in Development, 1969. 66. Colin Stoneman, “Industrialization and Self-Reliance in Zimbabwe,” Fransman, M.,(1982), Industry and Accumulation in Africa, Heinemann International Literature & Textbooks, 1982, pg 282; Andrew Coulson, “The State and Industrialization in Tanzania,” Fransman, M.,(1982), Industry and Accumulation in Africa, Heinemann International Literature & Textbooks, 1982. 67. Mkandawire, “Thinking About the Developmental States in Africa”; Reginald H. Green, “Four African Development Plans: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 3, no. 2 (1965): 249–79; Ake, “Explanatory Notes on the Political Economy of Africa.” 68. Federal Republic of Nigeria, “First National Development Plan 1962–1968” (Lagos: Federal Government Press, 1962), pg 1. 69. Kpessa, Beland, and Lecours, “Nationalism, Development, and Social Policy: The Politics of Nationbuilding in Sub-Saharan Africa.” 70. Tade Akin Aina, Chachage Seithy Chachage, and Elizebeth Annan-Yao, Globalization and Social Policy in Africa (Dakar, Senegal: Codesria, 2004); Jìmí O. Adésínà, “In Search of Inclusive Development: Introduction,” in Social Policy in Sub-Saharan African Context (Springer, 2007), 1–53. 71. Theodore W. Schultz, “Nobel Lecture: The Economics of Being Poor,” Journal of Political Economy 88, no. 4 (1980): 639–51; C. S. L. Chachage, Social Policy and Development in East Africa: The Case of Education and Labour Markets (Tanzania: University of Dar-es-Salam, 2004). 72. Adésínà, “In Search of Inclusive Development”; Kpessa, Beland, and Lecours, “Nationalism, Development, and Social Policy: The Politics of Nationbuilding in Sub-Saharan Africa.” 73. Obafemi Awolowo, “Philosophy for Independent Nigeria,” Alecture Delivered To, 1961; Adésínà, “In Search of Inclusive Development.” 74. Chachage Seithy L. Chachage, “Social Policy and Development in East Africa: The Case of Education and Labour Market Policies,” in Social Policy in SubSaharan African Context (Springer, 2007), 87–111. 75. T. Luta Maliyamkono, S. J. Wells, and Abel GM Ishumi, Higher Education and Development in Eastern Africa, 1982, pg 1. 76. Chachage, “Social Policy and Development in East Africa”; Guy Mhone, “Historical Trajectories of Social Policy in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of Zambia,” in Social Policy in a Development Context (Springer, 2004), 308–37. 77. Oka Obono, “Social Policy in the Development Context: Water, Health and Sanitation in Ghana and Nigeria,” in Social Policy in Sub-Saharan African Context (Springer, 2007), 224–45. 78. see K. Adeniji, “State Water Agencies and the Crisis of Urban Water Supply in Nigeria,” Aqua (London), no. 5 (1985): 33. 79. Obono, “Social Policy in the Development Context.” 80. Aina, Chachage, and Annan-Yao, Globalization and Social Policy in Africa; Adésínà, “In Search of Inclusive Development.” 81. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (OUP Oxford, 2009). 82. McLean and McMillan.

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83. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, Ed. Alan Ryan,” London and New York: Penguin, 2006; Jan Harald Alnes and Manuel Toscano, Varieties of Liberalism: Contemporary Challenges (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). 84. Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World (Macmillan, 2008). 85. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pg 2. 86. see Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Markets in the Name of Socialism: The LeftWing Origins of Neoliberalism (UNIV CHICAGO PRESS 1427 E 60TH ST, CHICAGO, IL 60637–2954 USA, 2014). 87. Taylor C. Boas and Jordan Gans-Morse, “Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan,” Studies in Comparative International Development 44, no. 2 (2009): 139. 88. Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness, Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education (Oxford University Press, 2019). 89. Simon Springer, Kean Birch, and Julie MacLeavy, Handbook of Neoliberalism (Routledge, 2016), pg 2. 90. Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy. 91. Sanford Lakoff, “Democracy: History, Theory,” Practice, 1996, pg 32. 92. Adam Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990, vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press, 2000); Antonio Franceschet, Kant and Liberal Internationalism (Springer, 2002); Beate Jahn, “Kant, Mill, and Illiberal Legacies in International Affairs,” International Organization, 2005, 177–207; Michael W. Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1983, 205–35. 93. Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa (Brookings institution press, 2001). 94. Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy. 95. Diamond. Ibid. 96. Simon Springer, “Neoliberalism and Geography: Expansions, Variegations, Formations,” Geography Compass 4, no. 8 (2010): 1025. 97. Boas and Gans-Morse, “Neoliberalism.” 98. Thandika Mkandawire, “Adjustment, Political Conditionality and Democratisation in Africa,” in From Adjustment to Development in Africa (Springer, 1994), 155–73. 99. Mkandawire. Ibid., 1994. 100. Mkandawire, “Institutional Monocropping and Monotasking in Africa.” 101. Mkandawire. Ibid. 102. Obono, “Social Policy in the Development Context.” 103. Mkandawire, “The Spread of Economic Doctrines and Policymaking in Postcolonial Africa”; Mkandawire, “Thinking About the Developmental States in Africa”; Yothin Jinjarak, Gonzalo Salinas, and Yvonne M. Tsikata, “The Effect of World Bank Trade Adjustment Assistance on Trade and Growth, 1987– 2004: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?,” Economic Systems 37, no. 3 (2013): 415–30. 104. James D. Wolfensohn, “Proposal for a Comprehensive Development Framework [for World Bank Policy]: A Discussion Draft,” 1998, pg 11–12.

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105. Kwadwo Konadu-Agyemang, ed., IMF and World Bank Sponsored Structural Adjustment Programs in Africa: Ghana’s Experience, 1983–1999 (Burlington, USA: Ashgate, 2001). 106. See Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy”; D. Rueschemeyer, E. H. Stephens, and J. D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics 55, no. 4 (2003). 107. Issa G. Shivji, “The Silences in the NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa,” Africa Development 31, no. 4 (2006): 22–51. 108. Tom Young, “Introduction: Elections and Electoral Politics in Africa,” Africa 63, no. 3 (1993): 299–312. 109. Thandika Mkandawire, “From the National Question to the Social Question,” Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 69, no. 1 (2009): 130–60; Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa. 110. Shivji, “The Silences in the NGO Discourse.” 111. Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder; Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies, and the Threat to the Developing World (Random House Business New York, 2007). 112. Kurt Weyland, “Theories of Policy Diffusion: Lesson from Latin American Pension Reform,” World Politics 57 (2005). 113. Cavadonga Meseguer, “What Role for Learning? The Diffusion of Privatization in OECD and Latin American Countries,” Public Policy 24, no. 3 (2004). 114. Rose McDermott, “The Psychological Ideas of Amos Tversky and Their Relevance for Political Science,” Theoretical Politics 13, no. 1 (2001). 115. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Subjective Probability: A Judgment of Representativeness,” in Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, ed. Kahneman Daniel et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pg 32. 116. Thandika Mkandawire, “Non-Organic Intellectuals and ‘Learning’in PolicyMaking Africa,” Learning in Development Co-Operation, 2000, 205. 117. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “The Emergence and Trajectories of Struggles for an’African University’: The Case of Unfinished Business of African Epistemic Decolonisation,” Kronos 43, no. 1 (2017): 63. 118. Mkandawire, “The Spread of Economic Doctrines and Policymaking in Postcolonial Africa.” 119. Mkandawire, “Non-Organic Intellectuals and ‘Learning’in Policy-Making Africa”; Mkandawire, “From the National Question to the Social Question.” 120. J. M. J. Owen, “Foreign Impostion of Domestic Institutions,” International Organization 56 (2002): 317–407; Frank Dobbin, Beth Simmons, and Geoffrey Garrett, “The Global Diffusion of Publi Policies: Social Construction, Coercion, Competition or Learning?,” Annual Review of Sociology 33, no. 21 (2007): 1–23. 121. Sarah Brooks, “Social Protection and Economic Integration: The Policies of Pension Reform in an Era of Capital Mobility,” Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 5 (2002): 491–523. 122. Dobbin, Simmons, and Garrett, “The Global Diffusion of Publi Policies: Social Construction, Coercion, Competition or Learning?”

Part IV

Africa in International Relations

CHAPTER 25

The African Union’s Pursuit of Pax Africana: From Continental Cadet to Globally Revered Generalissimo? Marcel Nagar

Introduction The international system, and Africa’s prospective position therein, has altered drastically since the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolizing the end of the Cold War in 1989. Since then, the past three decades has brought with it the replacement of a unipolar international order (characterized by American dominance), with that of a multipolar international system wherein power has been diffused among competing states: The United States (US) has, thus, seen its global dominance challenged by great-power competition characterized by the “rise of the rest”—notably China, India, and Russia—all who have a stake in molding multilateral institutions to reflect respective geopolitical interests.1 Multilateral institutional mechanisms, founded on liberal principles designed to manage the post-World War II bipolar world, are now being called into question as relics ill-suited and ill-equipped to the rapidly changing multipolar global order: The United Nations (UN), an example of one such institution, regarded as a shining beacon of multilateralism for the maintenance of international peace and security since 1945, has come under immense pressure for its inability to maintain a rules-based system and reach common ground in an increasingly divided multipolar world; thereby failing in its role as an international guarantor of peace.

M. Nagar (B) University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_25

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The multipolarity indicative within the current changing international system has brought to the fore the rise of nations within the Global South and, alongside that, an increase awareness of the need for African agency in global politics. Within the domain of international peace and security, increased greatpower competition coupled with the challenges of multilateralism has gave risen to the resurgence of Pax Africana on the African continent. These developments have ultimately led to the African Union’s (AU) institutionalization of peace and security under the banner of Pax Africana. This chapter is predominantly concerned with assessing Africa’s pursuit of Pax Africana—a call for which was made by the late Kenyan political scientist, Ali Mazrui (1933–2014) in his 1967 seminal work, “Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition,” wherein he builds a case for the emancipation of Africa from its colonial past.2 Pax Africana, as an idea, asserts that, “the peace of Africa is to be assured by the exertions of Africans themselves…”3 Mazrui’s seminal work was chiefly preoccupied with showcasing the ideals of Pax Africana as being foremost at the center of African political thought.4 For this reason, his initial conception of Pax Africana was not accompanied by any prescribed institutional framework.5 However, in light of the failure of Africa to achieve Pax Africana beginning in the 1960s up until the 1990s, African leaders sought to give greater credence to the idea of Pax Africana at the start of the new millennium. This was done through the construction of various institutional (notably, the transformation of the Organization of African Unity [OAU] to the AU) and normative frameworks (the shift away from the principle of non-interference to non-difference) which accompanied the establishment of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) in 2002. While Mazrui’s 1967 classical work promoted the idea of Pax Africana, this chapter will argue that within the current geopolitically competitive climate, the concept of Pax Africana has surpassed that of an ideal and has increasingly become regarded as a necessity institutionalized within the AU’s APSA. More than that, this chapter maintains that the rise in geopolitical competition— notably, the marked shift in power balances as a result of the rise of China, India, and a resurgent Russia—provides Africa with a momentous window of opportunity to leverage its global standing and finally realize Pax Africana. In so doing, this chapter will demonstrate that the rise of the OAU/AU role in Africa’s peacemaking has closely followed key events which have triggered changes not only within the international arena, but also normative shifts within the peace and security discourse. The ever-changing global arena (following the independence of Africa from colonial rule as well as the end of the Cold War) and key events, such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has brought to fore the increasing reluctance of the UN and former colonial powers, on the one hand, as well as Africa’s incapacity, on the other hand, to manage Africa’s numerous, complex, and intractable conflicts. Consequently, “African ownership” and “responsibility” of the peace and security on the continent grew in importance among African leaders. Although AU has made

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many inroads toward the realization of Pax Africana at the start of the twentyfirst century, APSA’s long-standing inoperability has ultimately jeopardized the full achievement thereof. In arriving at this argument, the remainder of this chapter is presented in four parts: This first section conceptually defines Pax Africana. It does so by providing a historical overview of the emergence of the concept by drawing on Mazrui’s closely related concept of “racial sovereignty” and his discussion of Africa’s perpetual state of “neo-alignment” experienced in its postindependence period, and as depicted in the 1960–1965 Congo Crisis. Secondly, this chapter explores Africa’s initial pursuit of Pax Africana, beginning from the birth of the concept in the 1960s up until the 1990s. Here, it will show that Africa’s achievement of Pax Africana during this period was obstructed by the following three factors: Firstly, the Cold War Superpower rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union, which found its expression in the numerous proxy wars waged on the continent. Secondly, the ineffectiveness of the OAU to respond to Africa’s intra-state conflicts in the Post-Cold War period. Thirdly, the failure and growing reluctance of the UN to act as an international guarantor of peace and security on the African continent, particularly during the 1990s. The third section analyses the AU’s institutionalization of Pax Africana within APSA. The analysis is presented in two parts: The first part interrogates the normative shifts which underpinned the OAU’s transformation to the AU in 2002, culminating in the establishment of APSA. The second part provides an assessment of the progress which the AU has made in the operationalization of APSA by reviewing each of its five institutional pillars: The AU Peace and Security Council (PSC), the Panel of the Wise (PoW), the African Standby Force (ASF), the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS), and the Peace Fund. The fourth concluding section outlines the overarching internal and external factors which still threaten Africa’s achievement of Pax Africana in the twenty-first century and provides recommendations as to the way forward.

Pax Africana: Origin and Conceptual Definition The idea and concept of “Pax Africana” denotes the conviction that Africa should assume full responsibility and ownership for the maintenance of peace and security on the continent without relying on the intervention from external actors. It advocates for Africa to adopt the role of its own “continental policeman” in dealing with its internal disputes. Mazrui’s idea and concept of Pax Africana is closely related to his principle of “racial sovereignty” which calls for the self-determination of the Third World. The principle of racial sovereignty asserts that only indigenous people can legally rule postcolonial states and that Africans cannot be ruled over or controlled by non-Africans on their own land. As such, Mazrui considers colonial rule to be an act of “permanent aggression” and consequently “a violation of racial sovereignty.”6 He

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sought to broaden the conceptualization of colonial rule from being regarded as merely “illegitimate sovereignty” to take on an expanded and more accurate, legal status of “illegal sovereignty.”7 Likewise, Mazrui contended that, “if it was illegal to usurp the sovereignty of a people of different color, it could not be illegal to attempt the restoration of that sovereignty.”8 In advancing his principle of racial sovereignty, Mazrui asserted that: “For many nationalists in Africa and Asia the right to sovereignty was not merely for nation-states recognizable as such in a Western sense but for ‘peoples’ recognizable as such in a racial sense, particularly where differences of color were manifest.”9 However, despite the seemingly controversial nature of Mazrui’s 1967 study, Richard Sklar (1969) notes that the idea and concept of Pax Africana is by no means intended to be used as a “racial conception.”10 Sklar explains that African liberals often used the terms “European” and “white man” interchangeably and the assertion of racial sovereignty in Africa is simply a denunciation of European domination.11 Moreover, the concept of Pax Africana, taken together with the principle of racial sovereignty, is intended to denote the liberation of Africa from its colonial ties. It is, thus, not concerned with racial supremacy or exclusivity. In sum, African liberation and sovereignty can only ever be truly achieved if its rulers are indigenous to the continent. On this basis, the colonial rule cannot be regarded as legal, and, similarly, any revolt against it cannot be deemed illegal. Grounded in the principle of racial sovereignty, Pax Africana considers intra-African intervention within its internal conflicts as more legitimate than those undertaken by actors and international bodies external to Africa. The concept of Pax Africana surpasses race and pigmentation in so far as it relates specifically to the military component of the principle of “continental jurisdiction.” Hence, it is chiefly preoccupied with the development of its own continental intervention force; comprised of African troops; and funded entirely by African financiers, which will have the sufficient military, technical, and logistical capacity to respond and resolve internal African disputes on its own terms and without the external reliance from outsiders. Taken together, then, Pax Africana can be defined, “as a triumph of continental jurisdiction, and perhaps of racial sovereignty”12 which emphasizes that matters relating to African peace and security should be exclusively a continental concern. Mazrui’s idea of Pax Africana sought to replace the then-antiquated Pax Britannica, and differs from the latter in that it does not seek to dominate or enforce peace on others. Rather, it calls on Africa to be the caretaker of its own peace and security by addressing the root causes of its intractable conflicts. Although there is a place for international organizations, such as the United Nations (UN), to supplement Africa’s peacekeeping efforts—it should be entirely propelled by Africa’s own resources and initiatives and, more importantly, rely on African thought, as oppose to Western models, in translating the idea of peace into practical reality.13 Mazrui’s arguments for continental unity through the achievement of Pax Africana arose in response to the challenge which African states faced in

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securing Pan-Africanism and non-alignment at the time of his 1967 study. Africa’s efforts were thwarted by its enduring reliance on the West to manage its peacekeeping which subsequently left Africa in a perpetual state of “neoalignment.”14 Mazrui cites the persistent relationship between Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial governments in Africa and their former colonial rulers, Britain and France, as examples of “neo-alignment”: For example, the 1964 British military intervention in East Africa to subdue army mutinies as well as the pervasiveness of British troops throughout the armies of the Commonwealth member states in Africa.15 To a lesser degree, Francophone Africa chose to, “compromise a little of its non-alignment for the sake of economic advantage,”16 through its connections with the European Economic Community (ECC). The 1960–1965 Congo Crisis is also presented by Mazrui as a complex case of “neo-alignment,” which not only highlighted East–West animosities at play during the Cold War, but also brought to light the failure of the UN— acting through the parochial interests of the P-5—to serve as an impartial guarantor of peace and security within the strategically geopolitically important and wealthiest province of Katanga. The United Nations Operations in the Congo (ONUC) began in 1960 and was mandated to supervise the withdrawal of Belgian troops from the country, following its independence from Belgium in June of the same year, and to prevent an impending outbreak of civil war.17 On July 11, 1960, Moise Tshombe, a pro-Western leader and American ally, declared the mineral-rich Katanga province an independent nation. He did so with the military support of the Belgians, French, and British, despite a UN regulation explicitly forbidding countries from backing secessionist movements. The newly elected pan-African Prime Minister of the Congo at the time, Patrice Lumumba, appealed to the UN troops to end the secessionist movement. The initial refusal of the UN to do so—on the basis that the secession was an internal matter—brought about the perception that the UN Security Council (UNSC), headed by the Swedish UN SecretaryGeneral (UNSG), Dag Hammarskjöld, were siding with the West in a proxy war in an effort to gain control of the Congo.18 It also prompted Lumumba to seek weapons and military advisors from the Soviets. Increasing skepticism toward the international body came to a head in January 1961, following the UN’s inability to prevent the assassination of Lumumba. The assassination of Lumumba was orchestrated by the US and Belgian governments, with the aid of his Congolese rivals and carried out by a Belgian execution squad—who later apologized for their involvement in 2002.19 The UN acceded to intervene in the situation in Katanga and passed Resolution 161 which granted the UN troops authority to take offensive measures in putting an end to Tshombe’s secessionist movement. This it did, and in January 1963, the UN, together with the US support, defeated the Katangan military, and had Tshombe step down as president. US maintained its influence in the Congo thereafter, and used its clout to not only exile Tshombe, but also in backing the ousting the President Joseph Kasavubu in

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1965 in favor of its very own despotic candidate, Joseph Désiré Mobutu (who came to be known as Mobutu Sese Seko). The Congo Crisis, thus, serves as an illustrative example of the inability of African political actors to resolve internal disputes without the need to call for external assistance and its subsequent failure to achieve “continental jurisdiction” in matters relating to continental peace and security: Lumumba, in requesting UN troops in 1961 and subsequently acquiring Soviet weapons for the Congolese arms and, Tshombe, in the hiring of European mercenaries within the Katanga army.20 More than that, it aggravated Africa’s general mistrust of the role of UNSC and P-5 in Africa, thus prompting the establishment of its own continental body in 1963: The OAU.

Exploring Africa’s Initial Pursuit of Pax Africana (1960s–1990s) Africa’s initial quest for Pax Africana, beginning from the birth of the Mazruian in 1967 up until the late 1990s, had been met with very little success. Firstly, the failure of Africa to serve as its own “continental policeman,” was overshadowed by the Cold War (1947–1991) superpower rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union which saw Africa taking center stage for some of the bloodiest proxy wars claiming the lives of 10 million African people. African states were used as proxies by the two global superpowers in their skirmishes with each other. The two superpowers both pursued geopolitical strategies and foreign policies in which they offered support to African governments who shared and backed their respective ideologies; that is, the West’s capitalism and the Communist Bloc’s socialism. For Mazrui, the achievement of Pax Africana during the Cold War required that African nations avoid, “military bases or quasi-military entanglement with either the US, the Soviet Union, or Communist China each on its own.”21 During the period of the Cold War, Africa struggled to achieve Pax Africana as it saw itself becoming the object of the respective containment strategies of the East and the West, who used the power vacuums formed during Africa’s independence struggles as an opportunity to flood Africa with arms and provide political support and military training to local despots, thereby inadvertently encouraging authoritarian rule throughout the continent.22 The above-mentioned case study of the Congo Crisis from 1960 to 1965 demonstrated the competition between the Western and Eastern bloc over the control of Congo’s rich uranium mines in the Katanga province during its precarious initial period of decolonization. Similarly, there were other significant proxy wars waged in other parts of Africa which detracted from the achievement of Pax Africana during the Cold War. For starters, during the 1970s, the Ogaden War (July 1977–March 1978) represented a proxy war which demonstrated the direct conflict between the US and the Soviet Union within the Horn of Africa.23 The Ogaden War was an eighth-month long conflict fought between Ethiopia and Somalia over the

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territorial control of the disputed Ogaden region in Ethiopia. The basis for the conflict stemmed from the partitioning of the Horn of Africa prior to World War II, which left many ethnic Somalis displaced in the surrounding countries of Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Eritrea. The Ogaden War represented a significant Cold War proxy war, firstly, because it saw a shift in alliances of Somalia’s President Siad Barre from the Soviet Union toward the US in 1977. President Barre’s denunciation of the Soviet Union came about after the Soviet Union’s decision in 1976 to redirect its primary support from Somalia in favor of Ethiopia’s Marxist-Leninist radicalized military group, the Derg, led by a “self-proclaimed Marxist,” Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.24 The withdrawal of Soviet support to Somalia prompted President Barre to appeal to the West for defensive weapons. However, the US President Carter refused to engage in an arms race in the Horn of Africa by supplying the Somali’s with arms, particularly in the aftermath of its controversial, long, and costly involvement in the Vietnam War.25 The Ogaden War was ultimately won by the Ethiopians (who had the backing of both the Soviets and the Cubans) and the Somali troops were forced to withdraw from Ethiopia in March 1978. The American public criticized the Carter administration’s policy stance on the Ogaden War and failure to support Somalia as an act of promoting “Soviet adventurism” within the Horn of Africa.26 Thus, the Ogaden War was further significant within the context of the Cold War as its outcome (regarded as a victory for communism) brought about the collapse of the precarious détente between the US and the Soviet Union (having developed in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis) and plunged the superpowers into the second phase of the Cold War. Similarly, during the 1970s and 1980s, Cold War rivalry found its expression in the late decolonization of Southern Africa.27 The Angolan Civil War (1975–2002) serves as one of the most prominent examples of a Cold War proxy war in Africa and emerged out of the 1974–1975 Angolan Crisis. The Angolan Crisis saw the creation of a power vacuum following the overthrow of Portuguese colonial rule on April 25, 1974 and the withdrawal of Portuguese troops following Angola’s official independence on November 11, 1975. The Angolan Civil War was centered on the conflict between three warring military movements: The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front of Liberation of Angola (FNLA), and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). On the one hand, it involved the external intervention of the US, apartheid-era of South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC and formerly known at the time as Zaire) and China—who all sought to curtail the spread of communism in the Global South by supporting FNLA and UNITA, respectively.28 On the other hand, the Angolan Civil War included the external involvement of Cuba and the Soviet Union whom both backed the Marxist MPLA.29 Angola’s abundant natural resources was an important factor within its 27year-long civil war: Not only were both ideological camps determined not to let Angola’s rich mineral reserves (consisting of oil, iron, copper, bauxite, diamonds and uranium) fall into the hands of the other, but these reserves

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were exploited as an ongoing source of funding for the war.30 By 1992, Angola’s diamond mines fell under the control of UNITA who financed its military operations through the sale of diamonds totaling US$3.72 billion.31 Angola’s Civil War came to an end in 2002, following the assassination of UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi on February 22, 2002 at the hands of government soldiers.32 It claimed the lives of 500,000 people and left the country politically and economically ravaged.33 To a large extent, the Angolan Civil War destabilized the region of Southern Africa—resulting in the spillover of militants and refugees in a number of neighboring countries (such as the DRC and Zambia).34 The Angolan Civil War became closely intertwined with the South African Border War (1966–1990), which was fought close to the Angola– Namibia border as well as the 1998s Congo War, due to the preexisting ties between UNITA and the Mobutu government.35 Mazrui had noted that within the context of the Cold War, Western powers could be pursuing their individual parochial interests above that of their particular Cold War ideological strategies—with the Western economic interests in the mineral-rich Katanga province and the diamond and oil-rich Angola, being cases in point.36 Likewise, the Soviet Union’s relationship with Somalia, which predated the Ogaden War, stemmed from the geostrategic importance it placed on the port of Berbera—which is upgraded to a military base to safeguard its interests within the Horn of Africa and gave it direct access to the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, thereby facilitating and increasing export trade with oil-rich Arab nations during the 1970s.37 The ineffectiveness of the OAU’s security mechanism to respond to the rise of Africa’s intra-state conflicts in the post-Cold War period is offered as a second factor which hindered the achievement of Pax Africana between the 1960s up until the 1990s. The OAU was considered to be a “statist intergovernmental organization,” grounded in the principle of non-interference, and chiefly preoccupied with the liberation of the African continent from colonial and apartheid rule.38 Its peacekeeping operations were, thus, restricted to the settlment of border disputes and the mediation of ideological spats resulting from the Cold War. It was very much ill-prepared to respond to the rapid rise in the number of intra-state conflicts which begun to emerge throughout the continent during this period. The OAU’s first military mission was deployed in Chad in December 1981.39 However, due to challenges ranging from logistics and insufficient financial resources, its mission was short-lived and the OAU subsequently had to withdraw from its mission in June 1982.40 Although the 1963 OAU Charter enshrined the “wellbeing of the African peoples,”41 it soon became labeled as a “club of dictators”42 whose parochial interests and decision-making procedures bypassed the lived experiences of African people. African leaders at this time capitalized on the principle of national sovereignty and the accompanying principle of non-interference which effectively entrenched “political tyranny and dictatorship” in their individual countries.43 The OAU was heavily criticized for protecting its member states at the expense of its people by turning a blind eye to human

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rights violations and violence targeted at civilians by African governments.44 Consequently, toward the end of the 1970s, a number of OAU bureaucrats and African leaders rallied around the idea of reforming the OAU’s principle of non-interference.45 Presidents Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, on a number of occasions, requested that a new OAU charter be drafted which responded to the prevalence of human rights atrocities and violence against civilians committed at the hands of African governments.46 However, these petitions failed to overturn the image of the OAU as a continental body unwilling to safeguard the physical safety and human rights of African people.47 As noted, then, the conclusion of the Cold War did not bring about a lasting peace on the African continent. Rather, the waging of numerous proxy wars on the part of the superpowers exacerbated marginalization, fueled civil wars, and displaced entire societies in Africa.48 The end of ideological battle between the West and the East also saw the superpowers and their allies retracting from their previous involvement within Africa’s conflict, thus, clearing the stage for the UN to intervene and manage Africa’s local conflicts. However, the inability of the UN to effectively manage Africa’s conflicts in the post-Cold War period is presented by this chapter as the third explanatory factor accounting for the failure of Pax Africana from the 1960s up until the 1990s. The United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM II) between March 1993 and March 1995 and the United Nations Assisted Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) from 1993 to 1996 are two key illustrative examples which showcased the world body’s disconnect from the continent in terms of its poor understanding of the root causes of Africa’s complex and intractable conflicts—knowledge which is required when arriving at an appropriate resolution. Moreover, these two examples illustrate the waning political will and reluctance of the UN as well as troop-contributing members to risk endangering the lives of their troops in securing peace on the African continent. UNOSOM II was authorized by the UNSC in March 1993 and was mandated to establish peace, stability, and law order conducive to receiving humanitarian aid and to mediate a political settlement between the warring political factions in the Somali Civil War.49 The Somali Civil is an ongoing war that began in 1991 in the aftermath of Somalia’s defeat in the Ogaden War and saw the weakening and overthrow of Barre’s regime in the face of rising clan pressures. The Somali Civil War was waged between the Somali National Army (SNA) and the Somali National Front (SNF) fighting for political control against a coalition of armed rebel groups which included: The Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), the Somali National Movement (SNM), the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM), and the United Somali Congress (USC). UNOSOM II was arguably unsuccessful in fully meeting its mandate due to its inadequate strategic knowledge of Somalia’s local culture and terrain and, more importantly, an absence of consent and buy-in from the warring political factions for the UN to deploy its troops. As such, the Somali rival factions had

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not yet reached a “mutually hurting stalemate”50 wherein all warring parties, “find themselves locked in a conflict from which they cannot escalate to victory and this deadlock is painful to them both,”51 and concede to a peace-plan. UNOSOM II came to an abrupt end in March 1995 when the US and European participants (Belgium, France, and Sweden) withdrew their peacekeeping forces following the deaths of 18 American soldiers in October 1993 as a result of a firefight with Somali militiamen in what came to be known as the “Battle of Mogadishu.” The UN’s intervention brought to light an important lesson that would come to have severe implications for its concurrent mission in Rwanda: “… apparently, Western democracies were incapable of sustaining significant losses of their soldiers in faraway places without clear strategic value.”52 Following from the deaths of ten Belgian soldiers in April 1994 at the hands of Hutu militias in the initial lead up to the genocide, the UNSC (at the insistence of the US and Britain) withdrew 3500 of its UNAMIR troops from Rwanda. In its place, UNAMIR was reduced to 250 troops who were mandated to maintain the then collapsing peace between the Hutu and Tutsi camps. UNAMIR, reduced to a skeleton contingent, was thus ill-equipped, under-resourced, and unauthorized to intervene in the ensuing genocide which claimed 800 000, predominantly Tutsi, lives. The UNSC would not consider intervening to prevent and stop the outbreak of genocide in Rwanda, citing “limited experience in protecting civilians, and doctrinal poverty” which limited its response to “the conventional dichotomy of Chapter VI versus Chapter VII.”53 Prior to 1994, the UNSC was never met with an option of protecting civilians against acts of genocidal violence. Nevertheless, the UN’s diminishing enthusiasm to intervene in Africa’s internal conflicts came to the fore in Rwanda—where it failed dismally as an international guarantor of peace. Nevertheless, in spite of Africa’s initial pursuit of Pax Africana and irrespective of the UN’s ineptitude in maintaining peace and security on the continent, African governments maintained their commitment to and stood firmly behind the world body, which in turn, “safeguarded their independence through its promotion of the principle of the sovereign equality of all states”54 —a crucial determining factor for newly independent African states who jealously guarded over their national sovereignty.

The African Union’s Institutionalization of Pax Africana: The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) Interrogating APSA’s Underpinning Normative and Institutional Frameworks Following a slew of criticisms which the OAU’s security mechanism received for its ineffectiveness in managing Africa’s conflicts during the Cold War, by 1990 the continental body acknowledged that it, “cannot be indifferent to

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the internal conflicts that spread death and sorrow and ruin member states and sway them away from their efforts to foster their socio-economic development.”55 The change in the nature of conflicts in the Post-Cold War era from inter- to intra-state conflicts necessitated a redefinition in the concept of security which places less emphasis on the traditional state-centric and greater emphasis on the human aspect of security. It also prompted a change in the thinking on the part of the OAU whereby human security came to be regarded as a prerequisite for economic development and integration.56 The OAU, thus, sought to reform its security mechanism to allow for it to assume this expanded peacemaking role. As a result of these developments, the OAU established its Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, and Resolution, in 1993, with the task of monitoring internal conflicts on the continent. The OAU’s peacemaking efforts and reforms were praised by member states at the 1993 UN General Assembly who commended it for complementing the UN missions in South Africa, Somalia, and Rwanda, as well as undertaking its own missions undertaken in Burundi, Congo, Angola, and Liberia.57 However, the tide soon turned in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which the OAU’s security mechanism found itself once again on the receiving end of criticisms. A report presented by the OAU’s “International Panel of Eminent Personalities (IPEP) to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events” critiqued the role of the continental body for its lack of member state commitment, overreliance on external financial and military support, and insufficient capacity and resources in dealing with the conflict.58 In particular, section III: C. 22 of the report advised that the OAU, “establish appropriate structures to enable it to enforce the peace in conflict situations.”59 The initial decision to establish the AU was taken at the 1999 Extraordinary Summit (Sirte) of the OAU. At the time, it was clear that the OAU had exhausted its primary mandate of liberating the African continent from colonial and apartheid rule. This decision was followed by the adoption of the Constitutive Act of the AU at the 2000 Lomé Summit and was officially launched at the Durban Summit of 2002. The transformation of the OAU to the AU saw a shift from an interstate to an integration organization which was of the view that, “the scourge of conflicts in Africa constitutes a major impediment to the socio-economic development of the continent and of the need to promote peace, security and stability as a pre-requisite for the implementation of our development and integration agenda.”60 The establishment of the AU sought to correct the inadequacies of the OAU by placing greater emphasis on “peace and security, human rights, democracy and intervention.”61 Moreover, its establishment saw a swift departure from the OAU’s ideology of anti-colonialism and its preoccupation with the preservation of national sovereignty rooted in the principle of non-interference.62 While the OAU Charter regarded sovereignty as “sacrosanct and almost absolute,”63 the AU Charter sought to redefine the principle of sovereignty by restricting its application. This is seen in the move from the OAU’s principle of non-interference

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toward the AU’s principle of non-indifference and legalized in Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act. Article 4(h) enables the AU to, “intervene in a member state pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.”64 This particular normative shift was largely prompted by the 1994 Rwandan genocide which highlighted the need for a legal basis for state intervention as well as the need for the accompanying military capacity for intervention. It imposed on African states the obligation to intervene to prevent and stop gross human rights violations on the continent. In building a case for the need of Pax Africana within the APSA, the AU’s Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ambassador Said Djinnit noted in 2004: “No more, never again. Africans cannot watch the tragedies developing in the continent and say it is the UN’s responsibility or somebody else’s responsibility. We have moved from the concept of non-interference to non-indifference. We cannot as Africans remain indifferent to the tragedy of our people.”65 As such, the transformation of the OAU to the AU saw a shift from regime security towards collective security whereby the AU Charter expressed its “commitment to an interventionist peace and security regime.”66 Realizing Pax Africana Through APSA? An Overview In part of the broader normative shifts which accompanied the transformation of the OAU to the AU, the AU adopted the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the AU on July 9, 2002, which entered into force on December 26, 2003.67 The PSC Protocol elaborated on the AU’s new, all-encompassing agenda for continental peace and security which included: “conflict prevention, early warning and preventative diplomacy, peace-making and peace building, the encouragement and promotion of democratic practices, intervention, humanitarian action and disaster management.”68 The creation of APSA took place and emerged in part as a product of the IPEP’s recommendations and as a result of the broader normative shifts which accompanied the transformation of the OAU to the AU in 2002.69 The PSC Protocol made provisions for the establishment of APSA to support the AU’s wide agenda for continental peace and security. In many ways, APSA is regarded as the institutionalization of Pax Africana at the start of the twenty-first century. According to Article 2 of the PSC Protocol, APSA is erected on the five following institutional pillars: The PSC, the Panel of the Wise (PoW), the African Standby Force (ASF), the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS), and the Peace Fund. In line with the AU’s decentralized approach to conflict management, Article 16 of the PSC Protocol makes provision for a working relationship between APSA and Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs)—referred to by the Protocol as Regional Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention, Management, and Resolution (RMs)—in an effort to harmonize and coordinate with the peace and security operations of each respective RM

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with the Union and to further strengthen activities and objectives of APSA.70 Beyond that, Article 7 of the PSC Protocol also acknowledges the need for cooperation between the AU and other international organizations such as the UN and the European Union (EU) in fostering a robust, “partnership for peace and security” in mitigating Africa’s conflicts.71 Strong international and regional partnerships are essential to the peace and security activities of APSA—and, arguably, affords the PSC significant leverage in fulfilling its mandate. APSA has been designed to function as an “interlocking system” whereby each pillar fulfills its role consecutively; beginning with the data derived from CEWS, followed by the advice and recommendations of the PoW, and lastly by the deployment of the ASF. In this way, all pillars are geared toward the prevention, management, and resolution of Africa’s conflicts.72 The implementation of APSA has undergone two reviews in (2010 and again, in 2014) and to date, has yet to become fully operational. The 2014 APSA assessment produced the current APSA Roadmap 2016–2020 which is a planned document that outlines five strategic objectives and related indicators (conflict prevention, crisis/conflict management, post-conflict reconstruction and peace building, strategic security issues, and coordination and partnerships) with the goal of having APSA fully operational by 2020.73 Below is an assessment of the progress which each of the five institutional pillars has achieved to date in the implementation of APSA: i. The African Union Peace and Security Council (PSC) The PSC, regarded as the “nerve centre of APSA,”74 is the highest decision-making authority on matters of peace and security in Africa. The PSC decides on matters relating to the prevention, management, and resolution of conflicts in Africa. Provisions for the establishment of the PSC were adopted at the inaugural assembly of the AU in Durban in 2002 and the PSC became fully operational in May 2004. The main objective of the PSC is to provide, “a collective security and early warning arrangement to facilitate timely and efficient response to conflict and crisis situations in Africa.”75 More specifically, under Article 7 of the AU PSC Protocol, the PSC is mandated to: “anticipate and prevent disputes and conflicts, as well as policies that may lead to genocide and crimes against humanity; undertake peace-making and peace-building functions in order to resolve conflicts where they have occurred; authorize the mounting and deployment of peace support missions; recommend to the assembly intervention in a member state in respect of grave circumstances as provided for in Article (h) of the Constitutive Act; and support and facilitate humanitarian action in situations of armed conflicts or major natural disasters.”76 The PSC is made up of 15 member states; of which 10 are elected for a two-year term and the remaining five are elected for a three-year

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term. PSC members are elected to ensure equitable regional representation according to the criteria outlined in Article 5(2) of the PSC Protocol. All member states have equal voting rights on proposed resolutions and decisions are arrived at by consensus. In the event that a consensus cannot be reached, decisions on procedural issues are arrived at by a simple majority and a two-thirds majority for substantive issues. The work of the PSC is underpinned by the PSC Secretariat which is mandated under Article 10(4) to provide the Council with operational support and technical expertise and is based in the Department of Peace and Security of the AU Commission. The PSC holds meetings and briefings at Ambassador, Ministerial, and Heads of State and Government levels to address conflicts and crisis. The PSC is chaired by an ambassadorial representative of the Council which is rotated on a monthly basis. In addition, the work of the PSC is complemented at a regional level with similar structures erected within the following RMs77 : The Committee on Peace and Security of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). The PSC counterpart in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is the troika of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defense, and Security. While the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has no PSC equivalent, its Assembly of the Heads of State of Government, and the Council of Ministers act in this capacity. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) boasts a robust Mediation and Security Council (MSC). Under its 2013 revised treaty, the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) has made provisions for a permanent Peace and Security Council. Similarly, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) has as its PSC counterpart, the Conseil de Paix et de Securité del’Afrique Centrale (Central African Peace and Security Council [COPAX]). The operations of the PSC have grown immensely since its inception and it has made numerous inroads in charting Africa’s own peace and security course. It has notably contributed to the resolution of conflicts, perhaps where its predecessor, the OAU, could not. These conflicts include: “Somalia, Burundi, Mali, the Democratic republic of the Congo, Comoros, Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire and actively involved with the relevant RECs to address threats and conflicts in their regions, for instance in the Central African Republic (CAR), Guinea Bissau, Sudan, South Sudan, Guinea, Niger, Kenya and Mauritania.”78 Nevertheless, according to the APSA Roadmap 2016–2020, the PSC suffers from the following challenges which include: A lack of enforcement and compliance mechanisms for decisions made; limited interaction between the PSC and its regional counterparts; insufficient capacity of the PSC Secretariat to effectively fulfill its task; and poor coordination between

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the PSC, PoW, and the Chairperson’s Special Envoys, Representatives, and Mediators.79 ii. The Panel of the Wise (PoW) The PoW is a consultative body of the AU, comprised of five members who each serve three-year terms. Each of the five members are highly respected African individuals who have made significant contributions to the promotion of peace and security on the African continent. Under Article 11 of the PSC Protocol, the PoW is tasked with advising and supporting the PSC on matters relating to conflict prevention on the continent.80 Similarly, to the PSC, the PoW also has regional counterparts81 : SADC has erected its own Panel of Elders and Mediation Reference Group. ECOWAS has formed its own Council of the Wise. The East African Community (EAC) has formed a Panel of Eminent Persons and has made inroads in the establishment of a mediation unit. Similarly, COMESA has a Committee of Elders, CEN-SAD has a High-Level Mediator for Peace and Security, and IGAD has a Mediation Unit. ECCAS, with the help of the AU, is in the process of forming its mediation unit. Other important developments include the formation of the Pan-African Network of the Wise (PanWise) in 2013. PanWise brings together a network of AU mediators, the RMs, as well as civil societies in an effort to improve coordination between these key preventive diplomatic actors through collaborating on missions, workshops, and research.82 Since its establishment, the PoW has conducted a number of preventive diplomacy missions and published documents pertaining to Africa’s key conflict issues such as election violence, gender-based violence, and violence against children in armed conflicts, and the need to strengthen governance mechanisms for the maintenance of peace, security, and stability. However, the APSA Roadmap 2016–2020 outlines the following obstacles which the PoW still faces in its operations which includes83 : Low interface between the PoW, PSC, and the PSC Chairperson; poor engagement of the PoW within AU-led mediation; slow progress in the operationalization of PanWise; and low levels of capacity of the PoW Secretariat at the AU. iii. The African Standby Force (ASF) The ASF is the “military pillar” of the APSA, and as such is regarded as one of the most crucial mechanisms for addressing Africa’s conflicts as well as the achievement of Pax Africana. The ASF is intended to be a continental rapid deployment force geared to undertake military interventions promptly and effectively. It is intended to compromise of 40 000 peacekeeping force sourced from five regional standby brigades which include84 : the SADC Brigade (SADCBRIG); the Eastern Africa Standby Brigade (EASBRIG); the ECOWAS Brigade (ECOBRIG); the North African Standby Brigade (NASBRIG); and the ECCAS Brigade

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(ECCASBRIG).85 The regional standby brigades serve as the building blocks for the continental deployment force and, thus, the rationale of the ASF is to enhance the capacity of each regional brigade through strengthening and equipping each individual national defense force and civilian police for peace support operations.86 Closely related to the ASF, was the intention to establish a “rapid deployment capability” (RDC), which would enable the rapid deployment of AU/RMs troops at the site of the conflict within a maximum of 14 days of the decision being made.87 The ASF was established in 2002 with the intention of being fully operational by 2010. However, this deadline was missed and extended to a later date of 2015—which, again, was not met. To date, neither the ASF nor the RDC has been deployed. The ASF, thus, faces numerous challenges that have slowed down its operationalization: The first challenge relates to and overlaps with the broader challenges of regional integration. These include the issue of multiple memberships and a lack of binding legal frameworks that would assist in having regional brigades ready timeously.88 The second challenge relates to the funding constraints. As such, peace support operations are exceptionally costly, and, as will be shown below in the proceeding section of this chapter dedicated to the Peace Fund, the AU relies heavily on the support and financing of external donors. The ASF’s initial 2010 deadline was in part determined by the excessive pressures placed on the AU by its Brussel donors as part of its EU–Africa strategy and set in a bid not to risk losing its e300 million that it had procured.89 Thirdly, there exists a lack of general political will and reluctance of member states to deploy their individual troops within conflicts outside of their own national borders. For example, Algeria and Angola both have significant military capacity but do not extend their contributions beyond “symbolic contributions” to APSA’s peacekeeping activities.90 The deployment burden is spread disproportionately across the continent with many troops coming from “Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.”91 Given the failure of the ASF and the RDC to materialize in the situation in Mali, the AU decided to put together the “African Immediate Crisis Response Capacity” (ACIRC) in 2013.92 ACIRC differs from the RDC and ASF as it does not comprise of police or civilian components.93 It is intended to comprise of 1 500 military troops who can be rapidly deployed and run short-term missions lasting up to 30 days.94 Needless to say, while ACIRC is needed in the short term to fill continental security gaps, the full operationalization of APSA (if only realized in the long term) is a crucial component to Africa’s achievement of Pax Africana. iv. The Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) Under Article 12 of the PSC Protocol, the CEWS is tasked with the collection and analysis of data in order to anticipate and facilitate the

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prevention of potential outbreaks of conflicts in Africa.95 It plays an important role in the early detection of and response to conflict. The CEWS advises the PSC on impending conflicts and threats to peace and security on the continent as well as recommends solutions. The CEWS comprises of a “Situation Room” which is responsible for collection and analysis of data as well as the publication of “early warning reports, situation updates, flash reports and weekly updates.”96 The Early Warning System (EWS) operates both at a continental and regional level and regional-based EWS have a direct link to the Situation Room in order to channel relevant data to solicit an appropriate and prompt response to impending outbreaks of conflict. Africa’s regional EWS includes: IGAD EWS (CEWARN), ECOWAS EWS (ECOWARN), EAC EWS (EACWARN), COMESA EWS (COMWARN), Early Warning Mechanism on Central Africa (MARAC); and SADC’s intelligence-based EWS.97 The coordination between the CEWS and RM EWS has grown considerably with technical meetings held bi-annually.98 However, the CEWS faces a few challenges which detract from its full operationalization and include: low levels of interface between key branches of the CEWS network such as, between the CEWS and RM EWS and between the National EWS and RM EWS; delayed response by decision-makers following the early warning trigger; difficulties in collecting accurate data due to constant shift in conflict dynamics; and the varying stages of preparedness of the different RM EWS.99 v. The Peace Fund The Peace Fund is intended to be the main financing instrument for Africa’s peace and security operations. Under Article 21 of the PSC Protocol, the creation of the Peace Fund is a step toward ensuring that the continent is self-reliant, less dependent on external donors, and able to finance its own peacekeeping operations.100 The Peace Fund comprises of contributions from the AU’s budget, member states, as well as from other sources (such as fundraising activities, civil societies, individuals, and the private sector). The Chairperson of the AU Commission may also accept voluntary contributions from sources outside of Africa on the condition that it is in line with the primary principles and objectives of the AU. However, APSA has suffered from a lack of financial ownership on the part of the AU Commission and the RMs. APSA has been almost entirely dependent on unpredictable sources of external financial support from donors such as the EU and the US. This raises questions as to whether APSA is wholly “owned” by Africa. However, while Africa’s peace operations have been entirely funded by donors, troops continue to be sourced from African states. This also raises questions concerning the political will of AU member states to financially contribute and invest in the realization of Pax Africana

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through APSA’s institutional frameworks. Commentators note that African leaders often fail to see the value in contributing to the Peace Fund and rather view it as another channel of resource extraction.101 Towards the end of 2008, the Prodi Panel emphasized the need for APSA to secure predictable sources of funding: “Reliance on unpredictable sources of funding means that there is no guarantee that essential capabilities will be available which, in turn, may invalidate planning assumptions. This acts as a disincentive to potential troop contributors who are understandably reluctant to commit to missions that they see as under-resourced, especially when this is accompanied by a lack of any guarantee of sustained reimbursement.”102 The AU’s overreliance on external sources of funding reached its peak in 2015 with external donor assistance contributing to 71 percent of the AU’s budget.103 Overall, progress toward the self-financing of the AU has nevertheless been slow given that 30 of the AU’s 55 member states regularly default on payments. This has led to the adoption of 2016 Kigali Financing Decision which imposed 0.2 percent levy on member states to pay their contributions to the Peace Fund and commitment by member states to finance 25 percent of its peace support operations.104 The levy has made an impact and by the end of 2017, the Peace Fund had managed to receive US$32 million of a total assessed amount of US$65 million.105 By 2020, this total has increased to and surpassed US$141 million. The Peace Fund is expected to become fully operational by 2020 and grow to a further US$400 million dollars by 2021.106

Conclusion APSA has made tremendous inroads towards the achievement of Pax Africana—both normatively as well as institutionally. Well much of the above discussion has centered on particular operational triumphs and obstacles encountered by APSA, overarching internal and external factors still threaten Africa’s achievement of Pax Africana in the twenty-first century: The first of which includes Africa’s nonchalant attitude toward its conflicts. Thus, while the birth of APSA saw the institutionalization and legalization of norms meant to allow and facilitate intervention in grave circumstances; the PSC has yet to invoke Article 4(h) despite there being cases which warranted such: For example, the crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing occurring in Darfur in 2003/2004 as well as the government-issued attacks on civilian protestors in Libya in 2011. Secondly, the ability of Africa to achieve Pax Africana has been hampered by the parochial interests and excessive external influence of global powers within Africa’s conflicts. The management of Africa’s conflicts at the UNSC continues to be controlled and shaped by the interests of the major powers—notably, the US, France, and Britain—with decisions on the majority of African cases taken by the P3.107 Neo-colonialism, referred to by Mazrui as “neo-alignment,”

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has also found expression in peacekeeping missions whereby previous colonial powers, such as the P3 use their position to maintain control in former colonies: France serving as the penholder for much of Francophone Africa (Burundi, CAR, Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC, Mali, Central Africa, and the Great Lakes) and Britain and the US act as penholders for the Sudan and Somalia.108 The P3 has been heavily criticized for its informal penholder system which has stripped African countries of the opportunity to weigh in on major decisions pertaining to the resolution of conflicts on its continent. Thirdly, and related to the above point, is the disproportionate representation of African countries as well as less importance being attached to African files at the UN. While much of the time at the UN is devoted to African issues (“in 2018, over 50% of UNSC meetings, 60% of its outcome documents, and 70% of its resolutions with Chapter VII mandates concerned African peace and security issues”),109 African states constitute a mere 28 percent of the overall UN membership. Moreover, strategic importance at the UN is often given to Syria, North Korea, and the Middle East.110 Therefore, beyond addressing APSA’s operational concerns, Africa needs to respond to these enduring and overarching issues if it is to truly achieve Pax Africana. Pax Africana, as institutionalized in APSA, recognizes that the continent does not exist in isolation and acknowledges the role and contribution of both regional and international bodies in the maintenance of peace and security on the continent. On the global stage, Africa can seek to counter Western parochial interests by using their seats on the UNSC to push for Africa’s peace and security agenda. The A3, thus, has an important role to play in this regard and unity on African matters is central to the achievement thereof. A strong and unified African position will be vital to the strengthening of African agency by exploiting the weakened position of the P-5 within an increasing multipolar world order and polarized UNSC. The AU and APSA should also continue to draw on the strengths of its RMs—some of which have more experience in peacekeeping than the relatively newly formed APSA: ECOWAS, SADC, and ECCAS, for example, have a decade’s worth of experience in peace operations over and above that of the AU.111 The AU should acknowledge and leverage the expertise of the RMs in order to ensure complimentarity between the continental and regional bodies. This will, in many ways, avoid competition within the hierarchical relationship between the AU and RMs as was the case, “in the mediation processes in the Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Madagascar, South Sudan and Zimbabwe.”112 Political will and unity among African leaders—both abroad and at home— is indispensable to the achievement of Pax Africana in the twenty-first century: Here, Africa’s “Big 5” (Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, and Ethiopia) may potentially play an important role in using their international clout to bring about a coherent and common African stance on peace and security issues which are guided by shared values.113 Only by drawing on the comparative strengths of each other can Africa hope to secure continental jurisdiction in matters relating to its peace and security. More so, only through solidarity

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and an united commitment to Pax Africana, can Africa bolster its marginalized position within an increasingly competitive global order to emerge as the great generalissimo in matters of its own peace and security as envisaged by Mazrui those years ago.

Notes 1. G. De Carvalho, S. Gruzd, and C. Mutangadura. “At the Table or on the Menu? Africa’s Agency and the Global Order,” 2019, accessed January 16, 2021, https://issafrica.org/research/africa-report/at-the-tableor-on-the-menu-africas-agency-and-the-global-order. 2. A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967). 3. Ibid., 203. 4. R. Sklar, “Ali A. Mazrui. ‘Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition.’ London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967, pp. xi, 287,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 2, no. 3 (1969): 390–391, https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0008423900025324. 5. Ibid. 6. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana, 203. 7. Ibid., 203. 8. Ibid., 39. 9. Ibid., 33–35. 10. Sklar, “Ali A. Mazrui,” 390–391. 11. Ibid., 390. 12. D. Nagar, Towards a Pax Africana: Southern African Development Community’s Architecture and Evolving Peacekeeping Efforts, 1996 – 2009, Masters Thesis (Cape Town: University of Cape Town, 2010), 6. 13. A. Mazrui, “Towards a Concept of ‘Pax Africana,’” in The Palgrave Handbook of Peacekeeping in Africa, eds. T. Karbo and K. Virk. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 14. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana, 163. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 173. 17. D. Kuwali, and D. Nagar, Towards a New Pax Africana: Making, Keeping and Building Peace in Post-Cold War Africa, Policy Research Seminar Report (Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, 2014), 9–13 and 44–45. 18. Ibid., 10. 19. Ibid., 10. 20. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana, 205–206. 21. Ibid., 214. 22. T. Scarnecchia, “Africa and the Cold War,” in A Companion to African History, eds. W. H. Worger, C. Ambler and N. Achebe (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2019). 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. S. J. Hamrick, “How Somalia was Left Cold,” New York Times, 1993, https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/06/opinion/how-somalia-wasleft-in-the-cold.html.

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26. D. R. Jackson, “The Ogaden War and the Demise of Détente,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 632, no. 1 (2010): 26–40, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0002716210378833. 27. Scarnecchia, “Africa and the Cold War.”. 28. A. N. De Sousa, “Between East and West: The Cold War’s Legacy in Africa,” Aljazeera, 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/ 2016/02/east-west-cold-war-legacy-africa-160214113015863.html. 29. Ibid. 30. South African History Online, “The Angolan Civil War (1975 – 2002): A Brief History,” last modified June 7, 2020, https://www.sahistory.org.za/art icle/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history. 31. Ibid. 32. BBC, “Jonas Savimbi: Angola’s Former Unita Leader Reburied After 17 Years,” 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48483246. 33. Ibid. 34. South African History Online, “The Angolan Civil War (1975 – 2002).” 35. Ibid. 36. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana, 185. 37. B. Stanley, “Berbera,” in Cities of the Middle East and North Africa: A Historical Encyclopaedia, eds. B. Stanley and M. R. T. Dumper (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2007), 93. 38. S. Adejumobi, and A. Olukoshi, eds., “Introduction: Transition, Continuity, and Change,” in The African and New Strategies for Development in Africa (Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2008), 9. 39. D. Nagar, “Pillars of Africa’s Peace and Security Architecture: The African Standby Force,” in Towards a new Pax Africana, eds. T. Karbo and K. Virk (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 2. 40. Ibid., 2. 41. K. Van Walraven, The OAU (The Netherlands: University of Leiden Press, 1996), 305–306. 42. Adejumobi, and Olukoshi, eds., “Introduction,” 9. 43. Ibid., 9. 44. P. Williams, “From Non-Intervention to Non-Indifference: The Origins and Development of the African Union’s Security Culture,” African Affairs 106, no. 423 (2007): 253–279, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adm001. ˇ 45. Z. Cervenka, and C. Legum, “The Organization of African Unity in 1981: A Crucial Testing Time for Peacekeeping,” in Africa Contemporary Record – Annual Survey and Documents 1981 – 1982, vol. 14. (London, New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1981), A83–96. 46. K. Dingwerth, A. Witt, I. Lehmann, E. Reichel, and T. Weise, “International Organizations under Pressure: Introduction,” in International Organizations under Pressure: Legitimating Global Governance in Challenging Times (UK: Oxford University Press, 2019). 47. Van Walraven, The OAU, 308. 48. K. Van Walraven ed., Early Warning and Conflict Prevention: Limitations and Possibilities (The Hague, The Netherlands: Kluwer Law International, 1998). 49. P. D. Williams, “United Nations Operation in Somalia II (UNISOM II),” in The Oxford Handbook of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, eds. J. A. Koops, T. Tardy, N. MacQueen and P. D. Williams (UK: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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50. I. W. Zartman, “Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond,” in International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War, eds. P. Stern and D. Druckman. (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000). 51. I. W. Zartman, “Timing and Ripeness,” in The Negotiator’s Fieldbook: the Desk Reference for the Experience Negotiator, eds. A. K. Schneider and C. Honeyman (Washington, DC: American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution, 2006), 144. 52. R. Schütte, Civilian Protection in Armed Conflicts: Evolution, Challenges and Implementation (Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer VS, 2015), 151. 53. Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda: The international response to conflict and genocide: lessons from the Rwanda experience, Study 2, (Copenhagen, 1996), 42–43. 54. Kuwali and Nagar, Towards a New Pax Africana, 10. 55. Organization of African Unity Secretariat, Introductory Note of His Excellency Salim Ahmed Salim, CM/1570(LI), Part 1 (Addis Abba: Organization of African Unity, 1990), 7 & 12. 56. A. Witt, “Between the Shadow of History and the ‘Union of People’: Legitimating the Organization of African Unity and the African Union,” in International Organizations under Pressure: Legitimating Global Governance in Challenging Times (UK: Oxford University Press, 2019). 57. Ibid. 58. Organization of African Unity, International Panel of Eminent Personalities (IPEP) to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events (Addis Ababa: Organization of African Unity, 2000). 59. Ibid. 60. A. S. Bah, E. Choge-Nyangoro, S. Derosso, B. Mofya, and T. Murithi, The African Peace and Security Architecture: A Handbook (Addis Ababa: The African Union and Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung, 2014), 28. 61. Ibid., 28. 62. N. J. Udombana, “The Institutional Structure of the African Union: A Legal Analysis,” California Western International Law Journal 33, no. 1 (2002), https://ssrn.com/abstract=1806611. 63. S. A. Dersso, “The quest for Pax Africana: The case of the African Union’s peace and security regime,” African Journal on Conflict Resolution 12, no. 2 (2012): 11–47, https://doi.org/10.4314/AJCR.V12I2. 64. African Union, Constitutive Act of the African Union (Addis Ababa: The African Union, 2000). 65. Ambassador Said Djinnit, AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, 28 June 2004, Addis Ababa, as quoted in Dersso, 2012, 21. 66. Dersso, “The quest for Pax Africana,” 27. 67. African Union, Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (Addis Abba: The African Union, 2002). 68. Bah et al., The African Peace and Security Architecture, 17. 69. U. Engel, and J. G. Porto, “The African Union’s New Peace and Security Architecture: Toward an Evolving Security Regime?” African Security 2, no. 2–3 (2009): 82–96, https://doi.org/10.1080/19362200903359774. 70. AU, Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union, 23–24. 71. Ibid., 10.

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72. Bah et al., The African Peace and Security Architecture, 41. 73. African Union Commission, Peace and Security Department, African Peace and Security Architecture. APSA Roadmap 2016 – 2020 (Addis Ababa: African Union Commission, Peace and Security Department, 2015), 14. 74. Bah et al., The African Peace and Security Architecture, 17. 75. AU, Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union, 4. 76. Bah et al., The African Peace and Security Architecture, 34. 77. Ibid., 42–45. 78. African Union Commission, Peace and Security Department, African Peace and Security Architecture. APSA Roadmap 2016 – 2020, 14–15. 79. Ibid., 15. 80. AU, Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union, 16. 81. African Union Commission, Peace and Security Department, African Peace and Security Architecture. APSA Roadmap 2016 – 2020, 16. 82. Ibid., 17. 83. Ibid., 17. 84. S. A. Dersso, The Role and Place of the African Standby Force. See also J. Potgieter, “Peacekeeping Forces for Peace Support Operations in Africa,” August 4, 2009, http://www.apsta-africa.org/news/article040809.php. 85. Nagar, Pillars of Africa’s Peace and Security Architecture, 2. 86. Ibid., 2. 87. P. D. Williams, “Reflections on the Evolving African Peace and Security Architecture,” African Security 7, no. 3 (2014): 147–162, https://doi.org/10. 1080/19392206.2014.939886. 88. Nagar, Pillars of Africa’s Peace and Security Architecture, 5. 89. Ibid., 8. 90. Williams, “Reflections on the Evolving African Peace and Security Architecture,” 151. 91. Ibid., 160. 92. Ibid., 154. 93. Ibid., 154. 94. Ibid., 154. 95. AU, Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union, 17–18. 96. African Union Commission, Peace and Security Department, African Peace and Security Architecture. APSA Roadmap 2016 – 2020, 15. 97. Ibid., 15. 98. Ibid., 15. 99. African Union Commission, Peace and Security Department, African Peace and Security Architecture. APSA Roadmap 2016 – 2020, 16. 100. AU, Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union, 26–27. 101. Williams, Reflections on the Evolving African Peace and Security Architecture,” 147–162. 102. “Prodi Report,” i.e., Report of the African Union–United Nations Panel on Modalities for Support to African Union Peacekeeping Operations (A/ 63/ 666– S/ 2008/ 813, New York: United Nations, December 31, 2008), §59.

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103. U. Engel, “The African Union finances - How does it work?” Working Paper 6 (Leipzig: Centre for Area Studies, 2015). 104. African Union, Decision on the Scale of Assessment and Alternative Sources of Financing the African Union, Assembly/AU/Dec.578 (XXV), Twenty-fifth Ordinary Session, 14–15 June 2015, Johannesburg, South Africa. 105. K. Pharatlhatle, and J. Vanheukelom, “Financing the African Union on Mindsets and Money,” Discussion Paper No. 240. Political Economy Dynamics of Regional Organisations in Africa, 2019. p. 4. 106. Xinhua. African Countries Contribute 141 mln USD to Continental Peace Fund Since 2017, 2020, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/14/ c_138704232.htm. 107. Kuwali and Nagar, Towards a New Pax Africana, 12. 108. Ibid. 109. G. De Carvalho, and D. Forti, “Africa Can Become More Influential at the UN Security Council,” 2020, https://issafrica.org/iss-today/africa-can-bec ome-more-influential-in-the-un-security-council. 110. Ibid. 111. Nagar, Pillars of Africa’s Peace and Security Architecture, 3. 112. De Carvalho, Gruzd, and Mutangadura, “At the Table or on the Menu?”. 113. Ibid., 2.

CHAPTER 26

Seeking African Agency in Global Clubs Arina Muresan

Introduction The role of exclusive global clubs (e.g., the Group of 20 [G20] and the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa [BRICS] partnership, among others), in global governance discussions, is becoming increasingly influential in their interest and ability in shaping the trajectory of global political-economic trends. In these discussions, African issues are listed as agenda items, and the impact is that they are not necessarily considered partners, even when being part of this club like South Africa’s membership to the G20 and BRICS. Clubs are exclusive in membership and borrow several norms and practices from multilateral institutions without investing as many resources as possible in physical, institutional infrastructure, and human resources. Much of the debates are reflective of international trends and may be considered a duplicate of the work in institutions; however, clubs be catalysts to ensuring decisions are passed, mobilize faster than formalized associations, and even pre-empt issues in global politics. Yet, members in clubs still maintain foreign policy goals and power asymmetries are still replicated except for middle powers finding niche cooperation roles (Cooper 2015; Handy 2010; Tsingou 2014) (Tsingou, Club Governance and the Making of Global Financial Rules 2015). From this perspective, club membership could be invaluable even to smaller

A. Muresan (B) Institute for Global Dialogue, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_26

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powers. In a global environment where elitism continues to drive conversations, how do African countries find common agency and exercise it when they have been predominantly side-lined in contributing substantively to the discussions about Africa? Calls to promote African agency in international relations have gained prominence over the last decade; this chapter asks what is African agency in the context of changing global dynamics and how can it be pursued in global governance clubs, like the G20 and BRICS (which deal with cross-cutting thematic issues, with a focus on economic growth most comprehensively)?

What Is African Agency, and Why Is It Important to Africa’s Role in a Changing Global Order? In defining African agency, emphasis is placed on the: (1) ability to project and leverage interests in relation to positions; (2) access to multilateral platforms that operate based on a Western-centric canon; (3) historical impact of structural constraints compounding from slavery, colonialism, liberation and the post-colonial environment; and 4) allowing the core of one’s philosophical and practical being to find expression (Chipiake 2018; Brown and Harman 2010; Poe 2003). African countries may further seek capacitating agency expressions in foreign policymaking through bi-lateral and multilateral channels and drawing from collective global South calls for a fundamental rethinking power reforms in international institutions (Bischoff 2020). More specifically, attention is drawn to the current global economic regime and financial constraints that interplay with African countries’ access to power sources and how they may project visions of national interest and progress. By comparison, African countries are small actors or powers in the international system; their histories and trajectories have been written from perspectives that African countries will have a sustained position in an international system that will continue to victimize them and therefore, it is unlikely that these actors may become international forces or sources of power. However, this kind of narrative not only touts a pessimistic view of African futures but also views Africa as a passive actor—which it is not. Regrettably, what feeds into this narrative of passiveness is resource disadvantage in negotiations. Across UN platforms, common positions are fundamental tools, but a greater emphasis needs to be placed on how this can be leveraged toward strategic decision-making (Chipiake 2018; Zondi 2013). Agency narratives are often linked to the “African solutions to African problems” discourse to resolve problems in African countries, which is specifically driven by leaders and finds official expression in the Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa, Final Act of Lagos (1980–2000); Africa’s Priority Programme for Economic Recovery (1986–1990) (APER); United Nations Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and

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Development (UNPAARD) (1986); African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes for Socioeconomic Recovery and Transformation (AAF-SAP) (1989); United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa (UN-NADAF) (1991); Abuja Treaty (1991); theAfrican Renaissance and New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) (2001); the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) (2003); AU Agenda 2063 (2013). The Regional Economic Communities (RECs) further enable these institutional plans. However, effective functioning of road maps and institutional mechanisms are dependent on leadership dynamics within countries and intercountry relations, which frequently is fragmented (Muchie et al. 2017). In addition to leadership narratives, the agency finds its expression and practical implementation through institutions and further negotiates common positions on such platforms. The function of multilateralism, as a tool for countries to achieve their foreign policy objectives (Moreland 2021), is operating in an environment where trust and reciprocity are threatened or ambiguous in multilateralism, the increased use of clubs in international relations are useful. A club, exclusive in membership and while there may not be a formalized organization or institution, may be accepted as an association, forum, grouping, or partnership that contributes to recognized discussions on global issues. These forums operate on multilateral values and engagement afield because Africa is likely going to benefit from the engagement and further encourage agency in decision-making and broader implementation (Cooper 2015). There is an eagerness to pursue and manifest African agency, specifically in international institutions that promote traction through rules-based interaction. However, African countries encounter global clubs with large and entrenched powers or emerging markets that share global South histories, and the space for negotiation is somewhat constrained. Although clubs have made African countries’ opportunities to engage, much of the engagement is determined by bi-lateral relations. In this, there is an opportunity for African countries to craft a common approach to clubs and determine the Africa-club engagement strategy. Zondi’s expression of a “currency of common positions” is key to Africa finding expression for its agency globally, and while organs like the African Union (AU) have served as institutional vehicles for continental discussion and decision-making, its ability to achieve concretized movement on issues is stymied. Clearer examples of common African positions and exercise of the agency have been noted in the voting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) especially pivoting on topics that pertain to African security (Zondi 2013). But there may be a desire to further quantify outcomes of agency, link progresses directly to the agency through quantifiable means or manifest for the benefit of socio-economic situations of people, mobilization of African leadership, and how this broadly interplays within bureaucratic or organizational environments, which can be seen as a bottom-up approach to understanding Africa in international relations. Much of the link lies in

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the coordination of the party-state relationship, and while African leadership has been severely critiqued for its overreliance, centrality, and even omnipotence. African leaders still have a role to play in engagements with clubs, and subsequently, who gets to be part of the conversation is symbolic to African agency. Therefore, the rest of this chapter explores how African agency can be exercised in more exclusive environments like global clubs.

Mechanisms Promoting Africa’s Club Engagements Broader multilateralism has been under threat for various reasons; (1) globalization, underscored by the liberal economic regime, is not as successful as advertised,(2) the outcomes of multilateralism are not effectively illustrated by its foretold successes, and (3) multilateral platforms are unable to adequately adapt to genuine demands for structural change (Narkilar 2020). In bigger multilateral fora, like the UN, it may be more difficult to reach consensus, but access to an exclusive club, or mini-lateral platform, maybe increasingly attractive because of the abovementioned benefits. The BRICS and G20 are most comprehensive in their issue coverage and engagement of African countries, albeit with their limitations. As clubs are not formalized institutions, the majority of engagements occur on a bi-lateral level and are not mitigated by particular rules and annual summits. This becomes problematic when terms of engagement are historically unequal. This has been quantified and portrayed through a trade where African countries remain exporters of agricultural products and fuels and mining products, and importers of manufactured products (WTO 2020). The World Trade Organization (2020) Trade Profiles 2020 report shows the destination countries of African exports and imports have remained traditionally inclined. Besides, rising and historical debt and interest levels are increasingly concerning as African countries cannot grow economies while maintaining debt repayments (Carneiro and Kouame 2020). ForeignDirect Investment (FDI) into Africa started to decline in 2019, as Africa’s investment profile is predominantly resource-based and prices of oil and commodities started to decline FDI took a downturn (UNCTAD 2020). Overall, global recovery from the Covid-19 crisis will be a long road ahead and continue to impact trade, borrowing, and investment. Now more than ever, it is paramount to leverage opportunities to improve African futures. The following section explores how the BRICS and G20 have engaged African countries at annual summits and the expectations that have emerged from the relationships.

The G20, the Africa Advisory Group, and Compact with Africa The G201 was established in 2008 to deal with the financial crisis; however geoeconomic trends have changed over the last decade, and systemic issues are ever more apparent (Berger et al. 2019; Cooper 2015). And over the last ten

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years, the G20 has expanded to include African issues in the G20 agenda; the emphasis on African issues and the roles of African countries, think tanks, and civil society in the overall G20 process are also up to each country that takes up leadership of the G20 for the year. Van Staaden’s description that Africa has been treated “as award instead of coequal partner” signifies African countries’ current role in G20 discussions (Van Staaden 2018). Power asymmetries in the G20 are still present, middle and emerging powers, which currently make up 11 of the 20 members (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey) have an opportunity to diffuse power and take niche roles, which is where African countries should be focused. Africa appears on the G20’s agenda through the various workstreams and engagement groups Think 20, Business 20, and Women 20. South Africa’s recognition as its only African member entrenched the perception of exclusivity, and the self-appointed club carries an amount of resentment where South Africa is consistently critiqued in its “Big Brother” role in Africa and as a middle power it is punching above its weight. Although membership to the G20 is well within the ambient of South Africa’s foreign policy objectives, especially focusing on its African agenda [DIRCO] (2011). In addition to South Africa’s membership, the AU and NEPAD enjoy observer status to the G20. However, it is felt that more efforts should be made to engage these organizations through official dialogue (Rajiv 2018). However, representation of African countries remains ad hoc at best (T20 2020). Another formalized arrangement to engage Africa, the Compact with Africa (CwA), was formalized by Germany’s presidency in 2017. It focused on a structured approach to G20-Africa macroeconomic, business, and financial engagements that provide African countries with more opportunities to receive foreign direct investment (Bhatia 2020). The G20 has helped members develop further relations through trade and investment, and the number of investment forums and cooperation engagements that have since emerged include most G20 countries. However, the formal G20 Finance Track initiative is co-chaired by South Africa and Germany through the Africa Advisory Group and falls under the CwA, that is coordinated by the African Development Bank, the IMF and the World Bank Group and has the potential to engage the public sector actors in securing investment partners in Africa (Floyd et al. 2019). The CwA, an initiative started during Germany’s chairmanship of the G20 in 2017, was created to attract investment based on African countries’ reform agenda and specifically focus on private sector investment and technical assistance. The CwA requires African countries to commit to an investment compact with the bi-lateral partner’s international organizations, adhere to a specific prospectus of reform to allow certain industries to become optimized, and finally implement these measures. To date, 12 countries joined the CwA; Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia, and in 2017 these countries had presented their commitments and visions for macroeconomic,

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business and finance frameworks with the G20. Also, several G20 countries came out with their voluntary contributions and complementary engagements through the EU External Investment Plan, the Forum of China Africa Cooperation, the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, to name a few (G20 2018). However, there needs to be a more holistic approach to investment that incorporates soft infrastructures like educational and vocational projects (Mabera 2019) Althoughforeign direct investment is considered a concern to address challenges between public–private structures of the financing proposed. It is argued that this compact does not necessarily consider country-specific challenges that would be further under pressure due to the securities structure in equity and bonds of the financing model that the CwA follows; the impact on public pensions and non-profit cooperatives; and those SMEs that cannot benefit from the CwA. Thus, it seems the partnership is skewed in favor of the private sector and not promoting reform in how partnerships are structured (Reisen 2017). It is anticipated that closer bi-lateral relationships between G20 countries and their African partners are likely to improve African countries’ sustainable development and that a more meaningful engagement should be initiated with the G20. The G20 views the CwA as a long-term initiative that can impact on managing debt and providing tax information that may influence global standards and contribute to a deeper understanding of illicit financial flows, informal markets, and pricing issues(T20 2020). However, African countries will need to navigate the CwA carefully because it resembles the Washington Consensus closely; (1) less government lending will be difficult to mitigate with necessary interventions, (2) the degrees of privatization and trade liberalization will not necessarily address social needs in context, (3) reforms could clear up certain investment and business bottlenecks, but overall there is no guarantee of job creation and economic transformation in African countries (Paulo 2017). At the G20 summit in 2020, during Saudi Arabia’s chairing of the group, the G20 countries established the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) (with encouragement from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), which allows G20 countries to pause bi-lateral loans to low-income countries in order to focus resources on responding to the Covid-19 pandemic (World Bank 2020). Of the 73 Low-Income Countries signed on, 38 are in Africa.2 This suspension service is in recognition of the immediate financial hardships that developing countries face due to the impact of the socio-economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the DSSI cannot achieve African debt solvency, and so Italy’s 2021 chairing of the G20 may feature as a key agenda item to engage the African agenda (Vines 2020). The G20 countries want to engage Africa through policy clarity and common approaches, which are still dependent on bi-lateral relationships. The BRICS, who are also members of the G20, a different approach to focusing on bi-lateral strategies only.

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BRICS and Bi-lateral Engagements, Seeking Pragmatism from a Post-Washington Consensus Rhetoric The BRICs first met in 2009 at Yaketeringberg, and South Africa was subsequently invited to join in 2010, expanding the acronym to BRICS. It is anticipated that the BRICS have the potential to play a greater leadership role in their respective regions, and so each BRICS summit has traditionally engaged regional partners of the respective host country through the BRICS-Plus platform and the BRICS’ Africa outreach as the broader mechanisms in engaging Africa. There is no formalized BRICS’ strategy to engage Africa, although this is based on international law and BRICS guidelines for contributing to a global order of reform and equality in promoting economic growth through trade, investment and development assistance, engagement is very much based on bi-lateral ties that countries establish. The BRICS began engaging Africa at the annual summits from 2013, during South Africa’s hosting of the fifth Summit in Durban. The focus was broad, and South Africa attempted to include leaders that had served as continental and Regional Economic Community chairs; Rwanda (as AU Chair), Senegal (as NEPAD chair), Gabon (ECOWAS Chair), Uganda (EAC Chair), Ethiopia (IGAD Chair), Togo (ECOWAS Chair), Burundi (COMESA Chair), Namibia (SADC Chair), Angola (SADC Organ Chair), and the then Chair of the AU Commission, Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat (Tralac 2018). The takeaway by the BRICS was to start a regional outreach, where the hosting country would focus on their respective region until China’s presidency of the BRICS in 2017, where it expanded the outreach past its region to include a global South interaction through its BRICS-Plus approach; inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria. South Africa’s presidency of the BRICS in 2018 returned to its Africa focus, and the tenth summit included: Egypt (as AU Chair), Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola, Zambia, Namibia, Senegal, Gabon, Togo, Uganda, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania and Zimbabwe were invited. In addition to the annual summit, South Africa hosted a second BRICS-Plus Cooperation with Emerging Markets and Developing Countries (EMDCs) discussion aimed at fostering or improving BRICS-Africa economic opportunities (DIRCO 2018a). In terms of material gains, trade between BRICS and Africa is focused on energy-based and commodities exports and manufactured or value-added product imports into Africa, which tells a similar story of how the rest of the world engages Africa. Moreover, the growing trend is to diversify engagement in Africa by improving access through investment in physical infrastructure and higher-production or manufacturing services, which could be extended to people’s movement. In terms of investment, the approach of Russia, India and China has been to incorporate or bundle these three activities, while Brazil and South Africa have kept these separate and improve on key industries. And

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lastly, development assistance to Africa is disseminated in the form of concessional loans, linked to China’s instrument of engagements, as well as technical cooperation and skills transfer in education, health and ICTs from all BRICS (UNECA 2013). The BRICS ardently express that there is scope for expanding relations with Africa and consistently linking common histories to their geopolitical interest in Africa. For example, all BRICS consider themselves developing countries and lean more toward global South narratives in achieving global reform. In addition, Brazil and Africa share Portugal as the common colonial link; Russia was an ardent supporter of decolonization and liberation movements in Africa; India’s engagement with Africa too shares in its anti-colonial movement and has a large diaspora living in Africa, having been a British colony; China, also a former British colony, quickly established itself as an equal partner to Africa and showed ardent support for similar movements that admired the communist ideology; and South Africa’s share in the fight for liberation was much more closely followed and supported by African countries, as well as the other BRICS members. In addition to economic returns, Russia’s interest in Africa is also diplomatic as “Russia seeks votes in support of its position at the UN or other political gestures that uphold Moscow’s diplomatic posture internationally” (Faleg and Secrieru 2020). While this strategy aims to show that Russia values all diplomatic partners, it is also to counter an anti-Russian narrative in international relations and show that it cannot be isolated diplomatically and that its allies need not be traditional dominant powers for Russia to have relevance in the world. Following engagements on multilateral platforms, India has become an important economic partner for Africa; for example, the India-Africa Forum in 2008, announcing the Duty-Free Tariff Preference Scheme for Least Developed Countries, scholarships for African students, credit line, and maritime security in the Indian Ocean region. Also, the Africa-Asia Growth Corridor (AAGC), India’s partnership with Japan and Africa established to rival the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Chakrabarty 2016). India is viewed as a development partner by Africa, and much of the engagement is driven by South-South cooperation principles and has grown to encompass commercial engagements in agriculture, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, ICT services. The focus of India’s economic diplomacy has been to provide: (1) grants that are geared to launching a Pan-African e-network to support education and medical capacity building; (2) technical assistance in the form of the Indian Technical and Economic Program that has specialized in training and technical assistance, and (3) making lines of credit available to the continent that is geared toward developing agriculture and energy infrastructure projects. This, in addition to India’s global governance aspirations to gain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), would gain traction with support from African countries (Lucey et al. 2015).

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China’s engagement of Africa through its FOCAC mechanism (established in 2000) engaging on the head of state and ministerial level every three years since 2000, much of the efforts have been to institutionalize, strengthen and create complimenting mechanisms to the engagement in various sectors, which has allowed China to engage in a more sophisticated manner (Zhan and Aiping 2018). This has also contributed to more nuanced engagement and incorporation through the BRI (established in 2013), where 45 of 55 African countries,3 including the African Union, have signed on. African countries and China share a consensus on international relations and appreciating and reciprocating respect for sovereignty most of all. However, China’s strict adherence to the one-China policy is essential for deepened relations and therefore sets a condition for a compromise that African and other countries need to adhere to. Moreover, there are impressions that the BRI is another tool that will entrench African countries’ dire financial situation through debt-trap diplomacy. This is a narrative that has continued to characterize the China–Africa relationship (Risberg 2020). China’s approach to African cooperation has been most noteworthy as it managed to blend financing mechanisms and invest in African infrastructure in a time when Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) funding started to decline since the 1990s (Paulo 2017). Although economic partnerships have had differing conditions, African countries’ debt to China is a moving target because China is reluctant to disclose private loans (Vines 2020). South Africa’s position as an African member in BRICS is complicated because of the high expectations from African and BRICS countries. While it was important to seize the opportunity and gain access through membership, it was not thought out which strategy South Africa would follow once it was there. Moreover, it emphasizes perceptions of South African exceptionalism in African international relations. The BRICS emphasize the importance of working within the existing institutions that development assistance and investment work like the African Union and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the AfCFTA, the AU’s Agenda 2063, the AU silencing the agenda of the gun, and collaboration between the UNSC and AUPSC (DIRCO 2018b). While there is a strong institutional framework for further partnership, there are expectations of African countries. A particular expectation is a political alignment that validates decision-making at the United Nations. More specifically, at the UNSC, permanent members lobby for positional support and are often split P3 (the USA, UK, and France) versus P2 (China and Russia). Often, China and Russia have been described as antiwestern, and those who side with them are automatically considered thus. China and Russia counter this polarizing sentiment by gaining the support of smaller powers and showing that they can gain considerable relevance. The BRICS are specific in emphasizing the principle of respecting nations’ sovereignty, which is the underlying BRICS approach to Africa. This translates into a conundrum for the BRICS, who may not be at liberty to critique

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another BRICS partner on the nature of bi-lateral relationships that the countries enter. For example, South Africa is considered the gateway to Africa, but it is severely critiqued for allowing external countries to access Africa and make preferential agreements that may not be in the continent’s best interest. South Africa can be key to BRICS relations with Africa, but the shifting global dynamics draw the attention and focus to how the BRICS coordinate regional interests. The dynamics among the BRICS are asymmetrical. Brazil’s struggle with corruption with the three of the former presidents (Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva [2003–2011], Dilma Rousseff [2011–2016] and Michel Temer [2016– 2018]) lessened Brazil’s momentum in the BRICS; and current president, Jair Bolsonaro (elected 2019 to present), had impacted most negatively on the BRICS partnership in his shifted foreign policy priorities and by aligning more closely with the United States of America and echoed some of former President Trump’s anti-Chinese sentiments (Zanini 2019). Russia and China are strong geostrategic forces, and both can complement the other in resources, economic and military capacities. And while both are in disagreement on the role of western hegemony, there is a growing question of who is likely to play a dominant role regionally (Stronski and Ng 2018). Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping have assured observers that the ongoing border tensions and geoeconomic competition between India and China will not impact the BRICS partnership (Business Today 2020). Although the economic landscape of the world is changing in favor of emerging powers, and the BRICS’ growth and leadership are uncertain toward initial projections in the Goldman Sachs paper “Dreaming with BRICs” (O’Neill 2019). This is now an opportunity for African leaders to leverage dynamics within the BRICS and drive their own interests for national development strategies. Much optimism for what the BRICS partnership must mean for the future of the engagements, but even among initiatives, there is no official BRICS-Africa strategy even though it has featured prominently on the BRICS annual agenda. The lack of strategy may be due to the BRICS’ emphasis on sovereignty, and where opinions may differ, there is an overwhelming desire to discuss what can be agreed upon. Strengths of institutional support it has been suggested that there should be permanent desks located within the AU that liaise with the BRICS and G20 regularly and link the NEPAD, Agenda 2063, and AfCFTA actively to the investment and trade engagements proposed (Sideropolous et al. 2018).

Limitations of Club Engagement in Africa It could be assumed that access to a club, a hybrid mini-lateral platform with exclusive discussions on global trends, may provide attendees with more opportunities to achieve pragmatic African positions. African countries have some limited exposure to large club summits. This is indeed a starting point for African agency; however, presence at a meeting does not necessarily guarantee that agency is, in fact, practiced or achieved. Similarly, the frequency of African countries being given opportunities to engage in a formalized space does not

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determine the engagement’s adequacy either. Much of the engagement should be based on improving bi-lateral lobbying with strategic members. The formal setup for African representation at these clubs is part of the limitation as there is a greater expectation that South Africa’s position in the BRICS and G20 will be of more benefit to African countries. South Africa’s role in club membership is complicated; it is required to represent African interests and pursue its foreign policy objectives where Africa features strongly. And in this, does South Africa speak for Africa framed according to its foreign policy? This is one criticism lodged against South Africa’s membership in the respective clubs and thus furthers a perception of South African exceptionalism in Africa. More and more, South Africa is seen as a symbolic partner for those wanting closer relationships with African countries, which could be more of a negative thing in terms of its composite smart power. However, due to its post-apartheid engagement in Africa, perceptions criticisms of its “bully versus big-brother” role have made South Africa recalculate what opportunities mean in such a context. South Africa’s co-leadership role in the CwA with Germany aims to encourage reform in both African countries’ governance systems and investor country philosophies and bridge dialogue between countries where requested. Most recently, part of this bridge-building happens through South Africa’s initiative to host the African Investment Forum in 2018, which generated US $ 67.8 billion in tabled investments and the US $ 40.1 billion in investor interest secured (Africa Investment Forum 2020), as well as dovetail with other WEF and BRICS initiatives for investment. Part of South Africa’s challenge is to change the perception of Africa while attempting to secure investment; however, this does not reform the underlying perception of Africa, and the CwA remains an initiative that attempts to reform African finance and governance from the outside without asking Africans how to approach development issues (Chakrabarty, 2019). South Africa is still an interlocutor for Africa to access the G20; in 2018, South Africa had its busiest diplomatic year; in addition to annual multilateral commitments, South Africa hosted the IORA chair, SADC Chair, UNSC non-permanent member, and BRICS chair. At the G20, South Africa used the platform to emphasize the importance of strengthening multilateralism, the rule of international law, and sustainable development and the peace and security agenda due to its non-permanent seat at the UNSC, as well as engaged the 2019 AU Chair and President of Rwanda Paul Kagame (South African Presidency 2018). And at the 2019 Summit in Osaka, Japan, President Ramaphosa’s specifically sought support for the CwA agenda to secure financial support for infrastructure development in Africa, as well as convene the standing trilateral meeting of African Leaders of Egypt as Chair of the AU and Senegal (NEPAD President) on African priorities (South African Presidency 2019). But South Africa is still forced to juggle its pragmatic goals as an African nation and that of the continent. It is difficult to determine to what extent power in the G20 has been diffused in South Africa’s favor as more diffusion of centralized power should mean more opportunity to create opportunities for material power and bring

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about the frequently discussed reform. While South Africa contributes to working groups and the multitrack diplomatic scape on key issues, it needs to navigate the political dynamics in the G20. Its role as a reformer may be only through narrative in a bid to slowly improve conditions in Africa through the encouragement of further investment and the construction of infrastructure. Issues are largely diluted by the time they are discussed at summits and working groups. Moreover, club governance is used as a key mechanism in discussing institutional trends and futures more informally.

Conclusions: Priority Shifting Activating African Agency The BRICS and G20 are often revered for their members’ international standing; however, this may not necessarily give the respective club legitimacy in international relations, and it is external parties that also contribute to its legitimacy. While these clubs have given Africa a spot on the agenda and invitation to meetings, it is also not necessarily testimony of what Africans may achieve on these platforms. The limitations of club governance and its engagement in Africa are based on (1) relying on South Africa’s coordination, (2) replicating traditional relationships, and (3) providing very little accountability. These limitations show that engagement with Africa has not taken place with Africa’s agency in practice. African countries have the ability to validate their engagements with clubs; however, much of this in itself is too symbolic and cloistered around summits that emphasize the role of the head of state. Engagements of outreach programs need to become decentralized to have greater outputs, including ministerial-level inputs, party-to-party engagements, and broader civil society engagements.

Notes 1. G20 members: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, France, Germany, Indonesia, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, UK, USA 2. List of African countries on the DSSI: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic of), Congo (Republic of), Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Gambia (The), Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Audan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zambia. 3. African countries that do not have a Memorandum of Understanding with China under the guidelines of the BRI: Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Eritrea, eSwatini, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Mauritius, Sao Tome & Principe, Tunisia. More information available at Green Belt and Road initiative Centre https:// green-bri.org/countries-of-the-belt-and-road-initiative-bri/.

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CHAPTER 27

The Monologue on Liberal Democracy: Africa in a Neocolonialized World Siphamandla Zondi

Introduction Using a decolonial lens of analysis grounded in African archives, this chapter critically reflects how the discourses and practices give rise to the elevation of the search for liberal democracy into the biggest and the most important pursuit in Africa. Liberal democracy replaced various discourses that pre-occupied critical African voices and activists in the 1990s when North Americans announced what they termed a wave of democratization that was consistent with trends in the rest of the global south. This development was used as evidence of the end of contestations about ideological options in the world and Western liberalism’s victory, both as an ideology of economy (capitalism) and politics (liberal democracy, human rights, and so forth). The democracy narrative focused on one form of democracy, namely liberal democracy, at the expense of many other versions and options that Africans had been discussing since the 1970s, including social liberation, nationalist transformation, social democracy, socialist democracy, popular rule, and so forth. In southern Africa, these southern discourses were well incubated within the debates on the national question, which raised pertinent issues about the nature of the state and nation after independence and the world system that conditioned this national–regional predicament in Africa. But the internally driven national question debate would be abruptly replaced by the externally driven democratization discourse. S. Zondi (B) University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_27

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Democratizing the Epistemological Lenses on Democracy in Africa The deconstruction of the story of democracy in Africa’s relations with the world begins with a critical reflection on how we discuss about knowledge in general and democracy. This is because the questions that democracy literature brings to the fore have to do with the practical challenges in how the management of politics has been taking place. We suggest how the discussion of this is conducted. Therefore, it is both a question of practicalities of politics and how we discuss about these practicalities. Positionality is about scholars positioning themselves epistemologically when they discourse about what is at hand. We argue that dominant discourses on democracy are conducted based on concealed positionalities and deceit concerning the dominant voices’ loci of enunciation. Therefore, we want to state at the very outset that revisiting the democracy story must begin with liberating the ways of knowing and discoursing on democracy in Africa. Unfreedom in ways of thought limits the potential of democracy in the broader political realm. There is a raging debate on the state of African politics in general that entrench two contending positions. One pursued strongly by British scholars of Africa says that Africa so democratized so much after the Cold War that it perhaps became too democratic concerning income levels and that it was regressing (Hoeffler et al. 2013). They argue that in this sense, Africa was becoming a normal democracy like Europe and North America in that there was now a threat of a democratic retreat. The argument says Africa’s experience was made worse by the fact of low income and weak development. There have also been arguments by those who look at the lessons from China and other Asian countries where liberal democracy was not a precondition for human socio-economic progress, forming part of the argument for the idea of a developmental state (Woo-Cumings 1999). The world’s problem has become known and described and understood as the problem of democracy (without an adjective), particularly the procedure of democracy, its technical qualities. It has become about how free and fair elections are where this. It has become about putting into practice the theory that democracy is strong when the results are not predictable; the idea of procedural certainty and substantive uncertainty (Mattes et al. 2000). It has become about spending patterns of the aid industry that funds regular elections, as part of the experiments aid agencies and western NGOs conduct to implement western illusions called theories and paradigms. The debate has been reduced to the wisdom of limits on presidential terms. Deep we have been drawn into liberal democracy’s myths, imaginations, and illusions thanks to Eurocentrism’s power. So much of this discourse can give the impression that democracy is failing in Africa because elections are not free and fair; African leaders have brought traditions of African monarchy in democratic states, thus generating autocrats in democratic states. African leaders are too old and last too long in power,

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it is said. There are conflicts, corruption, and poverty because of Africa’s democratic deficit manifest in poor governance, poor planning, and collapsing economies (Duvenage 1998). No sense of connection with the historical dimensions of the problem, as Shivji (2003) pointed out. For instance, no deep analysis of the very nature of the postcolonial state and its location in a global political framework makes them necessary. The nagging question is: who is speaking in the discussions on democracy and who is listening as these metanarratives about Africa continue? If the pervasive discourses relate to poverty or, say, corruption or the failure of the African state or Africa’s role in globalization or ethnicity in our politics, the need to fight “terrorism”, the failure or the travails of democracy, these are discussions for whom? Who is speaking in this discourse, and why are they speaking? Who is not speaking as a result? Who is heard, and who is not heard? Who deserves to be heard, and who does not? What do these vexing questions have to do with power relations globally, and how these structures and mold ideas that we debate in Africa? Whose version of democracy is assumed to be the standard by which progress or regress is measured, and what about popular aspirations and historical dreams of liberation? Therefore, the issues for us are to interpret why and how we continue to be drawn into extraverted contemplation about a common world, common humanity, common values, a common system of human organization, and even common sense. scholars from the periphery are being invited into extraverted conversations even before they have rediscovered themselves and have concluded their conversations about the postcolonial predicament. We are being invited to echo discourses before we understand why such discourses are being pursued and before we have got to the point where we re-become and thus gain our ontological density from which we can hope to have authentic interpretations of our world and our particular place in it, and how this affects what we eat or drink, what we say and think and what we do and respond to. We are therefore drawn into seeing our world from outside it. Put differently, and we are being lured to understand our social location— Africa through loci of enunciation that belong to other social locations, even locations whose encounter with Africa has had the effect of damning it, dominating it, exploiting it, distorting its history, denigrate its contribution to human civilization, treat its scientific heritage with scorn, deny that it has a heritage of knowledge, and the calling into question the legitimacy of its people as members of the human community (Mafeje 2011). We are being asked to speak and think in ways that confirm our subordination, marginality, or wretchedness. The Indian scholar Gayatri Spivak (1988, p. 271) refers to “the possibility that the intellectual is complicit in the persistent constitution of the Other as Self’s shadow.” This is the possibility that arises because we may not have attended to how certain narratives or explanations of reality were established as the hegemonic ideas without our input. If we are not careful, we find ourselves mimicking and perpetuating what the

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mainstream says about our ability to think authentically. Before long, these Eurocentric illusions become our reality. Asking questions against questions posed by the mainstream will enable us to see through the constructed hierarchies of power and knowledge in the Foucaultian sense, to see the regimentation of pieces of knowledge and the lenses we use to understand and interpret reality out there. It makes possible for us to understand why we tend to respond negatively to the question of whether we can think, even if we don’t notice the given discourses that we regurgitate, mimic and emulate fundamentally a methodological question— whether we can think about state and society, about human progress, about violence, poverty, justice, and other subjects—the question whether we can think ourselves authentically. This is: if we can think from where we are, and from the perspective of the subjects that we study? The challenge is to respond practically to how we reflect on, interpret, explain, and narrate the lived realities that we study rather than uncritically mimic hegemonic western discourses about our social location issues. For Lewis Gordon (2007, p. 4), this question speaks to the invisibility of a people who stand right in front of the men from the mainstream. These are people whose lived realities, experiences, and actions are studied, yet they are hidden in plain sight; they are submerged and do not exist. What do I mean? At the heart of the discursive patterns we described above are unsaid assumptions about whether the other that is being studied exists; if the other has emerged from obscurity; and if the other emerges, he emerges as what? It is about whether the other’s lived realities can be understood without the veil of borrowed discourses and alienated theories, and so forth. Put differently; the mainstream conducts the discourses about democracy in Africa as if Africans cannot speak; as if they have no visions of their own, have no historical precedents of their own to draw from, and as if they have not thought through what they require today. This leads us to our position about the subject that we study, the methodological choices we make about subjects under study, especially in areas related to democracy. Therefore, we suggest that fundamental to breaking the monologue of western discourses about us in the absence of our authentic voices, we need to ask uncomfortable and critical questions about who is speaking and who is not; whose ideas are privileged and whose are silenced. Secondly, we have to demystify our positions as thinkers and activists. This means thinking critically again about our positionality. Some thinkers are free-floating signifiers that they think from anywhere, and therefore they can think for everyone is false. No one thinks from nowhere or thinks universal thoughts. Objective rationality as a claim of Eurocentrism has made about itself has had the effect of keeping its identity hidden even as it spreads to the periphery disruptive endogenous and indigenous conversations with its theories, concepts, and methodological tools. Eurocentrism is a hegemonic perspective of North America and Europe. It is not a universal thought, but

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a regional thought universalized alongside the globalization of colonial, capitalist, and western cultural power since the late fifteenth century (Quijano 2007, pp. 155–167). We can escape this pressure to assume an objective position as a pervasive belief born out of the West’s idea as a world of reason and theory, a privileged epistemic positioning. Related to this, we have to engage critically about how African and subaltern voices generally are silenced. Lewis Gordon (2007, p. 156) writes in detail about the disaster of appearance for the subalterns. This is about the fact that the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) raises the question, “Am what?” In other words, my appearance or emergence as an inquirer or the emergence of the authentic sense of the studied material is confronted by questions about the legitimacy of the subject/the other as a member of the human community. Modernity created what he calls disastrous people, people cast in the zone of the damned in the Biblical sense and whose appearance becomes a disaster, the imposed disaster of recognition, or what is sometimes called the below-Otherness. The colonial subordinate to this day is not just the other concerning the western self. Still, he or she also carries the heritage of having been the wretched of the earth, the damned of the world, a people defined by nothingness, a people defined as without inner consciousness, a people outside the realism of those whose existence owes to their ability to think. The idea of thinkers in a free-floating position called objective about their position about study subjects, therefore inferring living loss, disappearance. Put, the intellectual tradition we operate under does not want us to appear as authentic selves—so, we cannot speak in the first person as I, but in the third person. Eurocentric perspective encourages us to occupy the position called objectivity, a form of disappearance because it is in that position that I become a mouthpiece of another reality, another way of thinking, and another experience. Under the veil of objective methodology, a sort of neutral epistemic position, I unwittingly or wittingly participate in mimicry and perpetuation of alienated discourses. I lose myself, disappear, submerge my feelings and think, lose my own eyes, and forget my history to look at the world according to the western subject. Then, someone wonders why I, as an African living in southern Africa, religiously frames the political question based on what western scholars like Neil Diamond thought were crucial questions of democratic consolidation instead of Africans’ lived realities on the ground. Observers wonder why our narrative seeks to confirm this region’s experiences theoretical frameworks born in Europe or North America. We are expected to consolidate and contextualize the imported conceptual and theoretical frameworks to fit in “international best-practice.” Westernized education, especially delivered through the modern university, is responsible for producing Eurocentric thought masked as universal thought. We in the global South are expected to add variables to the given analytical framework already framed. So, in conformity, we shift from the aspirations and lived realities of ordinary people to concepts of neopatrimonialism to the personalization

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of power, deformed class situation to passive middle-class factor, constitutionalism to institutional efficiency, the regularity of elections to technical efficiency of electoral processes, and the power of civil society as NGOs to the effectiveness of political parties as engines of democratization. We are to exclude what they exclude: they see no importance of understanding the heritage of the colonial statehood and nationhood, so we also tend to consider this insignificant. They see no continuity in post-independence African politics that suggests the darker side of modernity and its construction of political power and identity has not died. They see no hidden hand or third force except China and Russia, so do we. They see western NGOs and aid agencies as innocent Samaritans helping the less fortunate and therefore fail to see how humanitarianism is entangled in hegemonic imperialist designs at the global level. The project capital is capable of a moral duty to achieve equal development that enhances democracy, and so are we.

Post-liberation, New Imperialism, and Democracy The discourse now points out that after Mandela, there emerged “party dominance” (Southall 2005). Southall (2005) is animated by accusations of the main opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance, against the governing African National Congress (ANC) that it was too dominant in the political since on account of its achieving high percentage victories in elections of 1994, 1999 and again in 2004 to import the concept and theory of party dominance to augment this complaint with some caveats. He argues, consistent with the imported theory that both those who celebrate and those who malign this dominance exaggerate their cases because ANC dominance has its limitations. More voices have emerged to show that this party dominance is more widespread in southern Africa and have also drawn parallels with similar tendencies in other parts of the world, which does not include any part of the west (De Jaager and Du Toit 2014). Conservative scholars with a track record for skepticism about black rule have gone further to invent new features of a substantive democracy such that their foregone conclusion about the ANC role in South Africa is seen as negative dominance and a threat to democracy. They suggest such conditions as uncertain electoral outcomes, a fair chance for various segments to access the political office, the distinction between party and state, and, most revealingly, that “political minorities, although not in power, retain sufficient leverage” in national politics (Giliome et al. 2001). They inadvertently show that these conditions have diminished under the ANC rule, and therefore South Africa now has the rituals of liberal democracy without its substance (ibid.). Others seeking to be a bit more critical about party dominance assertions posed questions like is party dominance wrong in and of itself, thus participating in the debate framed by imaginations of western scholars about what would be a good form of democracy in Africa, imaginations founded on the fear of black majority governments. Raymond Suttner (2007) has poked holes into the party dominance narrative

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and its explanatory power for the challenges of post-apartheid South Africa, suggesting in the process that the perspective is fundamentally anti-democratic in that it is based on fear of popular democracy and high majority votes. Linked to this is the discourse designed to entice the ANC and other liberation movements to transition from movements to “modern political parties”, on the assumption that as parties, they would be better suited to entrenching democracy (Alden 1993). The mainstream literature repeatedly encourages the ANC to undergo this transition because it is assumed that South Africa underwent in 1991–1994 a transition from apartheid to liberal democracy. It is then assumed that the revolutionary ideals of transformation from white domination to multi-racial society, in this case, clashed with “ideals of liberal democracy”, being individual freedoms. Roger Southall (2013, p. 330) explains: While liberal constitutions seek to protect the rights of the individual against unjustifiable intrusions by the state, the demand for ’transformation’ implied that the liberation movements had an obligation to realize the rights of the majority through their acquisition and implementation of state power to overcome the structural imbalances of the past. Within the theory of the NDR, the party is envisaged as the leading force of the revolution, tasked variously with realizing equality for all, building productive forces, and challenging the continued domination of private capital. Such a perspective sits uneasily with any form of liberal constitutionalism, which seeks to protect the rights of forces that national revolutionary movements deem hostile to ‘transformation’.

Yet, instead of demanding that liberal democratic frameworks adjust to accommodate the aspirations of the majority of people disadvantaged by colonial modernity, these modernists demand that liberation movements abandon the philosophical, ideological, and political strategies that seek to meet the popular perceptions. They argue for abandoning the people in favor of a superior idea, the western idea of liberal democracy. Yet, they want to be understood to be speaking on behalf of the whole of democracy. Western friends of liberation movements that had for decades helped defend alternative visions of democracy by promoting social democracy are slowly abandoning social democracy for liberal democracy and want to drag African liberation movements with them in this direction. The efforts of the Swedish Social Democratic Party in the early 1990s, encouraging discourses on what is called the transition from liberation movements to “modern democratic parties” is a case in point because it was a trend in the entire social democratic movement in Europe (Olof Palme International Centre 2010). Even social democrats assumed that “A liberation movement has to be centralized and secretive while a modern party has to be influenced from the members and transparent” (ibid., p. 3), though we know that this is not a universal fact because there are political parties that fit the former typology and liberation movements like the ANC and South-West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) that fit the latter description. It neglects the whole scientific inquiry

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that finds elitist tendencies in political party history (Dionne 1991; Hacker and Pierson 2010; Hasen 2001; Katz and Mair 2009; Mersel 2006). The assumption is that African transitions since the 1960s failed because liberation movements remained movements and failed to transform into parties, but very little evidence is provided to back this claim up so that it stands only as an ideological statement rather than a scientific finding. Underlying this discourse assumes that liberal democracy is the universally chosen path to freedom, which then rules out other forms of democracy such as social democracy and even revolutionary democracy as the ANC sometimes calls its understanding of democracy. Thus, this discourse is part of the homogenizing tendency of modernity and its perspective, Eurocentrism, reducing all options in the pursuit of democracy to its preferred route, democracy through liberalism.

“End of History” and the Liberal Discourse on Democracy It has the same foundation as the ‘end of history’ myth proposed by Francis Fukuyama (1989) to describe what he assumed to be the victory of liberalism over alternative ideologies when the Cold War. “The triumph of the west, of the western idea,” Fukuyama bragged, “is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systemic alternatives to western liberalism” (ibid., p. 1). He was even bolder in his conclusion, saying, “the end of history as such: that is, the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” (ibid., p. 2). Western liberal democracy was not the latest form of government, but the final one. Western modernity and Eurocentrism have declared the end of history as an end of plurality in ideology and the ascendance of liberalism as the only preferred route in political transitions. It celebrated the spread of democracies in Africa after the collapse of communism, calling the third wave of a global rise of democracy. It assumed that this was a universal embrace of liberal democracy, which is why it criticizes some of the democratic transitions for lacking the features of a liberal democracy described above. It is because it assumed that what it considers to be the form of democracy is of universal application, and therefore Africans had to implement the version of democracy the west and its scholars imagined. The idea of the end of history and the victory of liberalism was backed by the state power of the global empire, the United States (U.S.), and a coterie of other states in its corner, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Exporting, entrenched, and even imposing the western interpretation of democracy in the world would become an important strategic consideration of the U.S. and fellow western powers in refashioning their relations with Africa and other parts of the world. Acharya (2014) discusses, in detail, how the post-Cold War inaugurated a period he describes as an American liberal hegemony, what U.S. analysts call either a new World Order or an American

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World Order. The U.S. and European literature either celebrated or tolerated the emergence of a unipolar moment in the world with the U.S. as a single superpower. It assumed that this was good for western civilization and its most successful idea, liberalism, which manifests most obviously in capitalism and democracy (Huntington 1999). This breeds the arrogant view of the U.S. role in the world with its government claiming on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Okinawa in 1997 that it was “the indispensable nation” and said that “we stand tall and hence see further than other nations” (ibid., p. 4). The U.S. saw itself as the first non-imperialist superpower, implying that it did not directly and openly colonize any territory in the world—of course, we know that it did control and dominate indirectly. On this basis, it viewed its global power as benign hegemony, a force for good. Two dimensions of power were crucial in the U.S. pursuit of global leadership: hard power in the form of expansion of military hardware and consolidation of its economic power; and soft power in the form of values and principles it wanted to export to the world. Democracy promotion fell in the latter category. The benign hegemon idea was backed up by huge investments by the finance and aid industries in the U.S. and the West in general. The U.S., through its agency, the USAID, invested a staggering US$123 million in “democracy assistance” for Africa alone in 1999, the year when education got only US$80 million (Armon 2007, p. 654). This is part of an average US$25 billion a year the U.S. spent promoting democracy, and a bulk of this was spent trying to rebuild the Iraq and Afghanistan that the U.S. militarily destroyed. From this budget, the U.S. has used underhanded methods to impose its version of democracy in Latin America, which in the process became an “empire’s workshop” for experiments, imposing western ideals, some of them deadly (Grandin 2006). In Latin America, the U.S. tested the strategies for “democracy promotion” before it applied them elsewhere, and it is there that it experimented on its illusions of benign global hegemony. Indeed, the U.S. establishment also points out that “[t]his initial line of democracy programming at USAID in the 1980s was principally confined to Latin America, except for some small-scale experimentation with such work in Asia” (Carothers 2009, p. 11). This literature goes on to say then in the 1990s; there was a “new zeitgeist”, [T]he startlingly rapid, far-reaching spread of authoritarian collapse and attempted democratic transitions in those years, in Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, sub-Saharan Africa, and South, Southeast, and East Asia pushed the U.S. and other Western policymakers to quickly expand assistance to support the trend. (Ibid.)

According to the mainstream literature, this “democracy promotion” endeavor became a central pillar of post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy, placing at the center the question:

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[W]hether in the absence of an overarching ideologically rooted threat from a totalitarian superpower rival, standing up for democracy abroad is just a pleasing, ’soft extra in U.S. foreign policy or whether it is something vital to the achievement of ’hard’ U.S. interests in a significant number of areas. (Ibid., p. 3)

The U.S. placed on itself the huge responsibility of imposing western liberal civilization and its values on the rest of the world through a balanced use of what it misnames as hard and soft power. This is misnamed because either choice is experienced as terrible by the rest of the world on whom these strategies are applied (Odom 1995). At this point, democracy promotion got entangled in what Kwasi Kwarteng (2012) describes as a consistent tendency of empires to be driven by the audacity of self-belief. All modern empires have claimed to bring about global democracy, and apologists have always claimed that these empires have brought about “benign authoritarianism” (Kwarteng 2012, p. 397). The institutions of liberal democracy are assumed to be saviors of society, and everyone hangs their hope on the human rights commission, the public protector, parliament, and courts. Party dominance is the biggest threat to this; hence the key thing to assess with every one of the five general elections is the extent to which “opposition” parties can bring the dominant party down. In 2000, South African political scientists gathered to discuss based on fundamental questions. There was, “A larger number of difficult questions began to be posed: should the opposition parties seek to combine, and if so, along what lines and around what principles? Should they seek to oppose “robustly” or “constructively”? Was there a danger that unity among particular opposition parties might bring about a further racialization of South African politics? (Southall 2000). In this dominant discourse, the South African problem was that there was a pursuit of liberation without sufficient commitment to liberal democracy, and this is what made liberation movements an agency to be treated with suspicion. John Saul would eloquently make this point and refers to a huge cacophony of voices that we’re concerned about, “Liberation without Democracy” in the whole of southern Africa (Saul 1999).

Eurocentric Illusions: Democratize the Untransformed Inherited States It is thanks to inherited Eurocentric perspective that many of us, African thinkers, fathom the Democratic Republic Congo question in very much the same way a Belgian scholar does, as a question of the inability of the Congolese political class to manage the state and not whether the inherited colonial state ought to be managed at all or vanquished. In this view, ending conflict revolves around finding a pact between the Joseph Kabila government or its forces and particular rebel groups known to be openly active in the conflict in the east, getting them to work together in order “to manage conflict.” If not all rebel

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groups join in the “peace festivities”, then at least the biggest one of them is enough for an announcement of peace while suppressing those who choose to stay out of the agreement. Under these conditions, post-conflict reconstruction is about building democracy through violence and force because those not represented in peace agreements are subject to “peacekeeping” and state security securing the “peace” signed. It is a narrative of a lack of patience in a rush to proclaim that democracy-building or consolidation has begun. Forcing an elite pact between Kabila and Rwanda’s Kagame government is a major milestone because it means with agreement done, NGOs and donor agencies can stream in to bring democracy before people think about other ways of exercising popular sovereign power. In this, it is as if the essence of the problem is the open armed conflict in the east of the country, a matter of armed groups that must be caused to put down their arms and be forced into the civilian democratic process by converting themselves quickly into competitive political parties seeking power through the vote (Reno 2006). In this sense, the conflict is conflict to the extent that it appears on the country’s surface; it is the manifested physical violence, and therefore conflict is confined in the East. Suppose the citizens of Kinshasa or Equator or Kasai ever expressed pain and burst out in anger. It is not because the conflict’s roots are in the very nature of the state inherited from the Belgian concession economics colonial system. Still, it is assumed they are just influenced by excluded political actors or the hunger for service delivery. The west of the DRC is about service delivery, and in the east, the problem is open conflict and external military involvement; liberal democracy is the panacea for this. Almost ten years since democracybuilding began, the state’s on-going fragility and popular discontent is because the government has not implemented liberal democracy fully. The story goes on, sidetracking the real national question, the nature of the state, the constitution of modern Congolese politics, and the global environment in which such tendencies thrive. The question is whether seeking to impose a liberal democracy model fashioned on the experience of states constructed centuries ago based on some national consensus on new states imposed from outside without any thinking about their durability is a wise move or not. Angola’s problem is the so-called stalled transition to democracy, stalled in the sense that there have been elections after 2002, but they have been inadequate polls in that they have returned the MPLA and President Jose dos, Santos. The state is corrupt, being used to enrich the elite around Dos Santos mainly because the state and society have not embraced democracy. The Angola people’s will is expressed when they elect another party; if you say none exist as a credible alternative, the point may be the reason needed to fund/support the emergence of one—whose main agenda is democratic change. The resource boom is a curse, being used to prop up Dos Santos and drive excessive social expenditure with infrastructure construction, human settlements. If Angola were democratic, it would see the benefits of its resource endowment. Therefore, Angola’s problem is that it is not democratic enough as a state. It is “a hybrid state”; it is a “reformed autocracy” (Roque 2009). But

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there is an acceptance that it is relatively democratic because it holds regular elections. This democratization does not transform people’s lives on a broad scale because the government is not liberal enough; the narrative implies. Yet, we know that at the basis of the problem is the very nature of the western state empires created and handed over to a westernized nationalist elite abruptly in 1975, and it has been barely surviving, battling disintegration since then. The question is whether you can democratize the inherited state before you decolonize it? The African analysis of the state’s fragility in Comoros and Madagascar as one of the strong personalities or personalization of rule is part of the Eurocentric illusions. On this account, the problem is not also of the crosswinds of neocolonialism that place France in a position to redefine by its actions the meaning of the international law principle of sovereign equality of states. The argument that the problems are also an outcome of their location in a globalizing western economy hungry for resources found in abundance in these islands is marginalized and silenced. The people of Mayotte’s vote to stay under the French umbrella is presented as an example of free will, but that of Grand Comoros to reduce the influence of the French is described as ideological. When democratization is a ploy to confront the real problem of the nature of the state and its location in a world system that needs such a state only to facilitate the designs of global power, it becomes part of Eurocentric illusions that keep us busy trying to implement without success (Massey and Baker 2009). In Madagascar, the mainstream discourse describes the problem as “messy democracy, merry-go-round”, driven by neo-nationalist instincts that nest in the personalities of big men of politics (Dewar et al. 2013). On the big island, one monster is disempowered and removed from power by coup or arrangement to make way for another dominant figure is explained as a function of something peculiar about Madagascar or the Malagasy people. Strong men are brought in or supported to remove older ones because the Malagasy people desire the rule of strong men by nature. Yet, the uprising against one strong man to bring about another strong man is labeled an expression of “popular democratic aspirations” Key areas for improvement, it is said, include tweaking the electoral system ostensibly to improve the “quality of outcomes” and to avert post-electoral violence. Credible elections agreed to by these personalities and people participating in large numbers offers “a new beginning” (ibid.). Like Comoros, Madagascar has not shown that they were viable states with established sovereignty because they have survived the past five decades, avoiding collapse. How do you democratize states whose very nature is fragile and identity uncertain? On Malawi, it is implied that Bingu wa Mutharika’s questions about global issues, neocolonial tendencies, and western aid brought trouble to his government. From this point on, many others of his sins are dug up and represented to the public in the making of the narrative of a monster and a demon in Malawian politics, while at the same time, the narrative presents anyone who

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stood up to Wa Mutharika as an angel. The economic slump partly caused by friction with the U.K. and also to do with the deep-seated fragilities of the Malawian economy were linked to Wa Mutharika’s political conduct. He was not a democrat, but a demagogue who pandered on popular feeling and deserted pragmatism, by which Eurocentric scholars often mean willingness to go soft on the status quo of inherited statehood. His fall from grace is presented as the start of a resurgence of democracy with Joyce Banda, his long-time associate who will oppose him, as its epitome. Banda epitomizes democratic alternatives because she did not raise difficult questions from the center of the world system. She was motivational in her speech rather than controversial. She made a name for herself in the western media for asking her people to do much with little and to care to dream amid the disaster and to rely on themselves. She made them believe in themselves so that they would not blame the external forces for their travails. Banda taught them not to blame others but themselves (Kamwendo & Kamwendo, undated). The mainstream discourse likes an African leader who takes responsibility for Africa’s present predicament because this absolves the west of its historical burden of justice. Her performance was from the very start to be judged on the basis that was very different from Mutharika: her branding as an inspiration. In the process, the underlying and complex issues of poverty and underdevelopment are left out of the equation. But the specifics of the Mutharika-Joyce Banda tensions simply manifest a deeper-seated problem: Malawi has not been stable fundamentally in its identity as a state and its statehood since independence. It survived on aligning itself with the western bloc of powers during the Cold War and on compliance with western conditions for aid and trade since the end of the Cold War, but it has not matured into a state sovereign in its own right. Liberal democracy is part of its compliance game that requires the west and regional organizations to keep the experiment from collapsing. As African scholars, we are responsible for amplifying with fresh data and many examples the narrative that Lesotho’s frequent encounter with coups is an outcome of corrupt and undemocratic leaders the country is cursed with, even without noticing that we are saying the masses that vote them into power or from among whom they arise are therefore also a curse. We thus leave hidden from the picture the role of the very construction of the state of Lesotho as a source of migrant labor for the fledging colonial industrial capitalism in the mines of Johannesburg and Kimberly and the global system that did not permit a fundamental transformation of this colonial heritage after independence.

The Liberation Without Democracy Thesis The ‘Liberation without Democracy’ thesis about the challenges of transitions in South Africa and Namibia provides the dominant narrative’s parameters

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about the Southern African question (Leys and Saul 1999). It rejects arguments that identify “democratic deficit” concerning country-specific factors and conjectural circumstances and thus projects itself as analyzing the fundamental problem. It makes a few claims. The first is that liberation movements were not democratic movements in essence or their commitment to democracy was at least tenacious, reaching a crisis point in the early stages of “liberation.” For instance, Namibia, South-West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) had an internal democratic crisis as securocrats, and the most senior leaders assumed full hegemony over the party decisions, making a mockery of membership-based deliberation. It points to presidentialism and the influence of the Chinese model of politics that SWAPO learned in the 1990s. Yet, it excludes from the explanation that SWAPO was born out of western colonial modernity. Its strategy for transformation does not seek to undo this but to entrench a local nationalist paradigm of politics learned during colonial rule. These are well-known ambiguities of African nationalism, its emulation of the colonial nationalism within which it was born. Its weakness is, therefore, also a global weakness rather than a purely indigenous problem. This means that it is inadequate to blame the problems of democracy in Namibia on Namibians per se and only without an account of how complicit in this is the western world. In Mozambique, the struggles of leadership in the 1960s and 1970s also manifested in the concentration of power in the “leader,” and since then, the party has focused more on bringing down the white government than building a democratic system of government. Presidential politics or personalization of power is blamed on the influence of the Soviet model, not on the colonial model of statehood that was unrivaled for almost a century until 1975. In Zimbabwe, “the product of a witch’s brew of personal rivalries, ethnicity, ostensible ideological difference and competitive international sponsorship (Russia vs. China)—interacted with a growing tendency to treat politics inside the two movements themselves as a zero-sum game to produce some very hard-boiled methods, on the part of both ZANU and ZAPU, of resolving differences and dealing with dissent (ibid.). Into this comes the rise of a strong man, Robert Mugabe, after crushing a rival called Tongogara and other members of the pre-independence leadership. Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) brought this authoritarianism into the liberation era, leading what is called an authoritarian chimurenga (revolution) with a nationalist flavor, which now haunts the Zimbabwean state and society. There is a diversity of experiences, the thesis continues, with this, from autocratic democracy in Namibia to quasi-democracy in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, to “dominated democracy” in South Africa. Democracy was not fully institutionalized in all cases, and in time, it began to wither. For this reason, Saul expected South Africa under the ANC to manifest this slow slide into autocracy for as long the party was in power. There is complete silence about many conversations that Africans have on their own had about the challenges of governance, statehood, economic transformation, and citizenship in

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Africa. Many of these African discourses revolved around understanding the nature of the state and nationhood after independence, and in southern Africa, this crystallized around the national question debates (Mandaza 1999). These raised the debate from matters of democratic procedures and process to discussions the very nature of state and society that imperialism and colonialism produced in the periphery of a western-dominated world system (NzongolaNtalaja 1997). These endogenous discussions underpinned the critical need for the complete decommissioning of coloniality as manifested in the nature and conduct of the postcolonial state, society, economy, culture, and knowledge. For these African discussions, liberation was a precondition of true and full democratic experience (Shivji 2003). There was an emphasis on the liberation of the world from the demon of coloniality manifesting in anti-democratic ghosts of imperialism (Kwarteng 2012), neocolonial relations between Africa and the west (Nyerere 1997), and in externally derived sovereignty (Clapham 1996).

Conclusion The question of the inherited colonial legacy of alienated state and economy that produces social marginalization was largely superseded or overshadowed in the 1990s by the liberal discourse of democratization, human rights, good governance, and economic reform in both academic and policy-making circles. It was concerned with fundamentally transforming the inherited state, its economy, and society in the making of genuine social democracy. While discussions, the rhetoric, and policy efforts on the understandings of and solutions to the national question as a deeply historical complex were prevalent in the 1980 and early 1990s, since the 1990s, the narrative of democratization with its components like good governance, a particular understanding of human rights and economic liberalization has become dominant. In this context, African agency in intellectual thought has given way to Eurocentric illusions, which Africans are encouraged to mimic and replicate. This chapter has shown that Eurocentric illusions and forces of new imperialism to control Africa’s understanding of postcolonial and Africa’s relations with the world have usurped the question of democracy in Africa from Africans into muted voices in the discourse about democracy framed in the center and entangle with the center’s imperialist designs. Eurocentric negations and new imperialism with the U.S. in the lead have been backed by the power of the center of the world system, including huge financial backing and its global cultural mechanisms. Therefore, the discussions on liberal democracy in Africa are trapped in haunting ghosts of coloniality that are manifest in the fact that postcolonial Africa is still neocolonized inside out.

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Nzongola-Ntalanja Georges, 1987. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Africa. London: Zed Books. Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges. 1997. ‘The State and Democracy in Africa.’ In Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja and Margaret Lee (eds.), The State and Democracy in Africa. Harare: AAPS Books. Odom, W. E. 1995. ‘How to Create a True World Order’. Orbis, 39: 159–172. Olof Palme International Centre, 2010. ‘From a Liberation Movement to a Modern Democratic Party’. Alexandria Conference Proceedings, Oslo: Olof Palme International Centre. Quijano discusses universalisms of Eurocentrism to some great lengths in Quijano, A. 2007. ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’, Cultural Studies, 21 (2–3): 155– 167. Reno, W. 2006. ‘Congo: From State Collapse to ‘Absolutism’, to State Failure’. Third World Quarterly, 27 (1): 43–56. Roque, P.C. 2009. ‘Angola’s Façade Democracy’. Journal of Democracy, 20 (4): 137– 150. Saul, J. 1999. ‘Rethinking the Experiences of the Southern African Liberation Movements’. In Hyslop, J. (ed.), African Democracy in the Era of Globalisation. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, pp. 167–178. Shivji, I. 2003. ‘The Rise, The Fall and the Insurrection of Nationalism in Africa’. Paper from Keynote Address to the CODESRIA East African Regional Conference held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, October 29–31. South African Democracy Trust, 2012. The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 6 (1990–1996), Abridged version. Pretoria: Unisa Press, pp. 21, 196–197. Southall, R. 2000. Opposition in South Africa’s New Democracy. Proceedings Report. June 28–30, Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape. Southall, R. 2005. ‘The ‘Dominant Party Debate’ in South Africa’. Africa Spectrum, 40 (1): 61–82. Southall, R. 2013. ‘The Slow Death of the Liberation Movements’. In R. Southall (ed.), Liberation Movements in Power Party and State in Southern Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press & James Currey, pp. 327–350. Spivak. G. 1988. ‘Can the Subaltern Think?’. In C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Basingstoke: MacMillan Education, pp. 271–313. Suttner, R. 2007. ‘Party Dominance Theory: Of What Value?’ Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, 33 (3): 277–297. White, G. 1998. Constructing a Democratic Developmental State. In M. Robinson and G. White (eds), The Democratic Developmental State: Political and Institutional Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woo-Cumings, M. (ed.). 1999. The Developmental State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

CHAPTER 28

Environmental Diplomacy and the Fallacy of Climate Bandwagoning in Africa Bamidele Olajide

Introduction Africa may, after all, have been engaging in the fallacy of climate bandwagoning in her environmental diplomacy. This is based on the reasoning that the provision of international cooperation among nation-states toward solving the challenges of global warming, climate change, and associated environmental realities can amount to the fallacy of bandwagoning if there is poor or no implementation of the lessons of the international climate regime. This would mean the absence of cross-bandwagoning of the development agenda of African countries and the failure to take the lessons of environmental diplomacy. Bandwagoning in climate governance ensures that new goals are added to the climate agenda through strategic linkage to benefit the actors involved (Jinnah 2011). This resonates in the context of Africa in that new global order is emerging, and the continent needs to unshackle itself from the underdevelopment and crisis that pervaded its historical trajectory in the twentieth century. While bandwagoning in itself is a positive drive for the achievement of goals, linking issues, or agenda to climate governance for the achievement of goals without commitment to the requisite elements of governance to achieve

B. Olajide (B) Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria Department of Political Studies and International Relations, North West University, Mahikeng Campus, Mahikeng, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_28

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the aim of bandwagoning is akin to the fallacy of bandwagoning. This position is true of many African countries linking strategically to the international climate regime, but this has not produced the needed results to improve the continent’s quality of life and/or environmental scenarios. This needs African governments and the various stakeholders to rethink environmental diplomacy on the continent. Climate change and other environmental problems have fundamentally impacted the world. This is in terms of its effects, science, and seemingly unending debates about finding lasting solutions to the menace. The effects of climate change are global and, as a result, have attracted the attention of governments and other stakeholders. The science of climate change has grown from a hitherto entrenched level of speculation to some high degree of certainty (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008). As a result, there has been a growing convergence between scientific and political communities worldwide on issues around climate change. Climate change is human-induced and as human activities have been fingered as the main cause of environmental problems such as rainfall variability that has induced drought, unprecedented temperature, and even sunshine measures in many parts of the world. These have implications for agriculture, population displacement, and human health (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008). The effects of climate change are felt worldwide; however, these effects are not even in their intensity as some areas of the world are more prone to such. Dupoux (2016) submits that African countries are more prone to suffer from the effects of climate change than any other part of the world. Being an infrastructurally weak clime, the continent’s humanitarian crisis has been exacerbated by climate change. Hence, environmental problems such as water shortages, drought, flooding and inundation, desertification, growing levels of food insecurity are daily lived experiences of Africans. This is the reason why Kofi Anan warned the continent of the need to pay attention to climate change despite its low-carbon contribution to the global menace (Africa Progress Panel 2015). Because of the reality of climate change in the continent, African leaders and statesmen have keyed into the global climate change arrangement to make the continent’s climate change resilient. Environmental diplomacy embarked on by state and non-state stakeholders around the world has grown in lips and bounds. The regularity in which Conferences and other forms of talks on climate and environment arguably shows the acceptance of climate change’s reality and dangers. As such, global negotiations and debates on reducing global warming have assumed a high political premium. Hence, politicians, civil society organizations, and the private sector worldwide find the need to bridge their differences to save the world. African countries are members of various multilateral platforms both within and beyond the continent. They are a prominent negotiating bloc in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its numerous Conferences of Parties (COPs). They are also signatories to its diplomatic instruments on climate change. Internally, through

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the instrumentalities of the defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and its successor platform, the African Union (AU), African countries have committed themselves to instruments for the combatting of climate change, such African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN), the high power Conference of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC), among others (Clim-Dev Africa 2015). This chapter aims to analyze the issues and challenges of African states’ environmental diplomacy, which have in sum ensured that such noble diplomatic efforts are but a fallacy. The import of this is that environmental diplomacy and other activities on climate change have not directly impacted the lives and livelihoods of Africans. The bulk of the continent’s peoples still depend on rain-fed agriculture, which means that a critical part of the African population is at risk of rainfall variability and even drought. The soaring poverty and food insecurity that Africa is facing do not suggest that Africa’s “commitment” to climate change adaptation is yielding the right results. Furthermore, Africa is short on implementing the climate of resolutions of Conferences and instruments and treaties entered into in the multilateral platforms they are part of. For example, following years of attendance of the Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC, Africa is still weak in the implementation of some of the mandates of such meetings. For example, multilevel governance and climate change finance are still weak in many African countries (Friis-Hansen 2017). All of this put together is affecting the position of the continent in a changing global order despite a visible and growing continental agency (Lala 2020). Following this introduction, the next section is a conceptual discourse on environmental diplomacy, which aims to clear ambiguities around the concept of environmental diplomacy. Section three is the theoretical framework for the analysis of the key concepts and findings of the paper. Section four and five consider climate change and environmental diplomacy in Africa and the fallacy of climate change bandwagoning in, respectively. Section six serves to conclude and offer necessary recommendations on how Africans can benefit from environmental diplomacy in the continent.

Environmental Diplomacy: Conceptual Discourse The idea of diplomacy has changed fundamentally since the end of the Second World War. Diplomacy is one of the tools necessary for the conduct of the foreign policy of states. States within the international system need to interact with one another for many reasons; hence, diplomacy comes to the fore as one of the tools for conducting relations among states and other actors in the international system. The multifaceted utility of diplomacy in the pursuit of global peace and development means that the concept is of various types as impacted by the realities and the growing complexities of history and, of course, the twenty-first-century world (Aksoy and Cicek 2018). One aspect or type of diplomacy that has gained currency in the post-Cold War era and,

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more importantly, twenty-first-century global politics is environmental diplomacy. Environmental diplomacy carries an expanded meaning and function of diplomacy in that it has adapted diplomacy significantly from its original conceptualizations and practice (Broadhurst and Ledgerwood 1998). Environmental diplomacy, though a recent concept, is a hugely contested one (Ali and Voinov Vladich 2016). The contestation in the meaning of environmental diplomacy arises from the development within the discipline of international relations, especially as they relate to counterpart development in environmental studies. The continued interrelationship between these two fields of study and the need to integrate their concerns led to the lack of agreement on the meaning of environmental diplomacy. On the one hand, conventional international relations holds that environmental diplomacy deals with regular conferences and multilateral gatherings of states, their diplomatic functionaries, and more recently, with greater involvement of non-state actors. On the other hand, scholars within environmental studies hold that environmental diplomacy deals with resolving and managing conflicts arising from environmental issues such as natural resources and general environmental problems. Efforts at understanding environmental diplomacy revolve basically around these perspectives. For this chapter’s purpose, the first notion of environmental diplomacy which deals with the periodic multilateral gathering of climate stakeholders to discuss and negotiate toward the ebbing of global warming and the provision of finance for mitigation and adaptation, is adopted. This dominant view of environmental diplomacy is viewed by Pisupati (2015, 5) in defining it as “Environmental Diplomacy is the established method of international discourse or the art of managing international relation, chiefly by negotiation, on issues related to environment.” In the view of Mrema and Bankobeza (2012, 3), opine that the raison d’être of environmental diplomacy is “to stimulate international cooperation to generate international agreement on complex transboundary environmental problems; bridging differences in cultural, social and political values, vested interests and scientific uncertainty.” While the definition of environmental diplomacy seems straightforward, the historical process of its emergence is rather a long, nervy one. The view of Yonemoto and Triendl (1998, 63), for example, in which they define “environmental diplomacy has very much involved a sort of mobilization of environmental issues in the service of more mundane foreign policy goals,” makes it obvious that environmental diplomacy emerged from the rubbles of world history as impacted by globalization. This is because conventional diplomacy proved inadequate in capturing the dynamics of emerging environmental concerns. It made the need for specialized diplomacy to cater to rising environmental concerns such as global warming, acid rain, and global commons, among others become necessary. The gravitation of the greater parts of the world toward post-materialism impacted the inadequacy of conventional diplomacy to achieve the requisite results for the world. As a result, there were greater and more vehement yearnings in the scientific and

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activist worlds on the pressing nature of the impending new environmental crisis that may face the world. The journey to political will to allow for the emergence of environmental diplomacy despite the state’s domineering nature was rather arduous. This is noted by Bordansky and Rajamani (2015) as they break the Governance Architecture of Climate Regime into phases. Moving through long periods of uncertainty, environmental diplomacy can be said to have eventually commenced with the gathering of states and non-state actors across the world in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 1992 for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit in which the threats of global warming, climate change, and other environmental issues were fittingly designated as transboundary problems (Mwanika and Odoyo 2008; Mrema and Bankobeza 2012). Going forward from the Earth Summit, regular multilateral gatherings of environmental actors have become a reality for the world. The Earth Summit brought a whole new understanding of the strategic nature of the environment and its dynamics to society’s development and sustainability. Environmental diplomacy offers a widened scope for the generic understanding of diplomacy, which has long been an exclusive preserve of nationstates in terms of functions and the number of actors within three decades of the Earth Summit. Environmental diplomacy deals with many environmental issues, such as the protection of the commons—“fisheries, endangered species, rivers, oceans, forests and other transboundary resources and Global environmental hazards such as climate change” Mrema and Bankobeza (2012, 2). Secondly, environmental diplomacy involves the interaction of multiple actors. This marks the departure from the conventional nature of diplomacy that was solely about the state. Environmental diplomacy brings together diverse actors such as environmental groups, scientists, corporations, journalists, even coalitions of subnational and municipal governments and cities worldwide. Thirdly, environmental diplomacy involves fora such as bilateral, multilateral gatherings with unprecedented levels of regime building through the United Nations and other international institutional structures. Environmental diplomacy differs from conventional diplomacy through the prisms of the diversity of problems, actors, and fora (Mrema and Bankobeza 2012). Regime building has been a feature of diplomacy since the start of the post-War era. This is one feature that environmental diplomacy shares with conventional diplomacy. The emergence of environmental diplomacy was aided by regime building as pressures were directed at institutions that arose from the process. This reality lies in the heart of the development after the Earth Conference leading to the emergence of the United Nations structure for climate change. This includes the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), Conference of Parties (COPs), and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), among other climate regimes. It is within this structure for climate change that the principles guiding environmental diplomacy find

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expression. Pisupati (2015) names these principles as Precautionary principle, Principle of Common but Differentiated Response (CBDR), Principle of Global Commons, and Principles on Justice and Equity. These principles arose as a result of the negotiation-based nature of environmental governance and the plethora of actors. This ensures that while the nation-states are still the collector’s item in diplomacy and international relations, the presence and growing influence of non-state actors ensures the following characteristics such as participation in decision-making, the rule of law, transparency, equity, accountability, and strategic vision govern deliberations and actions to be taken on environmental issues (Pisupati 2015). Participants in environmental diplomacy subscribe to these principles and characteristics of environmental diplomacy in the quest for finding solutions to environmental problems across the globe.

Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework adopted for this chapter is the functionalist theory of international relations and climate bandwagoning. The functionalist theory explains the change of perspective in international relations from the unsustainable, nationalist-focused inter-state relations of the nineteenth century, which had defied the search for global peace to the establishment of agencylike institutions to perform the functions that are largely technical or specialized on behalf of nation-states (Mitrany 1994). The change of focus from state power to functions performed in the international system in the view of functionalists explained the utility of specialized international agencies such as the United Nations structure and was used to explain the emergence of the European Union, the latter which is more popular with neo-functionalist (Haas 1964; Long and Ashworth 1999). The idea of “function” connotes the needs to be satisfied with the development of the world. These needs give rise to the functional equivalent to the old international order, which elevated the quest for order within and protection of states as the core international relations (Haas 1964). This means that needs can only be satisfied out of the political realm of the state. This is to the extent that there is a need for pooling of political will by nation-states to create the space for international organizations to cater to these needs’ satisfaction. Their temperament is based on jealously guarded sovereignty may not allow for such. Mitrany (1994, 95) explains this further by asserting that Cooperation for the common good is the task, both for the sake of peace and of a better life, and for that, it is essential that certain interests and activities should be taken out of the mood of competition and worked together.

This speaks to the need to establish international organizations that can satisfy the technical, economic, and social needs that would enhance the quest for

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peace worldwide. Imber (2013) notes that the functionalist theory explains the establishment of international organizations, even some of the oldest ones such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and Universal Postal Union (UPU), which were established in 1865 and 1875, respectively. The functionalist theory can explain the international regime building for climate change through the United Nations structure’s instrumentalities. This started with the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was established by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Maritime Organization (WMO). It was later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) was later established and adopted at the Earth Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Global warming and climate change being transboundary problems cannot be unilaterally solved by individual states due to their technical, economic, and political implications. Given this reality, the rise of international organizations and modalities to coordinate the search for action and solution became necessary. On the other hand, climate bandwagoning has to do with the unprecedented rise in the importance of climate change in contemporary international relations. This is to the extent that many political actors are now want to analyze or portray their activities through the prism of climate change. As informed by the unprecedented regime building through the United Nations structure’s instrumentalities, environmental diplomacy continues to witness a proliferation of actors. Scholars have described this as climate change bandwagoning. Thus according to Jinnah (2011, 3), climate bandwagoning is defined as a “recent phenomenon of political actors strategically linking their issues to climate change politics for a variety of reasons.” For Nicholson and Chong (2011, 122), “bandwagoning is a process whereby a weaker social movement borrows resources, activities, and discourses from a stronger movement to gain advantages from it.” Hence, for them, climate bandwagoning is the process whereby political actors who desire to make their movement stronger link with the climate change order through the use of its resources, activities, and discourses to achieve their original ends. Jinnah (2011) notes that there are two types of strategic linkages, which are formative linkages and operational linkages. For formative linkages, actors strategically link to the ideals of climate change through environmental diplomacy. Operational linkages refer to the day-to-day running of the regime. Motives for bandwagoning by political actors vary. This ranges from financial motives to other forms of gratifications. While some actors linked up with a regime from the inception due to its advantages to their realities, some joined in the process of iteration of the regime’s ideals. Political actors ranging from states to non-state actors have attempted to strategically link up with regimes that offer their issues avenues for better discussion and even negotiations. Climate change, with its far-reaching effects on international relations, has

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attracted both state and non-state actors to the extent that these actors strategically link their agenda to the Global Environmental Governance agenda. Climate bandwagoning is not the overlapping of political interests; it is rather a purposive, agent-based linkage of political actors to affect the whole essence of climate change regime as a result of their agenda (Jinnah 2011). As a result of bandwagoning in the climate change regime, the number of actors has continued to rise with a resultant increasing complexity of issues in the regime. The nature of international relations today owes a lot to the functionalist theory’s relative success in influencing the rise and the continued relevance of many global and regional organizations. These organizations are invested with legitimacy by nation-states due to the importance of the strategic needs they satisfy within the international system, which has made the quest for global peace and development tenable. International organizations, through their instrumentalities of extensive discussions, negotiations, compromise, and display of expertise in many critical areas, have largely prevented the world from reverting to global violence. Rather they have built extensive networks of regimes and institutions, strategically linking the world together more than at any point in history. The existence of international regimes on issues and challenges facing humanity has allowed for bandwagoning by political actors across the world. Their existence has also allowed states to allow for non-state actors to discuss issues affecting peoples of the world to get global concert for solutions. State actors with various developmental problems have also strategically linked their issues with the international climate change regime, both at its inception and continuously as issues arise.

Environmental Diplomacy in Africa: Liking Regional Exigencies to International Climate Regime In African development literature, the late 1970s and 1980s were rather lost decades as many African countries could not build on the successes they recorded in the immediate post-independence years (Lancaster 1990; Lubeck 1992; Arrighi 2002). By the 1980s, many African countries were already neckdeep in debt and the development that the people envisaged at independence was fast fading out. The continent’s development crisis became strategically linked with climate change as African countries sought every possible way out of their quagmire. While the continent’s development crisis cannot be said to have been caused by climate change, the latter has come to be known for its multiplier effects on existing environmental and social challenges (Olajide et al. 2018). The emergence and development of environmental diplomacy and its regimes dwell on changing global orders. First, at its inception in the early 1990s, a unipolar world had just emerged with the emergence of the United States as the undisputed world leader. Second, the emergence of new centers of power around the world, a situation that is aided by increasing forces of globalization, especially since the beginning of the twenty-first century.

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The emergence of the globalized society has ensured that countries and regions of the world reconsider their position in the changing global order. For Africa, this regional exigency made environmental diplomacy an allure. Having been on the margins of development over history, African countries see environmental diplomacy and its regimes as one further development mechanism. The intertwined nature of climate change and development became unprecedentedly pronounced since the early 1990s. This informed the initial official position of the continent on climate change which was based on the eradication of poverty and environmental revamp (Bogott and van Wyk, n.d.). This is to the extent that the menace is now a considered serious developmental problem in the continent. The position has become a mainstay of environmental diplomacy, especially from point of view of developing countries, since it picked up following decades of docility and absence of political will to discuss environmental issues at the global level (Tsega 2016). African countries have continued to link their development deficit to the climate change international regime from this period. Through decades of active participation in this regime, African countries have risen to be a major Group in Global Environmental Governance. Africa’s environmental frailties and development deficits prompted her linking into environmental diplomacy with her members signing the UNFCCC treaty in 1992 at the Earth Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Bogott and van Wyk (n.d.) and Clim-Dev Africa (2015) opine that the status of the continent as the most-at-risk region to climate change provided the incentive for African countries for a more decisive response to the menace. To aid their participation, African countries established continental institutions to process their positions in global climate negotiations. The oldest of these institutions even predated the onset of environmental diplomacy. This speaks to the continent’s readiness to explore climate change regimes at the global level to advance its quest for development. The African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN), established in 1985, had worked to ensure the continent’s ease of entry into the global regime. The continent made its stand known quite early in the life of the international climate regime. This comes with the establishment of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) in 1989 to work in tandem with the AMCEN in developing and advancing the position of the continent in climate negotiations. In 1991, the AGN first agreed on a common position for African countries as the world prepared for the Earth Conference coming up in the following year. This later is now known as the Common African Position (CAP). The AGN negotiates on behalf of the continent in the UNFCCC based on the Common African Position (Bogott and van Wyk, n.d.). The journey to the Common African Position was not a straightforward affair. This was because of the diverse interests represented among African countries. However, by 2009, Africa established its highest institution on climate change, the Conference of African Heads of State on Climate Change (CAHOSCC) under the

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auspices of the Africa Union (AU). This brought stability to the continent’s environmental diplomacy by immediately giving direction to the continent’s negotiation process. It led to the adoption of the Common African Position document in July 2009 in Libya (Tsega 2016). The consolidation of African climate change institutions under the African Union’s direction has given much effect to Africa’s negotiation efforts in the UNFCCC. Tsega (2016) notes that Africa started its negotiation process in the UNFCCC at a slow pace. This culminated in a serious lack of influence in the negotiation processes. The period between 1991 and 2006 marked the continent years of relative lack of influence with negligible agenda submissions. Since the mid-2000s, however, there has seen a steady rise in the influence of the African Group of Negotiators owing to the better organization among African countries on the issue of climate change (Clim-Dev Africa 2015; Tondel et al. 2015). The period 2007–2009 alone saw more submissions of agenda by the Africa Group of Negotiators than the period 1991–2006 (Tsega 2016). Today, within the UNFCCC, the African Group of Negotiators has made notable contributions to the body’s negotiating process. The continent remains one of the asserters of the core principles of the UNFCCC, such as the Principle of Common but Differentiated Response (CBDR), by insisting that Annex I nations that have historical emissions contribute more financially to climate change response. The Africa Group of Negotiators joined coalitions with other groups to give weight to its position in the negotiations and address the asymmetries in the relative power and influence of different countries and groups within the UNFCCC framework. Some of the coalitions include groups such as G77 and China, Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the South– South Cooperation (Tsega 2016). The balance of power function of coalitions serves to shore up Africa’s influence among Annex II countries. Furthermore, the cross-cutting nature of the coalitions speaks to the broadness of the African position. The coalitions have helped Africa to ensure that individual member states’ interests are represented in the UNFCCC negotiations. Its membership of these groups means the continent is a leader in the demand for the urgent adaptive responses and the resources required. Environmental diplomacy through the UNFCCC regime has recorded some milestones in the negotiations toward carbon reduction and adaptation. Africa, through the Africa Group of Negotiators, is a critical part of these success stories. Some of the milestones include the signing and ratification of the UNFCCC treaty itself, the Kyoto Protocol, the Bali Action Plan, the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage, and the Paris Agreement (Clim-Dev Africa 2015; Bogott and van Wyk, n.d.). The African Group of Negotiators were also very resourceful in the negotiations that led to the transition of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, conservation of existing forest carbon stocks, sustainable forest

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management, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+ ), among other contributions (Clim-Dev Africa 2015). African countries strategically linked their development issues to climate change in line with the two forms of bandwagoning alluded to by Jinnah (2011). Apart from the fact that African countries joined the international climate change regime at its inception, they have continually linked their development issues to the regime. At successive Conferences of Parties (COPs) of the UNFCCC, this reality plays out as the Africa Group of Negotiators harps on the need for equity and justice among parties in line with historical complicity in carbon emissions and to ensure that the wherewithal for combating climate change. The Group joins other Annex II Groups in insisting that these parties bear the financing and technological transfer to reducing global warming. The Group, along with its other coalition members, have always believed that international commitments on climate change should be binding because that is the assured way by which the international climate regime cans serve to effectively address the development dimension to climate change in the continent. The continent’s faith in the international climate change regime is also seen in the ratification of the several protocols and instruments that have emerged from it. African countries demonstrated their commitment to the international climate regime by signing international instruments such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement and depositing their Nationally Determined Contributions to the UNFCCC en route to COP 21 in 2015.

Environmental Diplomacy and the Fallacy of Climate Bandwagoning in Africa African countries consider the international climate regime as crucial to their development agenda. The intertwining of climate change and development imperatives of the continent provided the core incentive for joining the global climate regime. African countries have now become critical stakeholders in Global Environmental Governance, and as a Group, the continent is a firm believer in the ideals of the regime. It is then pertinent to question the effect of bandwagoning Africa’s development imperatives to the international climate regime, having been part of the movement for close to three decades. The assessment of the potency of African countries’ environmental diplomacy is done by critically considering how well countries in the continent have put to use lessons learned from the international climate regime. Going by these lessons, Africa countries can be said to have been engaged in climate bandwagoning’s fallacy. This is because lessons from the international climate regime have largely not been employed to aid the quest for development in the continent. The foremost lesson to be learned from the international climate regime is sound environmental governance. Environmental governance involves putting in place mechanisms to ensure that society is not affected by climate change

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and other environmental challenges by arresting its causes and cushioning its effects on the people, now and in the future. The international climate regime demands parties to the regime work assiduously to ensure that the people can face the future with hope based on the foregoing. The lessons of environmental diplomacy bring to the fore the idea of cross-bandwagoning by which African countries should approach the climate change challenge. The first bandwagoning is Africa’s engagement in negotiations in their environmental diplomacy to reduce carbon emissions and foster adaption through financing and technology transfer. The second bandwagoning is that parties are supposed to concurrently address their environmental issues as impacted by climate change by domesticating principles of environmental diplomacy that can aid their stand against the menace. What this portends for African countries is that they must engage in cross-bandwagoning by simultaneously engaging in international climate change negotiations and coming up with policies and programmes to address environmental challenges in equal measures on the home front. Failure to approach environmental diplomacy in this manner can only amount to the fallacy of climate bandwagoning in Africa. African countries are firmly engaged in the first, but the second plank remains eminently problematic and underexplored in the continent. To start with, African countries’ response to climate change is more of “motion without movement.” At the global and continental level, efforts are being made to confront the menace, but not much is being achieved within many countries. For many countries, joining the environmental diplomacy fray is merely to exercise their right as sovereign states within the international system. Beyond this traditional proving of sovereign equality, environmental diplomacy has become a regular jamboree for African environmental policymakers and their retinue of officials to the UNFCCC and other bilateral and multilateral gatherings. Back home, little interest has been shown in drafting workable adaptation policies and programmes to ensure that the vast number of poor citizens on the continent are cushioned from the effects of climate change. Furthermore, the international climate regime has inspired a lot of developments that can have an impact on the political economy of the world and affect Africa’s place and position global order evolves. One of such is the transition from fossil fuel to biofuels. African countries can shore up the energy mix and shorten the route to development by keying into this transition (Amigun et al. 2011). This and other products of environmental diplomacy do have potentially farreaching imports for African development and industrialization. While African countries hold that their development quest can be aided in addressing climate change and its effects (African Development Bank 2015), there is a demonstrable lack of will to face the menace with the best policy practice. This lack of political will is standing in the way of picking necessary behavioral and policy insights from environmental diplomacy to foster cross-bandwagoning. Environmental diplomacy is a coming together of many actors apart from state actors who had before its advent dominated international diplomacy. On

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the continent, countries engage in environmental policymaking with insularity, in that, unlike what they have seen on the international climate change scene, non-state participants are practically left out or not properly consulted (Muok and Kingiri 2015). The diversity of participants is one of the distinguishing features of environmental governance, in which diplomacy forms a critical part. Governments at all levels interact poorly with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), the research community, and other bodies (Mrema and Bankobeza 2012). It is apposite to state that these non-state bodies possess a vast understanding of the local environment, and it is dynamic and represent the people’s interests. The participation of these actors can enhance environmental policymaking and their input which can fundamentally enrich the position(s) of the continent in climate change negotiations. In effect, Africa’s insularity in the environmental policy process to the exclusion of nonstate actors shows a lack of democratic temperament in having the people and or their representatives coming on board for inclusive decision-making toward finding solutions to the problems affecting them in their environment. In addition to the limited participation of actors in environmental governance, if there are important take away from African states’ environmental diplomacy, it should be the twin principles of accountability and transparency. African countries, through the years, have a reputation for poor accountability and lack of transparency in public affairs. As principles of environmental diplomacy, climate change negotiations have shown that state parties can make little headway if these principles are not operational in environmental governance on their home fronts. The temperament of international climate change negotiations shows that countries must be seen as accountable and transparent in their general governance and on the environment, particularly to fully leverage their offerings. Principles of accountability and transparency affect the environmental policymaking process and, to a great extent, financing. Many African countries have been found wanting on these (Olajide et al. 2020). The public policymaking process is shrouded in official secrecy while governmental actors are largely unaccountable for their actions, choices, and decisions, which affect the people (Ndah 2010; Bayrakçı et al. 2012; Mondlane et al. 2016). The pervasive lack of accountability and transparency affects environmental governance, demonstrating African countries’ half-hearted approach to environmental diplomacy. Issues of accountability and transparency also have to do with financing climate change across the continent. Public finance management in Africa is poor and riddled with a lack of accountability and outright corruption. Many African countries have been taken as the face of corruption. For example, the erstwhile British Prime Minister described Nigeria as a “fantastically corrupt country” (BBC 2016). While this does not describe the whole of the continent, the malaise of sleaze and poor public finance management are serious problems on the continent. This problem is also visible in

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financing environmental, governmental governance in the continent. Environmental government finance in much of Africa is poor, with investment in critical infrastructure low and in many cases frittered away through corruption. This largely explains why basic issues such as housing, waste management, town planning, and drainage management have gory climate change outcomes for African citizens. Local environmental/climate finance is poor on the continent, which is largely the crux of Africa’s climate bandwagoning. Frittering away resources that could help address issues that could have forestalled many of the continent’s adaptation challenges and a continuation of the ruinous public finance culture shows that Africa is only bent on excusing its responsibilities on climate change without intending to take responsibility (Olajide et al. 2018). The case of Nigeria’s unhealthy management of its supposed local climate finance mechanism, the Ecological Fund resonates in this wise (Olajide and Ojakorotu, 2019). Why should Africa expect financial help from outside when it has failed to not managed its resources judiciously? (Olajide et al. 2020). African countries seem not to have realized the international climate change regime’s stance and body language for accountability in public finance, of which climate finance is a critical aspect. Africa countries have all along been engaged in the fallacy of climate change bandwagoning. The whole idea of environmental diplomacy is for the international community to jointly discuss, negotiate, and agree on the issues and effects of climate change and other environmental problems. This then supposes that state parties to international climate regimes need to bandwagon their issues as they are affected by the menace and also take home lessons on some of the best ways to address the issues. In the continent’s case, there seems to be a failure to realize that for effective bandwagoning of the climate type, it must be a two-way effort. To want to leverage the diplomatic side of environmental diplomacy without the lesson side is to demonstrate irresponsibility by African countries. Environmental governance ideas emanating from the international climate regime have so far encouraged states to tailor their engagement and negotiations to suit their realities. This came to the foremost glaringly in the lead up to the deposition of the Nationally Determined Contribution by state parties to the UNFCCC in 2015 (African Development Bank 2019). Hence, to fulfill the environmental diplomacy bandwagon’s lesson side, parties must make environmental and climate change policies tailor-made to suit their narratives. This will also be immensely added by adopting principles of participation, accountability, transparency, and requisite urgency with which issues must be addressed.

Conclusion Remarks Africa’s fallacy of climate bandwagoning has gone on for several decades since the Rio de Janeiro Earth Conference in 1992 and which was routinized into regular events where taxpayers’ money is being spent without appreciable

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results as a result of not taking lessons that can be tailored to suit local realities across the continent. The international climate regime that arose out of environmental diplomacy operates based on key principles of a plurality of actors to enhance rich and comprehensive decision-making, accountability, and transparency in the policy process and financing. These are basic lessons that African countries can leverage in their environmental diplomacy. These countries latched on to environmental diplomacy to help in the critical area of development deficit, which in reality is being exacerbated by climate change. While this is a positive bandwagoning, it is not enough to ensure that they continue fully benefits from environmental diplomacy. Environmental diplomacy is rich in principles and practices that can enrich environmental governance, including addressing the climate change challenge in Africa. Africa has so far failed to see the necessity of cross-bandwagoning by harping on one the diplomatic routine without taking the lessons. Furthermore, addressing climate change for popular benefits has more to do with political will than ineffective bandwagoning as presently being by most African countries. For example, agriculture is the largest employer of labor on the continent. The rain-fed nature of agricultural practices in most of the continent means that farmers are put in unfavorable social and economic situations with unreliable onset and cessation of rainfall. In many areas, too, such as the Eastern and Southern parts of the continent, intermittent, and often long-term drought makes it difficult for farmers to grow their plants satisfactorily (Dube et al. 2016). This means that there is an urgent need for irrigation farming across the continent to ensure that farmers can plant crops in and out of season, thereby shoring up food security for the countries. This involves having the right view on the urgency of climate change and the necessary political will to ensure that the continent’s drought-affected parts are greened for optimum agricultural utility. What this portends is that rather than half-hearted climate bandwagoning, African countries can look toward Israel and Libya (in the Ghadaffi era) for their exemplary “water-wise” agriculture, that is, turning desert into rich agricultural lands through massive irrigation farming (Fleischer et al. 2007; Heemskerk and Koopmanschap 2012; Panel 2018). The two countries in the desert put to question African countries’ half-hearted focus on environmental diplomacy without the will to take the lessons toward coming up with creative policies and programmes to tackle climate change. Environmental diplomacy has helped immensely in addressing the climate change challenge globally. For African countries, it has substantially helped to shift global focus on the development crisis because the continent houses the majority of peoples projected to be most negatively affected by it (Tsega 2016). However, it has not been able to substantially help address the climate change challenge due to the failure to cross-bandwagon. This portends that African countries need to rethink the climate change challenge but not seeing environmental diplomacy as a routine jamboree for leaders and policymakers. The need to learn the very best of lessons from the principles of addressing the challenge by engaging citizens and groups that represent their interests

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and other principles that can help shape policies and the processes of making them and finance. African countries must demonstrate to the international community that they are responsible in the quest for their development and do not intend to outsource finding solutions to their development crisis while sitting idly and or continuing to engage in poor policies and wanton waste of public resources that could have aided development if deployed the right way. African countries can only realise their much sought-after development in the changing global order by fully engaging in climate bandwagoing, that is, being active in environmental diplomacy and imbibing its lessons and principles for better environmental governance.

References Africa Progress Panel. “Power People Planet: Seizing Africa’s Energy and Climate Opportunities: Africa Progress Report 2015”, 2015. African Development Bank. “Analysis of Adaptation Components of Africa’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)”, 2019. African Development Bank. “The African Development Bank at the UNFCCC COP21 Meeting-Africa’s Climate Opportunity: Adapting and Thriving”, 2015. Aksoy, Metin, and A. Çiçek. “Redefining Diplomacy in the 21st Century.” MANAS Journal of Social Studies 7, no. 3 (2018): 907–921. Ali, Saleem, and Helena Vladich. “Environmental Diplomacy.” C. Constantinou, P. Kerr, & P. Sharp, The Sage Handbook of Diplomacy (2016): 601–616. Amigun, Bamikole, Josephine Kaviti Musango, and William Stafford. “Biofuels and sustainability in Africa.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 15, no. 2 (2011): 1360–1372. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2010.10.015. Bayrakçı, Erdal, Mehmet Gökü¸s, and Yasin Ta¸spınar. “Accountability in Public Policies: A Comparative Study.” Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference of American Society of Business and Behavioural Sciences, June 22–23, 2012, Berlin, Germany: 3–13. BBC. “David Cameron calls Nigeria and AFGHANISTAN ‘fantastically corrupt’”. News, Politics, May 10, 2016. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36260193. Bodansky, Daniel, and Lavanya Rajamani. “The Evolution and Governance Architecture of the Climate Change Regime.” In International Relations and Global Climate Change, edited by Detlef Sprinz and Urs Luterbacher, pp. 1–45, 2015. Bogott, Nicole, and Lesley-Anne van Wyk. “Zooming in on Africa in the International Climate Negotiations.” Broadhurst, Arlene I., and G. Ledgerwood. “Environmental Diplomacy of States, Corporations and Non-Governmental Organizations: the Worldwide Web of Influence.” International Relations 14, no 2, (1998): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 004711789801400201. Clim-Dev Africa. “Africa’s Journey in the Global Climate Negotiations- Africa at COP 21: A Synthesis Report for Policy Makers”, 2015. Dube, Thulani, Philani Moyo, Moreblessings Ncube, and Douglas Nyathi. “The Impact of Climate Change on Agro-ecological Based Livelihoods in Africa: A Review.” Journal of Sustainable Development 9, no. 1 (2016): 256–267. https:// ssrn.com/abstract=2724549.

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Dupoux, Partick. “Agriculture and Africa are the ‘poor relations of climate finance’. Why this needs to change”, World Economic Forum: Regional Agenda – Climate Change. Last updated November 24, 2016. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/ 2016/11/agriculture-and-africa-are-the-poor-relations-of-climate-finance-why-thisneeds-to-change. Encyclopedia Brittanica. “The Brittanica Guide to Climate Change: An Unbiased Guide to the Key Issue of Our Age”. Constable and Robinson Ltd., 2008. Fleischer, Aliza, Lichtman Ivgenia, and Mendelsohn Robert. “Climate Change, Irrigation, and Israeli Agriculture : Will Warming Be Harmful?” Policy Research Working Paper, no. 413 (2007). World Bank, Washington, DC. © World Bank. https://ope nknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/7169. December 19, 2019. Friis-Hansen, Esbern. “Implementing African Climate Change Policies”. In Decentralized Governance of Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa, edited by Esbern Friis-Hansen, pp. 11–24. Cab International, Boston, 2017. Giovanni, Arrighi. “The African Crisis, World Systemic and Regional Aspects.” New Left Review 15 (2002): 5–36. Haas, Ernst B. Beyond the Nation-State. Functionalism and International Organization. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1964. Heemskerk, Willem and E. M. J. Koopmanschap. “Agribusiness Development in Libya: A Fact-Finding Mission.” Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation, 2012. Imber, Mark F. “Functionalism: International Organizations”. Encyclopedia Brittanica, May 21, 2013. https://www.britannica.com/topic/functionalism-internati onal-organizations Jinnah, Sikina. “Climate Change Bandwagoning: The Impacts of Strategic Linkages on Regime Design, Maintenance, and Death.” Global Environmental Politics 11, no. 3 (2011): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00065. Lala, Fridon. “Africa in the Changing Global Order: Does African Agency Matter in Global Politics?” In The Changing Global Order, pp. 127–143. Springer, Cham, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21603-0_7. Lancaster, Carol. “Economic Reform in Africa: Is It Working.” The Washington Quarterly 13, no. 1 (1990): 115–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/016366090094 77535. Long, David, and Lucian M. Ashworth. “Working for Peace: The Functional Approach, Functionalism and Beyond.” In New Perspectives on International Functionalism, pp. 1–26. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1999. Lubeck, Paul M. “The Crisis of African Development: Conflicting Interpretations and Resolutions.” Annual Review of Sociology 18, no. 1 (1992): 519–540. https://doi. org/10.1146/annurev.so.18.080192.002511 Mitrany, David. “A Working Peace System.” In The European Union, edited by B. F. Nelson and A. C-G. Stubb, pp. 77–97. Palgrave, London, 1994. Mondlane, Hirondina T. C., Fernanda Claudio, and M. Adil Khan. “Remedying Africa’s Self-propelled Corruption: The Missing Link.” Politikon 43, no. 3 (2016): 345–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2016.1160859. Mrema, Elizabeth, and Bankobeza, Sylvia. “International Environmental Diplomacy and Negotiations”, 9th Joensuu/UNEP Course, Grenada, 2012 Muok, Benard O., and Ann Kingiri. “The Role of Civil Society Organizations in Low-Carbon Innovation in Kenya.” Innovation and Development 5, no. 2 (2015): 207–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/2157930X.2015.1064558.

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Mwanika, Philip Arthur Njuguna, and Martin Odoyo. “Environmental Diplomacy and Human Security: The First Joint Workshop of the Foreign Service Institute, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kenya, and the ISS, South Africa.” (2008). Ndah, Anthony B. “Public Policy and Policy Inappropriateness in Africa: Causes, Consequences and the Way Forward.” 2010. https://www.academia.edu/318501/ Public_policy_and_policy_inappropriateness_in_Africa_Causes_consequences_and_ the_way_forward. December 12, 2019 Nicholson, Simon, and Daniel Chong. “Jumping on the Human Rights Bandwagon: How Rights-Based Linkages Can Refocus Climate Politics.” Global Environmental Politics 11, no. 3 (2011): 121–136. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00072. Olajide, Bamidele, Aaron Tshidzumba, and Victor Ojakorotu. “Climate Change and the Politics of Implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in Africa.” Journal of Nation-building & Policy Studies 2020, no. Special Issue 1 (2020): 47–65. Olajide, Bamidele, and Victor Ojakorotu. “Intergovernmental Relations, Climate Finance and the Politics of Ecological Fund in Nigeria.” Journal of Gender, Information and Development in Africa (JGIDA) 8, No. Special Issue 1 (2019): 9–28. Olajide, Bamidele, Maryam Omolara Quadri, and Victor Ojakorotu. “Climate Change, Human Security and Good Governance in Nigeria.” African Renaissance 15, no. 3 (2018): 173–196. Panel, Malabo Montpellier. “Water-Wise: Smart Irrigation Strategies for Africa.” A Malabo Montpellier Panel Report, 2018. https://www.mamopanel.org/media/upl oads/files/Irrigation_report_FINAL_ONLINE.pdf. December 19, 2019. Pisupati Balakrishna. “South-South Cooperation and Environmental Diplomacy Options for India.” Chennai: Forum for Law, Environment, Development and Governance (FLEDGE), 2015. Tondel, Fabien, Hanne Knaepen, and Lesley-Anne van Wyk. “Africa and Europe Combatting Climate Change: Towards a Common Agenda in 2015.” Discussion Paper European Centre for Development Policy Management, No. 177 (2015). Tsega, Anwar Hassen. “Africa in Global Climate Change Governance: Analyzing Its Position and Challenges.” International Journal of African Development 4, no. 1 (2016): 3. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/ijad/vol4/iss1/3. Yonemoto, Shohei, and Robert Triendl. “Environmental Diplomacy, Regional Security, and the Limits of “Green Aid”.” Asia-Pacific Review 5, no. 2 (1998): 55–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/13439009808719979.

CHAPTER 29

The European Union’s Emergency Trust Fund for Africa and Challenges of Addressing Irregular Migration in the Global South: The Nigerian Example Paul-Sewa Thovoethin Introduction In the whole of the African continent Nigeria, remains the topmost country with an incidence of both legal and illegal migration to Europe and other countries in the global north. Various reasons have been advanced for this development. There is, however, no consensus among scholars on the major reasons for the high rate of migration of Nigerians to European countries. Some of the reasons in the literature include poverty, unemployment, natural disaster, and violent conflicts, among others. This rate of irregular migration of African citizens to Europe and other countries in the global north in which Nigeria has remained topmost has become both social and economic stress for these countries. Therefore, to address the challenges of irregular migration from the global south to the global north, especially as it affects European countries, the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa was established in 2015. The fund aims to foster stability and contribute to better migration management by addressing the root causes of destabilization, forced displacement, and irregular migration. The Trust Fund, which was for five years, has been in existence for more than four years, and it is undergoing an assessment from various quarters to ascertain if it has been able to achieve its objectives. Therefore, this work intends to join the debate in assessing the impact of EUTF for Africa to answer if it has addressed the issue of irregular migration in Nigeria. To P.-S. Thovoethin (B) Department of Political Science, Lagos State University, Lagos, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_29

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achieve the objectives, the paper is divided into four sections; first, it takes an overview of the EUTF for Africa, a critical view of the remote causes of irregular migration in Nigeria, an assessment of the Trust Fund in Nigeria, and recommendations of possible options for making the EU Emergency Trust Fund a veritable too for addressing both regular and irregular migration which will be beneficial to European countries as well as their African counterparts.

An Overview of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa This section takes an overview of the EUTF for Africa to bring into the framework’s limelight provisions. This would make it possible to match the framework’s requirements with what it has achieved so far in Nigeria later in this work. According to the European Commission (2015a), by the end of 2014, more than 3.1 million refugees originated from the African countries toward Europe. These countries also hosted some 3.4 million refugees, representing approximately one-quarter of the global refugee population. Therefore, there was growing recognition among European Union institutions and member states in the last decade that existing EU instruments before 2015 were not adequate to address the migrant crisis and that there was a need to bring together various sources of funding to address migration more coherently and to act more rapidly. In fact, in summer 2015, movements of refugees and migrants heading for Europe became a priority of European politics and public life, especially due to the rising death toll among people trying to reach European countries by all means. It was against this backdrop that by, invitation of the European Council, an international summit on migration was held in November 2015. Those that attended the November 2015 summit were the heads of state of 36 African countries and representatives of the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the United Nations (UN), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) (See http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/internati onal-summit/2015/11/11-12/, 2018).1 This summit led to the emergence of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. This European funding instrument aims to help implement the objectives laid down at the summit for five years, quickly and flexibly. According to Bartels (2019), the agreed objectives reflect a compromise between European and African states ahead of the meeting. These comprise so wide a range of options at addressing the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement, preventing and fighting migrant smuggling, eradicating trafficking in human beings, strengthening international protection and stepping up assistance for people in flight, improving cooperation on return and sustainable reintegration of migrants from Europe, and advancing legal migration and mobility possibilities.2

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The Trust Fund is expected to run from 2015 to 2020 and could be extended if need be. It finances activities in three regions on the continent of Africa (referred to as “windows”).3 These countries include Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia in North Africa; Burkina Faso, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Chad in the Sahel and Lake Chad regions; and Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, in the Horn of Africa. More so, neighboring countries of these eligible countries may benefit, on a case by case basis, from the Trust Fund projects with a regional dimension to address regional migration flows and related cross-border challenges. The primary beneficiaries are refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees, and the local communities hosting them, and other vulnerable or marginalized populations, such as victims of human trafficking, and smuggled migrants, youth, women, and children. Civil society actors such as community or women’s organizations are expected to benefit from the Trust Fund.4 The EUTF for Africa is structured around a Strategic Board, which sets the general strategy, and three Regional Operational Committees for the abovementioned three geographic windows of Horn of Africa, Sahel and Lake Chad, and North Africa. Each Operational Committee approves programs for their respective geographic window. The Strategic Board and the Regional Operational Committees are all chaired by the European Commission. They include representatives from the European External Action Service, member states, and other donors contributing more than e3 m to the EUTF for Africa. Partner countries in Africa, regional organizations in Africa, and donors contributing less than e3 m are granted observer status without voting rights. The legal basis of the EUTF allows for fast decision-making that falls outside the traditional procedures due to its emergency nature. The EUTF for Africa projects is generally proposed under the leadership of the EU Delegations and then selected by members of the Regional Operational Committees. In contrast to conventional EU development instruments, the European Parliament does not have oversight of the EUTF for Africa.5 This EUTF for Africa is a pooled fund of different EU funding instruments, mainly the European Development Fund, the EU budget, and member states and other donors’ contributions. In order to achieve the objectives of EUTF for Africa, the EU sewed the first seed itself by making available the sum of e1.8 billion in November 2015 from its budget, coming mostly from the European Development Fund (EDF). This amount was expected to be a matching fund; the EU expected its member states to put a further e1.8 billion into the fund as well. However, while the EU continually increased its contributions for three years, the member states remained well behind the Valletta summit’s expectations. Interestingly, by October 2018, the joint contributions to the EUTF stood at just e440 million.6 Out of this fund Germany provided the largest contribution, of e160 million. Thus, as the largest contributor Germany possesses a special interest in the functioning of

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EUTF.7 This development indicates the fact that contrary to expectations, adequate money was not made available by the European states to the EUTF, which accounted for the redirection of the lion’s share of its funding from the DC domiciled in the EU general budget. According to Mager (2018) as of 2018, EUR 3.4 billion was dedicated to the EUTF for Africa. In a report of Oxfam’s research (November 2015 to May 2019), out of the above-stated amount and some other funds raised by the EU and her member countries, the EUTF for Africa approved projects worth e3.9bn as of 2019. According to Oxfam’s classifications funding for development cooperation stands at 56% of the instrument (e2.18bn). In comparison spending on migration governance reaches 26% (e1.011bn) and spending on peace and security components reaches 10% (e382 m) of the total fund. Two percent of the EUTF for Africa (e83.1 m) is allocated to research and learning projects, and 6% (e243.8 m) is allocated to projects which could not be classified because of insufficient detail. According to this research, investment in projects directly connected to migration management and border controls increased in 2018–19 compared to 2015–17, at the expense of development cooperation projects. Just e56 m was allocated to fund regular migration schemes between African countries or Africa and the EU. This represents less than 1.5% of the total worth of the EUTF for Africa.8 It is imperative to state that the EUTF for Africa offers a good model for dealings with highly differentiated refugee and migration challenges in the African countries of origin, transit, and destination. According to my assessment, which has been underscored by Kipp (2018) the Trust Fund structure permits the Commission to respond rapidly and flexibly to highly dynamic migration flows. Under the EUTF, previously separate EU funding lines for external relations, home affairs, development cooperation, humanitarian aid, and neighborhood policy are now brought together in a single instrument for the first time.9 However, how all these have translated in reducing irregular migration from affected countries under the Trust Fund focusing on Nigeria shall be discussed in another section of this paper.

X-raying the Remotes and Immediate Causes of Migration in Nigeria This section aims to take a critical look at the significant reasons people migrate from Nigeria to Europe. This is necessary upon the backdrop of the fact that various reasons have been advanced for the increased rate of irregular migration in Nigeria which some of them have been minimally captured in the provisions of the EU Trust Fund for Africa, which might likely fail to address the problem of illegal migration in Nigeria. Going by this, an opportunity to understand the major reasons people migrate from Nigeria for greener pasture elsewhere shall help us understand significant reasons for the success or failure of the EUTF for Africa in the achievements of its set objectives. This is because; using the words of John Dewey (2014), “a problem well

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defined is a problem half-solved.” Again, Albert Einstein (2003 :3) asserts, “if I had an hour to solve a problem I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Therefore, to address the problem of irregular migration in Nigeria, there is a need to adequately understand both the macro and micro causes of the problem.10 Furthermore, it should be noted that the reasons why Nigerian nationals choose to leave their country of origin are complex and cannot be generalized which might make it difficult for an initiative like EUTF for Africa to address fully. Existing literature ascertains it is a mixture of economic as well as forced drivers that lead Nigeria nationals to leave their country. Moreover, it is also imperative to differentiate between potential migrants aside from actual migrants. This will better capture the motivations of all Nigerians that might want to migrate abroad and those that are already spread across countries in Europe, which could eventually assist the EUTF for Africa in understanding how funds are to be directed for different purposes.11 More so, it is also imperative to establish that there is sub-national variation in Nigerians’ desire to migrate that must be understood. For instance, by far, North-East Nigeria has been the region that is most deeply affected by Boko Haram violence. Yet the desire to migrate is comparatively low compared with other regions in the country that do not face high levels of insecurity. Further, a striking proportion of Nigerians who wish to leave the country for Europe are from Lagos state. There is evidence that the state parades those with moderate livelihood and whose socioeconomic class is most prominent in urban areas.12 This paper’s position which has been emphasized under the above paragraphs of the work, is that migration is motivated by numerous factors, and the phenomenon has been perceived from different perspectives. Some of the factors that cause irregular migration that has been emphasized in the literature include the search for employment, the lack of essential social services, and the unreliability where they happen to be present, agricultural failure, environmental deterioration, and communal clashes, escalating tensions due to differences and resource sharing between Muslims and Christians, outbreaks of intrastate violence in the forms of ethno-religious, political, criminal, and resource struggles, among others.13 Therefore, it is not the intention of this paper to emphasize various perspectives on the causes of irregular migration because these reasons have been adequately documented in the literature. Therefore, what is of utmost importance is a thorough examination of the changing drivers of migration in Nigeria, which have undergone limited research and which their understanding would enhance the success of EUTF for Africa and other financial schemes now and in the future. Such effort is necessary because of unpredictable factors that aid irregular migration in Nigeria, emerging simultaneously as the sheer number of aspiring migrants skyrockets.14 In an Altai Consulting report, Malakooti (2015a) describes that the youth in particular often chooses to migrate as a household strategy. Especially for

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young men who are expected to provide for the family and maximize income, migration seems lucrative. Success stories of households increasing their living conditions through remittances encourage other families to pursue the same strategy. Consequently, the decision to invest in a child’s journey to Europe becomes a seemingly rational option to increase household income, not necessarily because such migrants are from an impoverished background.15 This position has been established under the third paragraph of this section. I aver that most of those who travel or desire to travel from Nigeria are from Lagos state, which has the highest number of the middle-income class population in Nigeria. In recent years social media has also aided the movement of people outside Nigeria to Europe. These social media aids migration in different ways. According to Vertovec (2007) border-crossing networks have become a means through which people easily migrate from Nigeria to the global north. In his opinion, through their movements, migrants establish good social networks between their places of origin and places abroad. These social networks assist the migrants in learning and informing each other about where to go, how to get jobs, and find places to live, among other forms of assistance. Besides, through such transnational ties, they maintain families, economic activities, political interests, and other socio-cultural practices.16 In another dimension, social media’s role in the increase in the rate of migration of Nigerians could also be explained within the context of the fact that urban residents who use the internet frequently have a strong interest in migrating. This position could be supported by the fact that Nigerians who use the internet often and who have a favorable opinion of the global north development are more likely to want to migrate. These two influences of social media on migration suggest that a higher level of connectedness and openness to the outside world encourage the desire to migrate. It is also relevant to observe that a high proportion of Nigerians who leave or wish to leave the country are from Lagos. This could be connected to different factors. First, there is mixed evidence that those with moderate means (i.e., neither the most affluent, nor the poorest) are most likely to migrate abroad. This socioeconomic class is most prominent in urban areas. Second, Lagos reflects the social network effect that occurs in a city, in which Nigerians share their interests in migrating abroad. Third, Lagos is believed to be a “city of strivers,” in which people are most likely to imagine taking a migration journey.17 Furthermore the crisis of good governance in Nigeria has become an elixir for irregular migration in Nigeria. In the Nigerian situation majority of its citizens are not satisfied with the country’s democracy. Thus, Nigerians who are unhappy with the state of democracy mostly wish to leave their country. This development implication is that good governance, and the benefits attached to it in European countries have continued to attract Nigerians’ interests in traveling abroad.18

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What has run through this section of the work is that there are new drivers of migration in Nigeria that have not been adequately emphasized in the literature and research and have not been accommodated in the EUTF for Africa framework. Beyond this is the argument that the regional focus of the initiative in the Nigeria context has not addressed irregular migration, where the incidence is rampant. I will try as much as possible to justify these two positions in the next section of this work.

Implications of European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa Projects Funding in Nigeria and Other Countries in the Sahel and Lake Chad Region As a matter of emphasis and for the purpose of this section, I will reiterate that the overall objective and purpose of the EU Trust Fund for Africa is to address the problem of irregular migration in three regions or windows—Sahel and Lake Chad, which comprises of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal, the Horn of Africa which is made up of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, and the North of Africa which consist of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. Thus, by supporting stability and contribute to better migration management as well as addressing the root causes of destabilization, forced displacement, and irregular migration in these three African Regions, the Trust Fund draws four different strategic objectives: more significant economic and employment opportunities; strengthening the resilience of the communities and in particular the most vulnerable, as well as refugees and displaced people; improved migration management in countries of origin, transit, and destination; improved governance and conflict prevention and reduction of forced displacement and irregular migration.19 To achieve these objectives, since the emergence of the Trust Fund in 2015, financial allocations have been made to each window (region) in the following manner: North of Africa; e659.2 m, the Sahel and Lake Chad; e1.95bn, and Horn of Africa; e1.41bn.20 With the highest share of these allocations given to countries in the Sahel and Lake Child Region, it is expected that projects aiming to address the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement are in the forefront in these countries.21 Based on this belief attempts would be made in the next paragraphs of this section to examine some of the projects that have been embarked upon in these countries, especially with an emphasis on Nigeria, which accounts for the highest number of irregular migrants in the whole of Africa. It is also important to point out that the EU has been using the EUTF for Africa to increase its cooperation with the G5 Sahel, its Joint Force, and the Sahel Alliance. This G5 was created in 2014 by the leaders of Burkina

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Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger as an intergovernmental cooperation framework to fight insecurity, which has been supported by a cross-border Joint Force since 2017.22 Beyond this, half (e373 m out of e789.6 m) of the funding released through the Sahel and Lake Chad window since December 2017 has been designated for the Sahel G5 countries, with e125.4 m provided for essential services, economic resilience, and protection of refugees, and e77.5 m for migration containment or security forces support. The latter included e5 m to increase the state’s presence in the border regions of Burkina Faso, e10 m to increase the presence of Malian security forces and enforce the Malian authorities’ control over their territory, 57 and e10 m of budget support to the Chadian security forces to strengthen border control between Chad, Niger, and Cameroon.23 It is important to note that among these G5 Countries, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso remain the three top recipient countries in the EUTF for Africa fund in the Sahel and Lake Chad Region.24 Different reasons have been advanced for the preference given to these three countries in the allocation of funds for projects. First, in Mali’s case, the upsurge in insecurity due to an unprecedented influx of radical armed groups has led to a spread of terrorist acts from the northern regions of Mali to the central and southern parts of the country. Consequently, the situation has worsened in the country’s Mopti and Ségou regions, while Burkina Faso, and Niger are increasingly affected by the crisis. Furthermore, Niger remains an important transit country for people traveling from West Africa to Libya and Algeria hence, allocating higher resources for the country. This factor has been identified by the EU as a priority partner for cooperation on migration control. Accordingly, the EU invested significantly in Niger early in the EUTF for Africa’s lifecycle (e253 m since 2015), of which e122.2 m was earmarked for migration control.25 Burkina Faso has also remained another primary recipient of the EU Trust Fund’s funding due to security challenges that the country has been experiencing in recent years. Based on this, 5 million euros were provided by the EU for the Integrated Management Programme for Border Regions in Burkina Faso (ProGEF). More so, to support the presence of security forces at the borders with Mali and Niger, at least e22 m was allocated since December 2017 to support the Burkina Faso security forces and border authorities.26 Going further, aside these three countries in the G5, which have enjoyed considerable projects funding by the EU Trust Fund, is Mauritania, which is also part of the G5. Mauritanian enjoys a reasonable level of funding due to the fact that the country is seen as an important security ally for the EU, which is also reinforced by its status as a central player in the G5 Sahel; since it hosts its permanent secretariat. It is on record that in October 2018, DG HOME, together with DEVCO and the External Action Service, conducted a mission to Mauritania to build relations with the authorities and “place migration cooperation as part of EU foreign relations with the country. As a result of this mission, in November 2018, a e25 m program was launched to strengthen the Mauritanian authorities” capacity to control land and sea

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borders and provide protection to migrants. Out of the e25 m, e20 m was budgeted to improve social services, border control, and security.27 The attempt at illustrating the highest project funding allocation to countries in the G5, which has been done in the above paragraphs, is not to suggest that projects were not funded in other countries that are in the Sahel and Lake Chad region. The paragraphs established that these G5 countries enjoyed more EUTF funding and emphasized the underlining reasons for this. So, in order not to lose focus of this section, I will, in turn, take a look at some EUTF projects funding in some countries which are part of the Sahel and Lake Region but which are not members of the G5. Some of the Sahel and Lake Chad Region countries but which are not members of the G5 that would be the next focus are Guinea, Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire, and Nigeria, the reference case. In 2017, the EU negotiated agreements on the readmission of migrants with Guinea, the Gambia, and Côte d’Ivoire, which are reflected in the funding they receive through the EUTF. For instance, in May 2018, the Gambia “signaled willingness to cooperate” in the framework of an informal arrangement. Thus, by the end of May 2018, the EUTF for Africa launched a e23 m project providing economic opportunities, including returning and/or potential migrants and support[ing] the Government in its attempt to nurture perception shift for the Gambian population moving away from a future through migration to a future in The New Gambia28 It is also worth noting that the Gambia in 2018, focused on promoting social cohesion and attractive employment or self-employment in renewable energy, eco-tourism, and modern farming in Banjul and other inland provinces. This program targets 25,000 beneficiaries and focuses on returning migrants in 2019. Actions in these regions put an additional focus on high-intensity labor force activities to foster full labor market integration through on-the-job training, financial education, and incentives for financial saving and access to entrepreneurial schemes.29 Similarly, Guinea was awarded a e65 m employment creation project in July 2017, which occurred shortly after reaching an agreement with the EU on best practices for identifying and returning irregular migrants. Aside from promoting a development program, the project openly states that its objective is to reduce irregular migration and that it measures its results by reducing migrant departures. Other development projects with a migration control objective were also announced in Côte d’Ivoire, where the EUTF for Africa launched a e30 m project for budget support for civic registration in November 2018 to prevent irregular migration and reinforce cooperation on returns.30 In Nigeria, considering the fragile socioeconomic and food context in the country, the actions of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa are mainly located in the country’s Northern region States of Yobe, Gombe, Borno, and Adamawa. It is averred that the EUTF project funding is concentrated in the Northern Region of Nigeria because it is the region that has been ravaged with

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incidences of Boko Haram insurgencies and forced displacement. Thus, the Trust Fund’s focus in the region is to promote an approach linking relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD). This entails improving access to essential services, enhancing livelihood, and developing self-reliance opportunities for displaced people and host communities affected by the region’s humanitarian situation. However, it is essential to state that projects carried out in the region in the name of fighting the root causes of flight; rarely aim to create structural changes in international political relations, such as trade deals or agriculture and fishery policy. Instead, they work at the level of individual effort, activation, and employment of people in the region, to discourage their migration ambitions to Europe.31 It should also be affirmed that projects approved under the EUTF for the Sahel and Lake Chad Region and the circumstances around their adoption raise some concerns. One such concern is that in the Nigerian situation, the EU Trust Fund has failed to address the country’s critical sections that have a high potential for irregular migration. Over the years, North-East Nigeria, despite being under different sources of internal displacement is the region with the lowest number of potential immigrants despite the humanitarian crisis in the region. Another concern is that Nigeria, which produces almost fifty percent of irregular immigrants to Europe, has one of the lowest funding concentrations from the EUTF for Africa in the Sahel, and Lake Chad Region. The implication of this is that the emergency Trust Fund is achieving a little result in its quest to address its core objectives. Therefore it could be averred that countries that are more affected by the migration crisis draw the least benefit from the EU assistance. More so, the Trust Fund’s activities are more pronounced in countries like Ethiopia, Sudan, and Niger, where the problem of irregular migration is very low compared with Nigeria, which has a very high rate of immigrants. This suggests that there is a misplaced priority in the concentration of the activities of the Trust Fund in the Sahel and Lake Chad Region. Another serious concern is that development aid is increasingly used in this region as leverage to pressure countries to cooperate with European demands to combat irregular migration or accelerate the return of migrants. While this may increase the integration of migration management into the EU’s external action, in many cases, it undermines coherence within this action, especially between its foreign policy and development objectives.32 Concerning its functioning, the most controversial aspects are the diversion of aid, the conditionality approach,33 the non-alignment with partner countries’ development needs,34 and the lack of ownership of African partner countries.35 And on its goals, despite the fact that there is a link between development and migration, the EU shouldn’t expect less migration through development aid. Bartels (2019) supports this position when he argues that the financial and technical assistance provided by EUTF for Africa is not

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capable of managing migration movements in the long term and of tackling its structural causes. Hence it is doomed to failure.36 Another concern is that the European Commission dip into the EDF’s reserves and other traditional development instruments for nearly 90% of EUTF’s financial support, which affects funding that was destined for other purposes. The EUTF, therefore, brings little new and additional funding to the table, running the risk of diverting aid from essential areas of development.37 On a final note, there is the implication that a number of the EUTF focuses on projects promising short-term results. The assertion “emergency fund”; suggests that the current situation is a sudden emergency calling for quick solutions. Unfortunately, quick solutions are unlikely to have a long-term influence on development processes. Furthermore, the financial and technical assistance provided cannot manage migration movements in the long term and tackle its structural causes. Thus, European governments seem to expect quick results in areas where there are no quick solutions. It is a result of this that EUTF for Africa has not achieved its objectives and might likely not achieve much in Nigeria.

How to Make the EU Trust Fund Achieve Its Objectives The European Emergency Trust Fund has been criticized on various fronts. In fact, observers hold the position that I also align with that with some of these shortcomings; the Trust Fund has not necessarily impacted the continuous inflow of Africans to Europe, in which Nigeria is a third of this population. Unfortunately, the future of the EUTF for Africa is currently unclear, most especially because of the EU’s multiannual financial framework cycle lapse at the end of 2020.38 What is also worrisome is that the recent incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which adversely affected the entire world, has made it impossible for the European countries to focus on the implementation of some of the initiative core objectives, which has almost taken out 2020 from the five years cycle of the EUTF for Africa. Therefore, as the European institutions and member states move beyond 2020 to either extend the duration period of the framework or come up with a replacement of the initiative for another one, it is crucial to take note of certain imperatives for the implementation of the EUTF for Africa or draw appropriate lessons for future imitative. First is that the total amount budgeted by the European Union for the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa is a small amount of money compared to the scale of migration; the enormity of the development, security, and demographic challenges in these regions; and the large amounts of development assistance that these regions have received over the years. In fact, experience shows that the money has not made any significant difference to the root causes of migration or migration flows. Likewise, there is the inherent contradiction of a five-year “emergency” fund intended to address complex and long-term root causes. Because of this, as Cangas and Knoll (2016)

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point out, “tackling ‘the root causes of irregular migration’ is a lengthy, nonlinear, unpredictable process, depending on many more contextual factors than support from financial and technical development partners.” Castillejo (2016) also toes this line of argument when he avers that the basic theory of change that underlies the fund is also questionable beyond the scale and complexity of the challenge. Besides, there is no clear evidence that the type of development investments that the Trust Fund is making has prevented irregular migration. Indeed, many of the Trust Fund’s projects are similar to the kinds of investments that have long been made under traditional development instruments—with far more financing and greater scale—and yet have not appeared to reduce migration. Therefore, for the Trust Fund to achieve its objectives in the nearest future, there is the need to increase further funding by the Europeans and the framework to have a long years of operation. If these two steps are taken, they could kick-start new approaches and activities, which could then be taken forward with standard development programming. Thus, the EUTF may not be a “game-changer,” some of its objectives could serve as instruments to change the mindset and approach of addressing irregular migration in two aspects—making them as the focus to the root causes of migration as possible, and also making them as fast and as operational as possible.39 Furthermore, development aid, humanitarian assistance, and supporting strands, which the Trust Fund focuses on, must target those most in need and not fulfill donors’ other policy objectives. When aid is given for other purposes, such as donors’ short-term, self-interested political agendas, its impact on reducing poverty and its contribution to sustainable development is rarely lasting.40 This accounts for one reason why the Trust Fund has not especially addressed the problem of irregular migration in Nigeria. Thus, there is a need for the EU’s future financial framework for combating irregular migration from Nigeria to provide much-needed support not only to displaced people but also to create economic development opportunities. At the same time, there is the need for the EUTF for Africa to adopt clearer procedures and more transparent and consultative processes to ensure that short-term interests do not jeopardize the long-term objectives of development, stability, poverty eradication, and the protection of rights, in a situation that the Trust Fund would extend beyond 2020.41 Moreover, suppose the EUTF is going to be a future financial framework for addressing irregular migration in Africa. In that case, there is a need for EUTF for Africa to make the appropriate distinctions between the root causes of migration and forced displacement in its projects. This will enable funds to be appropriated for projects that will have possible impacts on the people. Opportunities should also be provided for civil society organizations to propose new approaches and projects, based on their experience and expertise in the humanitarian and development fields. Meanwhile, the EU should minimize its focus on returns and readmissions if it wants to improve its relationship with African actors. Incorporating

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Africa’s interests in the EUTF is an essential step toward ensuring on-theground benefits and could provide new openings for Europe to engage with its African partners in pursuing mutual goals.42 On a final note, the EU’s future financial instruments should not be based on the same crisis response model. They must support a more structural approach to migration governance, in line with development objectives. Moreover, while the aim of integrating migration dialogues into foreign policy is a legitimate one, the EU’s primary concern should also include the need to maintain its policy coherence for development and ensure that all its actions promote stability, democracy, sustainable development, and respect for human rights. The EU should ensure that migration-related projects are developed in partnership with all relevant stakeholders to achieve its intended goals with respect for human rights and human dignity, which align with the EU’s values.43

Conclusion Under this work, I have demonstrated that the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, which was established in 2015, is a good start at addressing the problems of irregular migration and forced displacement. However, the Trust Fund has been in existence for almost five years, and its impact on addressing its cardinal objectives has not been felt mainly because of some misplaced focus in its goals and project choices. For example, its main focus on refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees and the local communities hosting them, and other vulnerable or marginalized populations, such as victims of human trafficking and smuggled migrants, youth, women, and children as the primary beneficiaries cannot in any way address the problem of irregular migration in a country like Nigeria. This suggests that there is a need to refocus some of its objectives, reprioritize the concentration of its projects, and adopt a new approach for its further engagements. Therefore, Nigeria, which incidentally has the highest number of migrants to Europe, must be given adequate attention by the fund. There is also the need for more emphasis to be given to regions in the country with more potential migrants. Beyond these two suggestions, there is a need to embark on projects and activities that impact women. Without mincing words as indicated in the above section, the time frame of the EUTF must be revisited if its overall contribution to the gradual transition from humanitarian to development interventions, and improvement of the security and economic situation in the countries in which it operates must be achieved. By making all these the impact of changing drivers of migration in Nigeria such as the desire of the youth to migrate as a household strategy, the role of social media on migration, the desperation of “city strivers” to migrate, and the crisis of good governance as an elixir for irregular migration would become minimal.

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Notes 1. See http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/international-summit/ 2015/11/11-12/, 2018. 2. I. Bartels, ‘Money against Migration The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa’, Heinrich Böll Foundation, EU 2018 Annual Report on EU Trust Fund for Africa, 2019, pg 28. 3. C. Castillejo, ‘The European Union Trust Fund for Africa: A Glimpse of the Future for EU Development Cooperation’, Discussion Paper/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, 2016, pg 8. 4. European Commission 2018 Report on EU Trust Fund for Africa, 2019, pg 3. 5. E. Kervyn & R. Shilhav, ‘An Emergency for Whom? The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa – Migratory Routes and Development aid in Africa’, OXFAM, 2017, pg 4. 6. See //ec.Europa.Eu/trustfundforafrica/content/trust-fund-financials_en, 2018. 7. E. Kervyn, & R. Shilhav, ‘An Emergency for Whom? The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa-Migratory Routes and Development Aid in Africa’, OXFAM Briefing Note, 2017, pg 1–32. 8. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ‘The EU Trust Fund for Africa: Trapped Between aid Policy and Migration Politics’, OXFAM Briefing Paper, 2020, pg 1–40. 9. David Kipp, ‘From Exception to Rule – the EU Trust Fund for Africa’, SWP Research Paper, 2018, pg 1–30. 10. C. Barbière, ‘EU Aid an Ineffective Tool to End the Migration Crisis’. EurActiv Special Report. Brussels. 2016, pg 14. 11. Hein de Haas, ‘The Determinants of International Migration.’ Conceptualising Policy, Origin and Destination Effects’ International Migration Institute Working Paper, Vol. 32, 2011, pg 1–35. Hein de Haas, ‘Irregular Migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union: An Overview of Recent Trends,’ Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2007, pg 1–83. Uma Kothari, ‘Migration and Chronic Poverty’, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, Working Paper No. 16, 2002, pg 1–32. Jorgen Carling, ‘Migration in the Age of Involuntary Immobility: Theoretical Reflections and Cape Verdean Experiences’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 28/1, 2002, pg 23. 12. British Brocasting Corporation, ‘The City that Won’t Stop Growing’, 2017, pg 3. 13. International Organization for Migration, ‘Enabling a Better Understanding of Migration Flows and (Its Root-Causes) From Nigeria Towards Europe’, Desk Review Report Displacement Tracking, 2017, pg 3. International Organization for Migration, ‘Mixed Migration Flows in the Mediterranean: Compilation of Available Data and Information’, December, Le Grand-Saconnex, International Organization for Migration, 2018, pg 1–5. 14. Mathew Kirwin, & Jessica Anderson, ‘Identifying the Factors Driving West African Migration, West African Papers, No 17, 2018, pg 1–24. 15. Arezo Malakooti, ‘Irregular Migration between West Africa, North Africa and the Mediterranean’. Altai Consulting for IOM , 2015, pg 16–18. 16. International Organization for Migration, ibid., 2018.

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17. Mathew Kirwin, & Jessica Anderson, ibid., 2018, pg 1–24. 18. Michael Bratton and E. Gyimah-Boadi, “Do Trustworthy Institutions Matter for development? Corruption, Trust, and Government Performance in Africa”, Afrobarometer Dispatches 112, 2016, pg 1–17. 19. Inkel Bartels, ‘Money against Migration The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa’, Heinrich Böll Foundation, EU 2018 Annual Report on EU Trust Fund for Africa, 2019, pg 1–44. 20. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020, pg 1–40. 21. Inkel Bartels, ibid., 2019, pg 1–44. 22. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 23. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 24. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 25. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 26. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 27. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 28. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 29. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 30. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020. 31. Inkel Bartels, ibid., 2019, pg 1–44. 32. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020, pg 1–40. 33. Roberto Cortinovis,& Carmine Conte, ‘Migration-Related Conditionality in EU External Funding’, Research Social Platform on Migration and Asylum, 2018, pg 6. 34. Global Health Advocates, ‘Misplaced Trust: Diverting EU Aid to Stop Migration. The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa’, Global Health Advocates, 2017, pg 4. 35. Clare Castillejo, ibid., 2016, pg 8. 36. Joao Monteiro, ‘The European Union Trust Fund For Africa: A Literature Review’, Working Paper #88, Observatório Político, publicado, 2019, pg 1–15. 37. Clare Castillejo, ibid., 2016. 38. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020, pg 1–40. 39. Mathew Tempest, ‘Mimica: Emergency Trust Fund for Africa “might not be a game-changer’, Brussels: EurActiv, 2016, pg 1–8. 40. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020, pg 1–40. 41. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020, pg 1–40. 42. Therese Mager, ‘The Emergency Trust Fund for Africa: Examining Methods and Motives in the EU’s External Migration Agenda’, United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies, 2018, pg 1–8. 43. Tuuli Raty, & Raphael Shilhav, ibid., 2020.

CHAPTER 30

Europe After Brexit and Possible Implications for African Region Dickson Ajisafe and Seun Bamidele

Introduction The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed fluctuating global growth and fortunes, conflicts and new geopolitical formations. One of the major challenges that have faced the European Union since its inception was the United Kingdom’s Referendum of 2016, otherwise known as Brexit (Taylor 2017). On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom held its referendum on whether it should remain in the European Union (EU) or not. The outcome of the referendum was in favour of Britain to leave the Union. In recent years, vast number of literatures have expressed different scholarly arguments, opinions, and debates on the exit of Britain from the European Union (EU) (Agentur 2017; OECD 2016; Smith and alii 2017; Emerson and alii 2017; Belgian Government 2017). Many projections and probabilities have also been suggested on the trend, dimension as well as likelihood that attempted to explain future implications of the separation of Britain from the Union and suggested possible way forward for the EU member states. The outcome of Brexit votes for the EU generated a lot of debates and equally indicated dissatisfaction of the EU with the UK. Prior to Brexit, Bond et al. D. Ajisafe (B) Department of Political Sciences (International Relations), University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa S. Bamidele Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_30

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(2016: 01) raised certain issues that could take place after Brexit, such as if the UK votes to leave the EU, Britain will certainly change, but so will the EU. The remaining member states would not automatically oppose British views, nor would they always accommodate them. The development of exit of the United Kingdom from European Union (EU) has been fraught with debates and questions. This chapter extends the frontiers of these debates by briefly examine the causes, meaning, significance of Africa to the EU and UK, and implications that may follow the United Kingdom’ separation from the EU. It does so through a plethora of fault-lines that is seemingly peculiar to Europe, thus prompting a different trajectory for new studies on the UK, EU and Africa. The chapter touches on Europe, Brexit and exploration of positioning issues that will galvanize African states, while provoking an attitude of suspicion among the European countries after Brexit. The chapter concludes by examining specific implications on African States.

Brexit: A Journey of no Return? The UK voted to join the European Union, formerly known as European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, after its application to become EEC member was rejected twice in 1961 and 1969.In 1975, the country conducted a referendum to stay in EEC (Parliament.uk). In 2016, the UK conducted a referendum to exit the European Union. Why did this happen and what were the motivations that precipitated this development? To some extents, Brexit’s vote was an expression and explanation of the thoughts and rationales of the British people towards the EU. For the United Kingdom, Brexit could be said to be a fight for the sovereignty and self-determination of the British people. The UK citizens are of the view that their country, being a member of the European Union, has been gradually, clandestinely and systematically being deprived of its sovereignty. Hence, Brexit could be said to be a political exercise for regaining the UK self-determination and recovery of its freedom of self-governance. In sum, Brexit happened because the UK wants to be in charge of its own country (Ringeisen-Biardeaud 2017). In another dimension, social and economic conditions characterized a support for Brexit across geographical lines in the UK. Colantone and Stanig (2016) argue that globalization and access to importation from China has been a contributory factor that motivated vote to leave the EU. In other words, the UK regions that have more access to importations from China favoured Brexit. For Colantone and Stanig, the move was stronger in regions where more workers were originally employed in industries for which Chinese imports have increased the most over time, for example, textiles or electronic goods (Colantone and Stanig 2016). The challenge of migration was one of the internal problems wrangling the UK and the EU with demanded financial support accorded to the course of migrants. The issue of immigration was pointed out by David Cameron when he said that “he wants more controls on immigration from new member

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states, limits on benefits for immigrants, more powers for national parliaments to block the EU legislation, less red tape, and faster trade deals” (Irwin 2015: 7). On the other hand, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, did give her unflinching assistance to migrants mostly from the Middle-Eastern countries such as Syria and Iraq; some Europeans believe that such move increases security threats to Europe through terrorist activities. So, to secure itself from imminent attacks, the UK actions to exit the EU were propagated by British conservatives at the Parliament (British Broadcasting Cooperation News 2019). Since Brexit, the UK has embarked on remarkable reforms that are transforming its structures and processes of governance. However, the liberalization processes have also set the problem of illegal migration that can fuel terrorism in sharp relief. The influx of illegal migrants is one of the perceived significant factors undermining security in European countries. Conservatives in the UK Parliament pledged that the present administration would end the scourge of illegal migrants ravaging the state. These Conservatives perceived illegal migration to be one of the major obstacles to economic and social development in the UK (King and Lulle 2016). The UK Government stressed that all public authorities must increase their efforts to combat illegal migration and terrorism flag off by the issue of illegal migrants and have committed to broader reforms targeting increased transparency in migration policies within the EU (European Union 2019). There is seemingly apprehension among British authorities that fluxes of illegal migrants are not only damaging to economic productivity, but also foster terrorist activities (Jaˇrab 2005). Hence, although the pursuit of illegal migration policies is still wanting in terms of impact, substantial reforms undertaken about public administration, capacity-building in the EU, growing Europeancity safety and economic opportunities coupled with inadequate regulatory framework underline the need to act with determination, and there is a very real sense of urgency and political commitment of the EU to address illegal migration and terrorism activities among the European countries (Jaˇrab 2005). Illegal migration in Europe relates to the wider governance context within the EU, i.e., the structures and processes of managing resources. The governance framework of Britain is based on the centralisation of power and state management of economic resources (Hambleton 2017). At the EU level, the problems encountered include unclear, undefined, duplicated or redundant functions and responsibilities of members; limited control of the EU over the public expenditure; limited capacity and lack of professionalism of members’ representatives; and split administrative authority; all of which are conducive to a complex, inefficient and opaque system of supervision, accountability, reporting and allocation of resources among members (United Nations 2011). Although Britain and the EU do face very complex problems, comparison with lessons learned from other EU member countries reveal some potential strengths. These include (i) a growing economy, (ii) a certain degree of

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regulatory, cumbersome and uneven capacity, and (iii) real political commitment to reforms (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2007). Experience demonstrates that all three factors are interdependent for successful migration policies. Hence, although the governance framework in the EU comprises the main source of irregularities, the existing core governance capacity provides relatively favourable conditions for the success of reforms (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2007). In this case, the relative strength of Britain and the autonomy of the central decision-making bodies have the potential to drive change in migration and developmental policies. Key to the quality and direction of this change will be, firstly, increase in administrative and regulatory effectiveness, and secondly, the development of an engaged and empowered civil society to enforce responsiveness from the government bureaucracy (Veltmeyer 2008).

Conceptualisation of Integration of the EU vs (Pro) Brexit The concept of integration denotes the joining together of two or more economies, polities or abstract entities for a common purpose. Economic integration is therefore the fusion together of two or more economies in order to achieve a common economic purpose. Approaching the concept of economic regional integration as a general term, Ernest Haas writing in 1971, sees it as a process of combining separate economies into larger political communities. To the extent that political and economic forces are inextricably intertwined, any discussion of integration must encompass both economic and political variables. Haas (1971) went further to define the term integration as: The process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities toward a new center, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over preexisting national states. The end result of a process of political integration is a new political community, superimposed over the pre-existing ones. (Haas 1971)

Haas (1971) position on the concept of regional integration has been supported by Deutsch (1971) and other early theorists who noted unequivocally that authentic regional integration encompasses the whole “system”. That means that the generic reference to regional integration should be used. Deutsch (1971), has therefore seen the concept of regional integration, as “a process of peacefully creating a larger coherent political system out of previously separate units, each of which voluntarily cedes some part of its sovereignty to a central authority and renounces the use of force for resolving conflict between members”. According to Salvatore, as (cited in Mwasha 2009), who wrote on the “The Benefits of Regional Economic Integration for Developing Countries in Africa:

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A Case of East African Community (EAC)”, the concept of economic integration can be regarded as the commercial policy of discriminatively reducing or eliminating trade barriers (technical and non-technical barriers) only between the states joining together. Also, Daniel and Sama (2020), observed that the impulse or the drift for regional integration derives its rationale from the standard trade theory, which states that “free trade is superior to all other trade policies”. As an extension of this basic principle, therefore, free trade among two or more countries will improve the welfare of the member countries as long as the arrangement leads to a net trade creation. Their argument reflects the fact that historically or originally, EU regional integration aims solely at trade and other economic benefits. More clearly put, the standard trade theory provides the impetus for the development of the concept of EU regional integration. It is imperative to mention that the coming together of separate economies to exchange ideas, best practices, products and skills would go a long way to greatly benefit in one way or the other all the parties involved in the merger. It is therefore, in line with this reasoning, that there is the need for regional economic integration in Europe. Since then the EU member states have created economic groupings “in order to improve their bargaining position and achieve ‘sustained’ economic growth and development in a world structured by unequal and dependent relations by international division of labour”. According to Yansane (1977), the purpose for which many regions formed economic integration groupings was to breakdown debilitating dependencies on the old metro poles without shattering the nation-state structures based on the old colonial boundaries. Yansane (1977) went further to say that integration of the region became inevitable in view of the need to prepare the region, to curb neo-colonial challenges at the first instance, and on the long run, square-up efforts to take a strong stand in the global capital-driven economy. Many scholars over the years have been advocating for a strong integration of the EU continent in various relevant areas such as economic, political, security, social, and justice. Mwasha (2009), for instance opined that the benefits of regional economic integration depend on the level of economic integration and the deeper the integration, the greater the benefits to the participating partner States. Mwasha (2009), added that the degree of integration depends upon the willingness and commitment of independent sovereign states to share their sovereignty. Fernandez (1997), also observed that regional economic integration can serve a useful economic purpose beyond the direct gains from trade liberalization, by reducing uncertainties and improving credibility and thus making it easier for the private sector to plan and invest. Indeed, reducing uncertainty may be vital for realizing gains from liberalization. Whether economies benefit from a particular regional trade agreement depends on the scope and coverage of its provisions, the nature of the enforcement mechanism, and the circumstances in which the agreement can be modified. Economic integration can also serve as incentives for investment and

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attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI). Park and Park (2009), alluded to the fact that general reforms such as stabilization, market liberalization, and privatization adopted under regional economic arrangements can raise returns to all factors and are likely to be more than enough to increase private investment. It is therefore, the above-laid foundation in regional integration that gave birth to the idea of the EU, which was conceived and initiated. That notwithstanding, several years after its existence, the EU regional body can boast of many significant successes. Despite many positive gains that have been cloaked by the EU, such as the establishing of the EU, her efforts at attaining peace and security, democratization of the region, and many others, the EU has had very difficult challenges in economically integrating its EU member states.

Setting Theoretical Framework---(Post) Brexit This study adopts the neo-functionalist theoretical approach of integration. Major proponents of this theory include Lindberg (1963) and Haas (2001). Neo-functionalism was proposed to find a common ground for the functionalism theories of integration. It is a hybrid of Functionalist approaches. It describes the Functionalist approach as being a greedy approach by asking for too much, too hurriedly, and the Functionalist as appearing to be evasive and lackadaisical. Hence, there was the need for the proposition of a common ground in the name of neo-functionalism was born. This chapter agrees largely with the position of neo-functionalism that the best way to achieve an effective regional integration is the formation of administrative institutions at the transnational level, which are specialized and have the potential of demonstrating the significance and vitality of regional integration to member states. This chapter is also in agreement with the key position of the neo-functionalist approach that, no state is capable of maintaining its economic growth and its existing economic structures and be capable of satisfying the economic needs of its people, if it does not cooperate with other countries. The chapter acknowledges the imperfect nature of the neofunctionalist approach to the EU regional integration and Brexit or Post-Brexit as there are many criticisms against it with one of them being its emphasis on supranational aspects of the EU regional integration. Moravcsik (1998), suggests that much significance must be offered to nation-states. He notes that, neo-functionalist theorist place too much emphasis on supranational officials at the expense of national leaders, arguing that the nation state remains the core element in understanding international relations, including regional integration. Again, neo-functionalist’s assumption that the cooperation of political and administrative elites would lead to the cooperation of the population has been described by critics as flawed by the experience of “no” votes in the European Union Treaties. This is a fundamental weakness of the neo-functionalist theory.

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For instance, although the Lisbon Treaty was agreed upon by political and administrative elites, it did not mean that the ordinary voter endorsed or approved it. For this, it can be said that neo-functionalism as a theoretical tradition has a weakness in its lack of appreciation of the need to institute legitimacy among citizens. However, despite the numerous criticisms of neofunctionalism, this chapter is very much convinced that, it still stands tall in the midst of other approaches as far as the subject under examination is concerned. Neo-functionalist approach perfectly suits the theoretical underpinning of this chapter, since this chapter recognizes the fact that, nations are not the only crucial players in international affairs, especially in trade, as the role of supranational institutions and non-state actors in international trade cannot be underestimated. This chapter also adopts the neo-functionalist approach because of its relevance in providing a much clearer path where the integrated body would be more competent through the support of member states. This appropriately explains why EU member states cooperate with each other as well as with countries outside its catchment area for a profitable EU economic integration. Again, the neo-functionalist theory best suits this chapter because of its proposition for free trade barriers among integrated states. This theory is also suitable for this chapter, since it would ensure that EU member states operate borderless-trade system where there are no bottlenecks or obstacles in the way of EU member states in their bid to trade with one another including the Britain. It is therefore clear that the neo-functionalist theory of integration is the most suitable theory in which this chapter is theoretically framed.

The EU and Post-Brexit Brexit’s position, among other reasons, included trade liberalization. This implies that without any misgivings, the EU has lost one of its major economic powers which will affect its Trans-Atlantic relations. For the EU, the UK adopted policies and views would have less attention and as Bond et al. (2016: 3) suggests “the UK would struggle to get the EU to reflect British priorities”. Having lost one of the major powers as part of the EU, and as Cox (2016) asserts that, “with the fifth largest economy in the world by nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the largest financial centre in Europe in the city of London, a leading European Member of NATO and enjoying a special relationship with the USA, the loss of the UK to the EU is immense, politically and psychologically, a major reverse”. Post-Brexit therefore serves as a basis for checks and balance in EU-African relations. Apart from the above, the EU also stands the loss of many businesses from the UK. The trade law and legislation between the UK and the EU will not only change, but also it is speculated that some UK businesses that have ties with the EU might begin to diversify their interest off the Union (Food Standards Agency 2019). As reported by Food Standards Agency (a UK Agency), post-Brexit era will definitely affect the EU Food and animal feed legislation. Emphatically, the UK is now preparing its trade bodies and businesses in the

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face of leaving the EU without a deal. Its pack of preparation include custom processes and procedures as well as converting the EU legislation Withdrawal Act of 2018 to that of the UK. The Act, among other things, was designed to ensure that the UK exits the EU with certainty, continuity, and control (Food Standards Agency 2019). Similarly, Morrison’s Stores recent change of one of its products called, Brussels sprouts, to the areas of the UK in which they were grown has caught the Company’s customers with surprise. Brussels sprouts have been grown in Europe before the sixteenth century and are popular in Belgium which is home to the European Union’s institutions. Morrison’s Stores “Brussels sprouts” are now called, “Yorkshire sprouts”, “Lincolnshire sprouts”, and “Scottish sprouts, cementing a dimension of changes that will erupt in the EU-UK businesses and trade relations in the nearest future. Over the years, lots of compounding issues emerged on securitization of states due to terrorism and migration influx and so on. Therefore, to secure the safety and placing the citizen first before Unionism, steps of dissolution manifested. The strength of Unionism of the EU is therefore being tested, but “this is not so surprising because the UK remained aloof from continental Europe’s early steps towards integration, and it has been a trend among British Representatives which also played out at Messina in 1995 during the Treaty of Rome and European Economic Community (EEC) there. The representative walked out of the Treaty after making assertion that such Treaty was not acceptable for the British people” (Cox 2016: 3). So, what faces Europe now, starts with reviews and overhaul of policies guiding the EU in order to make it stronger and making a beginning of a new partnership between France and Germany (Cox 2016).

Africa, the EU, and Post-Brexit After more than 50 years of independence, the vast majority of African countries today find themselves among the poorest in the world; migration, injustice, corruption, and human rights abuses are rampant; political and economic stability are unrealized dreams; conflict and war continues to wreak havoc, and many governments continue to be unrepresentative, oppressive, and unaccountable to their citizens. The twenty-first century has seen a rise in the importance of positioning and repositioning as a factor in changing the global order. In contemporary Africa, changing and repositioning in global order appears to be motivating a growing number of groupings to participate in at the international stages. Since the early 1990s, when changing in global order emerged from international relations as a field of academic inquiry, there has been substantial literature as well as policy attention on the phenomena of trans-regional cooperation, both within and outside regional boundaries. Many African states fail to position themselves and there is a challenge of dependency. In other words, it is necessary to understand what late Ali Mazrui (1966) conceptualizes as the “African conditions” without coming to terms with the structures and strictures of Africa in a changing global order.

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Significantly, post-Brexit era would bring a notable shift to EU-Africa relations on specific terms, depending on how the two Unions approach it and this also undoubtedly raises serious interrogations. It is important to give a critical consideration along this line to Africa–EU relations in the era of Sustainable Development Goals, as well as EU–African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) Economic Partnership. Relations between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries are longstanding, but Cotonou Agreement came to an end in 2020; the question is, how would these impact current Africa– EU relations and what would likely happen to EU-ACP economic partnership after expiry of the Partnership Agreement in post-Brexit era and what does this mean for Africa? Similarly, considering the development of the UK exiting the EU and the possibility of the country shifting its interest to its Commonwealth countries, what impact might this have on Africa–EU relations? Again, China’s activities and influence in Africa cannot be overlooked and its possible impacts on Africa–EU relations is note worthy-how would increasing China’s presence in Africa impacts Africa–EU trade and development in the time to come? One of the implications or lessons emanating from Africa’s experience with the EU after Brexit is that state today, unlike in the pristine of its development, no longer holds unchallengeable monopoly of the means, instruments, and use of force and coercion. This implies that there is a dangerous trend in which the control of the means and instruments of force and coercion is being increasingly shared with the state by its real and potential enemies, thereby eroding the power of African States. Just like two powerful nations, the postBrexit era will usher in contestation between Europe and Africa on policies adopted. Thus, as a Union, the EU could have a potential to be more beneficial to Africa. Also, the existing relationship between Africa and the EU which they benefit politically, in terms of policy independence, will also be the most damaging economically (Irwin 2015: 06). More significantly, socio-economic, political, and environmental evaluation of post-Brexit on the European Union will be better validated in time and years to come due to its early stage. Just like Cremades and Novak (2017: 14) have noted, “A full evaluation of the withdrawal will be possible by historians and later by analysts, once the whole picture is available”. However, some immediate factors can be accounted for, which have to do with Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is an important vector for free trade to African region. In the light of this, it has been viewed that any shift of emphasis from security-oriented regional security to a human-needs focused regional security, (being canvassed by the EU after Brexit), will be unsuitable for Africa, as this could produce dangerous contradictions for African nations. It is therefore appropriate for national security to continue to be focused on the use of security forces in the safekeeping of African nations (Ewa 2018). In another dimension, Brexit provides a unique opportunity for African nations to connect (perhaps by using the regional African trading blocs) in order to leverage their position and collective bargaining power to negotiate

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more advantageous trade deals both with the EU and UK. There have been suggestions that the UK should and might forge closer links with Commonwealth nations, including respected African economies such as South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria. Even though South Africa and Nigeria (Africa’s two largest economies) have their own share of political uncertainty; however, if these economies can effectively negotiate together, they may well end up with more beneficial trade terms (Ewa 2018). The way the UK will approach negotiations with African nations is still to be seen. However, agriculture might be a main topic of discussion. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy which heavily subsidizes EU farmers and in turn, negatively affects the competitiveness of African farmers, has been criticized (Jeffery 2003). On this issue, African nations are likely to find themselves in a better bargaining position against both an isolated UK, and an EU offering a single market reduced by the UK’s absence. Tanzania has already taken the first step in announcing that it will not sign the proposed Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the East Africa Community, in the belief that, it can achieve a better deal following Brexit. African nations will do their best to negotiate the removal of any limitation on the ability of African farmers to export their produce, particularly as agriculture is one of the major ways Africans are seeking to diversify their export base (Jeffery 2003).

Post-Brexit Era: A Significant Advantage for Africa With the exit of the UK from the EU, the question is: where does Africa belong? In other words, how significant is Africa to Europe and the UK? From antiquity, African continent has been significant to other regions of the world. The continent is no doubt a region flowing with “milk and honey”. It is a region that possesses abundant mineral and human resources. No wonder countries such as China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Australia, North America as well as Europe, including the UK, could not let go of their “grip relations” with Africa. This is to indicate how important Africa is to these regions. With this understanding, Africa has an advantage to correctly reposition herself in her relations with the EU and the UK, knowing that the way the continent values herself would determine how other regions of the world put values on her. Maximizing her post-Brexit advantages from political, economic as well as human, and natural resources standpoint is unarguably her responsibility. Enough of depending on the EU or foreign bodies to fund development projects on the continent. Until this is done, Africa’s public image, which is most of the time, associated with and described by international Media with hunger, poverty, disease, and conflict will continue. Specifically, can Europe do without Africa? The fact is Europe has engaged Africa for many years. Thus, Africa matters to Europe a lot. History has shown that for many centuries, Europe did navigate its way to Africa, conducted what could be termed as explorative migration, with the aim of seeking, feeding, on and ransacking Africa’s human, natural and mineral resources for Europe’s

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development agenda. Unfortunately, Africa remained a sleeping giant at this time. The African continent’s resources are enormous and Europe knows it well. For example, as enumerated by Ernst Stetter (the Secretary General of the Foundation for Progressive Studies), Africa is the second-largest and second most populated continent in the world with more than 1.3 billion inhabitants. With the population growing rapidly, it is estimated that, in 2050, approximately 2.5 billion people will be living in Africa. According to Stetter (2018: 2), the year 2015 marked the 20th year since Sub-Saharan Africa started on a path of faster economic growth. During that period, growth averaged 5.2% per year (Stetter 2018). Africa is having a considerable sustainable growth rates, rising Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), foreign exchange reserves, robust export performance and lower debt levels (Stetter 2018: 2). In term of resources, does Africa matter to Europe? Of course, yes. As stated further by Stetter (2018), Africa has the greatest capacity for maintaining equilibrium in the biosphere and avoiding further depletion of the ozone layer. Africa, as it were, has the largest reserves of bauxite, chromites, cobalt, diamonds, and gold in the world (Stetter 2018: 2). The continent is rich in palladium, phosphates, platinum group metals, titanium minerals, vanadium, and zircon. African production accounts for 80% of the world’s platinum group metals, 55% of chromites, 49% of palladium, 45% of vanadium, and up to 55% of gold and diamonds (Stetter 2018: 2). Africa’s historical links and its geography provide European investors with a comparative advantage over North America and Asia, including China (Stetter 2018: 2). Moving forward, post-Brexit era opens many opportunities for Africa. The continent could maximize this period to strategically reposition its outlook with her former colonial overlords. Nevertheless, for Africa to be able to maximize its post-Brexit advantages, the continent needs adjustment on major fronts. Africa needs to combat the forces that have increasingly contributed to her marginalization in the comity of nations. As noted by late Nelson Mandela, what happens in Africa impacts on its relations with the rest of the world. Therefore, sustainable growth and development in Africa requires peace, security, and stability as well as unity among African countries (Mandela 2000).

Conclusion What Brexit implies for Africa in the area of trade currently remains unclear; depending on the decisions of the UK government, there may be negative or positive consequences for Africa in the field of development. Overall, while the UK’s post-Brexit strategy for Africa would seem to offer important opportunities in the area of trade and investment, a win–win outcome for all parties, most notably, the continent’s poor countries appear less likely. It would certainly be a shame to undo the significant progress made in the areas of poverty reduction and pro-poor growth in the past, most importantly now that we are learning that this very investment is one of the key

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factors underpinning the success of some of the continent’s fastest growing economies. Without any doubt, the UK has a long record of high level of aid spending in Africa. Hence, Brexit will be highly instructive for those who dream of an economically and politically integrated Africa. And while more lessons will be drawn as the process unfolds, some suggest themselves immediately. Brexit shows the sheer difficulty of pursuing common international aims against the grain of the perceived national interest. Nationalism and economic protectionism remain powerful reactionary forces on the African continent and cannot be underestimated by its governments. It is important to state that care should be taken not to expand trade blocs too fast and too far. It could be argued that the recent and rapid accession of Eastern European nations, and the resulting migration pressures (perceived or real), precipitated the Brexit result. In Africa, a more realistic aim than the Continental Free Trade Area could be effective regional free trade zones. Another important point for policymakers is to be clear about the agenda for integration: is it political, cultural or economic, or all of them? The closeness of agreement and commitment required for success is extremely high. It is therefore important to note that the full impact of Brexit on Africa is yet to be known, its uncertainty is likely to linger for a while and the nations that are highly dependent on the UK are more likely to scramble to take whatever deal the UK offers. Nonetheless, Brexit provides a unique opportunity for African nations to flex their collective political muscles and negotiate more advantageous trade deals and these should not be missed.

References Agentur, H. (2017). Hessen und der Brexit – Auswirkungen auf die hessische Wirtschaft. Wiesbaden. Belgian Government (2017). Towards an Economic Brexit Strategy – Position of the Employers’ Federations. Bond, I. et al. (2016). Europe after Brexit Unleased or Undone? London: Centre for European Reform. British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) News (2019). Brexit: All You Need to Know About the UK Leaving the EU, 20 December 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/ uk-politics-32810887 (accessed 27 December 2019). Colantone, I. and Stanig, P. (2016). Globalisation and Brexit, 23 November 2016, http://voxeu.org/article/globalisation-and-brexit (accessed 20 July 2020). Cox, P. (2016). Europe after Brexit. Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe, Debates and Document collection issue 6. Cremades, M. T., and Novak, P. (2017). Brexit and the European Union: General Institutional and legal Considerations. Study for the AFCO committee European Parliament. Daniel, D. A., and Sama, M. C. (2020). Regional Integration and Infrastructure Development: Challenges and Opportunities for Côte d’Ivoire. Journal of Infrastructure Development, 12(2), 139–153.

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Deutsch, K. (1971). The Analysis of International Relations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Emerson M., and alii. (2017). An Assessment of the Economic Impact of Brexit on the EU27. CEPS - Centre for European Policy Studies. European Union (2019). EU migration Policy, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/ en/policies/migratory-pressures/ (accessed 27 December 2019). Ewa, I. O. (2018). Nigeria’s Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: Implications, Issues, and Lessons for National Security. Review of History and Political Science, 6(1), 33–42. Fernandez, R. (1997). Returns to Regionalism: An Evaluation of Nontraditional Gains from Regional Trade Agreements, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 1816, New York University - Department of Economics. Food Standards Agency (2019). Prepare Your Business for the UK Leaving the EU. 1 November 2019. Retrieved from https://www.food.gov.uk/print/pdf/node/1290 (accessed 27 December 2019). Haas, E. (1971). Beyond the Nation-States: Functionalism and International Organization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Haas, E.B. (2001) Does Constructivism Subsume Neo-functionalism? in Christiansen, T., Jørgensen, K.E., and Wiener, A. (eds), The Social Construction of Europe. London: Sage, 22–31. Hambleton, R. (2017). The Super-Centralisation of the English State – Why We Need to Move Beyond the Devolution Deception. Local Economy, 32(1), 3–13. Irwin, G. (2015). Brexit: The Impact on the UK and the EU . London: Global Counsel. Jaˇrab, J. (2005). Media and Terrorism, https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/ XRef/X2H-Xref-ViewHTML.asp?FileID=10914&lang=EN (accessed 27 December 2019). Jeffery, S. (2003). The EU Common Agricultural Policy, The Guardian, https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/26/eu.politics1 (accessed 27 December 2019). King, R., and Lulle, A. (2016). Research on Migration: Facing Realities and Maximising Opportunities. http://ec.europa.eu/research/social-sciences/pdf/pol icy_reviews/ki-04-15-841_en_n.pdf (accessed 27 December 2019). Lindberg, L. (1963). The Political Dynamics of European Economic Integration. Stanford, CA: Princeton University Press. Living Heritage: Parliament and Europe (n.d.). The EEC and the Single European Act. Retrieved from.https://www.parliament.uk/about/livingheritage/evolution ofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliament-and-europe/overview/britain-and-eecto-single-european-act/ (accessed 20 July 2020). Mandela, N. (2000). Africa at LSE-Full text of Nelson Mandela speech at LSE. The London School of Economics and Political Science, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lse history/2018/08/01/africa-at-lse-full-text-of-nelson-mandela-speech-at-lse-on-6april-2000/ (accessed on 10 May 2020). Mazrui, A. (1966). Nkrumah: the Leninist Czar. Transition, 6(26), 9–17. Moravcsik, A. (1998). The Choice for Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mwasha (2009). The Benefits of Regional Economic Integration for Developing Countries in Africa: A Case of East African Community (EAC). Korea Review of International Studies. OECD (2016). The Economic Consequences of Brexit: A Taxing Decision, Policy paper.

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Oppenheim, M. (2019). That’s Why People Voted Brexit: Morrisons Mocked After Renaming Brussels Sprouts After British Regions. The Independent. morrisonsmocked-renaming-brussels-sprouts-144300624.html (accessed 27 December 2019). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2007). Implementing Regulatory Reform: Building the Case through Results Proceedings of the Meeting of the Group on Regulatory Policy OECD, Paris. Park, I., and Park, S. (2009). Reform-Creating Regional Trade Agreements and Foreign Direct Investment: Applications for East Asia. Working Paper Series. Ringeisen-Biardeaud, J. (2017). ““Let’s take back control”: Brexit and the Debate on Sovereignty”. Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XXII–2. Smith D., and alii. (2017). UK EU Exit: Trade Exposures of Sectors of the Irish Economy in a European Context. Irish Government Economic & Evaluation Service, Department of Finance. Stetter, E. (2018). Why does Africa matter for Europe? Foundation for European Progressive Studies. https://progressivepost.eu/spotlights/africa-matter-europe (accessed 10 May 2020). Taylor, G. (2017). Understanding Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union. Emerald Group Publishing, 91. United Nations (2011). Handbook on Police Accountability, Oversight and Integrity, https://www.unodc.org/pdf/criminal_justice/Handbook_on_police_Acc ountability_Oversight_and_Integrity.pdf (accessed 27 December 2019). Veltmeyer, H. (2008). Civil Society and Local Development. Interações (Campo Grande), 9(2), 229–43. Yansane, A. Y. (1977). West African Economic Integration: Is Ecowas the Answer? Africa Today, 24(3).

CHAPTER 31

Sino-African Relations and Trends for the Post-Covid-19 Global Order N. Oluwafemi ‘Femi’ Mimiko

China-Africa relations have today reached a stage of growth unmatched in history. We should scale the heights, look afar and take bold steps. —President Xi Jinping1

The Context: The Global System and the Paradox of Continuity and Change The international system structure has remained the same from the earliest to contemporary times. The changes that occur are at the margins—in terms of patterns of manifestation of the core elements that define its character. This equates to some paradox of sort. While the global system would seem to be profoundly dynamic in its operations, following the patterns of manifestation of the more easily observable elements, it remains unchanged in terms of structure and role attribution. It is skewed against the newer countries, which are more often than not, weaker and poorer; revolves around the fulcrum of power and national interest; runs against the grain of altruism, and pays little attention to morality. Indeed, nations tend to act morally only when such intersects, aligns with, or reflects their interest. These values remain constant even in the context of changing interpretation of patterns of engagement with these realities by state and non-state actors alike. N. Oluwafemi ‘Femi’ Mimiko (B) Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_31

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Thus, the international system is basically a community of state and nonstate actors, each propelled in its operations by a set of objectives that invariably square up with their raison d’etre. While corporate players are fixated on their bottom line; and political organizations, on sundry political goals; humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) work across identity boundaries that often separate the human community to offer specialized services to needy populations. For states, national security, economic welfare, and territorial integrity constitute the basis of participation in the global system. To this end, nations constantly seek an enhancement of their power capability, and by implication, ability to influence, or indeed take advantage of the system, and by extension, other actors with which they must relate, in pursuit of these broad values. At no time in the history of the global system has anything other than power and national interest been the primary motivation for state action, to which states commit humongous amounts of resources. The concept of power here equates to the ability to command obedience, to make a subject behave in a manner they ordinarily would not have behaved. On the other hand, national interest speaks to the totality of the values, ideas, interests, and sundry tangibles that every state seeks to exact or advance in the international system, often without much regard to the other party or parties. Countries always keep a single-minded focus on their national interest as the basis of engagement in the international system. They seek the exaction of these values through the overt or covert deployment of elements of their national power, sometimes in a benign, frequently in an abrasive and harsh manner, in a system that remains fundamentally anarchic, despite all pretensions to the contrary. It is this reality that underscores the inevitability of great-power domination of the global system. It has been this way since the modern state system emerged, and certainly from the end of World War II (WWII), when the victorious Allied Powers consummated the global order lasting to this day. America’s proactive response to the Great Depression—1939 to 1945—in the face of British tentativeness ensured the emergence of the former as the leader of the new order in Britain’s place.2 Such great-power domination has also manifested as deepening income inequality among and within countries. Virtually all of the foregoing elements had coalesced into the phenomenon of globalization, which became quite pronounced as the defining orientation of the international system from the turn of the century. Globalization defines the patterns of co-existence between and among identifiable political entities, depicted as states. It approximates the inevitability of “production on a planetary scale,” massive social engagement, diffusion of cultural forms, trans-border knowledge production, and widespread dispersal and sharing of technology.3 Driven as it were, by expansive development in technology, especially concerning the transmission of knowledge, communication, and movement, the critical elements of globalization at some point came across as unstoppable—formidable currents against which no nation

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could drive. Even where the focus in the literature has been on the globalization of production processes, the extensive migration patterns abroad in the past decade, especially since the unraveling of Syria, put some of the softer (meta-economic) dimensions of globalization in bolder relief. All these had defined the parameters of global interaction up until now. The Economist 4 notes three “body-blows”—the 2008 financial crash, SinoAmerican trade war, and now, Covid-19 induced lockdowns—that would seem to have seriously chipped away at the foundations of globalization within the past decade. However, the truth is that while the first two elements may have set in motion a deconstruction of the globalization schema, they have not been pervasive, strong, and sustained enough to destroy its basis. The projection may, however, be slightly different with the novel coronavirus, as I begin to demonstrate presently. The foregoing characterization of the global system provides the theoretical rubric for an explication of the critical currents underpinning Sino-African relations in particular and the place of the continent in a changing global order in general. In broad strokes, it speaks to a global system that has retained its essential features, with only marginal changes at the margins; thrives on the focused pursuit of power, requisite for the advancement of national interest by state actors; is susceptible to domination by the more powerful state- and nonstate actors alike; and approximates a type of human interaction as had never been seen in history—in its scope, breadth and depth. With the outbreak of Covid-19, it has also become evident that the process of resetting global relations and instituting a new pattern of behavior by actors in the international system may have commenced. How all of these impact Africa’s engagement with China and the former’s global relations constitute the problematic of this chapter.

Evolutionary Patterns of Collaboration Between China and Africa Four Decades of Tentative Engagement with China The beginning of modern China’s history can be located in the Chinese Communist Party’s victory over the Kuomintang in 1949, almost ten years before the 1960s season of independence in Africa. The early years of independence of the African nations were characterized by a linear relationship with the former colonial powers. For instance, Nigeria’s first head of government, Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa, had no hesitation in declaring his country’s eternal devotion to Britain, its former colonial overlord. This was despite Nigeria’s advertised commitment to the principle of non-alignment. According to him, I have indeed every confidence that, based on the happy experience of a successful partnership, our future relations with the United Kingdom will be

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more cordial than ever, bound together, as we shall be in the Commonwealth, by a common allegiance to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, whom today we proudly acclaim as the Queen of Nigeria and Head of the Commonwealth. … We are grateful to the British officers whom we have known, first as masters, then as leaders, and finally as partners, but always as friends.5

Even where attempts were made at multi-lateralization of relations by every African country, what obtained did not amount to more than a perfunctory opening up of the space of engagement to very limited allies of the former colonial power. The implication was that the asymmetrical relationship between the former colonist and the colonized was still largely in place across much of post-colonial Africa. Thus, it is understandable that the relationship between the African continent and China could not have been beyond the tokenistic level at this early stage of Africa’s entrance into the global arena. The only exception to this general rule were the left-leaning regimes strewn across the eastern and southern African sub-region. These had a long history of engagement with China than prevailed in much of the continent. Due to, and as a consequence of broad ideological affinity between China and these governments, many of which started as liberation movements against colonialism and apartheid, Beijing’s support to them was massive. It was a huge factor in the ultimate defeat of the two regime types, and their Western patrons initially insistent on sustaining the levers of the unwanted systems. This accounts for why the region became the earliest beneficiary of Chinese goodwill on the continent, signposted by the TanZam rail system, which opened up the entire sub-region, and practically connected many minuscule economies therein for the first time. By the time Africa began to open up and established some framework of collaboration with China, from about the early 1970s, especially upon Beijing’s claim of its United Nations (UN) seat in 1971, such was directed at two ends. There was the need to redress the acute infrastructural deficit of the continent; while, exacting capital support on terms that were generally regarded as much more subtle than what the West had on offer. The value of Chinese investment and construction in Africa had reached US$2 trillion in 2005.6 On the part of China, the need for access to natural resources became increasingly pressing as its economy’s export orientation was launched from the late 1970s, with the ascension to power of the reformist Deng Xiaoping. This served as the linchpin of its relations with Africa, undoubtedly one of the world’s most resource endowed continents. Today, Over a third of China’s oil comes from Africa, as does 20% of its cotton. Africa has roughly half of the world’s stock of manganese, an essential ingredient for steel production, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on its own possesses half of the planet’s cobalt. Africa also has significant amounts of coltan, which is needed for electronics and half of the world’s known supply of carbonatites, a rock formation that’s the primary source of rare earths.7

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The similarity in both ends of the collaborative enterprise’s development experience provided an additional impetus for engagement.8 The Third World heritage, which both Africa and China lay claim to, became a veritable platform for a much more symbiotic relationship between the two, within the general rubric of South-South cooperation. This was much more than African countries could have hoped for under colonialism, or indeed as they proceeded into independence virtually everywhere on the colonists’ terms. It was such invocation of developing world status that qualified China for special consideration by the time it was entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2011, a characterization that the Donald Trump administration in the United States (US) vigorously disputes, as conferring some undue advantages on China within the global trading system. The FOCAC Platform The year 2000 was quite significant for Sino-African relations, as it witnessed the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)— an institutional platform for coordinating and planning relations between China and African countries. The FOCAC office characterizes it as “both a key platform for collective dialogue between China and African countries and an effective mechanism for practical cooperation.”9 Thus far, it has held two summits, in years 2006 and 2015 in China and South Africa, respectively, and six ministerial conferences. Specific landmark collaborative initiatives denominate each, clearly spelled out in implementable action plans. The first Ministerial Conference was held in Beijing in 2000. It facilitated commitment on the part of China to increase the scope and number of scholarships for African students studying in China, and the number of Chinese teachers teaching on the continent. In Ethiopia in 2003, the second had China commit to installing satellite television in 10,000 African villages and annually training 1,000 media professionals.10 Under the third FOCAC, in Beijing, 2006, the commitment was made by China to build 100 rural schools in Africa, among others. The fourth conference was held in Egypt in 2009, with China undertaking to construct 50 China-Africa Friendship schools and providing equipment to African researchers returning to Africa from China. At the fifth FOCAC, in Beijing in 2012, the Chinese government undertook to grant 100 research fellowships and superintended 100 “joint research demonstrations” across the continent. Three critical platforms for collaboration were floated: the China-Africa Technology Partnership Programs, China-Africa Research and Exchange Programs, and China-Africa Think-Tank Forum. As aptly noted by Obamba, these three programs are … focused on joint research and providing a range of initiatives to strengthen the capacity of African countries for science and technology development, policy-making, management and technology transfer. … (They underscore

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China’s) shift towards poverty reduction and sustainable development, as opposed to the traditional preoccupation with grand infrastructure funding.11

There are at least four bases for characterizing FOCAC as quite consequential on Sino-African relations since its launch in the year 2000. First, the scope of cooperation and trade between China and Africa has expanded so rapidly in the period. Chinese trade volume with Africa moved up from $10 billion in 2000 to $160 billion in 2012.12 It amounted to US$148 billion in 2017 and was as high as US$101.8 billion for the first half of 2019.13 Official Development Assistance moved up from $5 billion in 2006 to $20 billion in 2012.14 While the first FOCAC summit had the Chinese government launching a US$5 billion concessionary loan package for the African continent, a commitment was made at the second summit in Johannesburg to expand trade volume between China and participating African countries from US$200 billion in 2014 to US$400 billion in 2020; and Chinese direct investment in Africa from US$32.4 billion in 2014 to US$100 billion in 2020.15 Direct investment consequent upon the activities of the China Africa Development Fund had amounted to US$20 billion by 2017.16 Secondly, while the focus of China’s involvement in Africa remains on the development of infrastructure, there is an evidential improvement in broader cultural frontiers, especially as it relates to academic exchange and collaboration. Among the more explicit forms of benefits to Africa include establishing the Ethio-China Polytechnic in Addis Ababa, the University of Science and Technology in Malawi, and the University of Dodoma in Tanzania. In 2006, China launched the Confucius Institutes, 35 of which have since been built across Africa. In 2009, a new program, 20 + 20, under which 20 Chinese universities became linked with the same number of universities on the African continent, was launched. Chinese “involvement with universities and knowledge system (in Africa),” which had been thought to be lagging,17 actually constituted one of the critical focal points of “The FOCAC Johannesburg Action Plan, 2016–2018,” launched at the second summit in 2015. According to the document, The two sides will continue to implement the 20+20 Cooperation Plan for Chinese and African Institutions of Higher Education, improve the cooperation mechanism between Chinese and African institutions of higher education, encourage Chinese and African universities to carry out cooperation in regional and country studies and support African universities in establishing China research centers and vice versa.18

Of particular import in all of these is that the FOCAC initiative has become distinguished as an “exemplary framework and mechanism of international cooperation, best known for timely delivery of results.”19

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Thirdly, both Africa and China are sensitive to the need to prevent the latter’s involvement with Africa from becoming exploitative, akin to the continent’s experience with the West. China’s gargantuan appetite for natural resources is widely referenced as the real basis for what many would regard as the country’s feigned interest in Africa. In response, China strives to not package its involvement with Africa in terms of aid and support. Rather, the emphasis is on “cooperation and partnership,”20 such as is conventionally undergirded by the principle of “equality and mutual respect.”21 Fourthly, a critical element in China’s expansion of the scope of innovation and industrial development experience is the triple helix model—a framework for organizing collaboration among government, universities, and industry—to advance the frontiers of “science, technology and economy … from an organizational perspective,”22 in the context of a knowledge-based economy.23 It is trite that all societies that have made the great transformation in their people’s overall quality of life had had to evolve a pattern of collaboration of higher education with industry, under a framework emplaced by government, without which the critical subject of knowledge application (innovation) would become imponderable. Indeed, no country has ever transitioned from poverty to prosperity, from rural to industrial production, informal to the formal economy, without resolving this tripodal linkage challenge. China has done this much to wide acclaim, underscoring the emulation possibilities of the model for Africa.24 As noted by Sachs,25 “Since 1978, China has been the world’s most successful economy, growing at an average per capita rate of almost eight percent per year.” This is complemented by a uniquely functional political system that beats the delicate balance between discipline and democracy in national life. Of it, Sachs again wrote, China’s political system is perhaps the longest-standing state structure globally: its roots can be directly traced to the Han dynasty’s administrative apparatus, almost 2200 years ago. The idea of a centralized state, with power emanating from the top and extending down through bureaucracies at the regional, local, and finally, village levels, has been the basic Chinese model since China’s unification in 202 B.C.26

The need to replicate the Chinese triple helix model across Africa, for its industrial development benefits, and broaden the scope of general cultural engagement, has attended FOCAC. This is demonstrated in greater cooperation in the higher education sector, such as in the increasing number of African students, many under Chinese government scholarship, enrolling for higher education in China. A whole lot of other elements in Sino-African relations have attended the debut of FOCAC. There is a sense that China and Africa share a common “developing world” heritage and comparable development trajectories.27 This has been emphasized and leveraged upon for mutual understanding of each other’s sensibilities and challenges. It is complemented by the generally more

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benign terms of engagement—economic and meta-economic—that China provides Africa with, making Western support easily pale into insignificance. Moyo noted that28 China trumps the US, the largest economy globally, in terms of trade with, investment in, and aid to Africa. Indeed, China’s exports to Africa topped $90bn in 2018, three times those of America. … In 2018, Chinese flows of foreign direct investment into Africa reached $5.4bn, whereas flows to the continent from America have remained consistently below $2bn since 2015 and turned negative in 2016 and 2018.29

Beijing strives to keep a safe distance from political currents in its host countries in Africa, focusing rather strictly on the narrow subject of economic cooperation. While this tendency may be in consonance with the preference of sundry African regimes, many of which at best equate democradura (limited democracy), it has been widely criticized as opportunistic, amounting to privileging economic interest over more enduring concerns like freedom, human rights, inclusivity, economic justice, etc. This is quite an issue for a country with a background in communism and its promise of equity and egalitarianism. Structural Limitations Overall, the conduct of the collaborative enterprise between China and Africa exhibits evidence of symbiosis, in which Chinese access to African resources is guaranteed, just as the latter draws considerable attention from, and taps into Beijing’s humongous capacity in construction. This serves to ameliorate the huge infrastructure deficit that detracts from the continent’s economic development possibilities. Yet, the scope of expansion in relations between China and Africa is constrained by several factors, many of which are structural. Language is easily the most evident one. Not having any long historical relationship with China, the mandarin language is relatively new to Africa. One of the Chinese government’s efforts to deal with this consists of establishing Confucius Institutes (CI), which opened in 2006 under the Beijing Action Plan. A key element in its mandate is the popularization of the Chinese language among African higher educational institutions. China has expressed commitment to broadening this initiative’s scope and supporting “more African countries in their efforts to establish Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms.”30 Concerns have also been expressed variously about the possibility of Chinese involvement in Africa’s development process becoming a platform for exploitation or some second form of slavery. This is a veritable basis for mutual suspicion at the best of times. There is a sense in which these tend to constrain the scope and depth of collaboration between China and Africa. A similar constraining factor derives from Africa’s limited industrial capacity on the one hand and China’s prodigious capacity for industrial production on the other.

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This not only serves to limit the scope of collaboration between the two entities, but it also gives relations an inescapable asymmetrical flavor, no matter how much the two partners try to balance the same. Total trade between China and Africa in the first half of 2019 was worth US$101.86 billion—made up of US$49 billion as Chinese imports from Africa and US$52.86 billion as its exports to the continent, with a trade surplus in favor of Beijing at US$3.86 billion.31 Compared to Africa’s, the sheer size of the Chinese economy also has a similar effect on the scale of relations. With 1.39 billion people, or 18.47% of the global population, China accounts for 15.12% of global GDP; and has posted a GDP growth rate averaging some 10% for the past four decades.32 While Africa’s population at 1.21 billion (or 17% of the world total) is comparable to China’s, the continent accounts for only 3% of global GDP.33 The skewed nature of whatever relations deriving from this context comes into bolder relief when it is considered that China often conducts bilateral engagement with each African state, rather than the continent as a composite. How effectively China would sustain this huge economic capability in the age of the novel coronavirus is conjectural. One of the more credible projections is that for the first time since the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese economy may post zero GDP growth for 2020. This emblematizes the general state of flux in the global system in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Changing Nature of the Global System Knowledge Economy Arguably one of the most critical elements that would define the change process underway in the global system is the deepening of its extant orientation as a knowledge economy. In place of natural resources being dominant as of old, the fulcrum around which the global economy runs today is knowledge. This process will still define the emerging order. As the German Ambassador to Nigeria once noted, successful nations’ wealth is located in the space between their eyes and not under their feet.34 This speaks to the place of mental faculty versus mineral resources in national development. Today’s leading companies—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc.—are service-based, rather than into mineral resource extraction. The orientation of the post-WWII international system is steeped in globalization, with its distinctive commitment to free trade, but this is now getting re-defined by new nationalism, a process that promises to get further deepened by the Covid-19 experience. In its most extreme, new nationalism presents as populism. Its underlying motif is “an assertion of the primacy of national identity over the claims of class, religion, or humanity in general.”35 The constitutive elements are language, territory, and myth of relatedness.36 It speaks to the demonization of the “other” and its perception as some form

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of an existential threat to the “self.” It is, therefore, insular and generally antithetical to globalism and its promise of cultural diversity. Approximating forms of a new nationalism in the incipient epoch are Donald Trump’s “America First” mantra, which is as disdainful of immigration as it is steeped in a false sense of cultural superiority that borders on racism. Others are Salvini Matteo in Italy, Sebastian Kush in Austria, Viktor Orban in Holland, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Alternative Germany in Germany, and Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France, among others. The very disruptiveness of the globalist order, which these represent, may have been reversed, arguably temporarily, by the centrist majority in virtually all countries where they were hitherto in the ascendancy. In some places where they had successfully made forays into power, like in Italy, the extreme right-wing tendency was swiftly divested of power. While all these may suggest a setback for rightwing populism across Europe and the Americas and have slowed the march of an ideological tendency that runs against the grain of globalism, which defines the post-WWII order, an inexorable reversal, consequent upon the Covid-19 pandemic, may yet be underway. Covid-19 Pandemic The body of knowledge available on the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) is still evolving. Available evidence indicates that its outbreak was noticed in the city of Wuhan, of Hubei Province of China, at the close of 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared it “a global health emergency” on January 30, 2020, and a global pandemic, March 11, 2020. By the first week of January 2021, the disease had infested 90.3 million people in 190 countries, and killed nearly two million others.37 The epicenter, according to the WHO, is the Region of the Americas, which accounts for 48% of the reported cases, and 55% of the deaths (www.who.int). It has appeared in at least 47 African countries; and, as of January 11, 2021, infested cumulatively, 2.1 million people, and killed some 24,464.38 The WHO has indicated it may infect 44 million and kill 190,000 in Africa.39 Whether Covid-19 is manmade or genetically engineered remains a contested terrain.40 The tension between the two leading economies of the world, the US and China, as to which country should be held accountable for what has been described as “the most devastating health challenge in a century,” also continues to build up. However, four issues are beyond debate here, even if their outer edges are still steadily evolving. The first is that Covid-19 will continue to negatively impact economic trends—in terms of production, exchange and consumption—for a long time to come, propelling an inevitable reconfiguration of the global system. The pandemic’s impact has generally been seismic and completely catastrophic on virtually all economies. The most advanced industrial economies have contracted sharply and are still set to contract even more. The US and British economies have shrunk by more than 5% since the outbreak of the

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pandemic. More than 20 million Americans file for unemployment benefits every month, regarded as the highest such rates since WWII. The global supply chain has been disrupted in a manner that has no equal in modern history. Already, Africa’s tourism industry, regarded as the second-fastest growing in the world,41 has virtually collapsed, exposing the economies of affected countries to grave danger. With the collapse in crude oil pricing, partly because of the contraction of buyers’ economies, Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, is unable to sell crude, on which it has depended for more than 90% of its foreign exchange earnings since the early 1970s. It may also not generate enough government income to finance its budgets, given its very poor tax penetration levels, at a tax to GDP ratio of about 4%, as against the World Bank recommended minimum threshold of 15%.42 Inevitably, foreign aid will dry up, which further exposes the underbelly of the African economy, which is heavily dependent on the same. The foregoing emblematizes the critical situation into which the global economy has been thrown by Covid-19, with economies falling into recession, production grinding to a halt, commodity markets collapsing, investment drying up, jobs fizzling out, and poverty multiplying. The depth and scope of the economic disruption arguably have no comparison in recent history. Secondly, the continued and rapid spread of the very contagious and deadly Covid-19, despite the successful deployment of a number of vaccine candidates, and emergence of new strains of the disease, invoke fear, insecurity, and trepidation across the world, about what the future holds in store for humanity. This is not the appropriate context for an organized and coordinated response to the incipient economic crisis. Thirdly, while the broader dimensions of its manifestations are essentially economic, the Covid-19 pandemic has enormous potential to generally reorder global relations patterns. Some trends in this direction may already have started to emerge. The pervasive closure of borders, suspension of air travels, spirited discussion on the desirability of diversification of industrial production bases—all in reaction to Covid-19—and in the context of a general lack of international coordination of response schemes to the pandemic, evince an inexorable process of re-composition of the global order that had prevailed since the end of WWII.43 The type of tension that attended requests for support facilities from the European Union (EU) by Italy as the pandemic began to take its toll, which the former was quite reluctant to grant, can be expected to reappear and threaten the most successful regional integration effort in history. As well, the global system may have lost a great deal of its enthusiasm for multilateralism in the rash for individualized responses by countries to the Covid-19 pandemic, a trend that may come to shape the incipient era. The precipitate withdrawal of the United States from the world, attendant upon Donald Trump’s “America First” philosophy that seemed implausible a couple of years ago, may indeed become the dominant trend in the global system. Multi-level governance can be expected to be less attractive to nations, with a real possibility of the better-leveraged economies resorting to beggar

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thy neighbor policies, the type that attended the Great Depression in the early 1930s. Attitude to international travel in general, and migration in particular, can be expected to be very negative, fueling xenophobia, calling to question all forms of cultural engagement, which have thus far been a key element of globalization. It is easily predictable that how most states would relate with China, going forward, may change considerably. This is the fourth emerging trend consequent upon Covid-19. This is going to be driven by the US-led admonition of China as having been less than transparent in the manner of its reportage of the novel coronavirus when it appeared, denying the rest of the world that critical moment of decision needed to put in place an effective containment scheme. Beijing’s expected denial of any act of wrongdoing in this regard44 may not be enough to stave off this flurry of condemnation as long as the world remains in turmoil because of the pandemic. As Rudd45 notes, “Chinese soft power (indeed) run(s) the risk of being shredded.” Tentative De-globalization Trends In general, the world is onto a new global order, the basic outlines of which are still being shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the most predictable ones are in the direction of a more anarchic bent; and fiercer competition for economic supremacy between the US and China, with Africa as one of the more critical theatres of engagement. A systematic displacement of the US by China, not just in Africa, but globally, is underway. While a drying up of aid and other forms of bilateral and multilateral assistance from the West to Africa may be inevitable, China is wont to extend its levers of cooperation with the continent in the areas of trade, investment, and aid, paving the way for a consolidation of Chinese influence on the continent. Thus, while Rudd’s characterization of the emerging trends may be valid in their broader outlines, it, however, is off the mark in terms of its conclusion on the mutual loss of influence in Africa by the world’s two leading economies. According to him, … China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished. Neither a new Pax Sinica nor a renewed Pax Americana will rise from the ruins. Rather both countries will be weakened, at home and abroad. And the result will be a continued slow but steady drift toward international anarchy across everything from international security to trade to pandemic management. With nobody directing the traffic, various forms of rampant nationalism are taking the place of order and cooperation. Thus, the chaotic nature of the national and global responses to the pandemic stands as a warning of what could come on an even broader scale.

There is no credible basis for the conclusion that both China and the US would end up the same manner in terms of their location in the emerging

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order; and that the world would be left completely adrift, with no visible leadership insight. In the first place, the incipient, precipitous abandonment of world leadership by the US under Trump cannot be discounted. As Crowley46 notes, In the Trump era, the US has become inscrutable, unpredictable and potentially unreliable. Its relations are now marked by ‘an erosion of values, respect for international institutions, and commitment to allies.’

A similar sentiment is given vent to by Gaouette et al.,47 thus, The United States has scaled back its role on the world stage and taken actions that undermine efforts to battle the coronavirus pandemic and left the international community without a traditional global leader, …

It is also evident that Beijing is eager to occupy the space being yielded by Washington. It has demonstrated this in the manner in which it became the unlikely defender of free (and fair) trade within the WTO structure, which Trump has criticized consistently; of climate change, following the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Accord, and despite its record as one of the world’s most culpable polluters; and in the manner it is moving to support the WHO, which faces an existential threat with US suspension of funding. From the point of view of Robert Michel’s Iron Law of Oligarchy, which is also perfectly applicable to the international system’s workings, the idea of a leadership vacuum in the system is an anathema. Therefore, it can be expected that the more the US steps back from global leadership, the more a newer leader would emerge to occupy the space yielded by the former. This does not necessarily suggest that such displacement as is bound to happen would be dramatic, taking place in one fell swoop. Such control the new leader can exercise may not be fully effective as it debuts, but, inevitably, a new power center around which much of the world would be willing to gravitate cannot but emerge. The suggestion by the London-based The Economist 48 that China is “unfit” or unworthy of global leadership is inconsequential in a realist context, in which power relations do not necessarily admit of weaker powers’ endorsement for the most powerful to operate. It is the reality of great-power domination given vent to in the opening section of this chapter. However, a major pushback on the emergent trend of de-globalization consists of the logic of finance capital. Always attracted to climes where the most profit could be exacted, global capital may partially, or indeed wholly, discountenance the drive toward self-reliance, “economic autonomy,” and neo-isolationism, by states that may be driven by narrow nationalistic instincts. Also, the success of any concerted effort at rolling back the frontiers of globalization qua human interaction across physical boundaries, and production on a planetary scale, may be too slow in manifesting, and not of such magnitude as to be able to effectively undermine non-state commitment to globalization.

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The futility of individualized response to challenges of global proportions, like climate change, poverty, income inequality, terrorism, Covid-19, etc., would also continue to serve as a bulwark against the de-globalization drive. The next section interrogates what the emerging trends portend for SinoAfrican relations in particular, and Africa’s place in the incipient global system in general. An inquiry into how the continent has fared thus far within the extant global system prefaces this.

Africa’s Enduring Place in the Global System Africa’s place in the global system has long been determined and remains unchanged, even when it presents in different forms. It started as a supplier of primary products for Western industrial economies. Products extracted from the continent changed over the years, from cash crops, through slaves, to sundry natural resources, yet, the structure of the continent’s engagement with the larger world has largely remained the same—extraction of things of value from the continent for onward shipment abroad, and importation of industrial consumables from outside of the continent. The orientation of its engagement with China also follows this structured pattern. As well, Africa has always been a key participant in earlier patterns of globalization, albeit as a victim, either in relation to the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, or neo-colonialism. The international system is structured in a manner that marginalizes the Global South’s interest, including Africa’s. This scheme of things may neither be suitable nor proper for Africa and the other continents in the South; it nevertheless manifests the reality of power, whereby the strong always tends to have its way, and the weak, what it is allowed. It is one strong factor in Africa’s enduring status as the basket case of development and metaphorical dumpsite for industrial products from other regions of the world, including China. It is paradoxical that what Africa was supplying the world, which made it remarkably important, indeed indispensable, in the past, is what, in contemporary times, accounts for its dwindling influence in the system. The continent’s space in the global system shrank considerably, beginning from the twilight of the last century, first with the fall of communism and the attenuation of the Cold War. As the Cold War came to an end, the privilege attendant upon Africa’s position as a key theatre of the ideological tango between the old communist East, and the capitalist West, suddenly vanished. The development of synthetic alternatives to many of the primary products, which gave Africa the leverage it enjoyed in the first few decades after political independence, detracted from its relevance. In the same vein, the emergence of multiple nonOPEC sources of crude oil greatly moderated the organization’s influence over the world energy market; just as the global drive for cleaner energy compromised the importance of hydrocarbon deposits that had been the dynamo of many African economies for so long.

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Thirdly, with no ideological rival checkmating anyone, at least in the manner of the Cold War era, the global powers invariably became more brazen, deploying raw power without much compunction, replacing the measured penetration of the time past—either in terms of obtainment of products of African origin, or feigned interest in meta-economic issues, like human rights, etc.—with thinly disguised brashness. Some of these manifested as interventions in Libya and elsewhere on the continent in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring. Fourthly, because of the poor performance of the African economies, the huge advantage in the influence that would have come from its very youthful population is lost in the face of the poor purchasing power of what passes for the middle class. In contradistinction, the desperation that attends these younger populations’ efforts to emigrate to the West, and indeed everywhere outside of Africa, is a huge factor in the negative attitude that the continent attracts in the global system. Akin to this in its effect, is the widening scope of conflict attendant upon nation-building pressures in Africa, which discourages productive investment in the continent’s economy. The surge of a new nationalism in many Western societies, with its anti-globalist and anti-immigration tendencies, has also further constrained Africa and Africans’ space of operation in the emergent global system. Thus, what is obvious from the above is that Africa lacks what it takes to be better reckoned with in the emerging global system. The economies of most of the 55 countries on the continent are small, lack a coherent policy framework, exhibit very weak productive structures, and are largely non-performing. The continent, and despite the peace-building efforts of the past, remains a theatre of instability. There is a yawning food insecurity. The political and economic processes are still perfunctorily democratic, thrive on exclusion, and thus structurally unstable. It is one continent that is still largely foreign aid-dependent; heavily indebted; parades a huge population of youths that are hardly appropriately mobilized for productive economic activities; and except for a very few of its countries, has very limited prospects of meeting UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets.

Africa’s Choices in a Post-Covid-19 World Order In the emergent post-Covid-19 order, more than at any other time, China will be pressured by the West for sundry political, economic, and strategic concessions, designed to constrict Beijing’s rising profile. Predictably, many would not be acceptable to China, with the outcome being an inevitable ramping up of tension in the global system. It is notable that President Trump and his Democratic Party challenger in the November 2020 election (now Presidentelect), Joe Biden, tried to outdo each other on who is tougher on China. This does not brood any positive possibilities for Sino-American relations going forward. Rather, what it implies is that some form of anti-Chinese orientation in Washington would continue to define post-Covid-19 US–China relations;

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certainly, if Trump had been re-elected, and in some more benign but no less consequential manner under a Biden administration. Thus, Africa would have a decision to make, vis a vis the nature of the relations it would want to continue to have with China. A key factor in its decision is the nature and quality of benefits the continent expects to obtain from such diplomatic maneuverings. As Moyo (2020) aptly notes, China has thus far “proven a worthy contender in this great-power rivalry, as a partner with Africa in trade, investment and aid.” Thus, there is no reason to imagine that the current tenor of Sino-African relations, which most African governments actually consider as mutually beneficial, is about to end, based on the say-so of a Western world that has already demonstrated a considerable degree of aid fatigue of sort. In the emerging scenario, Africa will define its interest in terms of closer engagement with a more assertive China, eager to extend the levers of its influence across the globe. Apart from having demonstrated its willingness to allow Africa a greater scope of largesse than the West has been capable of dispensing, China will continue to be uniquely relevant to Africa’s infrastructural needs; and it, on the other hand, continuously relevant to Beijing that is desirous of unhindered access to natural resources, which is in abundance in Africa. Another intervening factor in the ensuing contention is the singlemindedness with which Beijing has conducted the development enterprise and how profoundly attractive to African countries this continues to be. According to Mimiko,49 With an average GDP growth rate of close to 10% for several unbroken decades; a political system that may be undemocratic but has kept several millions of people under one political roof for thousands of years; an economic system that has moved close to a billion people out of poverty in a little above a generation; and the way it has handled this coronavirus pandemic, the mark of effectiveness and leadership is unmistakable (for China).

In contradistinction, the Trump administration demonstrated a general lack of purchase on the management of the Covid-19 pandemic, which at the last count had affected and killed more Americans than any other nationals in the world—more than 20 million and above 372,551, respectively (www.bbc. com). As Rudd50 aptly puts it, The world has watched in horror as an American president acts not as the leader of the free world but as a quack apothecary recommending unproven "treatments." It has seen what America First means in practice: don’t look to the United States for help in a genuine global crisis because it can’t even look after itself.

Strong recriminations against China and the World Health Organization invariably became the center point of President Trump’s Covid-19 response; but even this did not gain much traction with a wider world that took notice

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of the slow response of the White House and its failure to offer global leadership in containing the pandemic, as the US was wont to do. Also, the internal political process in the US is now greatly fractured, making any talk of global leadership in such a context ring hollow. Campbell and Doshi51 put these issues succinctly thus, The status of the United States as a global leader over the past seven decades has been built not just on wealth and power but also, and just as important, on the legitimacy that flows from the United States’ domestic governance, provision of global public goods, and ability and willingness to muster and coordinate a global response to crises. The coronavirus pandemic is testing all three elements of U.S. leadership.

Nothing that the United States is failing all three tests, Campbell and Doshi conclude that As Washington falters, Beijing is moving quickly and adeptly to take advantage of the opening created by U.S. mistakes, filling the vacuum to position itself as the global leader in pandemic response. It is working to tout its system, provide material assistance to other countries, and even organize other governments. The sheer chutzpah of China’s move is hard to overstate. … The United States, by contrast, lacks the supply and capacity to meet many of its demands, let alone to provide aid in crisis zones elsewhere.52

Even when the foregoing characterization places China in very good stead to continue to deepen its engagement with Africa, way ahead of what the retreating US would be capable or willing to do, critical issues have often been raised in Sino-African relations. French53 provides a useful summation of the arguments, some of which are, however, not predicated upon any verifiable facts and tend toward conspiracy theories. It is alleged that China deliberately infuses its citizens as permanent immigrants into Africa, with a view to ultimately having a redoubtable presence on the continent. It is said that the deals contracted with African governments by Chinese public and private business interests are often skewed against the Africans. These supposedly also take place in the context of very negative values dispensed by the Chinese in Africa: poor labor practices at the workplace; compromise on quality in the development of infrastructure; incipient interference in the internal affairs of African countries; and the consummation of sweetheart deals. Others are, round-tripping; and forcing through, of resource-for-infrastructure schemes with African governments that amount to strategic booby traps against their countries, designed to ultimately make the latter lose ownership over such facilities. Most importantly, the scampering for resources across the African continent without much regard to environmental issues and the often repressive and unresponsive proclivities of individual African governments to their citizens’ developmental aspirations, has tended to make China assume the image of a virulent and completely amoral player. The suggestion is also rife

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that the Africans are allowed only symbolic say in project choices, design, and execution, making many of such, executed across the continent, to not fit into any host countries’ identifiable strategic developmental vision. Impressive as the foregoing charges may seem, they fly in the face of realism. Countries hardly operate as mere do-gooders in the international system, without a scheme for exacting gains or rewards in some inequitable form. Where such is impossible to get, some form of quid pro quo, in the minimum, is inputted into every and all negotiations with other players. China’s high pitched involvement in Africa’s infrastructure development sector derives from the desirability for an outlet for its overcapacity in construction. Its Belt and Road Initiative is but the vector for canalizing this excess (industrial) capacity abroad. It thus affords parts of its teeming population the opportunity for productive engagement overseas thereby. Such has since become a part of its soft power profile that Beijing has deployed to good effect in the past decade. The drive for natural resources in Africa is a cardinal point in China’s engagement with the continent. It is not illegitimate for the country to prioritize this as an element in its national interest. In more concrete terms, China makes large amounts of funds available to Africa year-to-year—in direct investment, as loans on concessionary terms, support in the development of infrastructural projects, and in the context of minimal “conditionalities” and political interference. For instance, whereas the International Finance Corporation (IFC) loaned some US$2.2 billion to all of Africa in 2011, the first tranche of a US$13 billion Chinese loan package for Ghana, in the same year, was US$3—“surpassing any loan Ghana had received in more than fifty years of independence.”54 It is difficult to see how disengagement from, or indeed a significant scale back in relations with China could be an agenda matter for the poor African countries in the circumstances. Rather, what Africa requires is constructing a strong developmental state capable of engaging with China more strategically. Africa may have to negotiate with China as a collective; and insist on a clear strategic framework, which all forms of Chinese support must key into. In practical terms, this would involve, among others, overhauling of the labor practices of Chinese companies operating in Africa; and, as noted by France,55 the development of a blueprint for joint venture businesses between Africa and China—for technology exchange; and greater emphasis on copyright fidelity.

Playing the China Card: By Way of Conclusion China has become “the pre-eminent geopolitical force in Africa,”56 and it is difficult to fathom why it would want to yield this privileged space to other powers. It is also true that in the emerging global order, China represents for Africa, a credible alternative to the West. Sino-African relations can, therefore, be expected to move in the direction of closer engagement and consolidation. In addition to the direct benefits that accrue to the continent from extant engagement with China, the potential for further benefits from both

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China and the West is great for Africa, if it would deftly play the China card. The ensuing competition of the two leading economies for Africa’s attention promises to be doubly rewarding for the continent in the circumstances.

Notes 1. J. Xi (2015). In C. Onunaiju, “Nigeria-China Cooperation Advances to New Frontiers,” Leadership, Abuja (August 15, 2017). 2. Femi Mimiko, “Is Covid-19 a Deliberate Chinese Creation?,” New Telegraph, Abuja (April 3, 2020), www.newtelegraphng.com; Nigerian Tribune, Ibadan (April 6, 2020), www.tribuneonlineng.com. 3. N. Oluwafemi Mimiko, “Globalization, (Economic) Crisis and Social Dislocation in Changing Contexts: A Comparative Study of Mexico, South Korea and South Africa,” Korea Observer, Seoul, 36, no 4 (Winter 2005). 4. The Economist, London (May 14, 2020). 5. Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa, “Independence Day Speech of Prime Minister of Nigeria, Alhaji (Sir) Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa—October 1, 1960” (1960), www.ojuasha.com. Retrieved (October 1, 2017). 6. John Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, China Africa Research Initiative (2020), www.sais.cari.org. 7. Wade Shepard, “What China Is Really Up to in Africa,” Forbes (October 3, 2019). 8. Goolam Mohamedbhai, “The Internationalization of Higher Education in Africa: Strategies for Meeting the Development Challenges” (April 2016), www.africapolicyreview.com; and D. Teferra, “The Sino-African Frontiers of Aid and Partnership in Higher Education,” International Network for Higher Education in Africa (October 2009), www.inhea.org. 9. www.focac.org. 10. Charles Onunaiju, “Nigeria-China Cooperation Advances to New Frontiers,” Leadership, Abuja (August 15, 2017). 11. Milton O. Obamba, “The Dragon’s Deal: Sino-African Cooperation in Education,” International Higher Education, 72 (Summer 2013), http://www.res earchgate.net/publication/313421289. 12. Milton O. Obamba, “The Dragon’s Deal: Sino-African Cooperation in Education,” International Higher Education, 72 (Summer 2013), http://www.res earchgate.net/publication/313421289. 13. John Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, China Africa Research Initiative, 2010, www.sais.cari.org. 14. Milton O. Obamba, “The Dragon’s Deal: Sino-African Cooperation in Education,” International Higher Education, 72 (Summer 2013), http://www.res earchgate.net/publication/313421289. 15. www.fmprc.org.cn. 16. Bukola Ogunsina, “China Africa 2017 Trade Volume Reaches $85 Billion,” Leadership, Abuja (August 30, 2017). 17. Damtew Teferra, “The Sino-African Frontiers of Aid and Partnership in Higher Education,” International Network for Higher Education in Africa (October 2009), www.inhea.org. 18. www.fmprc.org.cn.

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19. Charles Onunaiju, “Nigeria-China Cooperation Advances to New Frontiers,” Leadership, Abuja (August 15, 2017). 20. Damtew Teferra, “The Sino-African Frontiers of Aid and Partnership in Higher Education,” International Network for Higher Education in Africa (October 2009), www.inhea.org. 21. Charles Onunaiju, “Nigeria-China Cooperation Advances to New Frontiers,” Leadership, Abuja (August 15, 2017). 22. Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff, “The Triple Helix of UniversityIndustry-Government Relations: A Laboratory for Knowledge Based Economic Development,” EASST Review, 14, no. 1 (1995), 11–19. 23. Huiming Fan, Xiaodong Zou, and Xufeng Lv Zhejiang, “CIC: A Chinese Triple-Helix-Based Initiative in Universities to Promote U-I-G Cooperation” (2013), www.triplehelixconference.org/th/11/bic/docs/Papers/Fan.pdf. 24. N. Oluwafemi Mimiko, “Can Economic Reform Survive on the Crutches of Political Centralism?: Critical Notes on the Political Imperative of Economic Deregulation in Nigeria: Comparative Insights From China,” Hawaii International Conference On Social Sciences, Sheraton Waikiki, Honolulu, HI, USA (June 16–19, 2004), ISSN#1539–7300. 25. Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime, London: Penguin Books (2005). 26. Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime, London: Penguin Books (2005). 27. www.focac.org. 28. Dambisa Moyo, “For a Marshal Plan for Africa,” The Economist Today, London (May 5, 2020), https://amp.economist.com/by-invitation/2020/05/05/ dambisa-moyo-on-a-marshall-plan-for-africa?__twitter_impression=true. 29. Dambisa Moyo, “For a Marshal Plan for Africa,” The Economist Today, London (May 5, 2020), https://amp.economist.com/by-invitation/2020/05/05/ dambisa-moyo-on-a-marshall-plan-for-africa?__twitter_impression=true. 30. www.fmprc.org.cn. 31. MOFCOM, “Statistics on China Africa Trade in January–June 2019” (July 27, 2019), www.english.mofcom.gov.com. 32. www.worldometers.info. 33. https://www.statista.com; https://www.weforum.org. 34. Dorothee Janetzke-Wenzel, “Individual and Public Choice: A Road to Success,” Convocation Lecture, The Nigerian Turkish Nile University, Abuja, Nigeria, Nile, Convocation Special Issue (2013). 35. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan, Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2003), 361. 36. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan, Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2003), 361–362. 37. The Visual and Data Journalism Team, “Covid-19 Pandemic: Tracking the Global Coronavirus,” BBC News (January 11, 2021), www.bbc.com. 38. Africa World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa, “Coronavirus (COVID-19)” (January 11, 2021), https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/ coronavirus-covid-19. 39. www.newsexpressngr.com. 40. Femi Mimiko, “Is Covid-19 a Deliberate Chinese Creation?,” New Telegraph, Abuja (April 3, 2020), www.newtelegraphng.com; Nigerian Tribune, Ibadan (April 6, 2020), www.tribuneonlineng.com.

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41. Africa Center for Strategic Studies (2020), “Media Review for May 14, 2020” (2020), www.africacenter.org. 42. BBC Reality Check, “Nigeria: Why Is It Struggling to Meet Its Tax Targets?” (September 8, 2019). 43. Japan is already focused on encouraging relocation of production processes back into the country from abroad. 44. https://wwww.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/who-bows-to-calls. 45. Kevin Rudd, “The Coming Post-COVID Anarchy,” Foreign Affairs (May 6, 2020). 46. Michael Crowley, “Washington and the World: ‘Absolutely Unprecedented’: Why Japan’s Leader Tries So Hard to Court Trump,” Politico Magazine (May 24, 2019), www.politico.com, Accessed (June 1, 2019). 47. Nicole Gaouette, Jennifer Hansler, Kylie Atwood, and Angela Dewan, “Allies Despair as Trump Abandons America’s Leadership Role at a Time of Global Crisis,” CNN Politics (May 9, 2020). 48. The Economist, London (May 14, 2020). 49. Femi Mimiko, “Is Covid-19 a Deliberate Chinese Creation?,” New Telegraph, Abuja (April 3, 2020), www.newtelegraphng.com; Nigerian Tribune, Ibadan (April 6, 2020), www.tribuneonlineng.com. 50. Kevin Rudd, “The Coming Post-COVID Anarchy,” Foreign Affairs (May 6, 2020). 51. Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi, “The Coronavirus Could Reshape Global Order: China Is Maneuvering for International Leadership as the United States Falters,” Foreign Affairs (March 18, 2020), www.foreignaffairs.com. 52. Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi, “The Coronavirus Could Reshape Global Order: China Is Maneuvering for International Leadership as the United States Falters,” Foreign Affairs (March 18, 2020), www.foreignaffairs.com. 53. Howard W. French, China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa, New York: Alfred Knopf (2014), 212. 54. Howard W. French, China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa, New York: Alfred Knopf (2014), 187–188. 55. Ibid., 243. 56. Dambisa Moyo, “For a Marshal Plan for Africa,” The Economist Today, London (May 5, 2020), https://amp.economist.com/by-invitation/2020/05/05/ dambisa-moyo-on-a-marshall-plan-for-africa?__twitter_impression=true.

References Africa Center for Strategic Studies, “Media Review for May 14, 2020” (2020), www. africacenter.org. Africa World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa, “Coronavirus (COVID19)” (January 11, 2021), https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus-cov id-19. Asiedu, K.G., “Trade Between China and Africa Dropped 14% in the First Quarter and Could Get Worse,” QuartzAfrica (April 23, 2020). BBC Reality Check, “Nigeria: Why Is It Struggling to Meet Its Tax Targets?” (September 8, 2019), www.bbc.com, Accessed (May 21, 2020).

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Campbell, K.M., and Doshi, R., “The Coronavirus Could Reshape Global Order: China Is Maneuvering for International Leadership as the United States Falters,” Foreign Affairs (March 18, 2020), www.foreignaffairs.com. China Africa Research Initiative, School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University (2020), www.sais.cari.org. CNN, Monitored in Ondo City, Nigeria (May 26, 2020). Crowley, M., “Washington and the World: ‘Absolutely Unprecedented’: Why Japan’s Leader Tries so Hard to Court Trump,” Politico Magazine (May 24, 2019), www. politico.com, Accessed (June 1, 2019). Dahir, A.L., “Africa’s Resource Rich Nations Are Getting Even More Reliant on China for Exports,” QuartzAfrica (April 26, 2019). Etzkowitz, H., and Leydesdorff, L., “The Triple Helix of University-IndustryGovernment Relations: A Laboratory for Knowledge Based Economic Development,” EASST Review, 14, no. 1 (1995), 11–19. French, H.W., China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa, New York: Alfred Knopf (2014). Gaouette, N., et al., “Allies Despair as Trump Abandons America’s Leadership Role at a Time of Global Crisis,” CNN Politics (May 9, 2020). Huiming, F., Xiaodong, Z., and Xufeng, L., “CIC: A Chinese Triple-Helix-Based Initiative in Universities to Promote U-I-G Cooperation” (2013), www.triplehelixc onference.org/th/11/bic/docs/Papers/Fan.pdf. Janetzke-Wenzel, D., “Individual and Public Choice: A Road to Success,” Convocation Lecture, The Nigerian Turkish Nile University, Abuja, Nigeria, Nile, Convocation Special Issue (2013). McLean, I., and McMillan, A., Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2013), Mimiko, N. O., “Can Economic Reform Survive on the Crutches of Political Centralism?: Critical Notes on the Political Imperative of Economic Deregulation in Nigeria: Comparative Insights from China,” Hawaii International Conference On Social Sciences, Sheraton Waikiki, Honolulu, HI, USA (June 16–19, 2004), ISSN#1539–7300. Mimiko, N. O., “Globalization, (Economic) Crisis and Social Dislocation in Changing Contexts: A Comparative Study of Mexico, South Korea and South Africa,” Korea Observer, Seoul, 36, no. 4 (Winter 2005). Mimiko, Femi, “Is Covid-19 a Deliberate Chinese Creation?,” New Telegraph, Abuja (April 3, 2020), www.newtelegraphng.com; Nigerian Tribune, Ibadan (April 6, 2020), www.tribuneonlineng.com. Ministry of Commerce, PRC (MOFCOM), “Statistics on China-Africa Trade in January–June 2019,” (July 27, 2019), www.english.mofcom.gov.com. Mohamedbhai, G., “The Internationalization of Higher Education in Africa: Strategies for Meeting the Development Challenges” (April 2016), www.africapolicyreview. com. Moyo, D., “For a Marshal Plan for Africa,” The Economist Today, London (May 5, 2020). https://amp.economist.com/by-invitation/2020/05/05/dambisamoyo-on-a-marshall-plan-for-africa?__twitter_impression=true. Obamba, M.O., “The Dragon’s Deal: Sino-African Cooperation in Education,” International Higher Education, 72 (Summer 2013), http://www.researchgate.net/pub lication/313421289.

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Ogunsina, B., “China Africa 2017 Trade Volume Reaches $85 Billion,” Leadership, Abuja (August 30, 2017). Onunaiju, C., “Nigeria-China Cooperation Advances to New Frontiers,” Leadership, Abuja (August 15, 2017). Rudd, K., “The Coming Post-COVID Anarchy,” Foreign Affairs (May 6, 2020). Sachs, J., The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen In Our Lifetime, London: Penguin Books, (2005). Shepard, W., “What China Is Really Up to in Africa,” Forbes (October 3, 2019). Tafawa-Balewa, A., “Independence Day Speech of Prime Minister of Nigeria, Alhaji (Sir) Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa—October 1, 1960” (October 1, 1960), www.ojuasha. com. Retrieved (October 6, 2017). Teferra, D., “The Sino-African Frontiers of Aid and Partnership in Higher Education,” International Network for Higher Education in Africa (October 2009), www.inh ea.org. The Economist, London (May 14, 2020). The Visual and Data Journalism Team, “Covid-19 Pandemic: Tracking the Global Coronavirus,” BBC News, (January 11, 2021), www.bbc.com. www.newsexpressngr.com. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/politics/trump-intelligence-community-chinacoronavirus-origins/index.html. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/who-bows-to-calls-from-countries-forindependent-probe-1.4943988. www.fmprc.org.cn. www.focac.org.

CHAPTER 32

“Look East” and Look Back: Lessons for Africa in the Changing Global Order Malami Buba

Introduction Africa and East Asia have had a long history of interaction, going back to medieval times (Keita 2005). From the Silk Road account of Marco Polo and his encounters with “… black-skinned Muslims” in Persia, to the 1415 gift of a giraffe to the Ming Empire from the court of Malindi, to the presence of African slaves in the Chinese courts, to the Ethiopian veterans of the South Korean war, to today’s ‘mixed-blood’ South Korean-Nigerians in the Asian Diaspora, Africa’s interaction with East Asia has always been a multidimensional phenomenon (see Keita 2005: 18ff). Enslavement was part of this history, as is trade, fashion, and the more recent Africa–China dialogue. The massive influx of Chinese investments in Africa, ranging from sea concessions in Tanzania to retail outlets in local markets in Kano, Nigeria, attest to the scale of this transactional relationship. And this is only just the beginning when we factor in the ‘New Deal’ thrust of South Korea’s ‘K-wave’, an aggressive export drive gripping the world of entertainment, beauty, and biotherapeutics. In culture, health, and economy, a middle power nation such as South Korea has penetrated the very soul of Africa’s young population. China, on the other hand, has since become a source of real competition even to the dominance of the dollar in international trade, let alone its capacity for business outreach as far-flung as Sokoto, in north-western Nigeria to exploit one M. Buba (B) Division of African Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), Global Campus, Yongin, South Korea © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_32

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of West Africa’s largest deposits of limestone on behalf of BUA, a local cement conglomerate. Then, there is the global leadership from the east, leading the way in tackling the Covid-19 crisis. In all of these narratives of Africa’s international relations with East Asia, there are lessons for the future of the continent in the changing global order. In the rest of the essay, I narrow the focus of the first part to South Korea for lessons in development, particularly in light of the current Covid19 pandemic. In this context, South Korea showed how it utilized the latent strengths of its local socio-cultural and economic practices to support its manifest scientific efforts against the disease. I also provide a glimpse of the journey of struggle that South Korea has had to endure in arriving at its current status as a highly sophisticated and diversified economic success. I then look back to pre-colonial Africa, where I try to evoke and recover the confident projections of empires and civilizations that undermined any notion of Africa as “developing.” Rather, Africa’s path to development, I argue, was truncated by a long history of subjugation, exploitation, and expropriation, which the continent must be overcome before its contribution to the changing global order are recognized and celebrated. In this spirit, epistemologies and the wider experience of learning, governance, and economic engagements in African societies are highlighted as evidence of Africa’s maturity and global resonance in the past. The vision is for these tested practices to serve as counter-colonial resources to pursue development that benefits all African communities. Finally, I address some of the prospects of closer alignment between Africa’s desire to be a global economic partner and citizens’ local needs for rapid and sustainable development. In a sense, a lot of the concerns of this essay have been documented elsewhere, but the qualitative cultural dimensions of these concerns seem often to be dismissed as peripheral to the wealth of nations.

Looking East to South Korea Given the current Covid-19 predicament, I want to start this essay by highlighting South Korea’s successes, a mid-level East-Asian economic power. In the current global health crisis, South Korea stands far apart in its approach to contain the virus and mitigate its impact on its citizens’ health and well-being. As the world closed borders, the country remained open, allowing trade to continue. However, this was not without preconditions, as the government traced the pandemic’s main source to Daegu city, and more specifically, to a particular Christian congregation. Daegu was designated as a Special Disaster Zone, and as recommended by the WHO, a program of testing, tracking, and treating commenced. The country then pioneered its innovations by developing self-reporting apps, drive-thru, and cubicle testing. These innovations and strategies will continue to be modified and adapted to suit the need. South Korea also developed social and economic strategies to support its citizens. Yet, despite contractions in global trade, Samsung reported a firstquarter profit of $6.2 billion, while the South Korean current account showed

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a surplus for March 2020 of $55 billion. At the heart of the country’s social and economic measures was universal financial support to all households and special consideration for SMEs. In the latest Covid-19 tracking by John Hopkins, (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html, January 9, 2021), South Korea has less than 16,000 active cases and 1,140 deaths. Meanwhile, the strongest economies globally, including the USA, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, are still counting their positive cases and the dead are in the hundreds. In England, UK, for example, with similar population and public health system, more than 2.5 million cases are active, and the death toll has exceeded 70,000 (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html, January 9, 2021).

A Lesson in Technology It turns out that South Korea’s robust IT infrastructure and mobile telephony penetration is a sine qua non for any African country wishing to model their response to a pandemic now and in the near future. Long before Covid19, South Korea prided itself as a nation of innovators and early adopters of cutting-edge technology. The latest of this innovation is the first deployment of 5G technology into the consumer electronics market. The mobile smartphone system itself is in the hands of more than 85% of the adult population, of whom privacy is not necessarily of paramount consideration. The ubiquitous deployment of CCTV throughout public and private areas of society appears to have almost inured citizens to new technology’s intrusive capacity. Besides, an identity management system that follows citizens from the cradle to the grave also gives authorities unprecedented access to big data of the people and their collective and individual behavior. This massive infrastructure is part of the strategies with which South Korea continues to fight Covid-19 spread and transmission. The system is in use for compulsory testing, quarantine, and notification apps downloads, requiring daily self-diagnosis for all entrants into South Korea, ensuring that every case of Covid-19 is identified, documented and treated. This, then, is the digital fault line separating South Korea from many parts of the world, and it is perhaps best described as “learning” in the broadest sense of the word. Again, I take the current covid-19 pandemic as an example of the policy’s earning cycle and its implementation. From investigative techniques to the deployment of technology and personnel, South Korea provides a template for a learning society of the future to sustain economic activities. In this learning cycle, innovation is key, and at the heart of this innovation is human capacity, in which the South Koreans heavily invest through education. Education is the source of power and respect for South Korea. It provides African countries an opportunity to learn how to make progress as they struggle to overcome the crisis of available resources further compounded by the unprecedented economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Without education, the unique advantage of a young population and underexplored natural resources will lose their comparative value for Africa in the changing global order.

A Lesson in Learning Since the 1950s, South Korean society was fully aware of their environment’s very negligible resource base. So, outside the sea’s catches and a small income from the land of undulating mountains, there were no minerals or precious stones within its borders. Since then, the country has cultivated and nurtured pervasive literacy through huge investments in education at all societal levels. In this process of societal re-engineering, it found willing and highly resourceful citizens who believed in the national project and can take the long view in their quest for comparative excellence. At the national level, South Korea’s investment in research and development has amounted to $73.3 billion in 2019, the highest spending to GDP ratio globally. This investment has enabled both existing conglomerates, such as Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and aspiring digital therapeutics companies, such as Hanmi, Yuhan, to excel as world class companies that continue to thrive in the most difficult economic period such as in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, South Korea is already powering ahead into a post-COVID “Korea Road” economy that is already paving the way for Samsung Heavy Industries to influence “smart shipping” in African countries, such as Nigeria. At the individual level, South Korean parents consider education the single biggest legacy they can leave to their children. As a result, the nowfamous competitive spirit of parents to prepare their children for all kinds of examination reaches a frenzy beginning with High School admission and culminating in the university entrance examination to determine which students are admitted into the top universities, particularly the so-called SKY (Seoul National, South Korea and Yonsei) universities. Tudor (2018: 51) see this quest as “… a legacy of Confucianism’s injunction to self-improvement through education.” And it is not an exercise in futility. Conglomerates such as Samsung conduct an annual competitive examination into their highly paid entry-level job market, and hundreds of thousands of young South Koreans compete in the Global Scholastic Aptitude Test (GSAT).

Lessons in Culture Closely related to education are the natural, cultural conduits of learning for which South Korea dedicates an enormous amount of resources to speed up its development process. These intangibles include the South Korean language and a Confucian value system to galvanize its modernization processes. There was a long period in South Korea’s history in which its language, culture, and society were degraded by the imperial forces of China and Japan. During these periods, Chinese became the language of classical education, government and

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business, and in the timeless practice of all colonial subjectivities, access to this powerhouse was highly restricted. The program left a vast majority of the citizens unable to read or write, let alone contribute more effectively in nationbuilding. It took a famous King Sejong of the Joseon Dynasty to see the importance of language as a “second skin” in the 1994 South African constitution’s empowering language and as a central pillar toward decolonization. The King’s efforts to recover and modernize South Korean Orthography into its present-day Hangul system were the precursor to South Korea’s modernization as a highly literate and forward-looking society (Tudor 2018). So important is this linguistic emancipation that South Korea is one of the few countries in the world where a writing system is celebrated as a national holiday. It is no coincidence that it was the guardian of a people’s tradition that led the push for language emancipation. In this South Korean narrative of struggle against linguistic imperialism, there are lessons for Africa and its traditional institutions’ search for relevance. It needs restating further that South Korea’s economy, technology, and society rely heavily on the Korean language, and it is arguable whether the rapid development it has achieved would have been possible in either of its colonial languages. There are lessons here for African countries whose wholesome reliance on their ex-colonial languages pose a real impediment to meaningful development and increased visibility in the changing global order (see Bamgbose 1991; Wa Thiong’o 1986, 2004, 2012; Simpson 2008).

Lessons in Trust and Character There are other ‘intangible’ assets that South Korea appears to possess. One is trust. As long as the government is seen pursuing a beneficial pathway for all, South Koreans can give it the support it requires for success. This implicit pact with authority speaks to the Confucian ethic of the South Korean to work as a “national” unit even in ordinary times (Huntingdon 2011 [1996]: 238) saw this as aspects of “the Confucian heritage, with its emphasis on authority, order, hierarchy, and the supremacy of the collectivity over the individual…”.). In times of crisis, as during the 2008 economic downturn, there were queues of citizens carrying gold and precious stones to donate to a government in danger of losing its grip on the economy. In the current pandemic, similar queues did build up to return government financial support as gifts to designated charities to aid the Covid-19 emergency support program. Trust is also implicated in the government’s reticence in restricting people’s movement even in the most serious cases of the pandemic, as in Daegu, which remained open throughout. South Korean authorities trust citizens to abide by the emergency laws regarding physical distancing, face-masking, and related hygiene regimes. In this respect, it is important to point out that trust is at the root of the economics of contract, which, as Stiglitz (2005: 237) noted, is

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a necessary condition “… to achieve enforcement without recourse to litigation.” So, trust is a key “non-economic” factor when development from the below approach is emphasized in economic programs and policies. A related attribute of the South Korean character is the efficiency with which decisions are taken. Perhaps, as a result of the trust pact between citizens and the government, South Korea, for example, made the swift decision to lock down whole cities as soon as the pandemic hit those areas, believing that citizens would understand the inherent national interest in taking such drastic measures. Even the opposition parties were quick to support the ruling government’s action. As a result, South Korea has recorded one of the fewest cases of positive cases and fatalities resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lessons in Identity Profiling In addition to these intangible aspects of the South Korean way of life, there has been a long tradition of identity-bearing among citizens. This has evolved from its Joseon Dynasty origin, where status differentiation was enforced through “naming” strategies, fashion style, and other signifying properties of individuals and groups. Now, this element of enforcement and the legacy of its authoritarianism can lead to calls for caution in assuming that the success of South Korea not only in the current Covid-19 program but also in its phenomenal economic success as an IT-driven knowledge economy, are products of a consensual relationship between the government and the governed. The ubiquity of CCTV in public and even private spaces and the routine collection of personal data, including the use of remote and digital footprint surveillance, could all be described as vestiges of a surveillance state and society. Nevertheless, the availability of this technology and its overwhelming adoption by South Koreans mean that it can serve as a force for good in crisis times, such as the current Covid-19 pandemic. The fact that few countries, even in the developed economies, possess or are willing to deploy more of these pervasive and penetrating technologies does point to another important fault line between South Korea’s success and the relative failure of bigger economies such as the US and UK, for example, to curtail Covid-19 spread. In addition to trust in the good public necessity of surveillance technology, it also points to the benign aspects of the technology; otherwise, regimes of torture and dictatorship will be eager to adopt and enforce its usage even in times of relative ‘peace’ in those countries. Investment in technology is necessary for development in Africa, particularly in the ‘new normal’ online reality of a post-Covid deglobalized space.

Lessons in Adaptation and Innovation It was not always like this for South Korea. South Koreans were in worse shape than many African countries before or during the 1950s. During this time, the literacy rate in South Korea was around 20%, and the GDP was

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a mere $40.9 million or $100 GDP per capita. Most South Koreans were living a basic agrarian life with little cash and very little food. Of course, it was engaged in a war that was to cost hundreds of thousands of lives and destroy the little livelihood available for the peasant farmers. But for the international dimension of the Korean War, which saw the active involvement of the US and allies, South Korea and its citizens may well have been reduced to another backwater recipient of international aid. This was not the only source of South Korea’s identity crisis at the time. Its two big neighbors, Japan and China, were colonized nations, and in their brutal encounter with this small nation, they pursued cultural, social, and economic policies of destruction, as indicated elsewhere. In particular, Japan imprinted on South Korea not only its militaristic control mechanisms but, more profoundly, a political system that is only beginning to look irrelevant in the face of bottom-up engineered liberal democratic principles of recent South Korean governments. The way it overcame this foundational stricture is a lesson in adaptation and innovation for African countries. In his now-classic examination of Asia’s emergence and consolidation, particularly East Asia as an economic success, Studwell (2013: 83ff) elaborated on the long-chain of industrial development trajectory that originated in the United Kingdom. This trajectory began with the mechanization of agriculture in England, which found its way to the USA. In turn, American mechanization led to the emergence, development, and expansion of the steel industry, which, according to Studwell, is still the foundation of economic development for developing economies. Manufacturing strategies, first developed in the USA, were re-engineered back into Europe through the educational adventures of economists such as the German economist Friedrich List, who pioneered a different approach to economic development and sustainability. He learned about these new agricultural mechanization and industrial engineering methods and propagated their refinement and contextual institutionalization in Germany. In the same vein, Japanese economic advance, according to Studwell, started with an understanding of the German model through educational exchange and training. By sending hundreds of Japanese students on economics scholarship to Germany annually, Japan used education to leverage technology transfer on a larger and deeper scale. This was engendered in no small way by the Japanese strategy of deploying their German-trained economists into actual production processes and developing industrial policies within government departments and ministries. In time, this holistic approach gave way to efficiency gains, the promotion of local consumption of goods and services, protection of local industries from external competition, subsidization of local innovations and the swift demand for standardization and internal competitive activities toward the export market (see Studwell 2013: 70–108). Through mergers, acquisition and liquidation, family businesses and conglomerates became stronger, and their products were successfully competing with the best in the world. Hyundai and Samsung’s story in South Korea is a case

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study in all of these protectionism processes, subsidization, and export promotion (see Studwell 2013). It was this “beg, borrow, steal”—Studwell (2013: 85)—and adapt a strategy that has propelled South Korea into the big league as the fourth-largest economy in Asia with a GDP of $1.69 trillion. Even in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, South Korea was exporting more than importing to the tune of $6.23 billion. In many respects, South Korea exemplifies a “lesson from the east” model to which Africa can aspire, as it faces many existential issues of the twenty-first century. It has undergone profound changes since the Korean War, and Africa must draw lessons from a comparatively mirroring society, with its history of enslavement, colonization, poverty, illiteracy, and cultural imperialism. In looking east to success models, such as South Korea, Africa can also look back to its glorious past before similar calamities befell its indigenous populations. And it is to this epoch that I now turn my attention.

Looking Back into Africa’s Past Even discounting Africa’s status as the origin of the human species, innovations in agriculture, architecture, and the arts continued to ensure humanity’s survival. Egyptian civilization left the pyramids and Tutankhamen as evidence. Zimbabwe’s medieval Kingdom bequeathed a form of clay architecture, of which ruins still survive to this day. The old Benin Empire left a legacy of bronze artwork that continues to baffle and impress even those who believed that Africa had no art, no history, nor creativity. The Great Mansa Musa of the Mali Empire entered the history books as a ruler not shy in displaying Africa’s wealth in natural resources, such as gold. In the same Mali, the great citadel of learning of Sankore in Djenna lived up to its reputation as one of the earliest and greatest learnings and scholarship centers. And in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Islam was to profoundly change the West African sub-regions social and political landscape. Africanist scholars as diverse as Asante (1987), Diop (1987), Fanon (1967), Falola (2018), Mbembe (2016), and Mudimbe (1994) have contributed greatly to our understanding of Africa’s material culture, its “canonical meanings”, and the radical “counter-colonization” project that is being undertaken by African scholars and Afrikological scholarship (see Osha 2018). Indeed, the very existence of a nation, such as Nigeria, with its vast population, diverse cultures, languages, and religious dichotomies, serves as a beacon of hope for humanity’s future as a whole. Even today, Africa’s natural resource reserve is believed to be more than $24.7tr in value. These are no small achievements for a place still viewed in the west as “a continent where the bodies are not counted” (see Anyona 2021). Africa is also a reservoir and repository of epistemologies, worldviews, and knowledge production processes whose relevance to the world in uncertain times is unmistakable. Epistemologies of personhood, such as Ubuntu (Zulu, Southern Africa), Omoluabi (Yoruba, Nigeria), and Mutuntaka (Hausa,

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Nigeria) and the worldview they propagate are concepts with applicative value in our current situation. Ubuntology, “the art and science of teaching and learning undergirded by humanity toward others” (Bangura 2015: 16), has become a familiar conceptual tool for participatory development, especially concerning governance and education and cultural renaissance, as well as a business enterprise. At its core, Ubuntu emphasizes humanity as an inclusive notion of universality, applying to all beings in the world of the living (and the world without). Its refrain of umuntu ngmuntu ngbantu ‘a person is a person through other persons’ captures the essence of Ubuntu’s universalism (see Bangura 2015: 128). Under this core principle of humanity lies applicative elements of human conduct, including religiosity, community, and inclusivity. Kinyanjui (2019: 114)’s study of local market enterprise in Kenya confirmed the values of ‘resilience, self-reliance, solidarity, entrepreneurship, economic justice, communal responsibility, and inclusiveness’ underlying strategies of survival for this “cottage” industry. In this context, it is important to recall the highly laudable work of political economists, such as Claude Ake, who presented a cautionary tale in the wholesome adoption of western-style development models. He advocated for the need to “domesticate” development practices in Africa if Africa is serious about meeting the challenges of the changing world order. In his critique of modernization theory, in particular, the stages of development thesis propounded by Rustow (1960), Ake (1996: 12) noted the absence of “consensus…, consultation and participation” in the evolutionary model as contributory factors to the misapplication of development strategies by multilateral initiatives in Africa. He traced the problem to a pervasive inclination of western financial aid agencies toward viewing development as a purely economic issue of modernization through industrialization. According to Ake (1996), this focus led to the conception of development “as an autonomous process, independent of politics, culture and institutional framework” (p. 12). Thus, African societies were/are expected to adopt “the standard model” of development, as evidenced in Western, and to a certain extent, East-Asian economies. However, Ake argues that only an ethnocentric paradigm rooted in the language, culture, and politics of the west can fail to see the inherent contradictions in forcing African countries to implement the modernization model without clarifying conceptual notions of “… scientific, epistemological and ontological significance” (p. 12). He termed this frame of reference a commitment “… to an abstract science of development rather than to an applied science…” (p. 13). His focus in this regard was how foundational issues of state and culture in Africa had been negated as primordial, even though their presence and relevance throughout society was precisely the major source of resistance to western-style development programs (see Chapter 1 of Ake’s [1996] penetrating analysis). Nabudere’s (1997: 203ff) painstaking critique of modernization and development also questioned this ‘evolutionist vision’, which emphasizes a ‘unilinear … conception of development’. He traced five centuries of western

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theorizing and public policy interventions in the ‘third world’ as an unbroken form of colonialism leading up to the present ‘multilateral organizations’, with their prescriptions and ‘support’ mechanisms’. In response to such an uncaring atmosphere of ‘… development from above’, the poor activated forms of economic resistance that continue to be characterized as the ‘the informal sector’, a sector that has turned out to be the lifeblood of economic survival in major African economic hubs, for example, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa (see Kinyanjui 2019). Nor are these Africanist scholars alone in pointing out the inequity of seeking to develop Africa from without. In his wide-ranging critique of globalization as an offshoot of development thesis, Stiglitz (2005: 237) noted that “… the failure to pay due attention to non-economic factors” meant that developing countries were being coerced into implementing programs the foundational assumption of which is externally driven by a “milder” form of social Darwinism. In fact, Huntingdon (2011 [1996]: 301) did hint at Western civilization’s uniqueness partly on the strength of “… the processes of modernization and industrialization.” Unsurprisingly, this conceptual deficit hypothesis of development theory has also been echoed as a call for a paradigm shift, as when Bangura (2015: 123) pointed out that “western structures are incompatible with African systems because the former is based on a concept that fractures African life.” Thus, both Ake and Nabudere advocated for the insemination of local ways of knowing and doing into the western models of economic development. In their raw Keynesian coding, “stages” may serve to inhibit rather than accelerate Africa’s economic maturity. The entrepreneurial model of Ubuntu business ethics highlighted in Kinyanjui’s (2019) research points to an infill remedy for Africa as it looks back in its antiquity for solutions to today’s existential questions. At any rate, while South Korea, for example, pursued modernization through industrialization, it was at the same time mitigating the policy’s corrosive effect on social cohesion by evoking its national values. Thus, Africa must pursue a policy of parallel pathways to development if its voice is to matter more in a changing global order already encumbered by the vicissitudes of Covid-19.

Africa’s “Ritual Archives” and a Lesson in Evocation and Recovery Language, culture, and traditional institutions are arguably part of Africa’s essential building blocks for core epistemologies. In times either of prosperity or distress, Africa’s knowledge architecture tools are available to the whole community for deployment. Religiosity, for example, is not simply seen here as an act of worship but, in Falola’s (2018: 914ff) description of Africa’s ritual archive, as a repository of all the “cultural knowledge,” “ancestral legacies,” “memory and remembrance,” and “objects [that] speak and communicate without words.” For centuries, local communities in Africa and their medicine men and women have been very much aware of the importance of the thick

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and dense forest environment around them. As Falola (2018) noted, plants, such as ewúro and their products, such as kola nut, are part of the knowledge system requiring continuing clinical investigation beyond their current psychosocial and transactional values. The “oral” practices of naming these plants that will ensure their survival for the treatment of diseases of the future by a new generation of African scientists. We know that naming is fundamental to classification, and classification is central to science and the scientific method. Yet, this important and strategic skill that served Africa well has gradually lost its meaning and content locally. In the past, naming practices were rooted in localities and in the ecology of that environment. In addition to naming what heals and what kills in the topographic terrain, names that affirm are central to the community’s essence. For example, the material realities of market days, the succession of seasons and birth positions are inscribed, as Hausa zanen suna ‘inscription of the name’ literally describes the actual naming ceremony of new birth. Similarly, the unknown and the unknowable vagaries are factored in by naming to celebrate and assuage the gods believed to be in charge of human conduct. In short, this ritual archive, as Falola (2018) aptly names Africa’s rich tapestry of local pieces of knowledge, contains the antidote, not only for countering the ‘colonial library’ of distortions but also for addressing some of the current existential questions about the place of Africa in a world with closed borders and closed mentality (Mbembe 2016; Mudimbe, 1994). We also know that naming was/is the principal means of connecting people, their community, and history in one unbroken line of social and cultural organization. In diverse communities, living side by side to one another, it behoves such areas to devise unique ways of personal identification, which, in turn, creates identities for individuals and their communities with social, political, and economic ramifications. Consider the case of the Igbo people of Onitsha, or the itinerant Muslim Hausa merchants or the herding instincts of nomadic Fulani of West Africa (Jalloh 2002). In all of these cases, specific cultural identities have transformed into economic levers of self-actualization and prosperity for individuals and their respective societies. Africa needs to deepen these specializations and the culture of entrepreneurship that allows these communities to thrive.

Africa’s Narrative of Diversity and Learning This narrative of naming is a lesson for Africa; that diversity can be harnessed for development, as long as individual entities’ strength is recognized, enhanced, and appropriated in a pool of other capacities. The peculiar lack of data to address crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic points to the importance of utilizing what we know about naming practices of African communities in devising better means of collecting personal and related community profiles in Africa. Already, western digital companies, such as WebberPhilips, are doing precisely that, with their controversial postcode classification ethnicity tools, heralding a new means of connecting Africa’s diaspora with the locality that it

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originated, in order “… to better understand the cultural, ethnic and linguistic origins of its users, clients and employees” (WebberPhilips.com). The implication of this brave new world is that Africa’s decision-makers must reckon with the digital value of African names. This further highlights the importance of having accurate and reliable data on Africa’s spoken and written languages. There are estimates of up to 3,000 languages, although the exact figure will depend on how languages and dialects are defined, respectively. Thus, diversity should not be seen as an impediment to big data’s foundational needs in the new digital age. Rather, Africa’s diversity in naming and related numerical profiles can serve as a major step toward developing its unique data collection system. The case of extending the legacy of the Joseon Dynasty in the new digital South Korea highlights why culture matters even more today.

A Culture of Learning Like South Korea, in the East-Asian example, Africa also contains lessons of learning from its territorial borders. The ancient craft of oral traditions continues to play a pivotal role in many aspects of Africa’s art and civilization. It is an old practice that saw the emergence of the Griots of Mali and the Senegambia and their modern successors in especially the music industry and the healing Marabouts and Sangoma of West and Southern Africa. Learning was passed on from one generation to the next through oratory and the maintenance of a core episteme around which newer forms of edification and celebration were embellished and elaborated upon. Mudimbe (1994: xiii) describes this element of myths and legends as part of the “zero degree discourse” of the rites of passage, and all cultures possess this great tradition. This particular form of learning has now been accepted as a proper tool of historiography and has been used to debunk the many historical fallacies of an Africa without art, history, or civilization. But even the more formal system of learning has a strong historical pedigree in Africa, and one only needs to look at the scholarly output of the 19th Century Sokoto Caliphate to appreciate the relevance of learning in creating the revolutionary impetus for change. In that theocratic but scholarly empire, learning in its broadest sense was put at the center of governance and leadership (Tukur 1999). Of course, discourses of Muslim theology were stressed, but debates about legitimacy and paths to success were robust even here. The classic case of the discourse of legitimacy during this era can be gleaned from the heated correspondence between Sokoto and Bornu at the height of the power of the former. More locally, it was learning not war used by the largely Fulani aristocracy to influence the populace concerning the illegitimacy and autocracy of the governing group, particularly centered around Hausa Gobir state at the time (Balogun 1975). Strategically, it was not learning for literacy in the form of a pervasive expansion of educational opportunities for the vast majority of the population. Rather, it was learning for action, which was engendered through the old oral method via translation, transliteration, and finally verification (see Hiskett

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1975). In this context, learning was bolted upon a familiar oral practice, and it then became canonized through memorization and dissemination throughout the society. This form of orality was implemented to deepen and inculcate formal practice, and points to the utility of this strategy in the new regime of gig and related digital delivery of economic development. For example, South Korea has shown how such a learning program can be accumulated and propagated for global success. Its focus on “intangible assets” has to be interpreted in the context of a learning society concerned not merely about the preservation of ancient skills but their improvement using twentieth-century mentality and strategic focus.

A Culture of Governance Undergirding the history of learning in Africa has been the pervasive presence in the previous centuries of leadership and governance practices with local resonance in people’s lives. In many respects, they were guided by ethical precepts in contact with Africa’s governance ecology built around the family, land, and the ancestral glue that binds the two. This made many traditional authorities assume iconic status well beyond their local contributions to poverty alleviation. They built empires of international dimension that resemble today’s European Union in their devolutionary ethos and the United States in their diverse makeup. The Sokoto Caliphate was one such empire whose grandeur in today’s diplomatic currency can only be esteemed in the extreme hostility with which colonial speculators like Clapperton described his ignominious treatment at the hands of “wretches” such as Sultan Bello (Clapperton 1966: xvi). Empires such as the Sokoto Caliphate transcended national boundaries as they embraced international (religious) cultures and languages. One of the abiding principles of such empires was a governing structure based on written principles of administrative conduct. In this respect, Sultan Bello, for example, often handed down governance treatises to his appointed emirs, such as the one he wrote to Emir Umaru Dallaji of Katsina. In such advisory principles, the Sultan stressed the importance of learning, justice, and accountability as essential to leadership success (see Buba 2018). Though unmistakably Islamic in their quotative pronunciation, they were also aligned to the ontological Hausa morality ethics around Mutuntaka. In this ethical program, community members of whatever class or status are entitled to certain privileges from other human beings. In turn, they are obligated to those other community members, as long as these core principles are observed. Perhaps, the most significant principle is haÎuri (“forbearance”, “acceptance”, “resilience,” and “positivity”) (see Buba 2020). A combination of confident leadership, a scholarly disposition to the “obligations of the princes” and underlying principles of good governance, as glimpsed in the above characterization, flies in the face of Africa’s proclaimed “leadership deficit”. There is a suggestion that Africa’s leadership crisis is so

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insurmountable as to present a pathological inclination to irresponsible leadership. For instance, Obadere and Adebanwi (2016) even noted this “… crisis of rule in contemporary Africa” in their book title, although the book’s chapters are, in fact, a celebration of “leadership in transformation.” From the exploration of the lives of Africa’s postcolonial leaders, including Mandela’s ethics of forgiveness (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2016) and Awolowo’s ethics of selfimprovement (Taiwo 2016), the book pointed to Africa as a space with “… a legitimate claim to leaders of distinction” notwithstanding the “chronic mobutism … and continued plunder, dispossession … and expropriation” (p. 8). On the other hand, Obadere and Adebanwi (2016) noted how the colonial and postcolonial conditions in which many of these African leaders found themselves strangled any hope for a lasting disentanglement with the colonial state, given its many transformations as a channel for exploitation and underdevelopment. As the examples of the Sokoto Caliphate have highlighted, beyond the colonial state lay an African leadership that was confident, inclusive, intellectual, and resolutely radical. In other words, there was a period in Africa in which all of the leaders captured in Obadere and Adebanwi, and the qualities they exhibited were present in a single leadership and governance structure. Recovering these qualities, in very short supply in the changing global order, will guarantee Africa’s place at the global table.

Concluding Remarks These points lead to the conclusion that by looking to the east, especially South Korea, a newcomer to the G7 roundtable, with its historic reimagining of development as an internally driven but export-oriented socioeconomic process, Africa is also capable of harnessing its rich cultural and epistemic heritage. It can mobilize them to muster the confidence to proceed with greater urgency toward strengthening internal mobility, circulation, and exchange, as advocated by Africanist scholars, including Falola (2018) and Mbembe (2016). Similarly, Africa can evoke and recover its sense of centeredness by utilizing its social dynamics as space where the soft power undercurrents of learning, participation, consensus, and confederacy are abundantly evident in how the continent approaches other entities for the good of Africa and the world at large. Already, Africanist scholars are noting the progress that the continent has been making, as is evident in the works of Landry Signé, which he summarized in a recent Project Syndicate essay (Signé 2020). His arguments concerning the positive “trends” that will see Africa through “… the combined shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, collapsing commodity prices, and global economic recession…” highlight many of the lessons that helped accelerate the development of East Asia. These include competitiveness, governance, innovation, diversification, and a push for a continental free trade area (see also Signé 2018; Signé and Gurub-Fakim 2019). These trends should further deepen an internal reflection for Africa as it faces the changing global order. Beyond the economy, there is a renewed

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effort at recovering and repackaging Africa’s indigenous knowledge systems for a broader development program (see Oloruntoba et al. 2020). In other words, Africa is already approaching the changing global order with a positive outlook. But, it needs to do more by looking ahead to East Asia’s success and reflecting back to the rich history of its communities, citizens, and leaders. Then, its role and relationship with East Asia and the rest of the world will become one of mutual exchange and respect.

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Mbembe, A. 2016. Critique of Black Reason. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Mudimbe, V. Y. 1994. The Idea of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. 2016. ‘Nelson Mandela and the Politics of Life’. In Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa: Leadership in Transformation. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 23–48. Nabudere, W. D. 1997. ‘Beyond Modernization and Development, Or Why the Poor Reject Development’. Geografiska Annaler 79B (4): 203–215. Obadere, E., and W. Adebanwi. 2016. Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa: Leadership in Transformation. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Oloruntoba, S. O., A. Afolayan, and O. Yacob-Haliso. 2020. Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan. Osha, S. 2018. Dani Nabudere’s Afrikology: A Quest for African Holism. Dakar: CODESRIA. Rustow, W. W. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Signé, L. 2018. ‘Why Africa’s Free Trade Area Offers So Much Promise’. Forum, Issue 2. Signé, L., and A. Gurub-Fakim. 2019. ‘The High Growth Promise of an Integrated Africa’. Project Syndicate (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/africafree-trade-area-boosts-growth-prospects-by-landry-signe-and-ameenah-gurib-fakim2019-08?barrier=accesspaylog). Accessed July 12, 2020. Signé, L. 2020. ‘Africa Is More Resilient Than You Think’. Project Syndicate (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/six-reasons-why-africa-willweather-covid19-crisis-by-landry-signe-2020-06). Accessed July 4, 2020. Simpson, A. 2008. Language & National Identity in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stiglitz, J. S. 2005. ‘The Overselling of Globalization’. In Globalization: What’s New. Edited by Michael Weinstein. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 228–261. Studwell, J. 2013. How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region. New York: Grove Press. Taiwo, O. 2016. ‘Obafemi Awolowo: Knowledge, Leadership, Governance’. In Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa: Leadership in Transformation. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 49–72. Tudor, D. 2018 [2012]. Korea: The Impossible Country. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing. Tukur, M. 1999. Leadership and Governance in Nigeria: The Relevance of Values. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Wa Thiong’o, N. 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of the English Language in African Literature. London: James Currey/Heinemann. Wa Thiong’o, N. 2004. ‘Recovering the Original’. In The Genius of Language. Edited by Wendy Lesser. New York: Anchor Books Ltd. Wa Thiong’o, N. 2012. Globalectics. New York: Columbia University Press.

CHAPTER 33

Changing Narratives of Human Rights Eteete Michael Adam

The journey of human political history has often included very serious human rights issues like the Holocaust of the 1940s. Most of these human rights issues touch upon human dignity. According to Anton Bösl and Joseph Diescho, “Freedom, justice and peace in the world are founded on the recognition of the inherent dignity of all members of the human family, and their equal and inalienable rights.”1 The prevailing presumption of human rights today is founded upon a Western conscience that became articulated in the intellectual evolution of the Enlightenment. Human rights are a product of human ethical systems. They attempt to preserve not just common human dignity but human life and liberty. Modern civilizations have come a long way in their political development, from the lessons learned about totalitarian systems and their adverse effect on human rights. However, Africa has also borne the indignity of a history of serious human rights violations. This starting with slavery and was consolidated by the Scramble for Africa that left the continent with a fractured political history and confused polities. The history of a globalized human rights system in the world, starting with the making of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, proved that there was an evolved global ethical system that recognizes that the dignity of humans goes to the root of human existence and that racial differences should not create exceptions. The history of human rights in the E. M. Adam (B) Babcock University, Ikenne, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_33

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world has often taken the shape of a Western narrative, and this has often led to the assumption that the formal discussion of human rights was alien to the African epistemological system. In considering the balance of narratives, Africa has not always had a fair shot at history since the literate tradition belonged in the Western system. Many times the oral tradition of documenting history in pre-colonial Africa had often been condescendingly considered and criticized. In the development of the continent, Western historians from the pre-Enlightenment age had often described Africa in antagonistic ways (Bates 2012).2 For instance, Herodotus had told a story about some young Europeans with aristocratic statuses who had traveled to Libya. They had toured Southern Libya and had happened upon some fruit trees whose fruits they plucked after some time they had been wandering (Bates 2012). Some small mysterious men skilled in the craft of magic abducted them for some “inscrutable and dastardly magic-dwarf” experiments.3 As evidenced by Herodotus’s writing, this imbalance of narratives, who incidentally is arguably the most revered Western historian, has also affected the argument about a pre-colonial notion of human rights. Many scholars have often argued about the non-existence of such a notion.4 However, this false position has often been concretized by the African epistemological system’s relegation, whose oral methodology has suffered immensely from criticisms that touch upon its credibility. Regional human rights systems are the mechanisms through which universal human rights norms are interpreted. They represent an emergent phase of international human rights law, which has gradually taken a multilateral form. However, the development of a human rights system on the African continent has often been undermined by a condescending commentary. This is because the continent has its history of rights lost to the complications of postcolonial politics. This research argued that Africa had a prior history of a legal conceptualization of human rights despite scholarly arguments that a legal conceptualization of human rights in Africa is a recent phenomenon. The paper considered the present state of human rights in Africa. The paper concluded that poverty and income inequality are serious setbacks to the human rights discourse in Africa. The paper recommended that the internet has a potential democratic value for human rights in Africa. Finally, a prioritization of human rights awareness would aid the positive progress of human rights in Africa. Human rights have always been known to generate a lot of robust intellectual discourse on the forms they assume, their origins, and the philosophies attributed to them. Like everything defined by the human condition and the dynamic interactions of society, they must step up to the challenges that human development and advancement present to them. The advancement of technology, the exploration of mineral resources, the climate change that is a response to human industrial activities, and the suggestions of a future that must engage the uses of green energy are the phenomena that are changing the discussions on human rights. The consciousness of human rights in a

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constitutional democracy makes constitutional democracy the freest form of government known to man. The idea of human rights in a regional immersion connotes the interpretation of primary human rights documents along the line of a closer cultural context. This is more so when it becomes necessary to evaluate human rights in ethical systems to understand humanity’s converging points. The West European ethical background the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948 had would have rendered the idea of human rights toward the failure to inadequately justify human life in cultural contexts.5 It might even have constituted culturally imposed perceptions of natural human claims that should have flowed from an immediate society’s traditions. This research would interrogate the development and prospects of regional human rights systems, especially the African human rights system. Regional human rights systems have either succeeded, stagnated, or failed depending on the level of intergovernmental cooperation, collaborative, ethical backing, and integration within the region. Developing countries within a region like Africa have lacked the political interconnectedness required for a concerted regional system (Olu-Adeyemi and Ayodele 2017). The lack of political interconnectedness would affect a vibrant regional human rights system since it is expected that political integration of a region should drive many regional interests, including human rights.6

Regional Human Rights Mechanisms Human rights issues at the international level have been largely situated within the discourse of regional interests around the world. Though this research focuses primarily on human rights in the African Continent, there are important lessons that will be drawn from a cursory exegesis of some salient model human rights mechanisms in other selected continents. For the purpose of such a comparative analysis, two other continents will be studied alongside the African Regional Mechanism. There are five regional human rights systems, but this research would focus on three regional systems.7 The three regional human rights systems, which are the African, Inter-American, and the European system,8 represent the regional machinery through which international human rights are supposed to be executed within regional social trends and political traditions. Regionalization has made the issue of enforcement of international human rights laws more pragmatic, as there are institutions that are established to enforce human rights at the regional level. Therefore, regionalization provides a realistic perspective on the continental enforcement of human rights. In the Americas, the American Convention on Human Rights, also known as the Pact of San José, was adopted in 1969 in San José in Costa Rica. The treaty entered into force on 18 July 1978.9 There are 24 States parties to the treaty as of 29 March 2020. On 26 May 1998, the Pact of San José was denounced by Trinidad and Tobago. The political philosophy underpinning the Pact of San José is individualism. This is amplified by the preamble which declared that “The American states

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signatory to the present Convention, Reaffirming their intention to consolidate in this hemisphere, within the framework of democratic institutions, a system of personal liberty and social justice based on respect for the essential rights of man…” of the 82 articles in the treaty, just an article is dedicated to the responsibilities of the individual. The article provides that, “Every person has responsibilities to his family, community, and mankind.”10 The article also provided that, “The rights of each person are limited by the rights of others, by the security of the general welfare, in a democratic society.” This treaty distinctly shows that the individualism that is the social philosophy of the West is a shared ethical system that characterizes societies where individual liberty is at the center of state policy. It would be interesting to note that the convention does not contain economic, social, and cultural rights, but a separate document addresses these rights in an Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, alternatively called the Protocol of San Salvador, which was adopted by the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1988.11 This division of human rights seemed like an intended prioritization of basic human rights over economic, social, and cultural rights, just like in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The General Assembly of the OAS also adopted the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty, in 1990 which entered into force on 28 August 1991.12 Again, it could be seen how the person’s basic human rights are at the core of the American regional human rights system. The European system of human rights includes; the European Convention on Human Rights, 1950, and its Protocols Nos. 1, 4, 6, and 7. In 1950 the Council of Europe adopted the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental freedoms (Heyns et al. 2006). The convention entered into force on 3 September 1953, and at the time of its entry into force in 1953, only ten states had ratified the treaty. As of 29 March 2020, 47 states have ratified the convention.13 The convention created the European Commission, and the convention also established the European Court of Human Rights. Both institutions have the mandate of ensuring that High Contracting Parties to the treaty comply with the convention’s provisions. However, with the coming into force of Protocol No. 1137 to the convention on 1 November 1998, all human rights petitions are now referred to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France.14 It is interesting to note that of all the regional human rights mechanisms, European human rights is the oldest and the most advanced.15 The European human rights system is the oldest of all the regional systems and has shown to be quite effective in its aim as it demonstrates the European Union’s political integrity. The EHCR has been productive in its work and purpose.16 However, it is plagued by a unique set of challenges, one of which is the burden of work that the court is weighed down with. On the other hand, the Inter-American human rights system is challenged by the varying political

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interests of states in the region and “the non-permanent and non-obligatory character of the Court challenges the effectiveness of the human rights protection mechanism.” These kinds of challenges stem from the political difficulties of multilateralism. The regional human rights systems are a necessity in the international administration of human rights as they provide the proximity and access needed to resolve a plentitude of human rights issues that could occur on a transnational platform. The necessity of the regional human rights system is also premised because although the United Nations human rights system is the primary machinery for the resolution of international human rights issues, it cannot carry the burden of being the only mechanism for the resolution of international human rights issues. There have been many arguments on the African conception of human rights. Without a doubt, Africa has always had a moral philosophy system that viewed rights from a communitarian perspective.17 There has been a considerable evolution of human rights globally, and Africa has had its share in that meta-narrative of global human rights evolutionary journey. However, there is an increasingly prevalent argument that Africa never had an indigenous notion of human rights as a legal concept.18 This argument, when interrogated, provokes a question. Must legality conform to modernist standards of Western-styled juridical practices? This question is answered by the transgressive phenomenon of Western culture and epistemological systems asserting themselves over other epistemological systems and cultures since Africans and the rest of the colonized world was convinced that a literate system sustained by the pedagogical institutions of the West was a more reliable system than a history of oral documentation in Africa. The argument on the later nascence of human rights as a legal concept in Africa is confronted by an oversight that might have been necessitated by a lack of information on African pre-colonial systems. The journey of human rights in Africa might have begun at discovering the KouroukanFouga, the thirteenth-century constitution of the Mali Empire. The Epic of Sundiata illuminates the articulation of the great civilization in the Mali Empire.19 The Epic of Sundiata told of the KouroukanFouga, which was reported to have been the constitution of the great empire. Although the Charter is mostly in oral form, it is authenticated by its cultural trajectory through a codified heritage handed down to generations of the Malinke clan.20 It is interesting to note that the mystery that shrouds Africa’s civilizational past and is being unraveled in contemporary research has often taken Africa out of the discussion of the fine points of human development. Such discussions like the development of the legal conceptualization of human rights are usually centered on the Western attempts at creating a juristic foundation for human rights. The creation of the KouroukanFouga happened after the Battle of Krina in 1235 when a parliament of nobles saw government establishment for the new empire as necessary. The KouroukanFouga was quite sophisticated as a constitution

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should be. It created a federation of the indigenous people to be governed by one institution.21 The KourougaFouga defined the interaction of the people by its rules. Article 5 provides that: Everybody has a right to life and to the preservation of physical integrity. Accordingly, any attempt to deprive one’s fellow being of life is punishable with death. (Embassy of Mali in Canada 2018)

Article 5 seems like a paragraph that would have come from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, except for the death penalty. What article 5 shows is that human rights were not alien to pre-colonial Africa. Article 20 of the KouroukanFouga states: Do not ill-treat the slaves. You should allow them to rest one day per week and to end their working day at a reasonable time. You are the master of the slaves but not of the bag they carry.

Although slavery in itself is against the core principles of modern human rights, document today, yet the KouroukanFouga has presented a fine ground upon which to conceptualize the African notion of human rights before Western democracy. Africa has had a history of great thinkers long before colonialism. Such philosophers, such as Ptahhotep, had laid a foundation of thought in which articulate institutions could be situated. Within this foundation of thought was a framework in which such reflections on humanity’s metaphysics and its attributed privileges must commence. In this regard, the KouroukanFouga represented the social philosophy within which pre-colonial African legal conception of rights existed. Therefore, the latest arrangement of a human rights system that involves the United Nations, the African Union and international law is an order that presents a new regime of a complex codified form. What this has achieved is that it has guided the constitutional conscience of the democratic positioning in Africa. The new regime serves as a point of guidance to the Western democracy that has been the hallmark of Africa’s engagement with the world, especially at the United Nations. This research would interrogate the historical development of human rights in Africa and the platforms on which they have been developed.

Postcolonial Development of Human Rights in Africa With the independence of many African states, Africa saw the rise of strong man regimes, the toppling of governments, and de facto governmental institutions’ self-installation. Many African countries’ constitution was suspended following this phenomenal transition into political darkness and a state of brutish survival. In this phase of political development, human rights abuses were characteristic of the state’s engagement with ordinary people, dissidents were forced into hiding and self-exile, and fundamental freedoms became rare privileges that could only be enjoyed in the West. In a country like Nigeria, there were many incarcerations and execution of dissidents, one which

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was the imprisonment and execution of the Ogoni journalist and activist, Ken SaroWiwa, which later brought about the Commonwealth sanctions on Nigeria, and in Mobutu Seseko’s Zaire, five university lecturers were detained for protesting poor wages.22 Such countries like Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia have been ravaged by political instability that has resulted from the de facto power gaps, interfering influences and states and lack of a monopoly of violence. Some countries are recovering from their violent political past, while some, like Somalia, are still deadlocked with pockets of violence and non-state mechanisms of terror. The advent of constitutional democracy is quite important to the journey of human rights in Africa since it gives human rights a framework for legal expression. Constitutional democracy allows for receptivity of the globalized position on human rights, and this has been the case since most human rights abuses have come from totalitarian states. For a country like Nigeria, a bad start with a long history of military regimes has marred the perception of human rights, so much that even in civilian administrations, the abuse of human rights occurs daily. Constitutional democracy came upon Africa when there was a weakening of a generation of power mongers and when it was the responsibility of strangers to the arena of power to decide where their countries’ political future was headed. An outstanding point in consideration of the constitutional processes in the newly democratized states is the involvement and the allowance of different groups to review the constitution before being adopted.23 The Organization of African Unity (OAU) was a platform where a clash of political ideas gave birth to political progress on the continent, coming into existence on 25 May 1963, signifying the first step toward regionalization. The different positions that were advanced on the political direction of regional affairs took shape to reflect the internal practices of African states themselves. At the inception of the OAU, its stand on human rights was lost in its attempts to balance the politics of liberation its member states were embroiled in.24 OAU considered human rights only at the point of the preamble of the founding Charter: Conscious of the fact that freedom, equality, justice and dignity are essential objectives for the achievement of the legitimate aspirations of the African peoples Persuaded that the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to the Principles of which we reaffirm our adherence, provide a solid foundation for peaceful and positive cooperation among States…

African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1982) However, Africa’s sharpened focus on human rights came with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), which was brought into existence by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981),

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otherwise known as the Banjul Charter. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights came into force in 1986. It was the first postcolonial attempt at regionalizing human rights issues. It served as a regional mechanism that sought to complement African states’ national human rights systems that were not in themselves well developed. In the year 2001, the African Union (AU) establishment brought about a replacement to the OAU. In contrast, the AU has been more proactive about human rights, except that since it is an intergovernmental organization, the politics of member states have almost made it docile. The AU has its ‘broad mandate on economic issues, socio-political development, and peace and security’, and then, it also has its focus on human and people’s rights.25 The Banjul Charter is the major human rights document in Africa with ratification by all the African states with the AU; Morocco was the only state that did not ratify the treaty.26 Apart from the Banjul Charter, there are some other regional human rights treaties like The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, The Protocol to the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa and the African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, otherwise known as the (‘Children’s Charter’) came into existence in 1990 under the AU endorsement; the treaty came into force on 29 November 1999. Before that time, child soldiers had fought in the Rwandan Civil War, which led to the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Some months before the coming into force of the Children’s Charter, there were above 120,000 child soldiers engaged in wars across the continent.27 In the Sierra Leonean Civil War that occurred between 1991 and 2002, it was common to see young, nimble fighters lugging AK-47 rifles, which by many descriptions allow for the deadliness and effectiveness of the child soldier.28 In that war, child soldiers were indoctrinated to the point where their understanding of the purpose of the war was tainted according to the wishes of their commanders.29 For many years on the continent, there have been cases of child labor, cases so deplorable that the conditions in which such young children found themselves can only be considered in a hellish description. Despite the coming into force of the Children’s Charter, could it be said that many children living in deplorable conditions have improved? Forty-one states have ratified the treaty on the continent.30 However, children still undergo hard labor on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire. For the Ivorian employer’s interest in the labor of young persons, it is a matter of power and legal consciousness.31 The question, whether the children would have adequate negotiation power is of no significance since they do not measure up to the psychological abilities of their employers. Children also labor hard in very dangerous conditions in

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cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. From the observation of a human rights researcher at Amnesty International, he describes the conditions against the cold, stark reality of the sleek technology that must request the suffering of young ones: The glamorous shop displays and marketing of the state of the art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks and miners in narrow manmade tunnels risking permanent lung damage.32

For most of it, Africa’s human rights problems are sourced from a cocktail of factors. One of the major factors being that Africa still battles with chronic poverty, despite the expansion of its present growth, the space between the GDP per capita income and the GDP itself exposes a class of the common people ravaged by poverty to the point where human rights mean nothing to them but the opportunity to survive, which the political class exploits most times.

The Protocol to the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa This treaty, otherwise known as the Women’s Protocol, came into existence through the Commission’s Special Rapporteur on Women’s Rights in Africa. Upon the African Union’s adoption of the treaty in July 2003, it entered into force on 25 November 2005.33 Like its regional counterparts, this treaty had the potential to create a change with its coming into force and even with its conceptualization. There has been a ratification of the treaty by 42 African states.34 The significance of this treaty met the continent when the emancipation of women seemed almost like a taboo. The Women’s Protocol’s coming into existence had a ramification, especially noted the peculiar nature of the African woman’s travails on the continent. One of these travails is Female Genital Mutilation, and another is the trafficking of young women as prostitutes across the continent and beyond. Although there is a special concern in some African countries concerning women, this special concern brought about the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Nigeria. NAPTIP as an agency has done quite remarkably well in following up on the cases of trafficked persons. There is persuasiveness in the provisions of the Women’s Protocol, and groups in the civil society, whose work is in the line of protecting women’s rights, could employ the Protocol in persuading their governments to take action when the need arises.35

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Sub-regionalization of Human Rights in Africa: The ECOWAS Experience Understanding human rights within the context of ECOWAS is expressed in the history of the community’s views and actions regarding the people of the West African sub-region. This is because ECOWAS does not have its own documented original interpretations of the international and regional instruments on human rights.36 However, the preamble to the Revised ECOWAS Treaty acknowledged the African human rights regime embodied by the Banjul Charter when it stated that: BEARING IN MIND the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the Declaration of Political Principles of the Economic Community of West African States adopted in Abuja by the Fourteenth Ordinary Session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government on 6 July 1991…

As a fundamental principle of the community, the Revised ECOWAS Treaty also affirmed and pledged its dedication to the “recognition, promotion and protection of human and peoples’ rights (Article 4(g)) following the provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights’.” There are no important distinctions that amplify a sub-regional interpretation of human rights, but there are interesting developments in the West African community that demonstrates the commitment of ECOWAS to human rights. One of such developments is the coming into the ECOWAS Regional Action Plan for the Elimination of Child Labour, especially the worst forms. The Regional Action Plan is a comprehensive document that contains the context in which it has become necessary to have a sub-regional statement of action on child labor; the statics underlie a continental problem and which challenges the efforts of the Children’s Charter. The Regional Action Plan showed that ECOWAS understood the challenges involved in pursuing the Children’s Charter’s implementation. However, the political challenges that confront the community itself are impediments to realizing its lofty strategies and aspirations toward human rights. Again the African human rights system is acknowledged in the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance. Within its preamble is the recall of women’s rights in international human rights documents, including the Banjul Charter. Its mindfulness of the ratification of the Banjul Charter by most of its member states is also typical. Article 1 of the Protocol on Democracy, in its understanding that there can be no democracy without a good human rights system, provides that human rights as contained in the Banjul Charter shall be protected by member states (Article 1(h)). The evolution of the right to democratic governance in the sub-regional multilateral platform was visibly demonstrated in Yahya Jammeh’s Gambia. This was in the wake of the controversial Gambian elections in December 2016, when ECOWAS threatened to “restore democracy” through a standing army.37

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The Community Court of Justice of West African States (ECOWAS) was established according to the ECOWAS Revised Treaty of 1993.38 The court has heard a plethora of human rights cases before it, some lacking merit and others getting judgment based on the principles of the Banjul Charter. The ECOWAS court’s work underscores the importance of a sub-regional attempt at emphasizing the germane nature of human rights and their implementation. In SirikuAlade v The Federal Republic of Nigeria((2012)ECW/CCJ/APP/05/11), the ECOWAS court held that a Nigerian, who had been detained for nine years “on holding charge” had his right to be free from arbitrary detention as provided by the Banjul Charter, violated by the Nigerian state. The world’s globalization has thrown African states into different levels of frenzy, and this frenzy can be described along two lines. The first is the perception of the African state and its institutional positioning. The second is the grappling of the African state with modern conceptions of political power. The anxiety that the internet brings to the African state and its institutions in which power resides is as dramatic as it reveals. The African state is totalitarian; it becomes easily jittery when human rights abuses get on the internet. A case in point was the policeman that beat a woman in Ghana.39 In 2018, it was reported that a policeman beat a woman with a child at Midland Savings and Loans. When the incident made its way to the internet, it erupted into a myriad of reactions forcing the authorities to take action, which might not have been taken if the incident had not gotten into the public space. Another case is that of Nigeria and its constant attempt at damage control whenever certain news gets into the public space, especially news that touches upon the government’s activities. The present apprehension of the Nigerian government of journalists and online activities seems to support this point. A case of relevance was the arrest of a Nigerian journalist and a vocal critic of the Cross River state government, Agba Jalingo, arrested on a charge of treason. The collectivistic pursuits of the African social philosophy which are projected by the FRANCE Charter was amplified by Kemi Pinheiro (San) v the Republic of Ghana((2012) ECW/CCJ/APP/07/10); the applicant had claimed his rights to register at the Ghana Law School violated, human rights which he erroneously claimed under the following provisions; peoples’ right to self-determination (Article 20 of the Banjul Charter), peoples’ right to pursue economic and social development (Article 22 of the Banjul Charter), or right to the establishment (Article 2 of ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol). The ECOWAS court held that none of these rights were violated since they are collective rather than individual rights. The positioning toward human rights at the sub-regional level has been demonstrably African, and this is quite important to the implementation of the regional human rights instruments in their particularist uniqueness. It is a juristic attempt at reflecting the African social philosophy system in which many African societies have found a convergent purpose.

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The Contemporary State of Human Rights in Africa Agba Jalingo’s protracted detention has generated a lot of attention on the internet and, as a result, has become an embarrassment to the state and even the judge on the case, Simon Amonbeda, who has even recused himself from the.40 The globalized effect of the internet on the democratic inclination and the policing of rights on the African continent cannot be overemphasized. The courts’ mechanism as media in which human rights can be resolved is challenged on many grounds, including the interference of inordinate politics. The simple disregard of the courts’ power in many African democracies is evidence of the emasculation of judicial efficiency.

Conclusion Human rights have come far in Africa both from a unilateral perspective and a multilateral one. However, there are blind spots for implementation through formal channels. With the progress on the regional treaties, there remain some issues to be resolved as to the effectiveness of the treaties’ intent. One of the issues is that of the growing poverty and income inequality in Africa. These present some serious challenges to the protection and safeguard of human rights in Africa. The immense poverty has grown to the point where it has dwarfed the urgency of human rights interventions. Many of the cases where there was the creation of allowance for the abuse of rights had the fingerprint of poverty and desperation. Therefore, it is imperative that the empowerment of the African people should be prioritized if there is a great concern on human rights abuses on the continent. There also is a huge gap in the sensitization of human rights across the continent. People need to be aware of the rights that are attributed to their state of being human. The internet is proving to be a formidable tool in stemming human rights abuses and creating redress. Such technology can be harnessed to enhance better compliance and in the detection of human rights abuses.

Notes 1. Bösl, A., and Diescho J. (eds), Human Rights in Africa: Legal Perspectives on Their Protection and Promotion (Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2009). 2. Bates, Robert, ‘History of Africa Through Western Eyes’ (Guardian, 11 November 2012), http://www.ttheguardian.com/world/2012/nov/01/afr ica-history-western-eyes, accessed 1 April 2020. 3. Herodotus, Histories (Penguin Classics, 2003). 4. EI-Obaid, EI-Obaid Ahmed, and Appiagyei-Atua, Kwadwo, ‘Human Rights in Africa—A New Perspective on Linking the Past to the Present’ (1996) 41 McGill Law Journal 819. 5. Brown, C., ‘Universal Human Rights? An Analysis of the “Human-Rights Culture” and Its Critics,’ in Robert G. Patman (ed), Universal Human Rights (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). 6. Olu-Adeyemi and Ayodele, 2017.

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7. European Parliament, The Role of Regional Human Rights Mechanisms. 8. Heyns, C., Padilla, D., and Zwaak, L. ‘A Schematic Comparison of Regional Human Rights Systems: An Update’ (2006) 3(4) Sur, Rev Intdireitos Human. 9. OAS Treaty Series, No. 36. 10. American Convention on Human Rights 1969, Article 32(1). American Convention on Human Rights 1969, Article 32(2). 11. OAS Treaty Series, No. 69. 12. OAS Treaty Series, No. 73. 13. Council of Europe, Treaty Office, ‘Chart of Signatures and Ratifications of Treaty 005: Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’ (Council of Europe Portal, 29 March 2020) ETS No. 005, https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/ treaty/005/signatures, accessed 29 March 2020. 14. Heyns, C., Padilla, D., and Zwaak, L. ‘A Schematic Comparison of Regional Human Rights Systems: An Update’ (2006) 3(4) Sur, Rev Intdireitos Human. 15. Georgetown Law, 2020. 16. European Parliament, 2010. 17. Lalude, Olalekan M., ‘The African Moral Perspectives on Human Rights and Their Influences on Anti-Gay Laws in Nigeria and Kenya’ (2019) 8(2) IJLSR 207. 18. Bösl, A., and Diescho J. (eds), Human Rights in Africa: Legal Perspectives on Their Protection and Promotion (Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2009). 19. Embassy of Mali in Canada, ‘KourougaFouga’ (Embassy of Mali in Canada, 2018), https://ambamali.ca/en/kourouka-fouga/, accessed 27 January 2020. 20. UNESCO, ‘Manden Charter, Proclaimed in the KurukanFuga’ (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, December 2008), Inscribed in 2009 (4.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/manden-charter-proclaimed-in-kur ukan-fuga-00290, accessed 29 January 2020. 21. UNESCO, ‘Manden Charter, Proclaimed in the KurukanFuga’ (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, December 2008), Inscribed in 2009 (4.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/manden-charter-proclaimed-in-kur ukan-fuga-00290, accessed 29 January 2020. 22. Amnesty International, ‘Human Rights Violations in Zaire: An Amnesty International Report’ (Amnesty International, 20 December 1980), https://www. amnesty.org/download/Documents/200000/afr620121980en.pdf, accessed 28 January 2020. 23. Udombana, Nsongurua J., ‘Interpreting Rights Globally: Courts and Constitutional Rights in Emerging Democracies’ (2005) 5 AHRLJ 48. 24. Ebobrah, Solomon, ‘The African Human Rights System: An Eventful Journey from Doom and Gloom’ (OCHR), https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRB odies/HRCouncil/AdvisoryCom/Session17/SolomonEbobrah.docx, accessed 29 January 2020. 25. Braun, T., and Mulvagh, L., ‘The African Human Rights System: A Guide for Indigenous Peoples’ (Forest Peoples Programme, 2008). 26. Amnesty International, 2019. 27. Human Rights Watch, ‘More Than 120,000 Child Soldiers Fighting in Africa’ (Human Rights Watch, 18 April 1999), https://www.hrw.org/news/1999/ 04/18/more-120000-child-soldiers-fighting-africa, accessed 28 January 2020.

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28. Duddenhorfer, 2016. 29. Skinner, E. P., ‘Child Soldiers in Africa: A Disaster for Future Families’ (1999) 16(2) IJWP 7–22, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20753202, accessed 28 January 2020. 30. Amnesty International, 2019. 31. Foua, B., ‘Enduring Child Labor on Ivory Coast’s Cocoa Farms: Practicality of the ILO Standards and the Missed Opportunities’ (Ph.D. thesis, Brunel University 2014). 32. Amnesty International, 2019. 33. Braun, T., and Mulvagh, L., ‘The African Human Rights System: A Guide for Indigenous Peoples’ (Forest Peoples Programme, 2008). 34. AU, ‘OAU Charter’ (African Union), https://au.int/sites/default/files/tre aties/7759-file-oau_charter_1963.pdf, accessed 28 January 2020. 35. Braun, T., and Mulvagh, L., ‘The African Human Rights System: A Guide for Indigenous Peoples’ (Forest Peoples Programme, 2008). 36. University of Pretoria, ‘ECOWAS: A New Vehicle for Human RIGHTS realization in West Africa?,’ Chapter Three (University of Pretoria Repository). 37. Hartmann, C., ‘ECOWAS and the Restoration of Democracy in the Gambia’ (2017) 51(2) Africa Spectrum 85, 89. 38. IJRC ‘Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice’ (International Justice Resource Center), https://ijrcenter.org/regional-commun ities/economic-community-of-west-african-states-court-of-justice/, accessed 28 January 2020. 39. ‘Video of Police Hitting Woman Carrying Infant Rattles Ghana’ (France 24, 27 July 2018), https://observers.france24.com/en/201807227-video-policewoman-baby-ghana, accessed 28 January 2020. 40. The ICIR, 2019.

Part V

Africa in Global Security Conflict and Peacebuilding

CHAPTER 34

Africa and the Restructuring of the United Nations Security Council Tim Murithi

Introduction This chapter makes a case for Africa to play a role in restructuring the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), based on the need to address geopolitical insecurity and the continent’s need to redress its historical exclusion from the design of the international system. The chapter will develop ideas drawn from an intersection of fields of study, including African studies, peace studies, international relations, and transitional justice. The chapter begins by proposing an understanding of global order predicated on the notions of maintaining peace and security, emphasizing the institution that has asserted its mandate to lead on this issue, namely, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The chapter will then utilize this understanding to interrogate the need for a geopolitical paradigm shift in terms of the existing order; it will argue for the dismantling of the UNSC and the wider UN system due to its inability to address contemporary crises. Furthermore, the chapter will argue that the nefarious activities of the Permanent Members of the UNSC, such as carpet bombing Syria, have transformed this body into a net producer of instability, and it more appropriate to rebrand the institution as the “UN Insecurity Council.” The chapter argues that the world has reached a crisis point due to the historical and continuing geopolitics of exclusion. Consequently, the historical T. Murithi (B) University of Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_34

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exclusion of most of the world in designing and upholding global order needs to be redressed. Concretely, this means that it is necessary to re-think and remake the Global Order. A geopolitical crisis precipitated by the invasion of Iraq, Libya, Crimea, and Yemen suggests that the world is at a tipping point toward even more profound catastrophe and chaos. The chapter then argues that Africa as a continent has to put forward its proposals to remake the global order. In achieving this objective, Africa can draw upon its historical experiences as a freedom-seeking continent, based on the insights drawn from the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles led by actors across its territory. The continent can also draw upon its insistence on self-determination, which animated the continent’s nation-states’ emergence. This is also evident in work done to advance economic empowerment, which is the ultimate indicator of a continent of people who can determine their selfdevelopment and enhance their livelihoods. The continent also reveals that Pan-African solidarity was prevalent and re-emerged based on the support that countries under the yoke of colonialism and apartheid received from their fellow African states and societies. However, there is still much more to be done to translate Pan-African solidarity into interventions that will consolidate and entrench democratic governance across the continent. Africa also continues to struggle for a more just world and more equitable global order. As targets of historical injustice, Africans continue to promote justice understood in these instances as fairness, equality, accountability, and redress for harm done in the past. Consequently, it has the authority to pronounce on what a more just world order can be reconfigured. And finally, African societies have provided examples of how to promote reconciliation between the various groups, societies, and communities around the world, epitomized by the work of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, but evident in other regional, national and communal initiatives of citizens across the continent. Consequently, Africans are also “reconciliations,” evident in the posture adopted by African governments and societies when the external colonizers left the continent. There was no rush to seek revenge and vengeance against colonizers for the brutal and dehumanizing system they imposed on the continent’s people. By drawing upon these Pan-African experiences, this chapter will put forward proposals for radical global transformation predicated on the pursuit of human freedom and self-determination, global solidarity, justice, and reconciliation. The chapter will discuss the dismantling of the UN system, particularly the Security Council, and its replacement with new institutions that seek to deepen global democracy, based on a renewal of principles of human freedom, solidarity, justice, and reconciliation, which we can draw from Africa’s own historical experiences. The chapter will conclude by discussing the practical steps toward remaking global order and examining the limitations that might confront such an initiative.

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Power Politics and the Failure to Maintain Global Order A historical contextualization of international relations reveals that power politics and self-interest infiltrated the institutions that were designed to maintain global order during the Cold War. This followed a period between the First World War and the Second World War in which the idealism that animated the League of Nations was viewed as damaging to the practice of international politics. The skeptics of idealism failed to grasp that it was normative ideology toward which humanity was perpetually traveling. Its absence in geopolitical practice did not necessarily confirm its invalidity. The emergence of fascist and totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan confirmed that indeed international relations were indeed nasty, brutish, and short in the eyes of some observers. However, the collective of countries all around the world to contain the excesses of the fascist and totalitarian regimes provided a demonstration of how humanity could activate its agency and be inspired by certain ideals to remake the world in an image that will uphold their freedom and well-being, as will be discussed further below. Political realism, which stepped in to fill in the ideological gap exposed in the perceived limitations of idealism, conceptualizes international relations as a realm in which power politics is fundamental, if not all-encompassing. A central tenet of realism is that the primary actors in the international system, nation-states, are first and foremost self-interested rational actors who operate through systems of alliances.1 Realpolitik’s persistence has led many analysts and practitioners of international relations to view it as a permanent feature of reality rather than an ideology, like its predecessor idealism, which has its ideologues and advocates. Scant or no attention is paid, from the realpolitik perspective to the disputants’ moral interests or creating the appropriate conditions to generate an outcome that will be owned and internalized by the parties. Consequently, in the grand battle of selfish interests, life is nasty, brutish, and short; humanity has veered dangerously toward its self-destruction. In effect, political realism as an ideology that appeals to human beings’ basic instincts has within it the seeds of humanity’s demise and destruction. Realpolitik, and its array of practices evident in brinksmanship and sabotage, is unlikely to promote global order and is undermining any efforts to stabilize international relations in the twenty-first century. The Cold War led to the geopolitical stand-off between the western block led by the USA and West European countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the former USSR and eastern block countries who were part of the Warsaw Pact. In effect, these blocks were viewed as a bipolar system for the maintenance of a balance of power. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s heralded the prospects for a new kind of thinking. However, the USA and its NATO allies instead opted for a triumphalist posture informed by the realpolitik prism and continued its policy

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of co-optation, coercion, or confrontation with its post-Soviet foes, notably Russia. The opportunity to view the world through a different lens, one which would advance international cooperation and reduced adversarial geopolitics, was lost by the heavy-handed approach that the USA and its allies adopted toward the rest of the world.2 The Middle East, which had fuelled economic growth in the West by extracting oil and other minerals, remained predominantly under the yoke of authoritarian regimes so long as they pledge fealty and allegiance to the west. The West’s willingness to support and finance authoritarian regimes in the Middle East spawned the extremist ideologies that erupted to contest the legitimacy of the dictators who suppressed their people with reckless abandon while transferring the mineral wealth of their people to their geopolitical masters in Washington, London, and Paris. This narrative repeated itself in Africa, where dictators were more beholden to their western paymasters than their people. In 2016, the Panama Chapters revealed elites’ collaboration in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa with offshore interests.3 The net effect of this has been unstable countries and regions, which are fertile ground for extremist ideology to flourish. In this volatile context, political realism’s ideology continues to be received as the gospel, rather than as an aberration and an anachronistic world view that does not contribute toward advancing the cause of global order. This type of persists’ legacy continues to corrode the prospects for a more humane approach to contemporary international relations. This type of thinking continues to orient the world toward the brink of geopolitical abyss and re-emergence of global conflict, as witnessed recently by the renewal of tensions between the West and Russia, partly but not exclusively NATO’s eastward expansionism. The type of thinking that precipitated the global crisis is still being proposed as the basis for remaking and remolding the world in the twenty-first century. One of the leading proponents of the ideology of political realism, Henry Kissinger, applied this frame of thinking in executing his role as Secretary of State of the United States and National Security Adviser.4 An archetypal realist statesman Kissinger did not hesitate to place the United States’ self-interest ahead of the societies in which they were intervening with disastrous consequences for the innocent civilians in these countries. For example, between March 1969 and May 1970, Kissinger was a leading proponent and advocate of “Operation Menu.” His advice to former President Richard Nixon was instrumental in unleashing a bombing campaign against Cambodia and Laos to target their adversaries, the Viet Cong, who were waging a war of resistance against the USA incursion on their territory. It is estimated that between 50,000 and 150,000 people, including innocent civilians, were killed during this USA bombing of Cambodia and Laos. Grandin argues that following Kissinger’s advice, “Nixon introduced us to permanent, extrajudicial war in Southeast Asia, and it continues today in the Middle East.”5 Ultimately, the USA lost the Vietnam war to the Viet Cong and utilized a facing saving peace

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agreement in Paris to extract themselves from this violent conflagration. The legacy of this approach to relations between states has had disastrous effects on the practice of international relations today, as will be discussed below in the cases of Iraq, Syrian, and Libyan invasions.6 Kissinger’s most recent book entitled World Order is a short-sighted meditation that repeats the laborious and self-destructive tenets of political realism and focuses on how the USA will continue to leverage its power in the chaotic world it has bequeathed to humanity.7 It is framed exclusively through the realpolitik prism. It considers the emerging threats to the western axis posed by Asia, specifically China, Russia and the perennial crisis in the Middle East, which has been paradoxically exacerbated by western interventionism. In an act of marginalization, Africa as a continent does not feature in Kissinger’s calculus for a new and emerging international system, as he does not dedicate any amount of analysis in considering the continent’s position or role in forging a new international system. Consequently, there is a call for African thinkers to advance their ideas on this issue. In referring to China’s contestation of American power, Kissinger argues that “a rising power may reject the role allotted to it by a system it did not design, and the established powers may prove unable to adapt the system’s equilibrium to incorporate its rise.”8 Kissinger further suggests that “the emergence of China poses a comparable structural challenge in the twenty-first century.9 The idea that “a rising power” should subscribe to a “role allotted to it” reveals what is wrong with the realist prism in framing how the USA should position itself against presumably would be contenders to its throne. This self-delusional notion of the USA as the imperial force that assigns roles and functions to its cohorts in return for papal fealty is deeply flawed and erroneous thinking that will only further precipitate a global crisis. This thinking’s flawed nature is evident in the endless and permanent wars that Washington is failing to contain, suggesting that either there are extremely high levels of incompetence in the practice of international relations or the ideology that is informing action is intentionally misguided or both. Kissinger argues correctly that “a reconstruction of the international system is the ultimate challenge to statesmanship in our time,” and his book is focused on this issue.10 Kissinger’s proposal to remake the world through a political realism lens is, however, counter-intuitive and self-destructive because this is the type of thinking that has brought the world to the brink of catastrophe in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The type of thinking that orients you to a crisis is unlikely the type of thinking that will extract you from it. This thinking’s paucity is self-evident in its problematic reluctance to acknowledge that human beings can alter their behavior to create alternative outcomes. Consequently, it is necessary to question the continuing prevalence of this type of thinking as it applies to the realm of international order and the pursuit of global order.

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The Invention of the United Nations and the Promise of Global Order Following the fascist and totalitarian powers’ subjugation at the end of the Second World War, the wartime allies decided to construct a new framework for the post-war world order. The United Nations organization was the progeny of this endeavor, and its primary purpose was to ensure that there was an institutional mechanism that would encourage its members to “settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that the international peace and security, and justice are not endangered.”11 Through the Security Council’s mechanisms and the General Assembly, the UN was provided with the ability to oversee the peaceful settlement of disputes. Specifically, Article 33 of Chapter VI of the UN Charter (1945) states that “the parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement.” The Charter of the UN-designated the world body has to be the primary vehicle with the responsibility to promote international peace and security. To operationalize these interventions, a broad range of institutions within the UN system could be utilized. On this basis, it is important not to lose sight that the UN is the composite formation of its Secretariat, the member states, and its numerous agencies. As the institution empowered by the Charter to promote peace and security, the UN Security Council is the most powerful of these institutions. It has a primary responsibility to create and establish the framework conditions for other branches and institutions of the UN system and regional organizations to contribute toward the peaceful resolution of disputes and the maintenance of global order. Consequently, it is the central focus of this chapter’s analysis. Regional organizations such as the European Union (EU), African Union (AU), the Organisation of American States (OAS), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Organisation for the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also have an important role to play in pursuing global order. Specifically, Article 52 of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter states that “the Security Council shall encourage the development of the pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies either on the initiative of the states concerned or by reference from the Security Council.”12 However, when the conditions on the ground are not conducive to the operationalization of peace and security, for example, in situations where armed militia are still projecting violence, then regional organizations generally have to defer to the UN Security Council, which has the power to authorize the robust engagement with armed groups if necessary.

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Africa and the Legacy of Global Exclusion The global disorder era will persist because a radical shift in thinking does not and cannot happen overnight. This is particularly apt when referring to international relations in which the parochial prejudices and biases of stateswomen and statesmen persist as the basis upon which to inform decision-making. This situation will not change until the attitudes are transformed through a program of “‘unlearning” the self-defeating and self-destructive world views premised on aggression, dominion, and control. The contestation and jostling for global supremacy will continue in this intervening period. If anything, the powerful countries have acquired a voracious appetite for preventing any contestation to their global hegemonic power, from any usurpers and pretenders to the global throne. It has gotten to a point where they are already directly engaging each other, for example, China’s ongoing confrontation with the USA over sovereignty of the South China Sea. NATO’s campaign to encircle Russia is evident in the most recent invitation to Montenegro to join the military alliance. In this noble quest to redesign the international system, the historical exclusion of most of the world in designing and upholding global order also needs to be redressed. Historically, like some other parts of the world, Africa was being excluded from global order design and construction. Given the historical exclusion, exploitation, and oppression of Africa, it is vital in terms of global justice for Africa to assert its right to shape and mold the future global order. Currently, the UN Security Council’s reality of negotiation processes perpetuates and reproduces this paternalistic exclusion of the African continent. More than 60% of the issues discussed by the UN Security Council are focused on Africa. Yet, the continent does not have any representation among the Permanent Five members of the Council. Given the fact that the P5 can veto all manner of decisions before the Council, it is a travesty of justice at its most basic level that African countries can only participate in key deliberations and decision-making processes as individual non-permanent members of the Council. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that African non-permanent members of the Council will, in fact, articulate and advance positions that are in the interests of African citizens and vulnerable communities in countries that they do represent. UN Security Council negotiation and decision-making processes affect the highest manifestation of unfairness in the international system. If achieving fairness in negotiations among states is the preferred route to achieving global legitimation, then a fundamental transformation of the UN Security Council and eliminating the veto provision is a necessary pre-requisite action. The P5 are among the beneficiaries of the status quo within the international system, reproducing a form of diplomatic apartheid. Given the fact that the asymmetrical distribution of global political, economic, and military

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power has remained relatively unchanged since the end of the Cold War means that the potential beneficiaries of global democratic transformation would in effect be the societies in the so-called developing regions of the world—Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Pan-African Efforts to Reform the UN Security Council Africa has tried to voice its concern about the need for a change within the existing UN system. Specifically, in March 2005, the AU issued a declaration known as The Common African Position on the Proposed Reform of the United Nations: The Ezulwini Consensus,13 which was a statement in response to the Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change which was issued in December 2004. the AU issued a position on UN reform and, in particular, on the reform of the Security Council by noting that “in 1945, when the UN was formed, most of Africa was not represented and that in 1963, when the first reform took place, Africa was represented but was not in a particularly strong position.”14 The AU goes on to state that “Africa is now in a position to influence the proposed UN reforms by maintaining her unity of purpose”; furthermore, it notes that “Africa’s goal is to be fully represented in all the decision-making organs of the UN, particularly in the Security Council.”15 The Common African Position enumerates what “full representation” of Africa in the Security Council means by demanding “not less than two permanent seats with all the prerogatives and privileges of permanent membership including the right to veto” and “five non-permanent seats.”16 On 27 May 2010, the first-ever negotiating text on Security Council reform was issued by the Chair of Inter-Governmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform, Ambassador Zahir Tanin of Afghanistan. In this document, AU position, which was articulated by Sierra Leone, which is a current nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council, retained the original position by stating that “Africa seeks the abolition of the veto, but alternatively, so long as it continues to exist, its extension to all new permanent members in the Council as a matter of common justice.” As noted above, the virtual impossibility of eliminating the veto provision from P5 members (due to their combined coercive power to subvert any such initiative) in short to mediumterm weakens the argument that achieving fairness in negotiations among states is a potential route to global legitimation.

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African Perspectives on the Remaking of Global Order This attempt by the African continent to propose reform of the UNSC through the Ezulwini Consensus has largely been rebuffed by the self-involved and self-interested powerful members of the UNSC, notably the P5. Consequently, it is time for Africa to directly participate in the dismantling of the current global system and replace it with a more inclusive system of global democracy. It is incumbent for our citizens and the leaders they have chosen not to wait for ideas to come elsewhere because they will not come in a manner that will be favorable to the collective, but only to the self-interested minority elite. Humanity is increasingly bombarded by a certain way of thinking through media manipulation, which prevents us from questioning the existing order. The first step is to pierce through the veil of this deception and see the world as it is. Africa as a continent has to put forward its proposals as to how to remake the global order. Sentiments emerging from the African Union Annual Assembly of Heads of State and Government, in January 2016, was that African countries should “pull out” of the UN system. This might be a necessary stepping stone toward dismantling the current system and replacing it with a system that deepens global democracy. While the prospects for exiting the dysfunctional UN system are appealing, several challenges have to be considered. For example, it is impractical to withdraw from engaging with the international system, particularly if you have to continue engaging and interacting with other actors worldwide. Consequently, Africa needs to re-group and re-think its strategy for remaking the world system.

Enhancing Africa’s Global Agency For Africa to achieve this objective, it will need to cleanse and extract any internalized sense of inferiority. This can only be achieved by decolonizing the African mind from mental slavery, which is a persistent feature of the postcolonial societies across the continent. African countries working in tandem can become a powerful force in international relations. The African project of continental unity is still a work-in-progress, but it will enhance the continent’s agency. The fact that the continent is still a work-in-progress does not mean that Africa has nothing to offer the world. Africa can offer insights from, and draw upon, its own historical experiences and continental struggles. African civic actors and the wider society can also lead the debate on a broad range of ideas, proposals, and recommendations. Africa must assert its right to contribute to remaking the world from the set of principles that have animated its existence in the last century. Consequently, these principles of freedom, solidarity, justice, and reconciliation, which Africa is a proponent of, should inform the remaking of the world in a way that strives to balance international authority with citizen participation.17

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Activating Africa’s Agency as Freedom Seekers, Global Solidarity, Justice, and Reconciliation Promoters Africans are freedom seekers, evident in their historical quest to liberate their continent. Pan-African freedom-seeking is also embodied in the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles that actors led across the continent. The quest for ultimate freedom has continued into the twenty-first century due to the persistence of economic control driven by compromised global institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank. We have not successfully spread freedom to every corner of the African continent, so the work continues. Besides, there is much work to be done to advance economic empowerment, which is the ultimate indicator of a continent of people who can determine their self-development and enhance their livelihoods. This notion of human freedom should inform the plan to reform the global order. Pan-African solidarity is evident in the support that countries under the yoke of colonialism and apartheid received from their fellow African states and societies. Today, Pan-Africanism is evident in the support that countries across the continent provide those wracked by conflict and crisis. Consequently, there is a strong argument for Pan-African solidarity and Pan-Africanism. However, there is still much more to be done to translate Pan-African solidarity into interventions that will consolidate and entrench democratic governance across the continent. However, this spirit of solidarity should and can be translated into ideas to frame participatory global governance. Africans have struggled for a more just world and more equitable global order. As targets of historical injustice, Africans continue to lead on promoting justice understood in this instance as fairness, equality, accountability, and redress for harm done in the past. To redress this historical injustice, the idea of a just system should, therefore, animate the redesign of a new global order. Africans have sought to promote reconciliation between the various groups, societies, and communities around the world, epitomized by the work of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. This principled position is evident in the posture adopted by African governments and societies when the external colonizers left the continent. There was no rush to seek revenge and vengeance against colonizers for the brutal and dehumanizing system. In fact, in some countries, the settler communities’ political narrative of reconciliation was deployed to frame the future relationship between the settlers and the natives. This approach is now being contested because there is a sense that reconciliation was not accompanied by justice and a genuine attempt by the colonial powers to redress the human rights violations which they perpetrated against the countries that they dominated. Nevertheless, this illustrates that Africans are also reconcilactors or agents of change premised on healing the deep divisions between groups and societies. The idea of global reconciliation also has to inform the attempts to redesign the international system.

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The Pathway to the Remaking of Global Order: Practical Steps to the WFN Through a UN Charter Review Conference The UN recognized that the moment would arrive when it became imperative to transform the organization and included a practical mechanism to review the body’s Charter. Specifically, Article 109 of the UN Charter provides a “General Conference of the Members to review the present Charter.” Article 109 of the UN Charter cannot be vetoed by the Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council, which has in the past hampered, deliberately sabotaged, and deployed subterfuge among their client states to prevent any attempts to “reform” the UN Security Council. This Charter Review Conference could be convened at a specific date and place if it is approved by “a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly members and by a vote of any nine members of the Security Council.”18 Therefore, there are no major obstacles to convening a Charter Review Conference apart from securing the necessary percentages described above in practice. Also, the decision-making process at such a Charter Review Conference would be relatively democratic in the sense that “each member of the United Nations shall have one vote in the conference.” This Charter Review Conference could be initiated by mobilizing the will of two-thirds of the General Assembly and nine members of the Security Council. The latter provision means that the P5 cannot veto any proposed UN Charter Review Conference. Such a Charter Review Conference could adopt a recommendation to substantially alter the UN Charter and introduce completely new provisions, including a change in the institution’s name to, for example, the World Federation of Nations. The adoption of these new recommendations could be based on a two-thirds vote of the conference, and each member of the UN would have one vote. The major challenge will arise when it comes to ratifying any revised or new charter. Article 109 further stipulates that any alteration of the UN Charter can only take effect “when ratified according to their respective constitutional processes by two-thirds of the United Nations members, including all the permanent members of the Security Council.” In essence, if a UN Charter Review Conference makes recommendations, then these have to be further ratified by the governments of member states and including all P5 members. Therefore, the final ratification of a new Charter could be held hostage by a veto from any of the P5, in effect an undemocratic provision inserted by the UN’s founders undoubtedly to serve their interests of ensuring that any provisions meet with their approval. There are precedents for Charter Review processes leading to the establishment of new international organizations, notably the Organization of African Unity’s transformation into the African Union, initiated by a meeting of Heads of State and Government in 1999.

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Therefore, a UN Charter Review Conference could lead to the formation of the WFN through broad-based and inclusive consultations that include governments, civil society, business, trade unions, and academics. Despite the potential veto of P5 members at the ratification stage, the General Assembly can nevertheless take the initiative and convene a UN Charter Review Conference. The recommendations adopted at a UN Charter Review Conference would be imbued by a degree of moral legitimacy. Therefore any efforts to sabotage the full adoption of such recommendations by the P5 would further expose the international system’s injustice. In the absence of the political will within the UN to convene a Charter Review Conference, an alternate strategy would be to establish the WFN through the convening of a new and separate treaty which could be approved and adopted by “whichever internationally progressive countries were willing to be pioneers.”19 Regarding a global parliamentary assembly, or as this proposal suggests the WFN Parliament, “even twenty to thirty economically and geographically diverse countries would be enough to found the parliament” and “the treaty agreed to by these countries would establish the legal structure for elections to be held within their territories including a voting system and electoral districts.”20 There is no reason why these pioneering countries would have to give up their membership in the UN while forming the World Federation of Nations. Almost all countries belong to more than one international organization simultaneously. There could be an advantage of the pioneer members of the WFN to retain their membership of the UN and actively use their positions to advocate for the new Global Democratic Architecture and convince an ever-increasing number of countries to join them in the new formation. The constitution of the WFN could be framed so that any country could join the formation so long as it is willing to meet its obligations under the WFN treaty. If the WFN treaty begins to gain momentum, then “other less proactive countries would have an incentive to take part rather than be sidelined in the creation of an important new international organization.”21 When membership of the WFN reaches an optimal number of countries, one could begin to see the gradual withering away of the UN’s relevance until it undergoes the same demise as the League of Nations. A pioneering group of countries established the UN itself, so it has already provided an example of how to successfully establish the WFN. In terms of how forward, what is required is for a group of progressive states to begin drafting a General Assembly resolution to put the UN Charter Review Conference on the agenda and in parallel begin to finance the drafting of the treaty and constitutional framework of the WFN.

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Interrogating the (Im)Possibility of Change It would be naïve to think that the beneficiaries of the current system will allow change to happen, simply because the African continent demands it. Consequently, this radical transformation will not happen any time soon. Instead, Africa will have to utilize a disruption strategy to undermine global systems and institutions that perpetuate its subordinate status and historical injustice. Africa will also need to continue leading in the design and creation of new global institutions and withdraw from international institutions dominated by the global geopolitical power-brokers. Africa already attempted this with the Ezulwini Consensus. Still, it was comprehensively rebuffed and cast aside, a decade after the initial Ezulwini Consensus initiative, the global system of governance and the UN Security Council remains intact and unaffected, as well as dysfunctional in terms of addressing contemporary security threats. The point is not that the UN is not doing good work in some places; the point is that the UN’s next version should achieve even more for the war-affected, refugees, and downtrodden. In a new system of global democracy, it should have its own predictable source of funding sourced, for example, from taxing financial capital flows or issuing a levy on imports, which the African Union has recently adopted as a proposed policy for funding its operations. Ultimately, the global order redesign is in effect about advancing the notion of our common humanity.

Conclusion The current global system is at a breaking point. The type of thinking that got us into this planetary crisis point is not thinking that will get us out of this problem. By extension, the erroneous thinking, informed by political realism, is not the kind of thinking that will get us out of this situation of global insecurity we find ourselves in. The UN system and its Security Council have abdicated from undertaking this fundamental task, which is key to human survival. The excesses of the Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council have pushed the world over the precipice, and the world is in an extended descent into the abyss of cyclical and never-ending violence. While some might relish and benefit from this state of affairs, the prognosis suggests that humanity will not survive if a person with paralysis and decrepit UN system cannot address the endemic crises it faces worldwide. The UN’s powerful members have demonstrated their ability to rachet up geopolitical pressure to achieve their desired self-interests. They have also demonstrated their willingness to utilize the UN as a prophylactic to achieve their nefarious ends. This is one situation in which the UN Charter came under direct threat from Permanent power members’ dogmatic interests (P5) of the Security Council. The illegal Iraq invasion by the USA and UK was the clearest demonstration of this propensity to perverting the international rule of law. The USA and

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UK amassed a coalition of the coerced and mounted their invasion, in direct contravention of the UN Charter, specifically Article 39 and its injunction against inter-state aggression. This event was nevertheless a notable nail in the UN Charter’s coffin and a clear illustration of the international system’s undemocratic character. Similarly, the ongoing bombing raids in Syria by the P4 members of the P5 of the UN Security Council, which were launched without a Security Council resolution, is further evidence of the corrupted nature of the international system, which purports to be the purveyor of the maintenance of peace and security. The UN, which was created to address the world’s problems in 1945, is no longer fit for purpose in the twenty-first century. Institution tasked with global security and maintaining the international rule of law is dysfunctional. As stipulated in the UN Charter, far from establishing “the conditions under which justice and the respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained,”22 the P5 are undermining this historical mission. The point is that the kind of thinking that got us into this puzzle is not the same type of thinking that will get us out of the current global predicament. The world has come to this state of affairs due to erroneous decision-making and missed opportunities by the global power elite who have, up until now, dictated the structure of the international system. This erroneous decision-making is based on ill-thought-out strategies predicated on a misplaced aggressive drive for dominion and control to achieve hegemonic self-interest. Paradoxically, instead of achieving the desired objectives of dominion, the global power elite is rapidly losing control of the international system and fomenting attitudes worldwide that are exacerbating global insecurity. The challenge is how to extract the world from this paradoxical situation, which could trigger events that could fuel and inflame an escalation of global confrontation and ultimately lead to chaos and catastrophe. The issue is whether the world can avert this precipitous decline and find creative ways to restore global order. Therefore, there is a need for global rules and standards to restrain the economic and political excesses that are currently undermining the fabric of societies worldwide. Suppose one speaks of providing more opportunities for the global citizenry to participate in global affairs. In that case, it is logical that people should be represented at the global level by some world people’s assembly. In April and May 2003, the peace marches brought an estimated ten million people out into the streets to air their voices, but this did not have a major impact on transforming the policies that were ultimately adopted. There was a revolution in global consciousness but not a parallel echoing of this transformation at the level of global governance institutions. It is, therefore, necessary to ensure that the next time the peoples of the world voice an issue of global concern, there will be an institution which can articulate these concerns and translate them into policy decisions which can contribute

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toward improving democratic transparency and accountability of the global decision-making and implementation process. It is unlikely that tinkering with the edges will generate institutional models that lead to a deepening of global democracy in the form of so-called UN reform. Yet, the global challenges across regions and within states continue to mount without an adequate forum for those most affected by these challenges to voice their concerns. Consequently, the transition to global democracy cannot be left to its own devices. The current global system is defined by the selective respect for international law and a self-evident democratic deficit. If the status-quo is permitted to persist, this model of elite global governance, for example, manifest through the P5 of the UN Security Council, will not reform itself but merely replicate and reproduce existing forms of exclusivity by co-opting a few more members. The increase in issues of common concern to world citizens at the global level justifies the formation of new arenas for democratic decision-making. African experiences can influence the formation of a new global order. Specifically, drawing upon Pan-African experiences with the quest for human freedom, solidarity, justice, and reconciliation, the continent can infuse these notions into the global order’s reconfiguration. A new Global Democratic Architecture would be premised on the vertical disaggregation of nation-states’ power to a supranational grouping of regions and downwards to sub-national communal formations. This chapter proposed that a sufficient case can be made to establish a World Federation of Nations to embody this new Global Democratic Architecture. A UN Charter Review Conference can launch such a process, alternatively, the WFN could be established by a separate and stand-alone treaty. This chapter has sought to establish the principle that radical transformation is required to achieve global democracy. UN reform will not significantly alter the power imbalances. Neither will it empower the world’s citizens to assert their right to hold global institutions accountable for their actions. Furthermore, radical transformation is also necessary to empower world citizens through their agency to actively define what a future organization will address their interests as in terms of reducing the socio-economic inequalities that plague the majority of humanity. The UN has become the anachronistic caterpillar that has ossified and is now ready to shed its depleted edifice through metamorphosis, which will allow a new geopolitical configuration to emerge and strive to re-orient the planet toward global order. In the interregnum leading to this radical transformation, there will be paradoxes, fissures, and discontinuities. Still, these will be necessary to enable and facilitate the emergence of a new global order. In this historical mission, humanity should be guided by the wisdom of the distinguished Pan-Africanist and first President of a democratic South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who advised that: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

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Notes 1. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). 2. Saadia Touval and William Zartmann (eds.), International Mediation in Theory and Practice (Westview, Boulder, 1995). 3. Bastian Obermeyer and Frederik Obermaier, The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide their Money (London: Oneworld, 2016). 4. Henry Kissinger, World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History (London and New York: Penguin Books, 2014). 5. Grandin, Greg, “Henry Kissinger’s Genocidal Legacy: Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Birth of American Militarism”, http://www.salon.com/2015/11/10/ henry_kissingers_genocidal_legacy_partner/, 10 November 2015, accessed 15 May 2016. 6. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 220. 7. Henry Kissinger, World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History (London and New York: Penguin Books, 2014). 8. Kissinger, World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History, pp. 366–367. 9. Kissinger, World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History, p. 367. 10. Kissinger, World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History, p. 371. 11. United Nations, Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice, 1945, Preamble. 12. United Nations, Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice, 1945, Preamble. 13. African Union, The Common African Position on the Proposed Reform of the United Nations: The Ezulwini Consensus, EXT/EX.CL/2 (VII), Addis Ababa, African Union, 7–8 March 2005. 14. African Union, The Common African Position on the Proposed Reform of the United Nations: The Ezulwini Consensus, p. 9. 15. African Union, The Common African Position on the Proposed Reform of the United Nations: The Ezulwini Consensus, p. 9. 16. African Union, The Common African Position on the Proposed Reform of the United Nations: The Ezulwini Consensus, p. 9. 17. Murithi, Tim 2007, “A Local Response to the Global Human Rights Standard: The Ubuntu Perspective on Human Dignity”, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 5, no. 3, (November 2007): 277–286. 18. United Nations, Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice, Article 109 (1). 19. Strauss, Andrew, Taking Democracy Global: Assessing the Benefits and Challenges of a Global Parliamentary Assembly (London: One World Trust, 2005), p. 9. 20. Strauss, Taking Democracy Global: Assessing the Benefits and Challenges of a Global Parliamentary Assembly, p. 9. 21. Strauss, Taking Democracy Global: Assessing the Benefits and Challenges of a Global Parliamentary Assembly, p. 10.

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22. United Nations, Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice, 1945, Preamble.

CHAPTER 35

Africa in Peacekeeping Operations in a Changing Global Order Damilola Agbalajobi

Introduction The development of peacekeeping in Africa has been evident since the last three decades. Global missions have been deployed to the African continent, also the largest regional contingent of troops comes from Africa, and in achieving the Africanization of peacekeeping, the African Peace and Security Architecture has significantly progressed.1 However, peacekeeping came about as a result of the end of the cold war with the attendant possibility of anarchy that could erupt. This made the United Nations come up with a mechanism to offer the world a way to “tame anarchy, through the technique of peacekeeping”.2 With the successful US led UN operation to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in 1991, the United Nations seems to have earned the name “the world peacekeeper or peace maker”.3 Since the deployment of the UN peacekeeping forces to the Suez in 1956, making the inception of peacekeeping operation, the UN has collaborated with multilateral organizations in all regions of the world to manage the increasing demand for Peacekeeping Operations (PKO).4 This partnership is however more pronounced in Africa, as mostly half of the UN led peacekeeping operations are on the African continent. This however did not come with its own challenges, as the UN and other partners had some scaling back on her peacekeeping operation. We had the Belgian withdrawal from UNAMIR in Rwanda, the lack of interest on the part of the US, the questionable role of France, and D. Agbalajobi (B) Department of Political Science, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_35

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failure of the UN to reinforce the mission that was ongoing making it difficult to combat the genocide.5 This engendered the thought that countries internal problem, could better be solved by multinational forces within the region the country belongs. As a result of this, there was a growing decline by the West to get involved in the Africa’s conflict, which led to the creation of an African peacekeeping structure.6 Africa’s first response to the call to “take responsibility” was by its creation of the African Union in 2002, after the defunct Organization of Africa Unity (OAU). With the Pan-African philosophy and the understanding that peace and security are main prerequisites for a prosperous future, African Union presents itself to the world as Africa’s peace actor.7 The self-conception of the AU being Africa’s peace actor, present her a comprehensive power to deploy troops in Africa conflict areas, and use both civil and normative power in order to ensure the safety of her people.8 The UN doctrine of peacekeeping has three main principles which are: consent, impartiality, and the minimum use of force.9 The UN peacekeeping is not devoid of mutuality and consensus, the parties to a conflict must agree to the extended hands of the UN in assisting them in achieving peace. This is evident in the UN peacekeeping operation in the following ways. First, since the 1990s, “the UN has also increasingly deployed peace operations in situations where there is no cease-fire or peace agreement in place to protect civilians. In these cases, the UN relies on the consent of the host-nation. Second, UN peacekeeping strives to be impartial; that is, the parties to the conflict are treated equally. However, in UN peacekeeping impartiality should not be confused with neutrality. UN peacekeeping missions are impartial in their dealings with the parties to the conflict, but not neutral in the execution of their mandate. Third, UN peacekeepers are only permitted to use the minimum force necessary to protect themselves, those that they are mandated to protect, and the mission’s ability to achieve its mandate”.10 The AU in its 2003 African Standby Force (ASF) strategic framework, explicated six scenarios that range from military advice to small military observer missions to multidimensional operations to interventions to stop mass atrocity crimes.11 For the AU, what determines the degree to which consent, impartiality, and local ownership, inter alia, define the mission is the main aim of the mission and the context within which it is executed. Since the creation of the Peacekeeping operation, the United Nations (UN) has been involved in various operation with Africa, the Middle-East and other parts of the world, deploying uniformed troops, police and military observers. By 2016, the deployment to the various units is estimated at the cost of US$7.87 billion in the fiscal year which commenced on July 1, 2016.12 The geographical concentration of the UN PKO was not static, it changed depending on the location of the conflict around the globe. Sandler provides the grouping of the UN PKOs, in four categories of increasing complexity: “(i) monitoring and observer missions, (ii) traditional peacekeeping, (iii) peacebuilding, and (iv) peace enforcement”. While

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monitoring and observer missions are at the consent of belligerents and consist of peacekeepers that observe and report any cease-fire violations, traditional peacekeeping is also at the consent of adversaries and includes actions by lightly armed troops and police to end hostilities and to maintain peace in a conflict area.13 Diehl and Druckman in International peace keeping operation, however, offer an improved classification of PKOs that consists of eleven groups. Among others, these mission types include “traditional peacekeeping/cease-fire monitoring; humanitarian assistance; election supervision/promotion of democracy; disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration; local security/law and order; and rule of law/civil society”.14 The combined efforts of the United Nations, the Africa Union, and individual nations, alongside the extended hands of agreement of the latter have helped maintain a significant measure of peace and stability in Africa. These efforts have encountered several challenges and have limited the extent of massive results. This chapter is divided into five sections thereafter, the conceptual interrogation, the role of the United Nations and the African Union in peacekeeping, the significant role of women in peacekeeping, challenges, and progress and African peacekeeping operation in the changing global order.

Conceptual Interrogation and Peace-Keeping in Africa The United Nations Secretary-General’s Report in the 1992 Agenda for Peace conceives peacebuilding to be an “action to identify and support structures, which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict”.15 A further clarification offered by the 2000 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (otherwise referred to as the Brahimi Report), defined it as “activities undertaken on the far side of conflict to reassemble the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the absence of war”.16 Olayode and Ukeje links the concept of peace building to state-building in the context of collapse of state institutions in the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars. To them, “peace building in West Africa usually involves multiple complex emergencies associated with the collapse of central administration (failed state phenomenon) and attendant consequences”.17 International peacebuilding is defined as consisting of “monitoring and investigating in order to increase trust so that the parties can believe that the piece of paper they signed has operational significance”.18 The principal function of peacekeeping operations is thus conflict management that focuses on the classic security dilemma through which the quantum of information each of the parties have about one another’s inclinations are increased. According to Diehl in Heldt and Wallensteen, peacekeeping is characterized by “consent of the conflict parties, neutrality towards the conflict parties, use of force in self-defense only, and limited military capabilities”.19 Heldt

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and Wallensteen observed that, “if limited military capability is required, then so-called robust (large and well-armed) peacekeeping operations (examples of which include many old as well as recent UN peacekeeping operations) would not constitute peacekeeping operations”.20 Quoting Donald, connecting the issue of neutrality and impartiality with the requirement of use of force in self-defense became a topical issue, but the issue is not whether peacekeepers should be neutral to the conflicts parties, but whether they should be passive or impartial when one of the parties violates a peace agreement or commits human rights violations.21 Neutrality instead of impartiality or self-defense defines peacekeeping.22 Heldt and Wallensteen defined “peacekeeping operation” as a third-party state intervention that: ● involves the deployment of military troops and/or military observers and/or civilian police in a target state; ● is, according to the mandate (as specified in multilateral agreements, peace agreements, or resolutions of the UN or regional organizations), established for the purpose of separating conflict parties, monitoring ceasefires, maintaining buffer zones, and taking responsibility for the security situation (among other things) between formerly, potentially, or presently warring parties; and ● is neutral towards the conflict parties, but not necessarily impartial towards their behaviour.23 Peacekeeping is however different from peacebuilding or peace enforcement. Peacebuilding is activities, policies, and programmes put in place in order to outback stability and effective social, political, and economic institutions after a war or conflict situation. Peace enforcement on the other hand, is operations that do not necessarily require consent from the host-nation or other parties to the conflict, as it provides for offensive action.

The Roles of the United Nations and Africa Union Following the defunct Organization of African Unity (OAU), the African Union (AU) was formed as a continental union comprising of 54 independent African states. As unanimously agreed by African leaders, it was formed in July 2001at the Lusaka Summit but officially launched on the 8th day of July, 2002 in South Africa. Its highest decision-making body is the Assembly of all the heads of states and governments of member countries of the union. Its specialized institutions include a representative body, the Pan-African Parliament, which is made up of 265 members elected by the national legislatures of the AU member states.24 The AU engages itself in conflicts resolution either through diplomatic means or by deploying peacekeeping missions in collaboration with the UN

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and other relevant partners.25 This led to the creation of the African Peace Security Architecture (APSA), as an institutional infrastructure capable of preventing and managing armed conflict on the continent. With the creation of APSA, the AU has been able to incorporate a system of managing African conflict from the dimension of conflict prevention, conflict management and post-conflict reconstruction. APSA roadmap is built around five thematic priorities covering the conflict prevention, management and resolution cycle which are: conflict prevent; crisis/conflict management; post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding; strategic security issues and coordination and partnership.26 On examining the performance of APSA, it was discovered that APSA has responded to over 60 interventions of conflict situation, hereby, making APSA a recognizable force’.27 Arguing for the regional arrangement, Boutros Boutros-Ghali avers that, the capacities of the regional organization has the potential to lighten the UN’s burden and at the same time consolidate a deeper sense of participation, consensus, and democratization in international affairs. These capacities he noted are in the areas of preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, peacemaking and post-conflict peace building.28 In the same vein, other compelling argument for regional arrangements for peace building, is the reluctance of the western countries to sanction and participate in peace keeping operations in Africa after the unpleasant experiences in Somalia 1993 and Rwanda 1994. Also, the 1995 Report of the UN Secretary-General on “Improving Preparedness for Conflict Prevention and Peacekeeping in Africa” also submitted that “sub-regional organizations sometimes have a comparative advantage in taking the lead role in the prevention and settlement of conflicts’ (UN 1995: A/50/711 and S/1995/911). The UN office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) has also argued for the expansion of the mandate of the South-South Cooperation from its “traditional focus on technical and development cooperation into relations within the realms of state-building and peace building”.29 A legal and institutional peace and security architecture was established by the AU. Its function was to primarily respond to threats, including the mandate for troop deployment at the territory of sovereign states (CA, article 4.j and 9.g), the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).30 It has been argued that, “the existence of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), and the normative and legal framework, produces the AU’s potential to become an autonomous actor independent from African member states”. Also, a way to influence attitudes of states, and effectuate African solidarity.31 Weak governance, violence and insecurity as a result of scourge of conflicts in Africa, this carry along a high risk of regional spill-overs, harming political and economic stability and a major impediments to the socio-economic development and makes AU’s peace and security policy “prerequisite for the implementation of the development and integration agenda”.32 This makes it necessary to have accompanied legal law such as political interferences,

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monitoring missions and military interventions which are all at the AU’s disposal. The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) was one initiative that came up because of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the seemingly impotency of the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to intervene given the “non-interference in domestic affairs” clause.33 This was created with the alongside the African Union (AU) in 2002 to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts in Africa. The African Union rejected the absolute respect for territorial integrity and nonintervention clause of its predecessor (OAU) and adopted the principle of “non-indifference”, thus breaking away from the dominance nonintervention principle that pervaded the continent. The APSA was founded on the principle of “non-indifference” through which domestic solutions to African conflicts are sought. The Constitutive Act of the AU and APSA allowed intervention in member state on the ground of grave circumstances such as: war crimes, genocide, gross violation of human rights, state terrorism, among others. After the Cold War, the turbulence between 1990 and 1994 gave rise to huge international peacekeeping operations, the cost of this was greatly increased during this period. Troop strength multiplied from about 12,000 to well over 70,000, and the cost rose from half a billion dollars to over three billion. In this regard UN peacekeeping operations swiftly transited from traditional military peacekeeping tasks to multidimensional operations in “failed states”. The then Secretary-General of the UN, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali at the request of the Security Council, presented An agenda for peace in July 1992. In this document he proposed a significant broadening of the UN’s use of military force to prevent conflict, halt aggression, and supervise and enforce ceasefires and post-conflict peacebuilding. Where ceasefires had been agreed on but not complied with, Boutros-Ghali urged the Security Council to consider deploying peace enforcement units that were more heavily armed than traditional peacekeeping forces.34 However, from the analysis of the UN’s record since 1993, evidence revealed that, the UN Security Council was reluctant to get involved in conflicts in Africa since the Somalia crisis that resulted in the death of 18 US troops. The initial involvement of the UN in Somalia in 1993, saw about 40,000 peacekeeping forces in Africa, but by June 1999, the number had reduced to 1,600. It is also interesting to note that where there were seven concurrent UN peacekeeping operations on the African continent in 1993, in June 1999 there were only three.35 Against this background, “the UN Security Council has been criticized as being lax in carrying out its mandated duty to maintain international peace and security in general and in Africa in particular. In fact, the world body has reduced its commitment to peacekeeping although the need for such operations has grown significantly”.36 In the words of Berman and Sams, “at a time of growing challenges to African peace and security, UN peacekeepers

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are either conspicuously absent from the region or, if present, have had their roles substantially marginalised”.37 UN peacekeeping operations have undergone significant fluctuations in the period 1991–2000. Evidences shows that, thirty-six (or two-thirds) of the 54 peacekeeping operations set up between 1948 and 2000 were established after 1991.38 Eight peacekeeping operations were under way at the beginning of 1991 but with the rise in peacekeeping requirements—particularly in the Balkans and Africa—the number of operations increased to 18 by the middle of 1994 and went down to 15 by the end of 2000.39 The deployment of uniformed peacekeepers also fluctuated widely with low level of uniformed deployments with a total strength of about 10,000 at the beginning of the decade, until it reached its peak in 1993. This was largely the result of expansions in the UN Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II) and the United Nations Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR).40 There were various challenges and pressure faced by the former UN SecretaryGeneral, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, because of the multiplication of problems faced in Yugoslavia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Somalia, Angola, South Africa, Mozambique. Given the AU peace support operations doctrine, which engenders a strong sense of shared responsibility and solidarity around a common African identity and purpose, an outbreak of violent conflict in one country impacts on its neighbours and its region. This allows the AU peace support operations to come to the aid of Africans at risk when the UN was not able or willing to deploy UN peacekeepers. In Darfur, Burundi, Somalia, and the CAR, the AU deployed into situations which the UN deemed not yet fit for UN peacekeeping.41 This is because the UN regards a comprehensive cease-fire or peace agreement as a prerequisite condition for consent. From a UN perspective, these AU operations were thus essentially peace enforcement operations.42 In analyzing all the AU and sub-regional operations between 2000 and 2015, it was discovered that, there is an emerging model of African peace operations that shares the following stabilization characteristics: 1. They operate in the midst of ongoing conflicts, rather than in postconflict situations as many UN peacekeeping operations; 2. They are mandated to contribute to restoring and maintaining stability, by (a) helping to protect the government and its people against identified aggressors, (b) helping the government to reclaim control over territories previously controlled by such aggressors, and (c) helping the government to extend the authority of the State throughout its territory;

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3. They operate in support of and alongside the security forces of the hostnation, and their mandates often include supporting efforts to build the capacity of these national forces; 4. They are mandated to use force, including offensively, in the face of anticipated attacks against themselves and those they are tasked to protect, and encouraged to do so proactively.43 Though not all the operation undertaken by the AU matches with all of the elements of this stabilization model, they constitute the most dominant and persistent trends in AU peace support operations. Operations with exceptions include the early missions in Burundi (AMIB) and Darfur (AMIS) where the AU missions were not operating alongside the government, but rather supported the implementation of peace agreements, and the missions in Comoros (AMISEC & MAES) that were tasked to ensure peaceful electoral processes.44 It is important to note however that, some of these stabilization characteristics were identified in the context of the UN’s new stabilization operations in CAR and Mali, and especially in the mandate of the FIB in the DRC, therefore not unique to the AU.45 However, while they are regarded as exceptions in the UN context that challenge the existing UN peacekeeping doctrine, in the AU context they are the defining characteristics of a new emerging AU peace support operations model.46 Furthermore, the UN does not consider its stabilization missions in the CAR, the DRC, and Mali to be peace enforcement missions. The UN acknowledges that it is not well suited to undertake peace enforcement or counterterrorism operations, while the AU, on the other hand, does not have the UN’s full suite of multidimensional capacities to enable it to undertake or sustain peace operations. As a result of these comparative advantages and shortcomings, a complimentary model has evolved where the UN turns to the AU to act as the first responder to stabilize outbreaks of violent conflicts in Africa.47 Once sufficient stability has been restored, these operations are transferred to the UN for the peace consolidation phase.48 On peacekeeping funding, the boom in commodity prices led to an increase in African military expenditure. There was 68% increase between 2006 and 2015, which was significantly above the global average.49 With the increase in the outbreak of a civil war in South Sudan and the terror group Boko Haram gaining ground in Nigeria (illegitimate non-state actors),50 and other unsolved conflicts in Somalia, Libya, Central African Republic, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, military spending also increased. This also led to a historic surge in peacekeeping missions and deployed troops, with AU deploying up to 40,000 troops, and the UN remains well above the 100,000 mark.51 Although most peacekeepers are now of African origin, funding predominantly comes from non-African sources. Among the top ten contributors to the UN peacekeeping budget which cover 80% of expenses, we have no

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no African country.52 In the case of the AU, there is massive donor dependency which can be seen in the example of a 2016 regular budget (excluding mission operational costs) of $416 million, and only $169 million is provided by member states.53 In peacekeeping missions, the dependency is even greater as nearly all the funding ($1.2 billion in 2016) comes from external sources, despite the fact that the AU aims to provide 25% of it in the future through the introduction of a levy.54 What accounts for the shortfall in contribution, varies across African countries, and probably this is an area inviting more research and debate. However, achieving peace in Africa and keeping it stable, going forward, requires the unconditional financial commitment of nations, among other things.

Significant Roles of Women in Peacekeeping in Africa At the inception of António Guterres’ appointment as Secretary-General of the United Nations, he found the need to commit himself to increasing the number of women serving in peace keeping operations. This is however not an invention in the UN, as previous administrations have made efforts to consolidate gendered perceptions into peacekeeping operations, thus a prioritization of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in PKOs. Increasing the deployment of women in PKOs is crucial if the goals and mandates of the UN regarding gender equality, non-discrimination and human rights are to be realized.55 This said, the UN has not stopped promoting and acknowledging the roles of women peacekeepers. This it does by increasing women recruitment to execute peacekeeping operations and to serve as role models to young women and girls in conflict areas dominated by men.56 Despite increasing efforts in mobilizing women peacekeepers, women are still under-represented in PKOs.57 Efforts are been made to increase the role and the contribution of women to peacebuilding and peacekeeping processes. Largely as a response to the negative consequences of deploying mainly men to these missions, pressure was placed on troop-contributing countries to increase the number of women deployed. The argument is that “this is not something that should be done from an equal rights perspective, but as a necessary step to address gender-based concerns and also to improve overall mission success”.58 This was based on the premise that women have something unique to contribute that men cannot provide.59 This is true given the fact that, men and women have varying experiences of security and hence would have different perspective on what matter to a successful mission. By the mid-1990s it had become clear that “men and women experience security differently. Increasing cases of peacekeeper misconduct, combined with claims that women’s empowerment and more gender-balanced states lead to long-term stability, had encouraged the UN and its member states’ agencies to mainstream gender in all security processes”.60 Gender mainstreaming is the

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understanding that all policies and actions affect the lives of men and women differently. This led to the ratification of a number of policies and principles relating to women, peace and security, the watershed being the ratifications of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1325 in 2000, which argues that gender mainstreaming should be implemented in all peacekeeping operations and mandates, and aims to “expand the role and contribution of women in United Nations field-based operations”.61 Resolution 1325, and numerous subsequent resolutions aim to advance human security, and promote the deployment of more women in peacekeeping operations. The United Nations Peacekeeping Operations works to ensure that the voices of women are not only heard but also that, women’s concern are taken into consideration when it comes to taking decisions on peace and security. This they do by ensuring they consider all barriers that tends to limit women’s participation in peace process. This is essential given the assertion that, “increasing women’s participation is essential in improving the operational effectiveness of peacekeeping units due to the unique contributions they make”.62 In addition, the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations’s policy on gender equality avers that: collaboration and dialogue with [troop-contributing countries] shall advocate for the adoption of gender-sensitive policies which support the increased recruitment and deployment of uniformed women to peacekeeping, as part of the overall commitment to ensure maximum operational effectiveness of the peacekeeping operations in line with the commitments made by Member States in recent policy discussions […].63

In line with the objective to implement the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and subsequent resolutions, African peacekeepers have made efforts in various ways to empower women and address the disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls. This has been enforced through the various establishment of the United Nations. For example, the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur founded July 31, 2007, through the Gender Unit established UNSCR 1325 Committees to monitor how the state governments implement their commitments to Resolutions 1325 and make sure women’s experiences are included in peace and security initiatives. In the DR Congo, women’s civil society are often involved in protection mechanisms at the grassroots level, such as Local Protection Committees trying to increase community resilience. This is done in collaboration with the United Nation Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). In another vein, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic that was founded on April 10, 2014, identified the protection needs of female ex-combatants, and introduced initiatives that encouraged women to develop skills to generate their own income, in order to prepare them for employment and also keep them away from taking up arms.

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In Mali, and South Sudan, the various United Nations Mission in these countries worked hand in hand with peacekeepers among the locals to support women’s participation in the peace process at various levels. In addition to efforts made by peacekeepers to empower women and implement UNSCR 1325, evidence also abound in various areas where women have and keep making impact, and also leading in political solutions. We see women getting more involved in peace negotiations in countries like Central African Republic and South Sudan. In Central African Republic, there was an improvement in the participation of women in peace talks of February 2019, as there were no women at the peace talks of 2018. In South Sudan in the same vein, of the numbers of people who took part in the peace negotiation of July 2019, 28% were women. Another form of peace process that women have made significant impact or participated, is, being signatories to peace agreement. In the Central African Republic, one woman ex-combatant signed the February 2019 Political Accord for Peace Reconciliation. In South Sudan, 25% of those who were signatories to the October 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement. Mali, the Central African Republic and South Sudan had women in formal peace committees. In CAR and South Sudan, women participated in the formal monitoring committees at the national and local level except for Mali that had no women in formal monitoring committees but had women constituting 20% of the members of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. In Sudan there was significant increase in the percentage of women occupying ministerial position and important position in the countries cabinet. In 2019, Sudan had the first case of women being the foreign minister and also Chief Justice, and women occupying 22% of the Ministerial position. Women have also played more active role in conflict prevention in CAR, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. In October 2019, 46% of the early warning mechanisms supported by MINUSCA comprised at least 30% women in CAR. In Democratic Republic of Congo, 62% of the local protection and early warning mechanisms comprised at least 30% women in 2019 as well. In Sudan, between 2014 and 2019, 46 Women’s Protection Networks established in Darfur function as early warning mechanisms that inform UNAMID’s mission patrol planning and help prevent Sexual and Gender Based Violence. Lastly, on the significant contribution of women to peacekeeping in Africa, we have more gender responsive peace operations in Mali, DR Congo, South Sudan, and CAR.

Challenges and Progress A significant degree of challenges with peacekeeping operations in connection with regional and international organizations revolve around the ability of member countries to freely contribute to operations when the need arises. However, studies grant more insight into factors that impede the work of peacekeeping in Africa.64

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An analysis of the apathetic reaction of the AU after the eruptions of violence during the elections in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010 reveals that “African states are not willing to mandate the AU to intervene in case of misuse of the monopoly of violence”.65 Despite the awareness of duties and the ethical implications of sovereignty (article 4.h of the CA), the Union did not act in this severe crisis. This restraint position is disadvantageous for AU’s attempts to centre human security, and counteracts its authority as peace actor. It weakens the ability to overrule domestic agendas, and to regulate peace activities of international actors in Africa.66 It is suggested that African states “see the AU as a forum to discuss interstate conflicts, more than an empowered continental peace actor”.67 They conclude that it is unlikely that the AU will become a strong peace body if it cannot respond on abuses of human rights, and persuade member states. It is argued by various scholars that African states only choose to support AU’s peace operations when it benefits them directly or indirectly. This led to the introduction of materialistic, state-centric framework to understand the rationales behind involvement of states in peacekeeping operations. Meagre and lackadaisical contributions of states impede the extent of efforts of the AU in particular. It is argued that “a peace actor with ambitions, but without money will not stay for long. States need to contribute significantly to AU’s capacity as peace actor, and to provide the PSC with enough resources to deliver on its ambitions”.68 Promoting peace by diplomacy and mediation can be achieved without high costs. However, “the AU fears to be a talking-house and endeavours the role of being an actor with potential hard power. Nearly all studied AU interventions (military and monitoring missions) share the conclusion that the PSC deals with a crucial shortage of material capacity, despite its institutional and legal capacity to manage peace and security operations”.69 The capacity problem resulted in a hierarchical state order. AU’s peace policy about when, where and how to interfere became a political consensus, and not a decision made by the AU as an autonomous actor. Regional powers, like South Africa, have the ability to regulate the collective peace policy because of their capability to deliver budget and troops. Some states are more capable to pay the high costs of military interventions than others, and will therefore support AU-policy that benefit them most.70 Other issues and challenges with peacekeeping in Africa are political and some military-related. On the political, the political will to intervene in a crisis to its concluding point, having achieved the desired aims and objectives of the intervention. The absence of political will “undermines and devalues any discussion of peacekeeping and intervention. Interventions carried out under these circumstances are inevitably doomed to failure.71 On a more operational level there is a demonstrable need for a proper institutional framework for any multinational peacekeeping force whether at a continental level, that is through the OAU, or at the regional level, for example, within ECOWAS’. This should include a political chain of command to which the military

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command will be responsible. To a very large extent the military problems mirror the political ones. A proper system of command and control needs to be established to prevent the kind of command problems that have, for example, occurred in Chad and ECOMOG. The military chain of command needs to have an established relationship with the political structure and for this reason alone a permanent headquarters is essential. Experience highlights the need for individual member states of an organization proposing to mount peacekeeping operations, to earmark, in advance, the military units they would be prepared to make available. This would enable both the political decision makers and the military commanders aware of the limitations on the military resources available to them. Furthermore, Ansorg et al. suggest three ways to address the challenges linked to troop quality and training, regional peacekeeping, and peacekeeping misconduct.72 To improve the overall quality of troop contributions to peace operations (and thus improve their effectiveness in protecting civilians), “countries with advanced militaries need to continue and possibly even increase their contributions to blue helmet operations. The success of German and Dutch deployments in Mali demonstrates that these contributions include Western engagement under the auspices of the United Nations”. The multilateral engagement of troops from countries with well-trained militaries and military engagement within the territory, needs to be strengthened. To address the reproach of transactional sex, more women needs to be included in peacekeeping operations. The UN has long recognized the need for female peacekeepers. It has successfully deployed all-female formed police units since 2007s, when the first such unit of Indian police officers arrived in Liberia, and former Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon launched an effort in 2009 to increase the share of women to 20% in police and 10% in military contingents by 2014. Although the increase of women peacekeepers can be undermined by the unwillingness of states to recruit and commit more women to the cause. So while it is possible that a large increase in the share of female peacekeepers could meaningfully reduce rates of transactional sex among deployed personnel, such an increase appears presently unachievable. Additionally, now is the time to encourage and consolidate the “Africanisation” of peacekeeping operations. Africa owning its responsibility and consequent glory will help keep it braced for unseen situations and will help avert future situations where the lives of Europeans will be valued than Africans.

Africa Peacekeeping Operation in the Changing Global Order Given the four major transformation in the global order ranging from (1) the rebalancing of relations between states of the global North and the global South; (2) the rise of regional organizations as providers of peace; (3) the rise

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of violent extremism and fundamentalist non-state actors and (4) increasing demands from non-state actors for greater emphasis on human security, it is imperative to examine how peacekeeping operations in Africa from the analysis given above is situated with the existing prism.73 With the transition from a unipolar to bipolar world, and the creation of the APSA by the AU and the potential to incorporate a system of managing African conflict from the dimension of conflict prevention, conflict management, and post-conflict reconstruction, goes a long way to impact the relationship between the global North and global South. This is because many Africa countries are beginning to demand a bigger say in the decision-making in the United Nation Security Council, hereby influencing the design of the UN peacekeeping operation. Also in this vein, the reluctance of the western countries to sanction and participate in peacekeeping operations in Africa after the unpleasant experiences in Somalia 1993 and Rwanda 1994, makes Africa peacekeeping operation of great importance. As Africa tends to be playing leading roles in peacekeeping within the continent.74 This is reflected in the budget of the UN on peacekeeping as approximately 75% of UN peacekeepers are deployed in Africa, and approximately the same amount of the UN peacekeeping budget is spent on peace operations in Africa, this means that these changes are likely to profoundly affect UN peace operations in the years ahead.75 The second major transformation in the global order has to do with the rise of regional organsation as provider of peace. In the case of the African Peacekeeping Operation, there has been an investment in strengthening their ability to deploy mediators and special envoys using their unique approach. This they do by managing potentially volatile transitions away from authoritarianism and conflict while emphasizing peacebuilding and the building of liberal institutions.76 In addition, the emergence of the African Peace Security Architecture (APSA) is in line with the evolution of the international peace and security architecture. A new global peace and security architecture is emerging where the African union works with the UN to co-manage international peace and security. An example among others is the United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur. This projects the legitimacy of the regional organizations over the UN that plays the role in the determination of an intervening actor.77 Given the rise of violent extremism and fundamentalist non-state actors or illegitimate non-state actors, African peacekeeping operation tends to take different dimension as they are rewriting the rules of wars. They are groups such as ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, al-Qaeda— affiliated group in Northern Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria. Hence, making African peacekeeping operation increasingly robust and the need to rethink the centrality of state-based approaches to security and intervention. Lastly, the increasing demands from non-state actors for greater emphasis on human security is been responded to by the AU as African peacekeepers have made efforts in various ways to empower women and address the disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls. This is in a way to

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engender self-sustainable peace, be more people-centred with the involvement of members of the societies, communities, and individuals, including women and girls. These explains, how the African Peacekeeping Operation situate in the global new order and what lies ahead in years to come.

Conclusion This chapter focused on various activities of peacekeeping operations in Africa. The chapter traced how the end of the cold war brought about the peacekeeping operation in Africa. The chapter highlighted how the combined efforts of the United Nations, the Africa Union and individual nations, alongside the extended hands of agreement of the latter have helped maintain a significant measure of peace and stability in Africa, through peacekeeping operation. The chapter claimed that through the creation of APSA, the AU has been able to incorporate a system of managing African conflict from the dimension of conflict prevention, conflict management, and post-conflict reconstruction. This makes Africa a leading voice with bigger say in decision-making in the UN Security Council. From our analysis, there is a significant trend which projects an emerging model, where African-led operations act as first responders while UN peacekeeping follow-up with peace consolidation missions. In addition, the recognition given to non-state actors is reflected in the significant role played by women in peacekeeping operation across different operation in Africa. Despite challenges being faced, African peacekeeping operation could serve as a model with a potential to give Africa a voice in the current global order.

Notes 1. Malta Brosig, “Rentier Peacekeeping in Neo-Patrimonial Systems: The Examples of Burundi and Kenya,” Contemporary Security Policy 38, no. 1 (2017): 109, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2017.1283926. 2. Sandra Whitworth, Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), 23. 3. Gerry Cleaver and Roy May, “Peacekeeping: The African Dimension,” Review of African Political Economy 22, no. 66 (1995): 485. 4. Stephen Aris and Kirsten König, “Long-Distance Relationships: African Peacekeeping,” CSS Analyses in Security Policy 236 (2018): 1, https://doi.org/10. 3929/ethz-b-000308337. 5. Cleaver and May, “Peacekeeping: the African dimension,” Review of African Political Economy 22, no. 66 (1995): 485. 6. Cleaver and May, p. 485. 7. Hans van ’t Land, The African Union’s Self-Conception as a Peace Actor: A Role Theory Approach, Master Thesis (Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands, 2019). 8. Land, p. 14.

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9. Cedric de Coning, “Peace Enforcement in Africa: Doctrinal Distinctions Between the African Union and United Nations,” Contemporary Security Policy 38, no. 1 (2017): 145–60, p. 147, https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2017. 1283108. 10. United Nations, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines (New York: United Nations, 2008), 38. 11. “African Union (AU)”, Policy Framework for the Establishment of the African Standby Force and the Military Staff Committee (Part I) (Document adopted by the Third Meeting of African Chiefs of Defense Staff 15–16 May 2003, Addis Ababa), 1. 12. Todd Sandler, “International Peacekeeping Operations: Burden Sharing and Effectiveness,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 9 (2017): 1877, https:// doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2017.1283108. 13. Sandler, p. 1879. 14. Sandler, p. 1879. 15. Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping”, para 21. 16. Security Council, “United Nations: Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations”, (3). 17. Kehinde Olayode and Charles Ukeje, “South-South and Regional Cooperation for Peace Building in West Africa,” Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society 5, no. 1 (2017): 35. 18. Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, “Building Peace: Challenges and Strategies After Civil War Nicholas Sambanis Peacebuilding Can Improve the Prospects That a Civil War Will Be Resolved.” 19. Birger Heldt and Peter Wallensteen, “Peacekeeping Operations: Global Patterns of Intervention and Success, 1948–2004.” 3rd ed. (Stockholm: Folke Bernadotte Academy Publications, 2007), 10. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn. com/abstract=1899505 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1899505. 20. Heldt and Wallensteen, p. 10. 21. Heldt and Wallensteen, p. 10. 22. Heldt and Wallensteen, p. 10. 23. Heldt and Wallensteen, p. 11. 24. Keith Gottschalk, “The African Union and Its Sub-Regional Structures: Research Paper,” Journal of African Union Studies 1, no. 1 (2012): 9–39, http://reference.sabinet.co.za/sa_epublication_article/aa_afrus_v1_n1_a2. 25. Brosig, p. 1. 26. Solomon Dersso, “The African Peace and Security Architecture,” Handbook of Africa’s International Relations (October 2018): 51–61, https://doi.org/10. 4324/9780203803929-6. 27. Brosig, “Rentier Peacekeeping in Neo-Patrimonial Systems: The Examples of Burundi and Kenya.” 28. Boutros-Ghali, Ch. VI. 29. Kehinde Olayode and Charles Ukeje, “South-South and Regional Cooperation for Peace Building in West Africa,” n.d. 30. Land, 13. 31. Land, 13. 32. Abel S. Knottnerus and Eefje de Volder, “International Criminal Justice and the Early Formation of an African Criminal Court (Chapter 15),” in Africa and the

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33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

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ICC: Perceptions of Justice, edited by Kamari M. Clarke, Abel S. Knottnerus, and Eefje de Volder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 376– 406, p. 378, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316556252.015. Olayode and Ukeje, “South-South and Regional Cooperation for Peace Building in West Africa,” p. 38. Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping,” pp. 16–19. Eric G. Berman and Katie E. Sams, Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and Culpabilities (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research and Pretoria: United Nations, 2000), 4–5. Neethling, “Whither Peacekeeping in Africa: Revisiting the Evolving Role of the United Nations,” p. 3. Eric G. Berman and Sams, pp. 4–36. Neethling, p. 4. Neethling, p. 4. Neethling, p. 4. De Coning, “Peace Enforcement in Africa: Doctrinal Distinctions Between the African Union and United Nations,” p. 151. United Nations, “Uniting Our Strengths for Peace—Politics, Partnership and People,” p. 71. De Coning, “Peace Enforcement in Africa: Doctrinal Distinctions Between the African Union and United Nations,” Contemporary Security Policy 38, no. 1 (2017): 145–60. De Coning, p. 154; Cedric, Gelot, and Karlsru “Towards an African Model for Peace Operations,” (2016): 1–19. De Coning, p. 152. Cedric de Coning, Chiyuki Aoi, and John Karlsrud, Eds., UN Peacekeeping Doctrine in a New Era: Adapting to Stabilisation, Protection and New Threats, ed. John Karlsrud, Cedric de Coning, and Chiyuki Aoi (Routledge Taylor & Francis Groups, 2017), p. 2. Cedric de Coning, Chiyuki Aoi, and John Karlsrud, p. 3. Cedric de Coning, Chiyuki Aoi, and John Karlsrud, p. 3. Sam Perlo-Freeman et al., “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2012,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (April 2016): 1–8. Mateja Peter, “UN Peace Operations: Adapting to a New Global Order?,” in United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order, ed. Cedric de Coning and Mateja Peter (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 1–24, p. 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99106-1. Walter Lotze, “Strengthening African Peace Support Operations: Nine Lessons for the Future of the African Standby Force,” 2003. Malte Brosig, “Rentier Peacekeeping in Neo-patrimonial Systems: The Examples of Burundi and Kenya,” Contemporary Security Policy 38, no. 1 (2017): 109–128. Brosig, p. 116. Brosig, p. 116. Heidi Hudson, “Mainstreaming Gender in Peacekeeping Operations: Can Africa Learn from International Experience?,” African Security Review 9, no. 4 (2000): 18–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/10246029.2000.9628063.

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56. P. Kirby and L. J. Shepherd, “Reintroducing Women, Peace and Security,” International Affairs 92, no. 2 (2016): 249–54, https://doi.org/10.1111/ 1468-2346.12550. 57. Jill Steans and Daniela Tepe-Belfrage, “Introduction,” in Handbook on Gender in World Politics, ed. Jill Steans and Daniela Tepe-Belfrage (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016), 1–4. 58. Olivera Simic, “Moving Beyond the Numbers: Integrating Women into Peacekeeping Operations,” Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF) (March 2013): 1–4. 59. Angela Alchin, Amanda Gouws, and Lindy Heinecken, “Making a Difference in Peacekeeping Operations: Voices of South African Women Peacekeepers,” African Security Review 27, no. 1 (2018): 1–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10246029.2017.1406381. 60. Kristen Cordell, “Women in International Peacekeeping,” in US Engagements in International Peacekeeping: From Aspiration to Implementation, ed. D. Kraus, R. A. Enholm, and A. J. Bowmen (Washington, DC: Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund, 2011), 30–43. 61. United Nations Security Council (UNSC), “S/Res/1325,” (October 2000): 4. 62. Donna Bridges and Debbie Horsfall, “Increasing Operational Effectiveness in UN Peacekeeping: Toward a Gender-Balanced Force,” Armed Forces and Society 36, no. 1 (2009): 120–30, https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X0832 7818. 63. Alchin, Gouws, and Heinecken, “Making a Difference in Peacekeeping Operations: Voices of South African Women Peacekeepers,” African Security Review 27, no. 1 (2018): 1–19. 64. Land, p. 2. 65. Ella Abatan and Yolanda Spies, “African Solutions to African Problems? The AU, R2P and Côte d’Ivoire,” South African Journal of International Affairs 23, no. 1 (2016): 21–38, https://doi.org/10.1080/10220461.2016. 1153516. 66. Land, p. 26. 67. Land, p. 26. 68. Land, p. 27. 69. Land, p. 27. 70. Land, p. 28. 71. Cleaver and May, p. 494. 72. Nadine Ansorg and Felix Haass, “Focus | AFRICA Three Ways to Improve Multilateral Peacekeeping in Africa ( and Beyond),” no. 6 (2019): 1–12. 73. Mateja Peter, “UN Peace Operations: Adapting to a New Global Order?,” in United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order, ed. Cedric de Coning and Mateja Peter (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 1–22, p. 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99106-1_1. 74. Peter, “UN Peace Operations: Adapting to a New Global Order?,” p. 3. 75. Cedric de Coning, “Africa and UN Peace Operations: Implications for the Future Role of Regional Organisations,” in United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order, ed. Cedric de Coning and Mateja Peter (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 213–29, p. 214, https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-3-319-99106-1_11.

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76. Busani Mpofu and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatssheni, “Introduction: Security, Conflicts, and Peacebuilding in Africa,” in Security, Conflicts, and Peacebuilding in Africa, ed. Busani Mpofu and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni (Austin: Pan-African University Press, 2018), 1–13, p. 1. 77. Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, “New Book: UN Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order,” 2018, https://www.nupi.no/en/News/ New-book-UN-Peace-Operations-in-a-Changing-Global-Order#.

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———. “Peace Enforcement in Africa: Doctrinal Distinctions Between the African Union and United Nations.” Contemporary Security Policy 38, no. 1 (2017): 145– 60. https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2017.1283108. Coning, Cedric de, Chiyuki Aoi, and John Karlsrud, Eds. UN Peacekeeping Doctrine in a New Era: Adapting to Stabilisation, Protection and New Threats. Edited by John Karlsrud, Cedric de Coning, and Chiyuki Aoi. Routledge Taylor & Francis Groups, 2017. Coning, de Cedric, Linnéa Gelot, and John Karlsrud. The Future of African Peace Operations From the Janjaweed to Boko Haram. London: Zed Books, 2016. www. zedbooks.co.uk. Cordell, Kristen. “Women in International Peacekeeping.” In US Engagements in International Peacekeeping: From Aspiration to Implementation, edited by D. Kraus., R. A. Enholm, and A. J. Bowmen, 30–43. Washington, DC: Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund, 2011. Dersso, Solomon. “The African Peace and Security Architecture.” Handbook of Africa’s International Relations (October 2018): 51–61. https://doi.org/10. 4324/9780203803929-6. Doyle, Michael W., and Nicholas Sambanis. “Building Peace: Challenges and Strategies After Civil War Nicholas Sambanis Peacebuilding Can Improve the Prospects That a Civil War Will Be Resolved.” Behavioral Science, 1999. Gottschalk, Keith. “The African Union and Its Sub-Regional Structures: Research Paper.” Journal of African Union Studies 1, no. 1 (2012): 9–39. http://reference. sabinet.co.za/sa_epublication_article/aa_afrus_v1_n1_a2. Heldt, Birger, and Peter Wallensteen. Peacekeeping Operations: Global Patterns of Intervention and Success, 1948–2004. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012. https://doi. org/https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1899505. Hudson, Heidi. “Mainstreaming Gender in Peacekeeping Operations: Can Africa Learn from International Experience?” African Security Review 9, no. 4 (2000): 18–33. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/10246029.2000.9628063. “International Criminal Justice and the Early Formation of an African Criminal Court (Chapter 15).” In Africa and the ICC: Perceptions of Justice. Accessed June 28, 2020. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/africa-and-the-icc/internationalcriminal-justice-and-the-early-formation-of-an-african-criminal-court/4AF5D0305 23C02CCD96C2B5108778417. Kirby, P., and L. J. Shepherd. “Reintroducing Women, Peace and Security.” International Affairs 92, no. 2 (2016): 249–54. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10. 1111/1468-2346.12550. Land, Hans van ’t. The African Union’s Self-Conception as a Peace Actor: A Role Theory Approach. Master Thesis, Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands, 2019. Lotze, Walter. “Strengthening African Peace Support Operations: Nine Lessons for the Future of the African Standby Force,” 2003. Ndlovu-Gatssheni, Sabelo, and Busani Mpofu. “Introduction: Security, Conflicts, and Peacebuilding in Africa.” In Security, Conflicts, and Peacebuilding in Africa, edited by Busani Mpofu and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 1–13. Austin: Pan-African University Press, 2018. Neethling, Theo. “Whither Peacekeeping in Africa: Revisiting the Evolving Role of the United Nations.” African Security Review 18, no. 1 (2009): 1–20. https://doi. org/https://doi.org/10.1080/10246029.2009.9627511.

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Olayode, K., and C. Ukeje. “South-South and Regional Cooperation for Peace Building in West Africa.” Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society 5, no. 1 (2017): 33–54. http://edu.uhk.cz/africa/index.php/ModAfr/article/view/170. Olayode, Kehinde, and Charles Ukeje. “South-South and Regional Cooperation for Peace Building in West Africa,” n.d. Perlo-Freeman, Sam, Elisabeth Sköns, Carina Solmirano, and Helén Wilandh. “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2012. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (April 2016): 1–8. Peter, Mateja. “UN Peace Operations: Adapting to a New Global Order?” In United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order, edited by Cedric de Coning and Mateja Peter, 1–22. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99106-1_1. Sandler, Todd. “International Peacekeeping Operations: Burden Sharing and Effectiveness.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 9 (2017): 1875–97. https://doi. org/https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002717708601. Security Council. “United Nations: Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations.” International Legal Materials 39, no. 6 (2000): 1432–98. https:// doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020782900009426. Simic, Olivera. “Moving Beyond the Numbers: Integrating Women into Peacekeeping Operations.” Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF) (March 2013): 1–4. Steans, Jill, and Daniela Tepe-Belfrage. “Introduction.” In Handbook on Gender in World Politics, edited by Jill Steans and Daniela Tepe-Belfrage, 1–4. Edward Elgar, 2016. “The African Union’s Self-Conception as a Peace Actor: A Role Theory Approach,” (July 2019). United Nations. United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines. International Peacekeeping. Vol. 15, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1080/135333108 02396475. ———. “Uniting Our Strengths for Peace—Politics, Partnership and People,” (June 2015): 84. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004. United Nations Security Council (UNSC). “S/Res/1325,” (October 2000): 4. Whitworth, Sandra. Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004.

CHAPTER 36

The War on Terror and Securitization of Africa Vincent Eseoghene Efebeh

Introduction In the last two decades, African countries have seen a significant rise in the emergence and proliferation of terror groups, attacks and threats of attack. Thus, almost every parts of the continent is replete with the news of attack or fear of attacks; from East, West, North and to the South of the African continent, the tales of terror attacks hit the global headlines almost on daily bases. Therefore, countries like Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania and such West African countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cameroon, Niger Republic, Nigeria and in Northern Africa countries like Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia among others have suffered several and very severe attacks while in many instances, several attacks have been foiled. In East Africa, AlShabaab militants continue to create fears and have carried out several attacks in different countries killing hundreds and injuring thousands. In Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and Uganda the scars of Al-Shabaab are still fresh. In West Africa, Nigeria-based terror group Boko Haram, also known as Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) has also left over 36,000 people dead, while several hundreds have suffered or sustained injuries and many including young girls and women, such as the famous Chibok and Dapchi girls, have been abducted by the terror group; with almost 2 million others displaced. Generally, many African countries have suffered terror attacks or have been a target of such attacks. The continued threats posed by terrorist groups to V. E. Efebeh (B) Department of Political Science, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_36

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African continent have necessitated the war on terror; and this has in turn brought with it the securitization of the continent. In another vein, the way and manner the war on terror is conducted in collaboration the Western allies; the war on terror may have been politicized. This is so because the governments of some African countries such as Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda, Burundi and Kenya, among others, have been accused of using terror card to cling to power and abuse human rights especially of opposition political parties. In many countries, the government defines terrorism according to their political interests, especially as there is no agreed common definition of terrorism, not even one offered by United Nations and academic scholars alike; this gives the political class the opportunity to define terrorism according to their wishes and mind set (Schmid 2013).1 Even in liberal democracies like the U.S., International norms have been grossly violated in name of fighting terrorism. Thus, many Africa countries consider terrorism as a major threat to their very existence, which must be dealt with decisively. Indeed, studies have shown that between 2006 and 2019, the number of terror attacks on African continent has grown by more than 1000%. Similarly, 2006 and 2016, terror attacks in Africa increased from 400 to over 2000. It is worthy of note that by 2015, threat caused by Al-Shabaab was not only a cause of concern to Somalia and East Africa but also to the entire continent and the world over (Rychnovska 2014).2 Thus, the first phase of the securitization of Africa took place during the era of ideological rivalry, also known as Cold War, when the Union of Socialist Soviet Republic (Eastern bloc) imperialism contended with the United States of America (Western bloc) imperialism in the heart of Africa in such areas as Zimbabwe, Angola, Ethiopia, Congo, Mozambique, Somalia, Uganda, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, among other Cold War theatres of war. The securitization came in form of the very stiff competition for allies on the continent through the military and other sundry supports by the Western and Eastern blocs, to Liberation Movements who are in arm struggle against colonial powers in their domain; and the shipment of arms and ammunition of war into the continent of Africa. Such Liberation movements as the Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the state of Angola; the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU); the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa and many others enjoyed supports from the super powers at the time (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Ojakorotu 2010).3 The attempt to rid the continent of terrorism in its deadly form, especially in a nuclear age, made the re-securitization inevitable. Thus, in contemporary times, most countries in Africa have witness a decade-long struggle and fight against terror groups which has almost stretched the military capabilities of such African countries as Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, Libya, Chad, Niger Republic, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso to mention but a few, beyond their limits. This over a decade-long fight against terror is further complicated by weak military strength and the politicization of the fight against terror. Thus, the fight against terror has on the other hand made the continent of Africa the

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epicentre of military operations, thereby diverting attention from the provision of basic amenities for the people to military-related issues. This in itself has brought untold hardship upon the people. The focus of this chapter therefore, is to examine the various causes of terrorism on the continent and how the fight against terrorism have turned parts of the continent to an epicentre of military operations rather than the epicentre of development. It further establishes the reason(s) for the prolongation of the war on terror and the possible forces behind the prolongation. The establishment of these facts would provide the requisite knowledge on how to demilitarize the continent so as to make the African continent count in a changing global order.

Theoretical Perspective The study adopted the rational choice theory for this work. The rational choice theory is a product of the psychological school of thought. The rational choice theory was derived from economics as it relates to games theory; the central argument of the theory describes the choice of rational decisions that an organization, individual or group of individuals (terror groups inclusive) makes before taking an action. The theory posits that terrorism and terrorist act is a product of rational, conscious as well as a well-calculated decision and act undertaken to achieve the group’s desired objective(s), be it political, socioeconomic and/or religious goals (Crenshaw 19924 ; Wilson 2000).5 In other words, individuals take rational decision based on the assessment of expected benefits and cost of each action and seek to maximize the best course of action that will benefit its interest (Gupta 2008).6 The central thrust of the rational choice theory posits that, if a person is willing to risk his life and/or freedom to commit an act of terrorism, he must have few preferable alternatives. The rational choice’s position is that the act of terrorists’ actions and behaviour is premised on costs, benefits and expectations of the cause of the terrorists themselves may want to adopt. As Shughart (2009)7 asserts, terrorists are rational on the basis of two important ways: First, every terrorist faces a budget constraint and whether acting alone or in concert with others, consequently, must deploy money, ammunitions and man power cost-effectively, allocating the available resources from time to time with the expectations of maximizing the net returns of their actions. Secondly, terrorists responds in a rather rational ways and manners to the counter measures taken against them. Thus, they usually look out for soft targets with minimum risks; and at all times, they review their methods of operations according to available intelligence information about their target country available to them. Terrorist groups are therefore, guided by the intelligence information gathered from the field or from their spies and even from fifth columnist in the army of their target state(s). Example of this can be found in the war against the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria; where it is believed that the terrorist organization have been able to infiltrate into the Nigerian army such that any time there is a planned counter attacks on the insurgency group they are quickly

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aware and lay ambush against the Nigerian troops. This is one of the reasons the war on terror in Nigeria is dragging on for so long. Terrorists, behaves as though they are guided by the same rational choice calculus that animates human action in more ordinary setting. They evaluate the alternatives available to them and choose the option that promises the largest expected benefit relation to changing risk. Therefore, the strategy is to the extent to which rationality aid the terrorist towards achieving their set goals. As Pape (2003)8 argues, the objectives and goals of the terrorists’ various attacks is to achieve a specific political purpose; such as to coerce the targeted country to change her position or policies in their favour. Modern terrorist organizations are such that employs the tactics of conventional military warfare and strategic thinking deploying modern technologies in the civil and military space to carry out their acts. Thus, for the war on terror to be effective therefore, collaborative efforts by the global community is required, especially in the area of exchange of information and military intelligence and also at all fronts are necessary for the global war on terror to make meaningful impact; and also making sure that it purges itself of the infiltration of fifth columnists within the military formation.

Attributes of Modern Terrorism and Its Emergence in Africa The act of terrorism has been variously described; however, just as there is no unanimously agreed definition of terrorism among scholars and public policy practitioners alike, so also the causes of terrorism defers, at least, from the theoretical purview. The major reason terrorism is difficult to define, albeit satisfactorily, is premised on the cliché—“one man’s terrorist is another man’s hero or freedom fighter”. To that extent, the term terrorism can be said to be nebulous. Besides, contemporary terrorism is such a pervasive phenomenon which has dominating influence over every aspect of daily human lives in the global community. It commands tremendous influence on the ways and manner state actors conduct foreign relations in the international system. It also has influence in the ways corporate entities conduct businesses, it has reshaped the structure and pattern of security forces and altered the thinking and approach of individual citizens and systems of government in modern societies (Efebeh 2008).9 The definition of terrorism has not, in actual fact, enjoyed universally acceptable definition, but modern terrorism has certain basic characteristics that are also prevalent in various definitions. Thus, the African Union Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism (July 1999), broadly defines terrorism thus: Any act which is a violation of the criminal laws of a state party and which may endanger the life, physical integrity…..or cause serious injury or death to any person, any number of group of persons or causes damage to public or private

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property, natural resources, environmental or cultural heritage and is calculated to – a) Intimidate, put in fear, force, coerce or induce any government, body, institutions, the general public or any segment thereof, to do or to abstain from doing any act…. b) Disrupt any public service, the delivery of any essential services to the public…or create a public emergency. c) Create a general insurrection in the state.

On the other hand, the United States’ government definition of terrorism is contained in Patterns of Global Terrorism (2002), incorporated in Title 22 of the US code, as the prelude to the “War of Terror” Section 2656f(d); described terrorism as: Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetuated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

As contentious as the above definitions may appear, they however aptly capture the fact that, an act of unprovoked violence against a segment of a society by an aggrieved group of people, constitutes what may be referred to as terrorism. However, terrorists are driven by deferent motives such as ideologies, religious beliefs and other sentiments or feelings that they feel strongly about. Thus, the use and motive of terrorism in the past used to be “we want a few people dead and a lot of people watching” but to modern day terrorists “violence has become an end in itself” (Zakaria 2004).10 Early terrorist organizations employed the tactics of terror targeted on governments or communities with greater political power, such actions are usually design to create panic, fear and extreme anxiety and cause the targeted authorities to concede to their demand(s). However, features of modern terror groups as epitomized by the Al Qaeda network, is that of networked global entity with international agenda. They have further established modern network of funding via private businesses, drug trafficking, independent wealth, local financial supports and charities; it should also be noted that some governments and countries such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Mumman Ghadafi’s Libya, have at various times been accused of funding and supporting terrorists organizations. The advancement in technology, as it has to do with information revolution and globalization, has aided this new wave of terrorism, in which case a small number of terrorists can do great harm as exemplified various coordinated attacks on the United States of America on September 11, 2001, in what has become known as 9/11; and the March 11, 2004 Madrid train blast. It is argued that early terrorists abstained from acts of deliberate cruelty capable of debasing humanity; but with the new wave of terrorism, decent and humane behaviour is no longer a norm (Laqueur 1987).11 Thus, even

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when terrorists of recent times may preach the oneness and brotherhood of man, and even practice it sometimes. However, more often than not, he has freed himself from moral scruples and persuaded himself that all is permitted (Efebeh 2016).12 Modern terrorists has the propensity to easily turn against his compatriots and even kill his comrades, as he will terrorize his enemies for human life is of no value. They further believe that lofty aim justifies all means, no matter how atrocious. Contemporary terrorist organizations have become major players in the international system; assuming the status of non-state actors as their actions and activities have become widespread geographically across the globe, and more sophisticated in their mode of operations and adapting to new technologies which has enabled them the ease of reaching targets and to recruit fighters. They operate on “Cell” bases across borders of the world, thrives better in societies where government is fragile and or weak and failing states. Modern terrorism has assumed the status of a “virtual state”,—one that has the attributes of a state, such as loyal population, sources of funding, welfare package for its population, standing army, but borderless and has no definite location on the global map; however we can feel and see the impact of their activities and the grief they left the people with. One very important feature of modern terrorism is that they lack ideological backing as against the old terrorists’ organizations that premised their struggle on ideological stances. For instance, most terrorist organizations of old such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) based their belief on nationalism. Modern terrorists are motivated by religious extremism and contradictory ideological semblance. For instance, when Boko Haram insurgency group started in 2009, they claimed that they have come to fight against western education saying that “western education is evil”; in fact, that is the very meaning of their name “Boko Haram”. By implication they also meant that western civilizations, values and indeed everything western to them is seen as evil that must be resisted, fought against and destroyed. Contradictorily, the same people are busy using the same western technologies, which are the products of western education, to advance their cause. In another breath, the Boko Haramists are claiming they want to Islamize the Nigerian state, but yet they kill Christians and Muslims every day; they bomb Churches and Mosques every now and then, if that is the case, killing fellow Muslims is an indication that nothing else matters to them except their aims, and when they kill all the Christians and fellow Muslims who then are they going to rule over in an all Muslim Nigeria? There lies the contradiction in the reason for their “struggle”. Modern terrorists also has a way of waging war against a state that tries to render support to another state under terror attacks; for example, Al-Shabaab on attacking Kenya and Uganda claimed the attacks were a revenge following the two countries intervention in Somalia by sending their troops. The Islamic Sate for Iraq and Syria (ISIS) made the same claim while claiming responsibility after attacking France and the U.K. this resonates well with securitization and argued that “what government call extremism is to a large degree, the product of their own wars” (Kundnani 2014).13

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The history of terrorism and terrorist attacks in Africa can be traced to the early 1991 in the state of Sudan, in which the leader of Al Qaeda network, Osama Bin Laden had operated and taken refuge. It was from the terrorists’ sanctuary in Sudan that attacks on the then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dares Salam in 1995 and 1998, respectively, were carried out. These various attacks on the United States’ interests led to the bombing of a chemical plant in Sudan and thus marked the beginning of war on terror on the continent of Africa. This fight and search for the perpetuators of the coordinated attacks spread to the state of Somalia, where some of them were eventually caught and killed. This was at a time when there was the rise in radical Islamic group in Somalia. The various attacks on U.S. targets were later to form the nucleus of U.S. policy on Africa as it concerns terrorism and the fight against terrorism on the continent. The various attacks on London and Madrid have been traced to the existence of terrorist cells in Algeria, Libya and Morocco in North Africa. Thus, the focus of global anti-terrorist fight by western powers, particularly the United States, became pronounced. This is so because the period marked the proliferation of terrorist organizations on the continent as the presence of fragile or weak status of most African states that are based on ethnicity, discrimination, religious diversity and “failed” institutions of governance became prevalent. There after such terrorist organizations as radical Islamic Maitasine which regarded itself as the “Taliban” of Nigeria, the Pseudo-Christian Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda emerged. The Al Qaeda network cells were first prevalent in the eastern coast and later North Africa and in Sudan. The emergence of Al-Shabaab in the African state of Somalia was as a result of the fragile nature of the Somali state; haven witness serious political challenges that has rendered the state institutions weak as well as vulnerable. The Al-Shabaab broke away from the Islamic Court Union and aimed primarily at establishing what they called “Greater Somalia” under Islamic (Sharia) Laws. The Al-Shabaab has thus become a major threat to lives and properties in, not just the state of Somalia, but to such other African states, such as Kenya, Tanzania, Angola and indeed to the entire African continent. In 2009, it was believed that the extra-judicial killing of Usman Mohammed Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram, by the Nigeria law enforcement agency while in police custody, would deter members of Boko Haram from committing further violence (Ugorji 2016).14 The opposite was the case in actual fact. Yusuf’s death in police custody triggered intense fighting and terrorist’s attacks against the Nigerian state and the citizens, leading to the escalation and spread of the conflicts. The Boko Haram example indicates that the use of military force alone cannot solve the terrorism problem (Art and Richardson 2007, as cited in Crenshaw 2014).15 Thus, between 2009 and June 2020, the insurgency group have killed over 36,000 and displaced over 1.8 million people and another hundreds of thousands injured. The group has been linked to such other international terrorists organizations as Al Qaeda network and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); the Boko Haram group now proudly

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referred to itself as the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP). In the West African region, such countries as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Republic have under militia terrorists attacks leading to the formation of the G5 Sahel made up of such French speaking countries as Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Niger and Mauritania. The G5 formation was backed by France and other European countries and backed by a UN resolution in 2017. The aim of the G5 is to quell the various terrorists and militia groups activities in the member states.

The Fight Against Terror: Africa as a Theater of Military Operation The war against terror on the continent of Africa became necessary as the devastating impact of terrorism became evident in every aspect of life, especially as it concerns the security of lives and properties. The war has, expectedly, made the continent to become the epicentre of military operations forever a decade now. The quest to rid the continent of Africa of terrorism and or terror-related attacks or activities has necessitated not only the various military operations on the continent, but also the various military collaborative efforts between affected African countries and their foreign allies in a bid to win the war on terror. Such collaborative efforts, and one among African countries, became necessary in the face of the very peculiar nature of modern terrorism which has global network and outreach, more deadly and better armed with modern technology in warfare that is almost more efficient than the armed forces of some states on the continent. Another reason that may be adduced for the war on terror is the humanitarian feelings among state actors; as leaving the states under terrorist attacks to their fate would amount to the avoidable lost of lives of innocent citizens. Thus, collaborative efforts would afford the states under attack to minimize lost of innocent souls, among other things. Again, such collaborative effort also became necessary in order to protect the economic interests of not only the state under attack but also of the international community. The dictate of contemporary global economic relations is such that distortion in any part of the global community can negatively impact on the entire global community and thus impact negatively on the supply chain; therefore, the securitization, through military support or operations could guarantee peaceful global economic supplies. The various military operations that are taking place in the various flash points on the African continent, through various military supports from “indigenous” and foreign allies came in form of supplies of military hard and software. Thus, as a result the United States deployed her military contingent, in what is known as Combined Joint Task Force in the Horn of Africa (CJTFHOA) to the continent in 2002; Under the CJTF-HOA, the United States of America stationed troops in Djibouti; and the subsequent release of $100 million for counter terrorism in East Africa in 2003. The money was released to improve border control, intelligence building, to improve the capacity of states in the region and to check the flow of arms, personnel, illicit funds and

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other forms of supports going to the terrorists in the Horn and down to the east of Africa from the Middle East. Again, the Europe Command (EUCOM) was largely responsible for the various military training and support operations in the Sahel region and geared at containing the Islamic radical GLPF in the state of Algeria. The EUCOM later grew to cover the entire North Africa and the entire Sahel region of Africa. However, by 2006 when the Islamic Court Movement took over power in Somalia, the US/Africa counter terrorism efforts got more pronounced; as the US tacitly supported Ethiopia in her invasion of Somalia. By 2007, it has become obvious that Africa is no more immune to terrorism and the threat it poses. The Unites States, through the Pentagon then announced a unified African Command (AFRICOM) in order to harmonize the different military programmes in Africa. On the other hand, as a measure aimed at curbing the rising cases of terrorist attacks and its threat in Africa, the African Union in 2002 adopted a plan of Action on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism; this measure was to help address, on a substantial note, Africa’s security challenges. As a fall out from this effort, the African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT) was established; this body served as the intellectual thinktank in providing centralized information, carries out studies and provides analysis of extremist groups on the continent. It also serves as a capacitybuilding centre for member states to combat and prevent terrorism and terrorist acts on the continent. By way of responding to Boko Haram attacks, the Lake Chad Basin Commission was established under a Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF); primarily to fight and end the Boko Haram terrorist organization which has made lives difficult for citizens of member countries, particularly for Nigerians. The Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) was established in 1998 and it was made up of such neighbouring countries as Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic. However, the MNJTF became active by 2012 when Boko Haram activities substantially increased in the region. Benin Republic pledge supports by way of sending troops to the MNJTF, and additional supports came the way of the MNJTF from the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. By 2015, the African Union got involved in the military operations to prevent further expansion of Boko Haram activities by approving the West African Task Force (WATF) of 7,500 troops from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger Republic and Benin Republic to fight the Boko Haram insurgency group. This efforts yielded positive results as most villages and territories were reclaimed from the insurgency groups; though expectedly, at a cost as many innocent lives and properties were lost, leading to thousands of people being displaced and left without means of livelihood. Aside from these multinational collaborative efforts, the Nigerian government and indeed the individual countries affected directly by the activities of the Boko Haram, also known as Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), have committed and still committing officers and men to the fight against the insurgency group; this is in addition to the huge funds that have been expended on the war. In all, Nigeria alone have

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lost over 36,000 lives to the conflict and another 1.8 million people displaced as of June 25, 2020. In Somalia, the African Union established the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in 2007 to lead the fight against Al-Shabaab terrorist group in Somalia and in such other countries as Kenya, Uganda and environ with an initial six months mandate to reduce the threat by Al-Shabaab and other armed oppositions groups and coordinate national defence and public safety institutions. The AMISOM is to work in collaboration with the Somali National Army (SNA); this collaboration was able to re-gain some towns initially seized by the Al-Shabaab sect. However, the Al-Shabaab continued its attacks on military installations and government targets. They also attacked neighbouring Kenya targets including an attack on Garissa University College on April 2, 2015 which claimed 148 lives, mostly students of the University who were preparing for their examination. Besides, North Africa is far more integrated into internationally radical Islamic terrorist activity than Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, the French government sponsored the establishment of the G5 Sahel on February 16, 2014, in Nouakchott, Mauritania. This is made up of such French speaking countries as Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger Republic. The aim was to for member countries to form a collaborative front to enable them tackles such problems that are common to them as—developmental policies and security matters in West Africa. Under the G5 Sahel Joint Force, France deployed 5,100 French soldiers to join troops from member nations. The G5 was created at the instance of the African Union and backed by the United Nations’ Security Council Resolution 2359 of June 21, 2017. These various wars against terror groups on the continent has not only led to the massive securitization of the African continent but has also shifted focus of states from human capacity development as well as infrastructural and economic developmental drives of African states. Thus, the increase in military budget in “peace time” to fund counter terrorism has the capacity to impede sustainable development and the advancement of democracy on the continent.

Concluding Remarks In recent years, acts of terrorism have surged in a number of countries in Africa; as it also poses greater threat towards global peace and security. Different scholars attest to the fact that almost all countries in the world have suffered terrorism either as a result of direct attack or their citizens being hurt in terror attacks elsewhere in the world or at least terrorists have threatened or affected domestic or foreign interests of all countries. In Africa, the cases of terrorism soared with studies indicating that from 2006 to 2016, terrorism rose by over 2000% with cases of fatalities also increasing. With Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram being the most active terror groups in Africa; this has raise concern in many quarters as the activities of Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, also known as Islamic State for West Africa (ISWA), terror groups threatening the

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entire East and West African regions and the world at large including the U.S (Feldstein 2018).16 Some scholars have however argued that the level of threat terror groups poses is at times over exaggerated, and in some cases the war on terrorism is used for political purposes with government in power branding their political opponents terrorists (Efebeh 2008).17 However, it is obvious that Africa is presently ravaged by terrorists activities such that some parts of the continent has become the Hobbessian “State of Nature” where life has become increasingly “short, nasty and brutish”; just like it is for residents of North-East and North-Central Nigeria where the activities of Boko Haram sect is most predominant and more frequent. This has created a state of hopelessness among the people as many have been killed, maimed or displaced, thus making life utterly miserable for them. In other words, the activities of terror groups, kidnappers and bandits pose existential threat to lives and properties in northern Nigeria. This state of affair has necessitated the huge shift of focus to military actions that has turned the continent of Africa to the epicentre of military operations even when no known African state is at war. Thus, the securitization of Africa in the inevitable fight against terror has come with its price, and one of these is the humanitarian crises that the fight generates, the destruction and widening of infrastructural gap and the associated negative economic impacts. It is worthy of note that, the securitization of the continent of Africa is also a boost to the military industrial complex, as the sales of arms and ammunitions and the hiring of foreign mercenaries will be unhindered for as long as the war on terror lasted. In another vein, the hiring of foreign mercenaries by the Nigerian government in the past to prosecute the war on terror, has laid credence to the argument that the complex’s involvement in the war is part of what may be prolonging the war. It is also apt to argue that, the influence of the military industrial complex is one reason the war has been politicized especially in Nigeria. In Nigeria, the counter terrorism measure seems to have become a very profitable business venture, such that the more money is budgeted for the war, the less the level of performances by the military. By June 2020 for instance, over 320 frontline soldiers resigned from the Nigerian Army, citing poor condition of service and lack of good enough arms and ammunition that can match the ones used by the terrorists. To that extent therefore, the low morale among the military personnel, possibly occasioned by corruption in the Army, has direct link with the prolongation of the war against terror in Nigeria. The lack of modern and sophisticated arms and ammunition to the Nigerian troops is not so much because of lack of funds to procure these items, but a product of the direct impact of misappropriation of funds meant for that purpose; and leading to under-performance of the military in the said war. This is coupled with the fact that the war against terror itself has been politicized. These are some of the major reasons there have been calls from many quarters for the replacement of the current service chiefs and the total overhauling of the entire security architecture in the Nigerian state. Thus, the African continent need to urgently rid itself of the various

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terrorist networks and end the multiple wars on terror so as to get into the very serious business of building a strong continent that can compete in a competitive emerging global order. In order to win the war on terror therefore, the various multination military formations established for the purpose of the war on terror in Africa, need to be strengthened and made more formidable at all fronts and equipped with modern military soft and hard wares to be able to take the war to the very door steps of the various terrorist groups on the continent. Furthermore, sharing of information and research to counter terrorism and violent extremism on the continent is very vital in the cause of the war. Thus, the paucity of vital information still remains a challenge as extensive research is required to analyze and understand threats and vulnerabilities in countering terrorism and violent extremism. Furthermore, states have a responsibility to understand differing interest among groups and dialogue creates an opportunity to bring about this understanding. The education of the people at the grass root, especially at the primary, secondary schools, Mosques and in Churches, against the evil of terrorism could be the much needed dose in the fight against terrorism as this would lead to a cut in supply of new recruits. This is in addition to good governance and strong governmental institutions. Finally and perhaps most importantly, the war on terror in Africa and particularly in Nigeria need to be fought from the political fronts. There are so many insinuations to the extent that powerful politicians and top officers in the military establishment have been variously accused and indicted for compromising their positions and for even being outright sponsors of the Boko Haram insurgency group. In order to win the war on terror therefore, the military establishment and the political elite need to be purged of such fifth columnists.

Notes 1. Alex P. Schmid, “The Definition of Terrorism,” in The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research, ed. A. P. Schmid (Oxon: Routledge, 2013). 2. Dagmer Rychnovska, “Securitization and the Power of Threat Framing,” Perspectives 22, (2014): 9–32. 3. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Victor Ojakorotu, “Do ‘Africans’ Exist? Genealogies and Paradoxes of African Identities and the Discourses of Nativism and Xenophobia,” Journal of African Identities 8, no. 3 (2010): 38. 4. Martha Crenshaw, “How Terrorists Think: What Psychology Can Contribute to Understanding Terrorism,” in Terrorism: Roots, Impact, Responses, ed. L. Howard (New York: Praeger Press, 1992), 44. 5. Wilson A. Margret, “Towards a Model of Terrorist Behaviour in Hostage Taking Incidents,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 4 (January 10, 2000): 403–424. 6. Dipak K. Gupta, Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence (London: Routledge, 2008). 7. William F. Shughart, “Editorial Announcement,” Public Choice 139, no. 1 (April 2009): 1 (Springer).

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8. Robert, A. Pape, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political Science Review 97, no. 3 (2003): 1–19. 9. Vincent E. Efebeh, “Terrorism: A Plague of the 21st Century,” Journal of Social Policy and Society 3, no 3 (2008): 18. 10. Fareed Zakaria, “Cruelty Is All They Have Left,” Newsweek Magazine (March 22, 2004), 9. 11. Williams, Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (New York: Library of Congress Publication, 1987). 12. Vincent E. Efebeh, “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, (ISIS), as a Threat to the Peace and Stability of the Middle East Region,” ANSU Journal of Arts and Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (2016): 107–119. 13. Arun Kundnani, The Muslims are Coming!: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror (London and New York: Verso, 2014), 322. 14. Basil Ugorji, Ethno-Religious Conflict in Nigeria (New York: International Centre for Ethno-Religious Mediation, 2016). Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://www.icermediation.org/. 15. Martha Crenshaw, “Terrorism Research: The Record,” International interactions 40, no. 4 (2014): 556. 16. Steven Feldstein, “Do Terrorism Trend in Africa Justify the US Military’s Expansion?,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (February 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3121228. Retrieved on 30 June 2020. 17. Efebeh, “Terrorism: A Plague of the 21st Century,” 1–20.

References Crenshaw, Martha. 1992. “How Terrorists Think: What Psychology Can Contribute to Understanding Terrorism.” In Terrorism: Roots, Impact, Responses, edited by. L. Howard. New York: Praeger Press, 44. Crenshaw, Martha. 2014. “Terrorism Research: The Record.” International Interactions, 40, no. 4: 556. Efebeh, Vincent E. 2008. “Terrorism: A Plague of the 21st Century.” Journal of Social Policy and Society 3, no. 3: 18. Efebeh, Vincent E. 2016. “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, (ISIS), as a Threat to the Peace and Stability of the Middle East Region.” ANSU Journal of Arts and Social Sciences 5, no. 1: 107–119. Feldstein, Steven. 2018. “Do Terrorism Trend in Africa Justify the US Military’s Expansion?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3121228. Retrieved on 30 June 2020. Gupta, Dipak K. 2008. Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence. London: Routledge. Kundnani, Arun 2014. The Muslims are Coming!: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror. London and New York: Verso, 322. Laqueur, Williams. 1987. The Age of Terrorism. New York: Library of Congress Publication. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo and Victor Ojakorotu. 2010. “Do ‘Africans’ Exist? Genealogies and Paradoxes of African Identities and the Discourses of Nativism and Xenophobia.” Journal of African Identities 8, no. 3: 38.

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Pape, Robert A. 2003. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political Science Review 97, no 3: 1–19. Rychnovska, Dagmer. 2014. “Securitization and the Power of Threat Framing.” Perspectives 22: 9–32. Schmid, Alex P. 2013. “The Definition of Terrorism.” In The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research, edited by A. P. Schmid. Oxon: Routledge. Shughart, William F. 2009. “Editorial Announcement.” Public Choice 139, no.1: 1 (Springer). Ugorji, Basil. 2016. Ethno-Religious Conflict in Nigeria. New York: International Centre for Ethno-Religious Mediation. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https:// www.icermediation.org/. Wilson, Margret, A. 2000. “Towards a Model of Terrorist Behaviour in Hostage Taking Incidents.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no 4: 403–424. Zakaria, Fareed. 2004. “Cruelty Is All They Have Left.” Newsweek Magazine (March 22), 9.

CHAPTER 37

Africa’s Search for Sustainable Security in an Emergent Global Order G. S. Mmaduabuchi Okeke

Introduction Insecurity and Africa have somewhat become synonymous in the international system eliciting responses from scholars and policymakers of African and Western extractions alike. The security challenges of Africa are indeed complex as they range from armed conflict to terrorism. According to Aning (2007: 1) …in the short to medium term, the critical human, regional and international security challenges facing Africa can be summed up as a nexus between old and new challenges. Old security challenges are characterized by perennial armed conflicts, for example the Chad/Sudan tensions or the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict among others underpinned by the easy availability of SALW, political violence and Food insecurity.1

The above has led Africa to develop various proposed solutions to the fledgling problem of insecurity, one of which is the APSA (African Peace and Security Architecture) among other partnerships. However, Africa does not exist in isolation from the rest of the world. It exists within an international order which is beyond the post World-War II International order. Global order which is the structural positioning of states in terms of power and economic relationships happens to be very central studying international relations, and the dominant international order today is the liberal order. The G. S. M. Okeke (B) Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_37

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Liberal international order based on sovereignty of states, rules, and norms, is an Anglo-American product of the Post World-War II era in the international system (Kupchan 2012).2 Within this global order, the African continent exists, tailoring its organizations, including its security architecture within such norms and rules. The liberal international order as constituted over the years has been structured to also guarantee the security and the global hegemony of the western world, and Africa over the years had its institutions subjugated and largely structured to suit this global order. However, as we have it the liberal international order is being challenged by China’s and other BRICS states. Also, the denouement of global power asymmetry has given Africa a rare opportunity to chart a new global power configuration course. While African States have attempted to develop capacity in several areas of their socio-economic, political, and security life, gaps, still exist between the nature of conflict confronting the region and the institutional framework for conflict management (Garuba 1998).3 There is still high dependence on foreign intervention in design and implementation of security programs. At first glance, neither the concept of security communities nor any other concepts of security cooperation currently in the academic discourse, such as regional security complex, regional security partnerships, or zones of peace, seem applicable to Africa’s emerging Peace and Security Architecture. On the contrary, the continuing presence of violent conflict and humanitarian catastrophes in wide parts of the continent, such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad and Somalia, has reinforced many people’s impressions of Africa as a continent characterized by quasi-Hobbesian anarchy rather than elaborate forms of security cooperation based on a commonality of values (Franke 2008).4 The end of the Cold War brought a new dimension to conflicts and wars in Africa. The continent now experiences more intrastate conflicts than interstate wars, leading to the death of many civilians and non-combatants and destruction of properties. The Cold War ended in 1990 following the collapse of the Berlin wall; but by 1994 Africa witnessed the mother of all conflicts, the Rwanda genocide that recorded the death of millions of civilians (Shelton 1997).5 The realization of the change in conflict dimension in Africa and its attendant consequences and the less concern by the international community led—African leaders to consider some of the guiding principles, structure, designs, and policies on conflict management. The concept of the African solution to African the problem became prominent among scholars and security experts. But the contention is to what extent have Africans provided a homegrown solution to its numerous security challenges. In the last decades, African states, and African statesmen, have played frontline roles in brokering peace agreements and have sought ways, ostensibly African, to end crises. AU member states have deployed more troops ever to

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peace operations in Africa, including in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR) to mention but a few. The AU is more robust and more mature than its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, with meaningful institutions to tackle the continent’s array of peace and security challenges. In 2011, it established a regional cooperation initiative to hunt down the Lord’s Resistance Army and the U.S. provided 100 army personnel to support Uganda in this military campaign (REUTERS 2017).6 But even with increased engagement in peace operations, questions remain about the quality and capability of African troops. Many African armies have pretty dismal track records in their own countries and are often poorly equipped and trained to deal with complex peace operations. Even Africa’s strongest armies have been found lacking. Again, differences and competition among AU member states, between the continental and sub-regional bodies, and multilateral actors have kept progress slow. The AU sees itself as Africa’s key interlocutor on peace and security, but it increasingly faces challenges to its authority, with member states seeking more immediate solutions and sub-regional bodies wanting to manage conflicts in their backyards. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), for example, want greater political and financial control over responses to conflicts in their region. While some felt humiliated by France’s decisive intervention in Mali, a core problem is that African states failed to act decisively because of disagreement among themselves: the AU and ECOWAS, suffered a degree of distrust and mutual suspicion over their differences in handling the postelection crisis in Côte d’Ivoire, where they competed over who was in charge; ECOWAS leaders were unclear about whether a military response was appropriate to address the twin problems of domestic crisis in Mali and transnational terrorism in the Sahel; Mali’s political leaders and the military junta were wary of an ECOWAS intervention; and neighboring Algeria and Mauritania were not members of ECOWAS and did not share its views on military intervention. In Libya, the AU’s preference for an inclusive dialogue with Muammar Gadhafi and his opponents, as opposed to troop deployment, was thwarted in arguably questionable circumstances when NATO chose the Arab League as its partner of choice in dealing with the Libyan uprising. The above challenges coupled with a lack of commitment of member states in contributing human material resources militate over conflict management and peacebuilding in Africa despite the stated peace architecture. The last decade has witnessed major developments in the evolution of the security sector reform (SSR) concept and its adoption within the international community. Bilateral actors as well as multilateral institutions including the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union (EU), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.) and the United Nations (U.N.) have

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developed policy frameworks and in some cases established operational capacities for SSR. Given its rapid ascent up the international policy agenda, several overlapping concepts have emerged in this area (AU 2010; ECOWAS 2005; E.U. 2006; O.E.C.D. 2004; U.N. 2008). Interestingly, Africa security Apparatus has depended on Europe since independence, even the AU peace and security Architecture has European Partnership in the form of donations, despite several emphases on African solution to an African problem. The big question is how have African leaders been able to overcome these challenges to build a strong peace and Security architecture for conflict management in Africa and to what extent has Africa depended on external forces in the determination of its security architecture, providing answers to these questions is the concern of this paper as it seeks to interrogate Africa’s search for sustainable security architecture in an emergent global order.

Exploring the Security Complex There is a vast amount of literature on implementing the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) created by the African Union (AU) in 2003. The APSA is the continental mechanism that structures the African collective defense system to promote peace, security and stability on the continent. Centered on the AU’s Peace and Security Council (PSC), the system relies on the African Standby Force (ASF), made up mainly of standby regional brigades, and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC), created in 2013 (Engel and Gomes 2013). Whereas the primary aim of the APSA is ownership of conflict management, Africanization is closer to reality. There are indeed many challenges to full appropriation by African actors. The non-African stakeholders’ support mechanisms for the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) are a strategically important topic of study, given the extent to which they tend to modify power relationships between the various actors—African and non-African, institutions and states. In the mechanisms to support the building of the APSA, these exogenous state actors see ways to reconcile the constraints they face—such as the obvious budgetary constraints and the fall in acceptability of their interventions—while simultaneously fulfilling their primary imperative, which is to maintain or strengthen their influence within the international conflict management system (Tardy 2005).7 The 2013 French White Paper on Defence and National Security states that: “Support for establishment of a collective security architecture in Africa is a priority of France’s cooperation and development policy.” (French Ministry of Defence, White Paper 2013). The academic literature dealing with peacekeeping challenges in Africa addresses international support practices for the APSA through the prism of the classic dichotomy which separates the African troop-contributing countries (TCCs) to African or U.N. peacekeeping

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operations, and exogenous actors—suppliers of financial, structural, and operational aid that enables this Africanisation. Bruno Charbonneau criticizes this distinction, which he defines as “subject-object” (Charbonneau2015).8 Nevertheless, securitization scholars have emphasized the centrality of security in human survival; hence security concerns are seen as everybody’s concern, ranging from human security to environmental security, to health security and security of properties. Graza and Oscar (2010), submit that issues related to conflict, peace, and security in Africa have generated such a constant international debate in recent decades that other important political economic or social aspects are also occurring in the continent since its independent processes have been marginalized and obscured. Emphasizing the role of traditional mechanism for conflict resolution and peacebuilding in Africa, they praise the role of endogenous mechanism such as the Guurti system used to achieve stability in Somaliland, the Mato Oput peacebuilding process between the communities Acholi in northern Uganda, the implementation of the Ubuntu concept in the reconciliation process in South Africa. These processes took place without external intervention and their impact on peacebuilding is commendable. The importance of these internal mechanisms has their internal legitimacy, inclusiveness, and ability to reach a consensus. This was juxtaposed with the mechanism adopted and elongated the process of peacebuilding. Again, Graza and Oscar (2010),9 opine that the special system adopted for Sierra Leone opted for punitive measures which were not rooted in local worldview, and such became unhelpful and harmful to reconciliation and peacebuilding in the country. They argue further that African states though engaging in electoral politics, but are yet to imbibe democratic culture. They see this lack of democratic culture as the cause of conflicts in Africa; they contend that the AU launched major initiatives to address the issue of governance and democratization in Africa, such as the African peer review mechanism; this enables member states to undergo a voluntary assessment process of their democratic practices. Graza and Oscar opine that 29 out of 53 countries have gone through the process as of 2010, another domestic initiative is the African Charter on democracy, election, and governance, launched in 2007, deepen democratic principles, election, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. They further aver that the African peace and security architecture (APSA) is structured as follows: ● A policymaking body (the Peace and Security Council). ● A Centre for Analysis and Data Collection (the continental early warning system). ● The military structure, (here there is the Africa Standby Force (ASF) and the Military Staff Committee (MSC) ● An advisory body of outside mediation (Panel of the Wise). ● A special fund to finance operation (the Peace Fund)

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Again, Franke (2008),10 writing from the constructivists’ perspective, argues that the emergence of African Peace and Security architecture and its institutional layer can best be described by the concept of a multilayered security community. Furthermore, he described a security community as a group of states integrated to the point where people have a dependable expectations of peaceful change. Distinguishing between an alliance and security community he argued that contrary to an alliance, a pluralistic security community is held together by the notion of collective identity and, more specifically, by shared values and meaning rather than merely the perceived need to balance a common threat. His views suggest that African Peace and Security Architecture are designed by the notion of the collective identity of African states rather than the need to balance threat, although the architecture will accomplish the threat balance. He further argues that a transnational or collective identity develops in the course of sustained interaction between states. Through the development of dependable behavior and common norms, it eventually leads to the emergence of a transnational community characterized by mutual trust and sense of affiliation. On the origin of African peace and Security architecture Franke argues that, peace and security framework is relatively new in African discourse. According to him, at first glance, neither the concept of security communities nor any other concepts of security cooperation currently in academic discourse seem applicable to African emerging security architecture. He argues that scholars rather describe African states with the impression of quasi-Hobbesian anarchical society with the degree of violent conflict that characterized the continent in recent times. Thus, African society falls short in the category of security community based on the communality of values. Hence, he states that the African history of security cooperation is none-the-less exasperating. Franke (2008),11 in tracing the history of collective security mechanism for Africa, argues that the idea of community security in Africa can be traced to the colonial era and the struggle for independence, which majored in the discussion for the establishment of the OAU in 1963. Kwame Nkrumah, a leading voice for African Unity, advocated for Africa High Command (AHC) a collective security mechanism, but this was not taken as the group favoring a gradual process toward uniting Africa, influenced the establishment of the OAU in 1963. However, he submits that the post-Cold War development in Africa led to a rethinking of developing a mechanism for peace and security as Africa began to experience the negative impacts of globalization; and the waning of interest from the superpowers, they enjoyed during the Cold War politics. The new wave of cooperative Pan-Africanism evolved. This new wave was characterized by a shift from regime security and sovereignty, which was available during OAU days to human security. Franke opines that the awareness of the negative effects of unconditional insistence on the OAU’s status quo, inspired leaders like Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda to call for a redefinition of security

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and sovereignty as a pre-condition for the continent’s development. Hence, the shift from non-interference to non-indifference underlying this sentiment grew stronger as humanitarian catastrophes happened in Liberia, Rwanda, and Somalia, which overshadowed any progress made in the continent. Forced into action, the continent’s leaders were increasingly ready to overcome the conceptual hurdles that had prevented meaningful and effective cooperation in the past. Furthermore Franke asserts that it was in this atmosphere of collective—imagination and collective identity formation that Colonel Muammar Ghaddafi’s radical reform proposals triggered the replacement of OAU and the establishment of the African Union (AU). Maloka (2001),12 has observed a new found readiness of an emergent hope for an African Renaissance. This idealistic undercurrent found expression in a renewed interest in African institutions and African solutions to African problems and eventually paved the way for a reappraisal of continental unity. As a result of this, the O.A.U.’s structural and institutional weaknesses came to the fore, and the need for reform became obvious. Furthermore, two important scholarly works were published on African regional security: Engel and Gomes Porto (2011)13 ; and; Hany Besada (2010).14 Both research works assess African regional security arrangements with its evolving peace and security architecture. The books provide an informed and critical analysis of the operationalization and institutionalization of the APSA. The authors recognize that the political, institutional, and normative processes that underpin the transformation of the OAU into the AU can transform the way the continent addresses the challenges of security. However, they assume many risks, and the implementation and successful actualization of the APSA are not assured. They reveal three interrelated challenges: 1. The individual interests of Member States and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) may reveal “self-help” strategies, which directly contradict the norms agreed upon and may hinder APSA’s institutional developments; 2. The continuing violation by the several Member States of fundamental principles such as the sanctity of human life and respect of human rights, democratic practices and good governance, the rule of law and protection of fundamental freedoms; these non-compliances will certainly require constant monitoring; and 3. The institutionalization of the APSA has revealed serious capacity deficits. In a context where organizational development, training, and additional staff recruitment are urgent, the questions on the sustainability of the APSA are many (Engel and Porto 2011).15

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However, Besada et al. (2010)16 provide an overview of the peace and security challenges facing the African continent, with topics ranging from integration methods, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), security sector reform (SSR), and Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and the APSA. It does not identify an overall conclusion of the twelve chapters’ arguments, but present useful insights about each of these issues. Most relevant for this thesis is the topic of African Solutions for African Problems and Hope and Challenges for the APSA. Regarding African solutions for African problems, the authors argue that difficult security problems, be they practical or normative, require complex solutions. To find widespread approval and improvement of top-down security means, more emphasis should be given to prevention, actual analysis of roots of conflicts on the ground, as well as the incorporation of systemic causes in the overall assessment and solution-finding process. This would imply scrutinizing the problems and actors of actual host countries and, the programs and actions of international organizations and actors. The authors also argue that it seems important for the APSA to further strengthen and expand the continental and sub-regional organizations to bridge the general divide between self-reliance and further internationalization of security. They would provide for regional and continental alternatives in the form of organizations that reliably serve as building blocks within the international peace and security arena, enhance (e.g., AU and peer review mechanism) continental collaboration and coordination in security questions by providing for continuity and a (preventive) diplomacy platform, and strengthen the continent’s role concerning norm creation and diffusion (Besada et al. 2010: 9).17 Concerning the hope and challenges for the APSA, the authors provide a short overview of the APSA mechanisms and point to the encouraging decrease in the number of wars and greater prosperity and stability many states in the region have shown. They note that progress has been made. However, they argue that the lack of state capacity, coordination, resources, and the AU’s unwillingness to confront fellow leaders among others, means that Africa has not operationalized its peace and security architecture. Further integration between the AU and U.N. is the primary recommendation as the way forward for the AU (Besada et al. 2010: 11).18 Cilliers (2008), in an article titled the African Standby Force (ASF), argues that strategically the lack of adequate financial resources and the lack of capacity at the level of the AU are the two major obstacles for the operationalization of the ASF and, consequently, of the APSA. He presented some structural problems, such as the lack of coordination and engagement between the AU and the five regions. Besides, he argued that the development of some systems, like logistics, training, command, and control is based on political and not on practical considerations. Arguably, he wrote that some African partners (European and Americans) have seized on the ASF concept to such a degree that it sometimes undermines African ownership. This is most pronounced in West and East Africa, where the number of officers seconded from donor

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countries to training, planning, and regional structures are rapidly outnumbering their African compatriots. For Cilliers, that is not appropriate and the “A.U. and the various regions should ensure that they assume ownership and drive donor support and not the other way around” (Cilliers 2008: 18).19 Cilliers also wrote about the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) in 2005. He provided an overview of CEWS essential characteristics as a continental system, presented a brief history of this system’s development, and explained the key differences between intergovernmental early warning and national intelligence systems. He offers two major conclusions: the first was that the early warning system’s functioning should be insulated from the executive influence and any formal engagement with national intelligence agencies. The second conclusion was that early warning systems, at whatever level, should develop a methodologically sound, but simple and clear system for ongoing monitoring to help establish a baseline for conflict analysis. For Cilliers, conflict prevention is a much cheaper and more appropriate role for the African Union than conflict intervention, and in this context, the role of the CEWS is central (Cilliers 2005).20 However, in a general sense, Rothschild (1995)21 in Williams (2008: 2)22 maintains that any study of worlds etymology will show that, security has meant very different things to people depending on their time and place in human history. Also, Dalby (1997: 3)23 maintained that Security is a contested term, one with multiple meanings, some of which are not at all necessarily logically linked to conventional understandings. Though security studies gained currency during the Cold War its roots extend deep to scholars such as Hobbes and Clausewitz. The above alludes that the realist perspective of International Relations has been the dominant viewpoint; and a major influence of the traditional conception of security. Laying the foundation of the realist standpoint of security studies, Hobbes sees security as a consequence of the selfish nature of man whose life is solitary, brutish, nasty, and short in the state of nature, and it is extended to international anarchy in the international system when such individuals are under the Leviathan (The state). Hobbes identified the problem of security in the broadest conceivable terms as rooted in just being human. He stipulated that the natural and psychological conditions arising from simply being human generated a conflicting social problem what is today characterized as the security dilemma (Kolodziej 2005: 52).24 Kolodziej (2005: 52)25 further maintained that the many instances of fear between peoples and states are but historical instances of an underlying security dilemma endemic of all human societies and their relations with each other. Again consistent with the Hobbesian assumption of security, Karl Von Clausewitz drew the logical conclusion that states like Hobbes’ individuals lived under the condition of perpetual conflict tending toward pure war (Clausewitz 1976).26 So, for Clausewitz, security is a consequence of states’ conflicting interest in the international system and centered around the quest for power.

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Taken together, the submissions of the above scholars, security has been dominated by the state-centric and power centric conception for much of the period of the existence of the field of security studies, which dates back to the period of the Cold War, and this was rooted firmly in what Ken Booth called the “intellectual hegemony” of realism (Acharya 1997: 300).27 From this perspective, Williams (2008: 6)28 identified a philosophy of security as virtually synonymous with the accumulation of power. He further maintained that security is considered a commodity that one must possess such as property, money, weapons, and armies from this perspective. So based on this viewpoint power is seen as a route to security (Williams 2008: 6).29 This viewpoint of security echoes realism as a major guiding principle of security studies as it defines it in terms of power. Williams (2008: 5)30 went ahead to define security as most commonly associated with the alleviation of threats to cherished values, especially those which, if left unchecked, threaten the survival of a particular referent object in the near future. In essence, following the realist and state-centric perspective of security, the referent object here would be the state or a particular regime. Another major argument within the literature of security studies is to answer the question of who or what is being secured, what Williams has called the “referent object” of security. Lending his voice to this argument, Rothschild (1995)31 in Williams (2008: 7)32 maintains that the central focus of security has been people in the long sweep of human history. This viewpoint is an antithesis to the notion that academic IR has fused security with the state (Williams 2008: 7).33 Even more specifically, it was fused with a particular conception of “the” national interest as set out in the US National Security Act of 1947. This helped promote the rather confusing idea that security in International politics was synonymous with studying (and promoting) “national security” (Williams 2008: 7).34 However important and dominant this state-centric view of security has been, it has not gone without criticism as it has been seen as too narrow in terms of its analytical scope and does not cut across all areas of security that lie outside the pursuit of power. The state-centric concept of national security provides a dominating strand of security analysis, one that tends to equate “security with the absence of a military threat or with the protection of the nation [state] from external overthrow or attack.” Many recent critics of the national security paradigm have found the intellectual lens of realism too restrictive and advocated a redefinition and broadening of security studies. As a result, a debate continues over which phenomena should be included within the purview of the new security studies agenda and which should not (Acharya 1997: 300).35 The above brings about these policy debates, within the academia in general and within international relations in particular, about how security should be reformulated to adapt to new circumstances (Walt 1991)36 in Dalby (1997: 4).37 To Dalby (1997: 4)38 the global security problematique, as often argued, now consists of much more than the contest for the political supremacy

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of super power rivalry. Often under the rubrics of “common security” or “cooperative security,” the themes of non-offensive defense, economic security, environmental security, societal insecurities, drug threats, even human rights, and the autonomy of civil society have been added in attempts to reformulate security policies to encompass many new items on the global political agenda (Booth 1982, Allan & Unwin 1993, Thomas 1994, in Dalby 1997).39 The above viewpoint was made by Barry Buzan, a very prominent scholar in the field of security studies, to extend the security of human collectivities by adding areas such as environmental, economic, and societal aspects to the narrative of security studies (Williams 2008: 4)40 and Dalby (1997: 4).41 Nevertheless, in the literature of security studies, a major problem that has been identified, is the fact that the traditional notion of security does not have the capacity to understand and address the security issues of the periphery states and in the context of this paper; Africa. This is because much of Africa’s security issues go beyond just the pursuit of power and mere superpower supremacy. Issues such as food security, economic security, environmental security etc., are the issues that most likely affect Africa. Due to the cold-war origin of security studies, the above has been because it took a Eurocentric viewpoint, not taking into cognizance the security problems of the third world, which were even created by Cold War superpower politics (Acharya 1997: 300).42 However, the extension of the boundaries of the concept of security includes, economic, ecological, demographic (refugees and illegal migration), narcotic, or gender issues, has not gone without its criticisms. As scholars like Mohammed Ayoob warn against too much broadening, citing the danger of security becoming a catchall concept, and urging the retention of the original state-centric and war-centric focus of security studies (Acharya 1997: 300).43 Also, Lothar Brock, lending his voice to the broadening of the concept of security, maintains that “defining environmental issues in terms of security risks is in itself a risky operation… we may end up contributing more to the militarization of environmental politics than to the demilitarization of security politics.” So, in the final analysis, what is most important is that security involves removing threats to the survival of a referent object, whether that referent object is the state or actual human beings.

Theoretical Framework Dependency theory, as propounded by Andre Gunder Frank, Theo Dos Santos, and Immanuel Wallerstein concentrated on locating the cause of backwardness of Third World countries (initially more especially Latin America) within the dynamic and contradictory growth of the world capitalist system (Hoogvelt 1997: 38).44 It came as a major critique of the postulations of the Modernization theory about the backwardness of third world countries and in the context of this paper, African countries.

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According to Hoogvelt (1997: 38),45 the essence of the dependency theory is the contention that as a result of penetration by colonial capital, a distorted structure of economy and society had been created in the colonial countries, which would reproduce overall economic stagnation and extreme pauperization of the masses for all time. Dependency was thought to generate a structure of internal social relations that corresponds to and is created by how a country is inserted into the structure of international economic relations. This imposed specialization of production and the continued coincidence of interests between the imperial states and the ex-colonial elites, even after independence, blocked any attempt at industrialization and internal social transformation (for example a bourgeois revolution, Hoogvelt 1997: 38).46 Dependency best explains this chapter’s thesis as Africa has been dependent on the liberal west for development policies, trade, and even partnerships for security architectures. This situation has put Africa in a precarious situation of not being able to actually take care of the insecurities such as food security and other human insecurities that are the main security problems in Africa. Also, because of the position that African countries occupy in the historically determined mode of production, they have been relegated to the production of raw materials and, as such, not in the position of global power to determine what constitutes their security issues and they also cannot affect the global order effectively. African states have depended on Europe, North America, and China for structure and implementation of a framework to curb security challenges. This dependency posture confirms the position of the dependency theorists such as Skunkel (1969)47 who defines dependency as the economic development of a state whose national development policies are dependent on external influences. Dos Santos (1971)48 appreciates the historical aspect of dependency and views dependency as a condition that shapes a certain structure of the world economy in such a way that it favors some countries to the detriment of others, and limit the development possibilities of the subordinate economies— a situation where the economy of a certain group of countries is conditioned by the development and exploitation of another economy to which their own is subject. Dependency theory is premised because resources move and flow from poorer countries, referred to as the periphery, to rich countries that are referred to as the core—this flow of resources enriches the core, while impoverishing the periphery. There are multifarious definitions of dependency. However, all the definitions share three common features or characteristics. Firstly, the dependency is an international system that is made up of two types of states. The states are dominant/dependent, core/periphery, or metropolitan/satellite. The core states are rich and industrialized in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The periphery states are countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. These countries are

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characterized by low per capita Gross National Products (GNPs) and rely on a single commodity to earn foreign exchange. Feraro (1996)49 notes that the definitions of dependency recognize that exogenous forces are of paramount importance to the economic activities conducted within dependent countries. These exogenous forces include transnational corporations, donor aid, world markets, communications, and any other means by which the advanced industrialized countries can represent their economic interests abroad. Moreover, all the definitions of dependency indicate that the relations between dominant and dependent states are dynamic because the interactions between the two sets of states tend to reinforce and intensify the unequal patterns. Moreover, the dependency is a very deep-seated historical process, rooted in the internationalization of capitalism. The literature on dependency theory suggests that richer nations can control the periphery or poorer nations and make them dependent on them forever. This they achieve by using a variety of means and paraphernalia such as political and economic interventions. In the epoch of the 1950s that coincided with the emergence of the dependency theory, colonization was still in place and served as a means of politically controlling poor nations. With poorer nations in Africa and the world over under the control of wealthy nations, dependency has been heavily entrenched, and the flow of resources to richer nations has continued unperturbed. Economic strategies that have been used to control poorer nations include the modeling of poorer nations as extractive centers by colonists. One of the dependency theory’s main ideas is that developed countries benefit heavily from the resources of poorer nations. This enables the richer countries to sustain higher standards of living. Rodney (1972)50 argues that colonization was not only about exploitation but also about repatriating profits to the homeland. The war of liberations that were fought in Africa patronize the idea that richer countries wanted to continue holding on poorer countries. Any attempt to disturb the unequal relationship that sees the poorer countries as providers of resources to richer countries is met by countering resistance. The richer countries always rely on their superlative military power to maintain the status quo; that is, the unequal integration of the poorer countries in the world system. In this current dispensation, richer countries rely on the media, donor aid, and educational systems to maintain control and hegemony over poorer countries. Matunhu (2011)51 argues that the expansion of Europe into Africa facilitated a conducive environment for siphoning resources from Africa to Europe. Idiosyncratically, Europeans used military force through colonization to entrench their control over Africa. Furthermore, Matunhu (2011)52 reiterates that Africa was and continues to be dominated economically and politically by external centers of power. Most noticeable here is the economic, political, and cultural dependence of the continent on America and Europe. Blatantly, donor aid continues to be used as paraphernalia for enforcing control over Africa by western countries. Countries that resist western control are coerced

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into submission by threats that they will not receive donor aid from western powers. For instance, countries such as Malawi, have been implicitly coerced into accepting homosexuality by being threatened that support in the form of huge budgets from the USA and other funders will be withdrawn if homosexuality is outlawed. Therefore, donor aid has been an impeccable tool of control over poorer countries by wealthy nations. In 2000, Zimbabwe embarked on the Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP), an exercise that was viewed by the European Union as unconstitutional and uncalled for. The European Union, with Britain at the fore-front, unequivocally resorted to withdrawing donor aid as a tool to ensure that the country abandons the land reform program. Donor assistance and support heavily truncated from an annual average of US$138 million in the 1990s to US$39.9 million between 2000 and 2006 (Kabonga 2015).53 Consequently, the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) pulled out their aid in 2001 and 2003, terminating projects that were running and retrenching the human resource that was attached to projects (Gara 2009). It is not rhetoric to argue that donor aid has a strong affinity with dependency as it is being used as modern paraphernalia to ensure that Africans serve the wealthy nations’ needs. Unambiguously, the argument is plausible that donor aid is being used to subjugate Africans and perpetuate the wealthy nations’ privileged position. Those that dare threaten the interests of wealthy nations are reciprocally threatened that aid will be withdrawn. There is credibility in Matunhu (2011)54 argument that Africa is still politically, economically, and socially dependent on Europe and America—given the staggering amount of money that is being transferred into Africa as donor aid. The flow of aid to Africa rose upwards from US$6 billion in the 1960s to about US$46 billion in 2011 (Kabonga 2015).55 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2011) notes that Africa received the largest share of the Official Development Assistance amounting to US$28 billion. It is clear from this that most African countries rely on donor aid— for instance, countries such as Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Rwanda have half of their budgets supported by donor aid. It has also emerged in a study that was conducted by Kabonga (2015)56 entitled, The Impact of Donor Aid on Social Economic Development in Chegutu district (Zimbabwe), that donor aid creates dependency. Donor aid in the Chegutu district is antithetical to sustainability. A quantum of projects being patronized by donor aid is perpetuating dependency. The feeding scheme in the Chegetu district epitomizes dependency that is being created by donor aid heavily depends on the continued availability of foodstuffs from the donor country, and the activity will cease once exogenous support ceases. The refurbishment of schools is one other project that is being spearheaded by donor aid.

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Sustainability is only used as rhetoric to justify the giving of aid, which in the end benefits the benefactor as opposed to the recipients. The dependency on donor aid has become so pervasive to the extent that communities and villages are always clamoring for social aid. According to Nazneen (1993),57 aid from Western countries has resulted in ethnocentric solutions to local challenges. Aid resources have been dwindling rapidly, and the stampede for aid results subsequently from countries listening to advisors from the North, who inherently lack appreciation of local problems. The mere fact that Third World countries need aid compels them to listen to the advisors. Nazneen (1993)58 further submits that advisors are undoubtedly products of their own experiences and environments—no doubt some bad advice has been tendered by some culturally unaware and incompetent people. This however becomes antithetical and antagonistic to sustainable development.

Africa in the Global Security Complex Indeed, there is no gainsaying that Africa today struggles with a number of security issues ranging from food insecurity, the spread of infectious diseases to terrorism. The abovementioned has been blamed on some factors by different scholars and policymakers but prominent of such has been Acharya (1997), who highlights the weakness of the African state structures as a major source of Africa’s security dilemma (Acharya 1997: 302).59 Security issues became rife in the third world and particularly in Africa during the period of the Cold War. However, this coincided with the golden era of the state-centric view of security studies, and little attention was given to the third world as its security narrative did not fit into the superpower rivalries of communism and capitalism. For Acharya (1997), the Cold War period was marked by a preoccupation of security studies scholars with issues and problems of a particular the international system segment. In this period key concepts in international relations and national security assumed a grossly Eurocentric universe and the issues and experiences within other segments collectively labeled as the Third World, were not fully incorporated into the discourse. Attention to problems of regional instability in the Third World was given only to the extent that they could affect the superpower relationship (Acharya 1997: 301).60 The above was in blatant denial that Africa was the epicenter of international security issues during the cold-war period. As Acharya (1997: 301–302) enunciates during the Cold War, the vast majority of the world’s conflicts occurred in the Third World. Most of these conflicts were intrastate (antiregime insurrections, civil wars, tribal conflicts, and so on). A study by Istvan Kende estimated that of the I20 wars during the 1945–76 period, 102, were internal wars (including antiregime wars and tribal conflicts), while another study by Michael Kidron and Ronald Segal (covering the 1973–86

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period) found a mix of sixty-six internal wars and thirty border wars. The socalled regional conflicts in the Cold War period were thus essentially domestic in origin. Indeed, the roots of Third World instability during the Cold War period were to be found in weak state structures that emerged from the process of decolonization, that is, structures that lacked a close fit between the state’s territorial dimensions and its ethnic and societal composition. (Acharya 1997: 301–302)61

So, amidst the neglect of the Third-world in security studies and international security policy, the African leaders have on several occasions devised means to combat its security problems, leading to Partnerships like NEPAD and the framework of the AU (African Union) As has been established in the literature, the security issues of Africa have mostly fallen within the purview of other aspects of security which are not state-centric and the lack of capacity of the African post-independence states to guarantee development and accumulation of capital has further contributed to the woes of Africa when it comes to security.

NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) NEPAD was a product of the preoccupation of African leaders in the twentieth century with the development of the continent, which they considered pivotal to the security of Africa (Onuoah 2008: 229). Consequently, the African leaders such as Thabo Mbeki and others realized that if the continent is to matter in the international community in the twenty-first century, there is a need to rethink its development strategy (Omoweh 2003, in Onuoah 2008: 229).62 NEPAD initiatives were classified into long-term, short-term, and mediumterm objectives. The long-term objectives of NEPAD as contained in the NEPAD document 2001(Articles 174–188) are to: a. Eradicate poverty in Africa and place African countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development and thus halt Africa’s marginalization in the globalization process. b. Promote the role of women in all activities NEPAD’s short- and medium-term objectives include: a. Strengthening mechanisms for conflict prevention, management, and resolution at the sub-regional and continental levels and to ensure that these mechanisms are used to restore and maintain peace. b. Promoting and protecting Democracy and Human Rights in their respective countries and regions, by developing clear accountability,

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transparency, and participatory governance at the national and subnational levels. c. Restoring and maintaining macroeconomic stability, especially by developing appropriate standards and targets for fiscal and monetary policies and introducing an appropriate institutional framework to achieve these standards d. Revitalizing and extending the provision of education, technical training, and health services, with high priority given to addressing HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other infectious diseases. e. Building the capacity of the states in Africa to set and enforce the legal framework, and to maintain law and order (Onuoah 2008: 231–232).63 Looking at the above lofty objectives of NEPAD in hindsight, it is clear that the crafters of the document took into cognizance the fact that the security issues of Africa are development issues and, by extension, economic issues. This notion supports Buzan (1994: 90–102) in Stubbs and Underhill (1994)64 that there are interconnections between security and economic issues. This is because there should be a certain level of security to guarantee development while development also guarantees security. They are mutually reinforcing phenomena. The program’s crafters also identified the capacity building of African states as a major driver of the development of Africa and, by extension, the security of Africa. So, from the above, it is now pertinent to note that with all the virtuous objectives of NEPAD ranging from short term to long term, why has it not brought about the required development that would lead to security in Africa amidst the persistent insecurities in Africa today. The answer to the above question lies in the fact that the NEPAD is an old wine in a new bottle. However, NEPAD was portrayed as a product of African leaders’ initiative, notably presidents of South Africa, Algeria and Nigeria, that is Mbeki, Bouteflika and Obasanjo, respectively. It was discovered that the G8 capitalist countries accepted NEPAD because it was based on a suggestion and demand by PM Tony Blair of the United Kingdom (Onuoha 2008: 233).65

APSA: Towards Sustainable Security in Africa According to Williams (2011: 8), the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), denotes a complex set of interrelated institutions and mechanisms that function at the continental, regional, and national level. Nationally, there are AU member states, which house the majority of capabilities relevant to conflict management. Regionally, the APSA relies on the continent’s regional economic communities (RECs) (Williams 2011: 8).66 Furthermore, AU recognizes eight RECs and two mechanisms for coordinating the African Standby Force (the East Africa Standby Force coordination mechanism and the North African Regional Capability). The relationship

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between the AU and the RECs is supposed to be hierarchical but mutually reinforcing: the AU harmonizes and coordinates the activities of the RECs in the peace and security realm, in part via liaison officers from the RECs serving within the AU Commission in Addis Ababa. At the continental level, various institutions coordinated by the AU’s Peace and Security Council comprise the APSA (Williams 2011: 8).67 At this juncture, it is pertinent to note that even though the AU has come up with a peace and security Architecture for Africa alongside partnerships with external powers like the USA and the EU, why does insecurity persist in Africa? Africa has structured its development programs and security architectures to suit the standards and objectives of the West. This has been based on the Neoliberal order as established post world war two which was made by the West for the West (Kupchan 2014).68 The above means that the current global order as constituted cannot guarantee Africa’s security because such institutions like the world bank, WTO and the IMF are still structured to guarantee the economic security of the West and further protect the liberal international order. This explains why there have been differences in what constitutes the greatest security challenges that affect the world today. As Williams stated (2008: 8),69 one recent illustration of the politics of constructing threat agendas was the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change (2004), comprising sixteen eminent international civil servants and former diplomats. After much debate, the Panel’s report, A More Secure World, identified six clusters of threats exercising the world’s governments: economic and social threats, including poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation; interstate conflict; internal conflict, including civil war, genocide, and other large-scale atrocities; nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons; terrorism; and transnational organized crime (UN High-level Panel 2004: 2). It quickly became apparent, however, that there was no consensus as to which of these clusters should receive priority: some, mainly developed Western states, considered threats from terrorism and WMD to be most pressing, while many states in the developing world thought that most resources should be devoted to tackling armed conflict and economic and social threats (Williams 2008: 8).70 The above presents the argument of this paper in the light that since Africa continues to be dependent on the West for security partnerships and there is still no consensus on what constitutes security threats in Africa, such security threats would continue to persist until Africa owns its security imperatives and build a sustainable security architecture for itself. So, critical questions must be asked at this juncture. Should Africa continue structuring its security architecture in line with the liberal world order or carve out its niche in the changing global order? How is the global order changing and what is the reason for this change and what role can Africa play in it? How can Africa negotiate the bend and build a sustainable security Architecture taking into cognizance its peculiar challenges?

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Even so, the present security Architecture of Africa based on the APSA executed through the REC’s (Regional Economic Communities) is not sustainable. This is because the security architecture of Africa is seemingly established by Africans but funded by the West. This is evident in the AU-EU partnership and the AU Peace Fund, where foreign donors contribute the lion’s share. For example, during the African Mission in Burundi (AMIB), the EU contributed $23,609,756.00 while the United Kingdom gave $3,591,150.00 out of the total of $29,643,533.96. A similar development is apparent with the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), where the AU’s partners contributed $179,244,528.95 to the AMIS Special Trust Fund for the period 2003 to December 2005. For the AU Peace Fund, out of a total cash flow of $83,730,622.59 for the period June 1993 to December 2005, external donors contributed $57,280,651.67 (Aning 2014: 9).71 Therefore, the paper contends that there has never been a riper time for Africa to take a detour on its security architecture as the current one does not guarantee Africa’s sustainable security because it is funded by the West who have their vested interests. Indeed, the global order is changing as the structure of world power and the world economy is changing. The rise of China and other BRIC nations are in the middle of this changing global order as we now have several alternatives to the liberal international order. This can be corroborated by Kupchan (2014: 5),72 who posits that the world is in the midst of a defining change in the distribution of global power. During the Cold War era, the industrialized democracies consistently accounted for at least two-thirds of global output. Today, their share of economic output has fallen below 50%, and will continue to diminish in the years ahead. By 2050, according to Goldman Sachs, four of the top five economies will come from the developing world (China, India, Brazil, and Russia). Only the United States will still count; it will rank second, and its economy will be about half the size of China’s (Kupchansss 2014: 5).73 So, within this changing global order, how does Africa negotiate the bend? Given the opportunities that the changing global order brings and the frailty of the liberal world order, it is high time for Africa to start asserting itself in the international community by taking a stand and having a collective view of security, but this can’t be done without solving the structural problems of Africa’s Regionalism. Aning (2007: 1)74 identifies that the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and the African Union (AU) are undertaking promising steps to respond to some of Africa’s challenges, but Some of Africa’s core security challenges are (a) the legacy of historic notions of state sovereignty; (b) the rise of regionalism in the absence of common regional values; (c) the difficulty of managing hegemonic regionalism; (d) elitism in the form of regional integration occurring only at the level of leaders without permeating the consciousness of the people; (e) the creation of institutions with little or no capacity to manage them, resulting in a merely formal regionalism; and finally (f) the perception of regionalism as an externally driven project.

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The above problems, especially the problem of regionalism related to the absence of common values, present a major problem toward having a sustainable security Architecture. With common values, the AU would function better as states would be better motivated to contribute their quota of funding peacekeeping missions, and there would be a consciousness of having something to protect. The AfCFTA (Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement) presents a major opportunity to further strengthen the drive for a sustainable security architecture for Africa on two fronts: 1. It can improve trade among African countries, which would give them a sense of common interest and collective security of what to protect. 2. It also can improve an economic lot of African states hence giving them the ability to provide the conditions necessary for security and development. Also, the difficulty of managing hegemonic regionalism presents a major problem for building a sustainable security architecture. It has been established that a Hegemon or Hegemonic powers are vital to the success of regional integration. The hegemon would provide the incentives for integration and provide the public goods even to the extent of paying the financial costs of some major peacekeeping operations within the African region without dependence on the West. Also, the institutions of African security have been created with little or no capacity to manage them. In essence, therefore to negotiate the bend, Africa must structure a security Architecture that does not depend on the West for funding in order not to continue upholding the security dilemma of running a security architecture that is seemingly conceived by Africans but funded by the Western partners, because it is obvious that such ventures will not protect fully the security interests of Africa. The above situation also raises the question of “whose security” is guaranteed within the current security architecture. Indeed the global order has gone through a lot of changes both from the political and economic angles since the end of the second world war, and it will continue to be in flux, so it would be in the best rational interests of Africa in applying its agency toward putting Africa in a favorable position in terms of security. Hence reinforcing the mantra of African solutions to African problems. So, with the dwindling economic progress of the west and its ripple effect on the African peace fund, there is no better time for Africa to negotiate a bend than now.

Summary and Conclusion The paper argues that the real issues that cause insecurity in Africa have been neglected over the years because the security Architecture of Africa is

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highly dependent on Western donors and partners who view Africa’s security problems from the state-centric point of view. The paper went further to argue that for Africa to have a sustainable security architecture amidst a changing global order, there is a need for Africa to work on its regional integration that would improve trade between African states hence encouraging common values among African states that would, in turn, improve the incentive of African states to support its security architecture.

Recommendations It is against the backdrop of the foregoing discussions that the paper came up with the following recommendations: a. The AfCFTA (African Free Continental Agreement) signed by all 54 nations should be properly managed by the African states to improve trade among the states in the region which will be an incentive for security in Africa. This will also solve the problem of vertical integration of the African economy instead of horizontal integration. b. Africa should also strive to internalize and own its development agenda to carve out a niche for itself within the global order, which is in flux. c. There is a need for a regional hegemon to rise and guarantee the public goods for Africa’s regional security to thrive. Nigeria or South Africa could play that role effectively.

Notes 1. Aning, K. (2007). Africa: Confronting Complex Threats; Coping with the Crisis. Journal of International Peace Academy, Working Paper Series, 2007, p. 1. 2. Kupcahn, C. (2014). Reordering Order: Global Change and the Need for a New. London: Macmillan. 3. Garuba, C. (ed) (1998). Capacity Building for Crisis Management in Africa. Lagos: Gabumo Press. 4. Franke, B. (2008). Africa’s Evolving Security Architecture and the Concept of Multilayered Security Communities. Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 43, No. 313. 5. Shelton, G. (1997). Preventive Diplomacy and Peace Keeping. Journal of African Security Review, Vol. 6„ No. 5, pp. 234–245. 6. REUTERS. (2017). US Says to Continue Training Regional Troops Against Lord’s Resistance Army. www.reuters.com. 7. Tardy, T. (2005). EU-UN Cooperation in Peacekeeping: A Promising Relationship in a Constrained Environment. In Sven Biscop et al. (eds), The European Union and the United Nations—Partners in Effective Multilateralism. Institute for Security Studies. 8. Charbonneau, B. (2015). The Politics of Peacekeeping Interventions in Africa. In International Peacekeeping. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–8.

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9. Graza, R., and Oscar, M. (2010). Conflict, Peace and Security in Africa: An Assessment and New Questions After 50 Years of Independence. Being a paper presented at the seminar Peace, Conflict and Security in Africa, New challenges and Perspectives, Barcelona, November 3–5. 10. Franke (2008), op. cit. 11. Ibid. 12. Maloka, Eddy T. (2001). The South African “African Renaissance (AR)” Debate: A Critique. www.researchgate.net. 13. Engel, Ulf, and Porto, Joao Gomes. (2011). Africa’s New Peace and Security Architecture: Promoting Norms, Institutionalizing Solution. Journal of Conflict and Security Law, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 212–217. https://www. jstor.org/stable/26294720. 14. Besada, Hanny Gamil. (2010). Crafting an African Security Architecture: Addressing Regional Peace and Conflict in the 21st Century. Ashgate Publishing Limited. 15. Engel and Porto (2011), op. cit. 16. Besada (2010), op. cit. 17. Besada (2010), ibid., p. 9. 18. Besada (2010), ibid., p. 11. 19. Cilliers, J. (2008). The African Standby Force: An Update on Progress. http:// africacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/The-African-Standby-ForceAn-Update-on-Progress.pdf. 20. Cilliers, J. (2005). Towards a Continental Early Warning System for Africa. http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/papers/102/paper102.pdf. 21. Rothschild, Emma. (1995). What Is Security. Peace Palace Library. www.pea cepalacelibrary.nl. 22. Williams, P. (2008). Security Studies: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. 23. Dalby, S. (1997). Contesting an Essential Concept: Reading the Dilemmas in Critical Security Studies. Council of Foreign Relations. 24. Kolodziej, Edward A. (2005). Security and International Relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 25. Kolodziej, ibid. 26. von Clausewitz, Karl. (1976). On War. Vol. 1. www.gutenberg.org. 27. Acharya, A. (1997). The Periphery as the Core: The Third World and Security Studies. URI. http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP28-Acharya.pdf. 28. Williams (2008), op. cit., p. 6. 29. Williams (2008), ibid. 30. Williams, ibid., p. 5. 31. Rothschild (1995), op. cit. 32. William (2008), op. cit., p. 7. 33. Williams, ibid. 34. Williams, ibid. 35. Acharya (1997), op. cit. 36. Walt, Stephen M. (1991). The Renaissance of Security Studies. International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 2 (June 1991), pp. 211–239. https://www. jstor.org/stable/2600471. 37. Dalby (1997), op. cit. 38. Dalby, ibid. 39. Dalby, ibid.

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William (2008), op. cit., p. 4. Dalby (1997), op. cit., p. 4. Acharya (1997), op. cit., p. 300. Acharya (1997), ibid. Hoogvelt, A. (1997). Globalization and the Post-Colonial World. London: International Peace Academy. Hoogvelt (1997), ibid. Hoogvelt (1997), ibid. Sunkel, O. (1969). National Development Policy and External Dependence in Latin America. The Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, p. 23. Dos Santos, T. (1971). The Structure of Dependence. In K. T. Fann and Donald C. Hodges (eds), Readings in U.S. Imperialism. Boston: Porter Sargent, 226. Feraro, V. (1996). Dependency Theory: An Introduction. South Hadley, MA: Mount Holyoke College. Rodney, W. (1972). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Dar es Salaam: Tanzanian Publishing House. Matunhu, J. (2011). A Critique of Mordenization and Dependency Theories in Africa: Critical Assessment. African Journal of History and Culture, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 65–72. Matunhu (2011), ibid. Kabonga, I. (2015). Impact of Donor Aid on Socio-Economic Development: A Case of Chegutu District. Unpublished Masters Dissertation. Gweru: Midlands State University. Matunhu (2011), op. cit. Kabonga (2015), op. cit. Kabonga (2015), ibid. Nazneen, R. (1993). Impact of Foreign Aid in Developing Countries. MA Thesis. Montreal, QC: Concordia University. Nazneen (1993), ibid. Acharya (1997), op. cit., p. 302. Acharya (1997), op. cit., p. 301. Acharya (1997), op. cit., pp. 301–302. Onuoha, J. (2008). Beyond Diplomacy: Contemporary issues in International Relations. Nsukka-Nigeria: Great AP Express Publishers Ltd. Onuoha (2008), ibid., pp. 231–232. Stubbs, Richard, and Underhill, Geoffrey. (eds) (1994). Political Economy and the Changing Global Order. London: Macmillan. Onuoha (2008), p. 233. Williams, P. D. (2011). The African Union’s Conflict Management Capabilities. www.researchgate.net. Williams (2011), p. 8. Kupcahn (2014), op. cit. William (2008), op. cit., p. 8. William (2008), ibid. Aning, K., and Pokoo, J. (2014). Understanding the Nature and Threats of Drug Trafficking to National and Regional Security in West Africa. www.resear chgate.net. Kupcahn (2014), op. cit., p. 5. Kupcahn (2014), ibid. Aning (2007), op. cit., p. 1.

CHAPTER 38

The European Union and the African Regional Security Outlook in the Twenty-First Century: Gains, Challenges, and Future Prospects Mumo Nzau

Introduction The twenty-first century arrived with many and varied security challenges, opportunities, and dynamics on the globe. These realities meant different things for different regions. It is critical to note that during the 1990s, some necessary fundamental changes were taking place in the international system. The Cold War had come to an end, and the European Union was created in 1992.1 During that decade, Africa was plagued by many varied challenges, the most outstanding among them being the outbreak of deadly intra-state conflicts, state collapse, and genocide over and above the scourge of HIV/AIDS. The continent was engulfed in a civil war, as was the case in Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Chad, Angola, South Sudan, and Darfur, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic among others.2 Simultaneously, the threat of international terrorism and violent extremism was beginning to take shape in the globe, including the August 7, 1998 bombings on the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.3 It was against this premise that Africa sought to re-examine and redefine itself so as to be more active in resolving these emergent challenges on a formidable regional platform and to revitalize African agency in global affairs.4 This informed the dissolution of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the formation of the African Union (AU) in a process that began in M. Nzau (B) State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_38

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1999, culminating in the AU Constitutive Act in July 2000 before the AU was officially launched in July 2002.5 In 2001, The AU (then still OAU) also developed a framework for holistic development on the continent under the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), and further set up a mechanism for its implementation, in 2003; hence, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) premised on the spirit of African Renaissance and having “African Solutions to African Problems.”6 These developments ushered in a new era of Africa-EU cooperation, particularly in regional security, with a specific focus on Africa.7 This chapter examines the gains, challenges, and likely prospects for the regional security outlook in twenty-first-century Africa, with particular reference to the EU–Africa relations dynamic. The analysis setsoff with a brief retrospective account of Africa–EU Relations before teasing out several conceptual and theoretical debates on this subject area. It then critically analyzes the EU’s performance in enhancing regional security on the continent over this period, before “tying it together” with a discussion of the same prospect.

Africa–EU Relations in Retrospect At the core of Africa–EU relations are three critical factors: first, colonial legacies, second, socioeconomic disparity; and third, the structure of the international system. Africa and Europe have a long and deep historical relationship that goes many centuries back, one that may be described as “bitter-sweet.” Bitter, as African were subjected to immense suffering, displacement, and death in the hands of slavers, the slave trades, colonialist and other imperialists many of whom were of European origin or had European political, commercial or otherwise economic links and interests.8 Sweet, because Africans did also learn and benefit from European science and technology and various sociocultural and political institutions and processes. Thousands of Africans not only fought alongside Europeans in the First and Second World Wars but also traveled to the capitals of their European colonizers, where they furthered their education and gained many and varied professional skills.9 It was partly due to these experiences abroad that Africans gained exposure to the outer world and agitated for political independence among other sociopolitical freedoms in the 1940s through to the 1960s and after. However, fortunately, or unfortunately, Africa attained its independence at the height of the Cold War, a time in which Europe was divided in the middle along with a sharp “capitalism versus socialism” divide. These were also the early decades of European regional integration with the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957.10 This institutional framework that three decades later morphed into the European Union (EU) in 1992. Therefore, it is partly right to argue that Africa–EU cooperation is a rather contemporary and hence fairly recent phenomenon. However, though the Cold War convoluted direct and “freer” relations between Africa and Europe, it is essential to note that healthy bilateral ties continue to exist between the

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newly independent African countries with their former colonial powers, especially France; but also other European Troop and/or Personnel contributing countries such as Germany and the Netherlands. France, for instance, was involved in fighting jihadist groups together with Chadian and Malian troops in Operation Serval.11 It is also noteworthy that Africa had its regional integration framework through the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which was established on May 25, 1963, and later transformed itself decades later in 2002, into the African Union (AU).12 However, during the 1960s and 1970s, relations between Africa and the European Economic Community took place under a more comprehensive cooperation framework between the EEC and the developing countries under the banner of Africa Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, which was established in 1975. These were the years when the Less Developing Countries (LDCs) were agitating for establishing a New International Economic Order (NIEO), intending to yield more favorable gains in terms of trade, commerce, and exchange with the rest of the industrialized world. It was against this background that several historical agreements came into place in as far as ACP-European Cooperation relations were concerned. It was against this premise that economic cooperation between the ACP States and the EEC was formally initiated through the Yaounde Conventions in the 1960s and Lome Conventions (Lome I, 1975– 1980 and Lome II 1980–1985). It is these frameworks that culminated in the Cotonou Agreement, a Partnership Agreement between the European Union (EU) and the ACP States in June 2000, and was set to last the next two decades up until 2020.13 It is noteworthy that all these partnerships that focused on trade development cooperation, as well as political affiliation, have a strong African imprint- Yaounde is in Cameroon, Lome in Togo, and Cotonou, in Benin.14 Similarly, I contend herein that there has continued to be a strong EU imprint in the African regional security experience since the beginning of the twenty-first century, one that has registered considerable gains as well as challenges in equal measure. Nonetheless, this sphere of cooperation continues to hold many prospects as the two regions forge into the future.

Conceptual and Theoretical Premise The subject area of EU–Africa regional security cooperation can be conceptualized as a three-level process, such that if “security cooperation” is the outcome variable here, then three sets of pre-conditions would have to be concurrently attained. I argue that for EU-AU security cooperation to be successful, these three levels must function in harmony and be backed by political will and functional governance institutions. The first level constitutes states, which are the main actors when it comes to formal international interaction. As realists maintain,15 states engage in relations with others in

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order to enhance their interests either in immediate terms or in the longerterm strategic sense. According to liberal intuitionalists, though states have an insatiable appetite for self-preservation and power-driven self conceitedness, which makes them mostly unpredictable and invariably “untrustworthy,” it is nonetheless cooperation between states is still possible and enforceable.16 After all, when their interests converge, there is a likelihood that they can agree to cooperate on attaining them other than result in the use of hard power. This is the logic behind the next level- the region; hence Africa on the one hand and Europe on the other. The region is represented by institutions and/or structures (in this case, the AU and/or EU) formed by states in a particular region, upon making specific cost-benefits analyses before mutually and wilfully committing to certain sets of rules, procedures, processes, and goals—hence intra-regional cooperation. For the most part, the third level brings two or more regions (in this case, Africa and EU-Europe) together, thereby comprising yet another tier of inter-regional and/or cross-regional cooperation. For purposes of this analysis, the issue area under partnership here is security—a broad and multifaceted concept. The conceptualization and theorization of security have changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War. Before this period, security was understood purely in military-strategic terms. For this reason, much emphasis was laid on physical security and the ability to ward-off direct deadly attacks on governmental and/or regime assets and interests. This was the central thinking behind security throughout the Cold War period. Nonetheless, as the twenty-first century begun in earnest, the theoretical, conceptual bounds of the concept of security, was broadened to encompass more human-oriented security concerns; one that is sensitive to the governance-development nexus. However, this is not to say that the core military-strategic core aspects of the concept were thrown out the window. In fact, with the challenges that came with the 9/11 attacks and the global war against terrorism and violent extremism, states (and the state-led approach to security) have remained the main prime drivers and actors right from the policy and operational levels through to the institutional and tactical dynamics of the realm. Over this period, there has been more emphasis on a more liberalinstitutional cooperation environment as far as the prosecution and operationalization of everyday security matters is concerned. This is the context under which EU-AU regional security cooperation has been taking place. Indeed, in the twenty-first-century international system, “security has become a globalized issue that cannot be dealt with in isolation.” Yet, there is a critical question about how to conceive the intent, rationale, and directionality of the regional security plan at the conceptual level, as far as EU–AU relations are concerned. According to Bogoyoko and Marie, there are several essential premises against which to anchor such a discussion. First is the argument that African regional security can be conceived as “a field for re-legitimization of the European Commission [and hence, the EU],”17 in which the EU was now

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repositioning itself to the developmental challenges and realities of post-Cold War Africa; especially given the fact that as a key ODA actor in Africa, the EU had to be alive to the fact that development was not possible without a secure and well-governed African region. Second is the view that African security “is a field for testing out for the European Security and Defence Policy [ESDP].”18 Here, the contention by Bogoyoko and Marie is that since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the EU increasingly sought to engender practical import and operational legitimacy to the European Security Strategy, its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as well as it’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In this way, such regional security cooperation with Africa offered a valuable platform to validate these new and internationally oriented policies and procedures. After all, the EU had long engaged with Africa in earlier contextual settings mainly to do with trade and development assistance since the 1960s.19 It was making a comeback through international security initiatives that involved Africa, mostly under the global platform offered by UN-led peace and security undertakings on the continent. The third perspective is one that depicts African security as a “field of Europeanization of member-states security policies.” On this assertion,20 maintain that through EU common security policies on Africa, this, in fact, offers a valuable opportunity for EU member states, particularly those with deeper roots on the continent (say former colonial powers) to further coordinate, meet, and interact their defense and security policies and therefore further “Europeanize.” Nonetheless, this very idea may be also be construed as “EUAfrica regional security cooperation” that entrenches pro-European strategic interests (either unilateral or collective) in Africa and at times, to the disadvantage of African states as well. In this way, EU regional security policy in Africa could be construed as a conduit for entrenching pro-European extractive interests, which lack any tangible solution to the stack realities at the end of the day and challenges on the continent. Conversely, an institutional counterargument can also be made about African regional security arrangements under the broader AU umbrella. Hence the question of what Africa has done to build her governance institutions at the regional and sub-regional levels in order to not only effectively and favorably benefit the continent and its people from international security cooperation (in this case with the EU) but also sustainably engage with other global actors to the long-term gain of the African cause in the twenty-first-century international system, comes to mind.

The EU and Regional Security in Twenty-First-Century Africa: A Critical Analysis The events that followed the September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks on the United States, and hence the new global security outlook characterized by the Global War on Terror (GWT), led to EU to refocus its global strategy.21 On its part, Africa sought better institutions and processes that would enable her

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to overcome myriad governance, developmental, and security challenges that had long crippled the continent. In this way, the newly formed African Union (AU), which held its First Summit in February 2003, was seeking to redefine its place in the international development agenda as the globe look forward to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and after that, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).22 On the other hand, the EU’s strategic interests in Africa revolved around the following issues: First, to gain access to Africa’s rich natural resources and promising market potential; Second, working with Africa in the fight against violent extremism and terrorism; Third, being more active in assisting Africa to build and nurture her governance institutions and human rights; and finally, to generally work together with Africa, through the African Union (AU) in the pursuit of shared strategic interests in the international system.23 At this juncture, it is vital to examine the institutional frameworks within which EU-Africa security cooperation has been taking place over the past two decades. Determined to confront and sustainably overcome the continent’s security challenges, the AU, in its Lusaka Summit of 2001, proposed establishing a Peace and Security Council (PSC) Protocol. This marked the beginning of the formalization of what came to be known as the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), a broad framework that enables the AU to coordinate actions and processes regarding physical (as well as human security within the continent), as well the bonds of cooperation and partnership with international actors and/or stakeholders including the EU and the United Nations (UN), among others. APSA’s five key components include the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC), the Continental Early Warning System, the Military Staff Committee, the Panel of the Wise, and the African Peace Facility Fund.24 The PSC is the prime organ of the AU on matters of security in Africa. It is supposed to offer policy direction and coordinate various undertakings to prevent, manage and sustainably resolve intra-state and inter-state conflicts, deter and counter international terrorism, protect human rights and promote good governance through a common defense and security framework.25 On its part, the European Union has in place some critical multilateral frameworks that have incrementally created the space for engagement with various regions and actors in the international system, as far as global security is concerned. One of the key instruments that made this possible was the Lisbon Treaty of 1999, which gave rise to the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In 2004, the EU came up with an Action Plan for the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in Africa where it committed to building African Sub-Regional Organizations (SROs)/Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in undertaking various security operations and programs including planning, training, operational and support on matters to do with Demobilization, Disarmament, and Reintegration (DDR) and Security Sector Reforms (SSR). This framework gave rise to the EU Strategy for Africa in 2005 and the EU-Africa Strategic Partnership in 2007, and others thereafter.26

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It is also noteworthy that over and above these multilateral platforms, the EU has been involved in matters to do with peace and security in Africa through many other bilateral platforms, which affect the EU on the one hand, and mainly African countries on the other. Further, other platforms at the global level, where Africa-EU cooperation has continued to take place, are key among them being the G-8 and/or G-20, which comprises 19 leading donor states and the EU.

Gains Since the early 2000s, the EU has perhaps been the most outstanding security partner for African regional organizations, maybe only comparable to the UN. In fact, the EU accounts for at least 40% of the UN’s budget for peacekeeping. The EU responded to many crisis settings on the African scene through its various Common Foreign and Security Operations. From as far back as 2003, the EU responded to various intra-state conflict-related crises in Chad, Somalia, Guinea, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Sudan, among others. Between 2003 and 2014, the EU (in collaboration with the UN) played a collaborative, complementary, and actively supportive role in launching up to 16 missions in Africa. In this way, the EU has been involved in various peacekeeping and peacemaking operations in Africa. This is through conflict prevention, actual crisis management, peacebuilding, and reconstruction. In some cases, the EU has been involved in specifically targeted operations through bilateral arrangements with affected African countries. In cases, it responded to specific crises through one particular UN-mandated task. In contrast, in yet others, the EU assisted in the funding and coordinating various crisis negotiations at the political level.27 In 2003, under the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (SCDP), the French-led Operation Artemis was launched and tasked to support UN operations, secure humanitarian actions, and protect civilians following heavy fighting in Eastern DRC. Three years later, during the first-ever democratic elections in the Democratic Elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since independence, the EU also created the European Union Military Operation (the European Union Force, EUFOR) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in April 200628 to supplement UN efforts in overseeing and monitoring the process, under the then United Nations Mission Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), which morphed into the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).29 Around this period, the EU deployed three other Missions in the DRC that specifically aimed to strengthen the country’s governance institutions with specific reference to security sector reforms (SSR). These consisted of two police missions, EUROPOL Kinshasa and EUROPOL RD Congo, and the military-oriented mission, EUROSEC RD Congo, that were

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mainly involved in enhancing professionalism human rights in the administration of justice, law and order sector as well as defense reforms in the DRC. Further, in 2018, the EU committed 77 million Euros toward emergency humanitarian aid and development assistance in the DRC.30 Over and above the regional insecurity crises sparked by deadly intra-state conflicts in Africa, several mutual severe threats have been at play, especially in the context of piracy and terrorism. Between 2005 and 2010, the piracy menace (more so off the Eastern Africa coastline) was rampant, thereby affecting international trade, maritime commerce, and exchange. In December 2008, the EU deployed a combined Naval Force (UNAVFOR), also known as ATALANTA. Its mandate, which lasted through 2010, was to prevent, deter and protect seaborne vessels off the coast of Somalia from pirates as well as to ensure the safe passage of humanitarian supplies destined for Somalia and other parts of the Horn of Africa. In this operation, the lead EU states included Spain, the UK, Greece, Germany, and France. During this period, EU anti-piracy operations were also supplemented by NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield, which was launched in 2009.31 Besides, these efforts also involved the US-Naval Forces initiative known as Joint Task Force (JTF) 151.32 At another level, the EU has been actively involved in supporting the operationalization of the Africa Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).33 In 2004, the EU established the African Peace Facility (APF) under the European Development Fund (EDF). Between 2004 and 2015, various peace and security operations under the APSA umbrella received at least 1.703 billion Euros in contractual funds and an additional 1.594 billion Euros through other funding platforms.34 Over the past decade, Africa in general and many sub-regions (such as the Sahel, Northern Africa, and the Greater Horn of Africa) on the continent particular have emerged as a significant geopolitical security threat to the EU member states. This threat revolves around three intricately interrelated issue areas-terrorism, illegal migration, and organized crime.35 International Terrorist groups such as the Al-Shabaab in Somalia (and the Greater Horn), Boko Haram (in West Africa and the broader Lake Chad Basin), as well as Islamist and jihadist groups (such as AQIM, MUYAO, and Ansar Dine) in other parts of the Greater Sahel and Northern Africa, have been linked to yet other global terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iran and Syria (ISIS), which have been responsible coordinated terror attacks (including Lone Wolf Attacks) in Europe and Africa alike.36 EU remained active in funding various aimed at countering terrorism and violent extremism in Africa. One such broad mandate setting is the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which commenced in 2007. Between 2014 and 2016, for example, AMISOM received at least 900 million Euros from the EU, mainly earmarked to facilitate the remuneration of troops serving in the mission.37 Under APSA structures, mainly the RSOs and RECs, the AU was engaged in Missions in the Central African Republic, Mali, and in the broader Lake

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Chad Basin.38 For example, in addressing the threat posed by Islamist insurgent groups in the conflict in northern Mali, in 2012, the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS) established the African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA), which began in September 2013. Similarly, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) established the Multinational Force of Central Africa (FOMAC), which later transformed itself into the African-led International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) in 2013. In 2015, the AU, through the Lake Chad Basin Commission, also created the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) for purposes of tackling the threat posed by Boko Haram in the sub-region. All these Missions (which have increasingly grown complex and protracted) bore not only an imprint of EU (and UN) support but also the active operational presence of EU countries such as France, Britain, and the Netherlands, among others.39 The EU also set up two capability building missions in the Sahel region (namely, EUCAP Sahel Niger in 2012; and EUCAP Sahel Mali in 2012) through the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) framework under which the EU came up with the EU Strategy for Security and Development in the Sahel in 2011. Both missions aim to train civilian and military actors in the security and/or defense establishments in both countries (Niger and Mali) to better combat terrorism, violent extremism, and organized crime. The EUCAP Sahel Niger Mandate was extended to September 2020, while that of EUCAP Sahel Mali was extended to January 2021.40 Elsewhere, the EU Training Mission- Somalia (EUTM-Somalia), which has been in operation since 2010 (to present, through mandate extensions), has for a decade now offered training support to AMISOM and Somalia Federal Government troops in order to improve the security and development capacity in Somalia.41 The EU also sought to enhance Somalia’s maritime capability through the EU Mission on Regional Maritime Capability Building in the Horn of Africa (also codenamed EUCAP Nestor), which in 2016 transformed itself into EUCAP Somalia, to support Somalia in enhancing maritime security under a mandate that was extended to December 2020.42 Similarly, the EU Training Mission-Mali (EUTM-Mali), which has an active troop capacity of up to 700, has been in operation in the Sahel sub-region since 2012 (to present, through mandate extensions) to provide the operational capacity to the G5 Sahel countries in order to neutralize the destabilizing effect of jihadist rebel groups in the region. EUTM-Mali is in its Fifth Mission Mandate (2020– 2024).43 In 2015, the EU also established the European Military Advisory Mission to the Central African Republic (also known by the French acronym, EUMAM RCA), which succeeded the European Task Force in the Central African Republic (known by the French acronym, EUFOR RCA).44 The many theatres of conflict, poor governance, poverty, climate change, and terrorism in twenty-first-century Africa have had a severe manifestation of other parts of the globe, mainly Europe. One such embodiment is that to do with illegal migration from Africa into Europe, in which untold

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human suffering and deaths have taken place, as thousands embarked on dangerous attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe in the hands of dangerous smugglers’ and/or traffickers’ syndicate networks based both in African and EU countries.45 As part of a comprehensive EU response to this threat, the EU established the European Union Border Assistance Mission in Libya (EUBAM Libya) was launched in May 2013 to enable Libya to better manage its borders as part of a more exhaustive post-conflict reconstruction process.46 In April 2015, the EU formed the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean (EUNAVFOR MED), which was later renamed Operation Sophia, which has since sought to support the naval operations of various African countries to prevent and mitigate the threat. In September 2019, the EU extended its mandate to March 2020.47 Other EU efforts toward regional security have been directed at countering organized crime, including money laundering, cybercrime as well as trafficking in humans, illegal arms and light weapons and narcotics, as well as illegal trade in wildlife endangered species of flora and fauna.48 As far as the general realm of human security is concerned, the EU (through the European Commission) has stood out. The European countries collectively account for at least half of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding to Africa. The EU, therefore, continues to features strongly as a key international partner in terms of governance, joint development initiatives, governance, and human rights on the African continent.49 In this direction, EU programs have also been keen to address health, energy, environment, food, and economic security in Africa.50 This is in addition to matters of governance and economic development in Africa. For instance, the EU was active in supporting regional governance and development agendas in Africa, such as the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as well Africa Agenda 2063.51

Challenges While considerable mutual gains have been realized through Africa-EU cooperation, these processes have not been without challenges. Over the past few years now, emergent world powers of the “BRICS fame” appear to have aroused a whole new level of strategic interests in the continent, popularly termed the “Second Scramble” for Africa.52 This has brought into sharp focus what is seen as “unhealthy competition,” which could be detrimental to future regional peace, security, and stability in Africa. Some commentators have maintained that if Africa is not organized as more comprehensive regional security and the developmental bloc, the “olden” pervasive extractive and unequal relationships might result from this new-found clamor for African resources, labor, and markets. Another challenge revolves around the resilience of insurgencies and terrorism, among other forms of violent extremism on the continent, despite EU–Africa efforts in addressing the vice. While the problem of terrorism was for a long time seen as mainly affecting northern, western,

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and eastern Africa, today there are concerns about continued recruitment into violent extremism in practically every part of the continent, including central and southern Africa, as exemplified by the developments in the Cabo Delgado Province in northern Mozambique.53 Furthermore, qualms have been raised in various academic and policy circles over the effectiveness of EU counterterrorism operations in Africa. A number of standalone EU military operations in Western Africa and the Sahel have been variously criticized for being selective, slow, and inconsistent. In some instances, such relations have been construed to serve narrow regime survival interests borne out of bilateral deals with particular European countries.54 Also, the question of illegal migration from Africa to Europe has remained thorny as far as EU–Africa security cooperation is concerned. This issue has brought the “Libyan question” into sharp focus, with critics arguing that Libya’s case is a manifestation of a poorly handled security and humanitarian crisis in the twenty-first century, and with Europe at the center of it. In 2011, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 1973, which bestowed on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)— whose majority membership comprises EU countries —the mandate to intervene directly in Libya in order to protect civilians from likely atrocities in the hands of the Gaddafi regime, at the height of the Arab Spring phenomenon of 2010/2011.55 What was initially touted as a promising Responsibility to Protect (R2P) initiative ended up to be a long-drawn humanitarian and security crisis that has dragged for close to a decade later.56 Yet Africa and its leadership also had its misgivings and inadequacies.57 For instance, Ottosen noted in 2010 that: “NEPAD and particularly APRM, was embraced by the EU as an expression of Africa’s commitment to democracy and good governance and since then has remained high on the EU’s external relations agenda. But today, almost nine years later, NEPAD has shown few results, and few countries have fully implemented the APRM.” 58 Yet over the past decade (2010–2020), Africa has continued to grapple with broad human security governance and developmental challenges. While some of these challenges are partly due to lack of political commitment and favorable prioritization of issues on the part of African countries, the continent has in many respects failed to live up to its expectations as a result of being trapped in a state of macroeconomic, logistical and technological incapability.59 Hence, the many end-objectives of Africa’s peace and security architecture (APSA) and the wider rubric charted out in Africa Agenda 2063 have remained underoperationalized and/or unattained, and this need not be said to be wholesome “an EU problem,” but rather an African one.60 Adebajo61 notes that there is a significant difference between AU and EU power structures. He contends that the sharing of power in the EU is institution-based, while in the AU, it is leaders-centered. Also, AU’s ambitions and end-objectives have in several respects appeared to be unmatched by actual capabilities on the parts the structures have so far been tasked to attain.62

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Lately, there seems to be a global “retreat to nationalism” with events such as Brexit and countries inward-looking perspectives on immigration, trade protectionism, and even race relations. There is a new line of thought among some countries that bilateral cooperation informed by unilateral initiatives could yield more deals than cumbersome processes that come with collective action.63 Subsequently, as the second decade of the twenty-first century comes to a close, both state (and non-state) actors are caught up in an emergent tussle between nationalism on the one hand, and regionalism and/or globalism, on the other. The experience with the COVID-19 Pandemic, for example, brought these perspectives into sharp focus as there was no straightforward set-out approach across countries and/or regions in responding to the crisis, especially at its onset.64 These emergent dynamics are likely to pose a number of policy and operational challenges as far as Africa–EU regional security cooperation is concerned.65

Future Prospects In the EU’s own words, “The ties that bind Africa and the European Union are broad and deep as a result of history, proximity and shared interests. Africa, in all its diversity, is home to over 1 billion people. It boasts the youngest, fastest-growing middle-class in the world. Africa’s young people have the potential to transform the continent’s political, economic, and social prospects….African women are key drivers of sustainable growth, development, and peace. Responding to their aspirations will determine the future of the continent….We need to partner with Africa, our twin continent, to tackle together the challenges of the twenty-first century and to further our common interests and future.”66 This outlook is echoed in the continent’s aspirations as contained in the Africa Agenda 2063 Framework. As propounded by the framework, Africa’s aspirations underscore the centrality of security, governance, women, and youth, and global partnerships to Africa’s long-term development plan. “Aspiration 3” points to “an Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law” 67 while “Aspiration 4” speaks to “a peaceful and secure Africa.”68 “Aspiration 6” looks forward to an “Africa whose development is people-driven- relying on the potential of the African people, especially its women and youth,”69 and “Aspiration 7 ” presents “Africa as a strong, united, resilient and influential global partner.”70 Further, in the framework’s “First Ten-Year Implementation Plan, 2014–2024,” one of the core priority flagship projects has to do with “silencing the guns by 2020.”71 Many of these common goals and shared aspirations are yet to be met. The threats posed by complex insurgencies, terrorism, and other forms of violent extremism as well as assorted forms of organized international crimes remain real and imminent not only in Europe and elsewhere on the globe but also in Africa. Similarly, the year 2020 has since arrived, and the guns are not

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silenced yet. From the foregoing, both Africa and the EU are not short of an ideal vision about what their cooperation is about, why, and how. The legal, policy, and institutional framework necessary to engender regional security and development through Africa-EU cooperation is well in place. Similarly, much more could be done (and hence, much more room for improvement) through mutual Africa-EU security cooperation and thereby enhance and sustain regional security in twenty-first-century Africa.

Conclusion This chapter set-out to examine the gains, challenges, and likely prospects for the regional security outlook in twenty-first-century Africa, with specific reference to EU–Africa relations dynamic. The analysis began by tracing Africa–EU Relations’ historical background before assessing some conceptual and theoretical debates on this subject area; before critically analyzing the EU’s performance in enhancing regional security on the continent over this period. The discussion has revealed an EU imprint in the African regional security experience since the beginning of the twenty-first century, one that has registered considerable gains and challenges in equal measure. This sphere of cooperation continues to hold many prospects as the two regions forge into the future. However, to gain in absolute and sustainably gainful terms from such a relationship in the future, Africa must invest in an honest, wilful, and committed political environment, one that will live up to these common aspirations and make them a reality.

Notes 1. Council of the European Communities and the Commission of the European Communities. Treaty on European Union. Luxemburg, Office of the Publications of the European Communities, 1992. 2. Nzau, Mumo. “Inter-African Diplomacy and the Crises of the Post Cold War Period.” East African Journal of Humanities and Sciences. 7, no 2 (2007): 2. 3. Adala, Tom and Mumo Nzau. “A Critical Review of State Responses to Counter-Terrorism and Violent Extremism in Kenya and the Wider Eastern Africa Region,” in Mustafa Yusuf Ali, Mumo Nzau and Hassan Khannenje. Eds. The Changing Dynamics of Terrorism and Violent Extremism: An Analysis. (Volume I). Nairobi, HORN, 2018: 224–250. 4. Chipaike, Ronald and Mtatarutse H. Knowledge. “The Question of African Agency in International relations.” Cogent Social Sciences. 4, no 1 (2018): 6. 5. African Union Commission. African Union Handbook. Addis Ababa, AU Commission, 2020: 15. 6. Ibid, p. 110. 7. Koivula, Tommi and Heidi Kauppinen. Promoting Peace and Security in Africa. Helsinki, Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, National Defence College. Research Reports, Series 2, no. 34. May, 2006; Abebayo, Adeyeke. The EU and Africa: Fro Eurafrique to Afro-Europa. London, C. Hurst & Co. Ltd, 2012: ix.

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8. Leroy, Marcel. Africa and the EU: Perspectives and Prospects. Stockholm, IDEA, 2009: 3. 9. Schraeder, J. Peter. African Politics and Society: A Mosaic for Transformation. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2004: 90. 10. Erik Jones, Anand Menon and Stephen Weatherhill. Eds. The Oxford Handbook of the European Union. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012: 95–96. 11. Deneckere, Matthias, Ashley Neat and Volker Hauk. The Future of EU Security Sector Assistance: Learning from Experience. Maastricht ECDPM, 2020: 5–23. 12. African Union Commission. African Union Handbook. Addis Ababa, AU Commission, 2019: 14. 13. Bossyut, Jean. ACP-EU Relations Beyond 2020: Engaging the Future of Perpetuating the Past? Maastricht, ECDPM, 2017. 14. Dodo, Mahamat K. “The Securitization of China’s Engagement with Africa: EU Energy Security Strategy.” Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences. 5, no 4 (2014): 748–749. 15. Goldstein, S. Joshua and Jon C. Pevehouse. International Relations. New York, Pearson, 2006: 46. 16. D’Anieri, Paul. International Politics: Power and Purpose in Global Affairs. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012: 75. 17. Bagoyoko, Niagale and Marie, Gilbert V. The European Union in Africa: The Linkage Between Security, Governance and Development from an Institutional Perspective. IDS Working Paper No 84. Brighton UK, Institute of Security Studies, University of Essex, May 2007: 10. 18. Ibid, 16. 19. Kiejzer, Niels, DIE and Alfonso Medinilla. Can the EU Priotise Both the African Union and the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Group? Brussels: DIE, ECDPM, DDRI and ODI, 2017. 20. Bagoyoko and Marie. Op. Cit.: 22. 21. Biscop, Sven and Jan Joel Anderson. The EU and the European Strategy: Forging a Global Europe. New York, Routledge. 2008. 22. The AU Constitutive Act was adopted in Lome Togo in July 2000, after which a Summit was held in Lusaka, Zambia where the plan to launch the African Union was adopted. Subsequently, the AU was founded on 26th May 2001 in Addis Ababa and formally launched on 9th July, 2002 in Durban South Africa. 23. Scheipers, Sibylle and Daniella Sicurelli. “Empowering Africa: Normative Power in EU-Africa Relations.” Journal of European Public Policy. 15, no 4 (2008): 607. 24. Vines, Alex. “A Decade of African Peace and Security Architecture.” International Affairs. 89, no 1 (2013): 96. 25. Assanvo, William and Christian E.B. Pout. The European Union (EU): Africa Peace and Security Environments’ Champion? Paris, Foundation for Strategic Research, November 2007. 26. Vines, Alex. “Rhetoric from Brussels and Reality on the Ground: The EU and Security in Africa.” International Affairs. 85, no 5 (2010): 1092–1093. 27. Brosig, Malte. “EU Peacekeeping in Africa: From Functional Niches to Interlocking Security.” International Peacekeeping. 21, no 1 (2014): 74–80. 28. Vlassenroot, Koen and Vleriae Arnould. EU Policies in the Democratic Republic of Congo. London, The Human Security Group, 2016: 9.

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29. Chafer, Tony and Gordon Cumming. Beyond Fashoda: Anglo-French Security Cooperation in Africa Since St. Malo. International Affairs. 86, no 5 (2010): 1129–1147. 30. European Network for Central Africa. EU Support to Security Sector Reform in the DRC: Towards an Improved Governance of Congolese Security Forces. Brussels, EURAC, 2017: 22. 31. Kaunert, Dr. Christian and Dr. Kamil Zwolski. “Somalia Versus Captain ‘Hook’: Assessing the EU’s Security Actorness in Countering Piracy Off the Horn of Africa. Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 27, no 3 (2014): 593–612. 32. Chalk, Peter. “Piracy off the Horn of Africa: Scope, Dimensions, Causes and Responses.” Brown Journal of World Affairs. 16, no. 2 (2020): 89–108. See also; Soufis, Evangelos. Case Study of European Union Anti-Piracy Operation “Naval Force Somalia,” Successes, Failures and Lessons Learned for the Hellenic Navy. Unpublished MA Thesis, submitted to the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, September 2012. 33. Pirozzi, Nicoletta. “EU Support to African Security Architecture: Funding and Training Components.” EUISS Occasional Papers No 76, February, 2009. 34. Engel, Ulf. 2016. “Networked Security Between “Restraint” and “Responsibility”? Germany’s Security Policy Towards Africa.” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies. 17, no 2 (2016): 57. 35. Stambol, E. Magdalena. “EU Initiatives Along the ‘Cocaine Routes’ to Europe: Fighting Drug Trafficking and Terrorism by Proxy?” Small War and Insurgencies. 27, no 2 (2016): 309. 36. Nzau, Mumo. 2020. “The Political Economy of Terrorism and CounterTerrorism in Twenty-First-Century Africa: A Critical Evaluation.” In Samuel Ojo Olurontoba and Toyin Falola. Eds. The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy. Switzerland AG: Palgrave Macmillan. 37. Tardy, Thierry. The EU and Africa: A Changing Security Partnership. European Institute for Security Studies, 2016: 2. 38. European Union External Action Service (EEAS). Strengthening EU Security and Defence. Brussels, EEAS, 2020. Accessed from: https://eeas.ueaopa.eu, on 27th July 2020, at 1905 h EA.T. 39. Piccolino, Gulia and Stephanie Minou. “The EU and Regional Integration in West Africa: Effects on Conflict Resolution and Transformation.” Working Paper Series. Pretoria: Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation, University of Pretoria, no 5 (February, 2014). 40. European Union External Action Service (EEAS). The EUCAP Niger Civilian Mission. Brussels, EEAS, 2016. Accessed from: https://www.eeas.europa.csdp, on 25th July 2020, at 1850 h EA.T. 41. Ehrhart, Hans-Georg and Kerstin Petretto. The EU and Somalia: CounterPiracy and the Question of a Comprehensive Approach. Hamburg, European Free Alliance, 2012: 43. 42. European Union External Action Service (EEAS). European Union Capability Building Mission in Somalia (EUCAP). Accessed from: https://www.eucapsom/eu/fact-sheet/, on 28th July 2020, at 0940 h EA.T. 43. European Union External Action Service (EEAS). European Union Training Mission-Mali (EUTM Mali). Accessed from: https://www.eutmmali.eu/factsheet/, on 28th July 2020, at 1000 h EA.T.

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44. Council of the EU. Central African Republic: Council Establishes a Civilian Advisory Mission. Press Release, 9th December 2019: Accessed from https: https://www.concilium.europa/, on 28th July 2020, at 1000 h EA.T. 45. Cross, Hannah M. The EU Migration Regime and West African Clandestine Migrants. Journal of Contemporary European Research. 5, no 2 (2009): 171– 187. See also, Mouan, Liliane, Simona Massey and Cameron Thibos. After the ‘Migration Crisis’: How Europe Works to Keep African in Africa. Accessed from https://www.opendemocracy.net, on 28th July 2020, at 1100 h EA.T. 46. European Union External Action Service (EEAS). EU Integrated Assistance Border Mission in Libya (EUBAM Libya). Brussels, EEAS, 2015. Accessed from: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/csdp, on 27th July 2020, at 1900 h EA.T. 47. European Union External Action Service (EEAS). European Union Naval Force- Mediterranean (EUNAVFOR MED/Operation Sophia). Accessed from: http://www.operationsophia.eu, on 28th July 2020, at 1115 h EA.T. 48. Deneckere, Neat and Hauk. The Future of EU Security Sector Asistance: Learning from Experience. Op. Cit.:10. 49. Sicurelli, Daniella. Competing Models of Peacekeeping: The Role of the EU and China in Africa. A Paper Presented at the Fifth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics. Porto: Portugal: 23–26 June, 2010. 50. Rupiya, Martin R. “Food Aid: The Implications for Food Security in Africa.” Africa Security Review. 13, no 1 (2004): 83–89; Akokpari, John. The Political Economy of Human Insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Tokyo, Japan: Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization, V.F.R. Series. No. 431, October, 2007. See also; Wiggins, Steve and Sharada Keats. “Current State of Food Security in Africa and the Africa-EU Partnership on the Millennium Development Goals.” Food Security in Africa: Paper for Africa-EU Partnership on MDGs. London: Future Agricultures Consortium & Overseas Development. March, 2009; and Carius, Alexander. Climate Change and Security in Africa: Challenges and International Policy Context. A Paper Presented by the United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA). Berlin, 17–18 December, 2009. 51. African Union Commission. Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. Addis Ababa, 2015: 3–4. 52. Okeke, N Chris. “The Second Scramble for Africa’s Oil and Mineral Resources: Blessing or Curse?” The International Lawyer. 42, no 1 (2008): 196. 53. See for instance: BBC. Mozambique: Is Cabo Delgado the Latest Islamic State Outpost? BBC, 5th May 2020. Accessed from https://www.bbc.com, on 28th July 2020 at 1210 h E.A.T. 54. Dworkin, Anthony. Europe’s New Counter-Terror Wars. London, European Council on Foreign Relations. ECFR/192, October 2016. Accessed from: https://www.ecfr.eu, on 9th July 2020, 1215 h, E.A.T. 55. Dembinski Mattias and Theresa Reinold. Libya and the Future of the Responsibility to Protect: African and European Perspectives Frankfurt, Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt, 2011: 2. Accessed from: https://www.soar.info, on 9th July 2020, 1100 h, E.A.T. 56. Helly, Demien. Africa, the EU and R2P: Towards Pragmatic International Subsidiary? IPG, no 1(2009): 45–58. 57. Miranda, Valerie V., Niccoleta Pirozzi and Kai Schaffer. Towards a Stronger Africa-EU Cooperation on Peace and Security: The Role of African Regional

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58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

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Organizations and Civil Society. Rome, Istituto Afrari Internazionalli. IAI Working Papers, no 12, 2012. Accessed from: http://www.iai.ti, on 9th July 2020, 1030 h, E.A.T. Ottosen, L. Hafdan. NEPAD’s Contribution to Democracy and Good Governance in Africa. Stockholm, International IDEA, 2010. Engel, “Networked Security Between “Restraint” and “Responsibility”? Op. Cit.: 57. Anyidoho, K. Henry. “African Union’s Evolving Crisis Management Capabilities.” In Kouvula, Tommi and Heidi Kauppinnen. Eds. Promoting Peace and Security in Africa: Is the European Union Up to the Challenge?. Contributions to the IX Soumenlina Seminar on European Union Crisis Management Crisis in Africa; National Defence College, Helsinki, 2006: 81. Abebajo, Adeyeke. The EU and Africa: Fro Eurafrique to Afro-Europa. London, C. Hurst & Co. Ltd, 2012. Assanvo and Pout. The European Union (EU): Africa Peace and Security Environments’ Champion? Op. Cit.: 11. Fisher, Jonathan. Horn of Africa Security Dialogue: Mapping ‘Regional Security’ in the Greater Horn of Africa: Between National Interests and Regional Cooperation. Addis Ababa, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2014. Biscop, Sven. “Coronavirus and Power: The Impact on International Politics” Security Policy Brief No 126 (March, 2020): 1–4. See also: Kiejzer, Niels, DIE and Alfonso Medinilla. Can the EU Priotise Both the African Union and the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Group? Brussels: DIE, ECDPM, DDRI and ODI, 2017: 2. European Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. “Towards a Comprehensive Strategy with Africa.” Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council. Brussels: EU, 2020: 1. African Union Commission. Africa Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. Addis Ababa: AU Commission, 2015: 7. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

References Abebajo, Adeyeke. The EU and Africa: From Eurafrique to Afro-Europa. London, C. Hurst & Co. Ltd, 2012. Adala, Tom and Mumo Nzau. “A Critical Review of State Responses to CounterTerrorism and Violent Extremism in Kenya and the Wider Eastern Africa Region”. In Mustafa Yusuf Ali, Mumo Nzau and Hassan Khannenje. Eds. The Changing Dynamics of Terrorism and Violent Extremism: An Analysis. (Volume I). Nairobi, HORN Press, 2018: 224–250. African Union Commission. Africa Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. Addis Ababa: AU Commission, 2015. African Union Commission. African Union Handbook, 2019. Addis Ababa, AU Commission, 2019.

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African Union Commission. African Union Handbook, 2020. Addis Ababa, AU Commission, 2020. Akokpari, John. The Political Economy of Human Insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Tokyo, Japan: Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization, V.F.R. Series No 431, October, 2007. Anyidoho, K. Henry. “African Union’s Evolving Crisis Management Capabilities.” In Kouvula, Tommi and Heidi Kauppinnen. Eds. Promoting Peace and Security in Africa: Is the European Union Up to the Challenge?. Contributions to the IX Soumenlina Seminar on European Union Crisis Management Crisis in Africa; National Defence College, Helsinki, 2006: 81. Assanvo, William and Christian E.B. Pout. The European Union (EU): Africa Peace and Security Environments’ Champion?. Paris, Foundation for Strategic Research, November 2007. Bagoyoko, Niagale and Marie, Gilbert V. The European Union in Africa: The Linkage between Security, Governance and Development from an Institutional Perspective. IDS Working Paper No 84. Brighton UK, Institute of Security Studies, University of Essex, May 2007. BBC. Mozambique: Is Cabo Delgado the latest Islamic State Outpost? BBC, 5th May 2020. Accessed from https://www.bbc.com; on 28th July 2020 at 1210hrs E.A.T. Biscop, Sven and Jan Joel Anderson. The EU and the European Strategy: Forging a global Europe. New York, Routledge. 2008. Biscop, Sven. “Coronavirus and Power: The Impact on International Politics” Security Policy Brief No 126 (March, 2020): 1–4. Bossyut, Jean. ACP-EU relations beyond 2020: Engaging the Future of Perpetuating the Past? Maastricht, ECDPM, 2017. Brosig, Malte. “EU Peacekeeping in Africa: From Functional Niches to Interlocking Security.” International Peacekeeping. 21, no 1 (2014): 74–90. Carius, Alexander. Climate Change and Security in Africa: Challenges and International Policy Context. A Paper Presented by the United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA). Berlin, 17–18 December, 2009. Chafer, Tony and Gordon Cumming. “Beyond Fashoda: Anglo-French Security Cooperation in Africa Since St. Malo”. International Affairs. 86, no 5 (2010): 1129–1147. Chalk, Peter. “Piracy Off the Horn of Africa: Scope, Dimensions, Causes and Responses.” Brown Journal of World Affairs. 16, no. 2 (2020): 89–108. Council of the EU. Central African Republic: Council Establishes a Civilian Advisory Mission. Press Release, 9th December 2019: Accessed from https: www.concilium. europa/ on 28th July 2020, at 1000hrs E.A.T. Council of the European Communities and the Commission of the European Communities. Treaty on European Union. Luxemburg, Office of the Publications of the European Communities, 1992. Cross, Hannah M. The EU Migration Regime and West African Clandestine Migrants. Journal of Contemporary European Research. 5, no 2 (2009): 171–187. D’Anieri, Paul. International Politics: Power and Purpose in Global Affairs. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012. Dembinski Mattias and Theresa Reinold. Libya and the Future of the Responsibility to Protect: African and European Perspectives. Frankfurt, Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt, 2011. Accessed from: www.soar.info, on 9th July 2020, 1100hrs, E.A.T.

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Kiejzer, Niels, DIE and Alfonso Medinilla. Can the EU Priotise Both the African Union and the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Group? Brussels: DIE, ECDPM, DDRI and ODI, 2017. Koivula, Tommi and Heidi Kauppinen. Promoting Peace and Security in Africa. Helsinki, Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, National Defence College. Research Reports, Series 2, no. 34. May, 2006. Leroy, Marcel. Africa and the EU: Perspectives and Prospects. Stockholm, IDEA, 2009. Miranda, Valerie V., Niccoleta Pirozzi and Kai Schaffer. Towards a Stronger Africa-EU Cooperation on Peace and Security: The Role of African Regional Organizations and Civil Society. Rome, Istituto Afrari Internazionalli. IAI Working Papers, No. 12, 2012. Accessed from: http://www.iai.ti, on 9th July 2020, 1030hrs, E.A.T. Mouan, Liliane, Simona Massey and Cameron Thibos. After the ‘Migration Crisis’: How Europe Works to Keep African in Africa. Accessed from https://www.opende mocracy.net. on 28th July 2020, at 1100hrs EA.T. Nzau, Mumo. “Inter-African Diplomacy and the Crises of the Post Cold War Period.” East African Journal of Humanities and Sciences. 7, no 2 (2007):118. Nzau, Mumo. 2020. “The Political Economy of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Twenty-First-Century Africa: A Critical Evaluation.” In Samuel Ojo Olurontoba and Toyin Falola. Eds. The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy. Switzerland AG: Palgrave Macmillan. Okeke, N Chris. “The Second Scramble for Africa’s Oil and Mineral Resources: Blessing or Curse?” The International Lawyer. 42, no 1 (2008): 193–209. Ottosen, L. Hafdan. NEPAD’s Contribution to Democracy and Good Governance in Africa. Stockholm, International IDEA, 2010. Piccolino, Gulia and Stephanie Minou. “The EU and Regional Integration in West Africa: Effects on Conflict Resolution and Transformation.” Working Paper Series. Pretoria: Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation, University of Pretoria, no 5 (February, 2014). Pirozzi, Nicoletta. “EU Support to African Security Architecture: Funding and Training Components.” EUISS Occasional Papers No. 76, February, 2009. Rupiya, Martin R. “Food Aid: The Implications for Food Security in Africa.” Africa Security Review. 13, no 1 (2004): 83-89. Scheipers, Sibylle and Daniella Sicurelli. “Empowering Africa: Normative Power in EU-Africa Relations.” Journal of European Public Policy. 15, no 4 (2008): 607–623. Sicurelli, Daniella. Competing Models of Peacekeeping: The Role of the EU and China in Africa. A Paper Presented at the Fifth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics. Porto: Portugal: 23–26 June, 2010. Sidiropoulous, Elizabeth and Romy Chevallier. “The European Union and Africa: Developing Partnerships for Peace and Security.” The South African Institute of International Affairs, Report 51, 2006. Soufis, Evangelos. Case Study of European Union Anti-Piracy Operation “Naval Force Somalia,” Successes, Failures and Lessons Learned for the Hellenic Navy. Unpublished MA Thesis, submitted to the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, September 2012. Stambol, E. Magdalena. “EU Initiatives Along the ‘Cocaine Routes’ to Europe: Fighting Drug Trafficking and Terrorism by Proxy?.” Small War and Insurgencies. 27, no 2(2016): 302–324. Tardy, Thierry. The EU and Africa: A Changing Security Partnership. Paris, European Institute for Security Studies, 2016.

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Vines, Alex. “A Decade of African Peace and Security Architecture.” International Affairs. 89, no 1 (2013): 90–109. Vines, Alex. “Rhetoric from Brussels and Reality on the Ground: The EU and Security in Africa.” International Affairs. 85, no 5 (2010): 1091–1108. Vlassenroot, Koen and Vleriae Arnould. EU Policies in the Democratic Republic of Congo. London, The Human Security Group, 2016. Wiggins, Steve and Sharada Keats. “Current State of Food Security in Africa and the Africa-EU Partnership on the Millennium Development Goals.” Food Security in Africa: Paper for Africa-EU Partnership on MDGs. London: Future Agricultures Consortium & Overseas Development. March, 2009.

CHAPTER 39

Piercing the Veil of Non-Interference Doctrine: China’s Expanding Military Footprint in Africa Gorden Moyo

Introduction In recent years, Africa has witnessed a phenomenal increase in China’s military forays onto the continent. Since the emergence of President Xi Jinping at the helm of the Chinese Communist Party in 2013, Beijing has been increasingly committing an admixture of soft and hard power resources towards prevention, mediation, and resolution of peace and security dilemmas on the African continent. This recent development is aligned to Beijing’s geopolitical and geoeconomic interests that are buoyed by its ‘Going Global’ policy and President Xi Jinping’s signature programme—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).1 It will be argued in this chapter that Beijing has deepened its military presence on the African continent in order to safeguard its commercial interests, assets, investments, and citizens as well as to project its power as a rising global leader. It is common knowledge that Africa is mired in a melange of violent and latent conflicts including the old and perennial conflicts in Somalia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as well as the newer conflicts in South Sudan, Libya, Nigeria, and in the Gulf of Chad countries namely; Chad, Mali, Central Africa Republic (CAR), and Cameroon. In addition, nontraditional security threats and volleys of religious extremism and international terrorism represented by groups such as Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Maghreb and Sahel regions, and the drug and G. Moyo (B) African Leadership Development, National University of Science and Technology, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_39

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human trafficking as well as piracy activities in the Gulf of Guinea and the Gulf of Aden are a cause of concern to Beijing’s geostrategic interest on the African continent. There is little doubt therefore that China’s military footprint is currently expanding in Africa largely in response to these peace and security dilemmas. Generally, Beijing’s growing involvement on the African continent in the field of peace and security is amply demonstrated by increased financial largesse towards the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA); increased Chinese participation in the United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) peacekeeping missions and peacebuilding activities; the recent establishment of the China-Africa Defense and Security Forum (CADSF); dramatic surge in Sino-Africa arms trade; and enhanced counter-piracy and counter-terrorism activities as well as the establishment of the first Chinese Naval Base on the African continent. Consequently, Beijing has since co-joined the Euro-American powers and other external actors with military presence on the African continent including France which has military bases in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Central Africa Republic, Mali, and Senegal among others. Also, Italy, the UK, the U.S., and the Russian Federation all have extensive military presence on the African continent.2 It is instructive to note that Beijing’s global military incursion is not limited to Africa alone, the re-rising Global South giant has also deployed its military and armed police force to the other parts of the world including Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Iraq to safeguard its embassies and its geostrategic interests in those areas.3 However, in terms of scope and scale, the Chinese military presence in Africa is still relatively small as compared to the Euro-American military forces that are spread across the continent. Arguably, Beijing’s growing engagement in Africa’s peace and security sectors has defied its long-standing traditional and ideological principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of the other sovereign states. It is against this backdrop that this chapter sets out to examine Beijing’s continued rhetoric of non-interference policy amid its increasing deployment of military boots on the African ground. However, it must be noted from the outset that while Beijing has scaled-up its military presence in Africa, it has not overly used its hard power resources as a foreign policy instrument. Instead, it has tacitly relied on smart power—that is the combination of hard and soft power resources to endear itself with its African hosts as will be explained anon. Three quintessential questions will therefore stalk the debate in this chapter: the first is whether or not this runs against Beijing’s unintrusive doctrine of non-interference into the domestic affairs of the African states, and second, whether Beijing is using its BRI investments such as ports, airports, railways, and fiber-optic networks to support its military projection on the continent? And the third is how China’s peace and security engagement in Africa relate to its broader strategic and economic interest on the continent? These questions will be under review in the sections below. The first part of this chapter reviews the historical context of the application of the non-interference doctrine,

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while the second and the subsequent sections demonstrate how Beijing has selectively applied the non-interference policy in pursuit of its commercial and geopolitical interests. The discussion is contextualised within the discursive context of China’s rise as a global economic and military power and its changing interests during that rise.

Changing Patterns of Non-Interference Doctrine Historically, Africa-Sino relations have been framed by their shared experience of colonialism and their status as developing regions as well as their impulses against the Euro-American hegemonism, neo-imperialism and bullying tendencies against the countries of the Global South. Unlike the Euro-Western powers, Beijing is not tainted by a history of enslavement, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and apartheidism. Instead, China has gained some clout as a re-emerging Global South power that has overcome its own historical humiliation at the hands of imperialists by becoming the second largest economy globally and more crucially, Africa’s largest trading partner since the time of the global financial crisis in 2008/2009. It is against this backdrop that Beijing has become an all-weather friend for most African countries. Apparently, this friendship is largely oiled by Beijing’s non-interference principle among its other foreign policy instruments. Broadly defined, non-interference denotes a foreign policy in which a state or states do not involve themselves in the internal affairs of another state with or without its consent.4 To be sure, the principle of non-interference is generally regarded as international law and is recognised by various multilateral international organisations including the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Arab League.5 However, it is also important to note from the outset that the notion of non-interference has been evolving since the Westphalian Treaty of 1648. In the last three decades, it has embraced the ideas of the responsibility to protect and the responsibility while protecting including the notion of intervention in the affairs of the other countries to prevent the genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. A more nuanced discussion of these issues however lies outside the purview of this analysis. For the purposes of this discussion, non-interference includes diplomatic interference, subversive and clandestine political action, military intervention including peacekeeping operations, sale of arms to rogue governments, and influence into the electoral processes of the sovereign states. The principle of non-interference is one of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence guiding China’s foreign policy since the First Afro-Asian decolonial Bandung Conference of April 1955 which gave birth to the South-South solidarity.6 The other principles are: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity; mutual non-aggression; equality and mutual benefit. Not surprisingly, in its

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renewed engagements with African countries, China has been reifying its noninterference rhetoric thereby pontificating full respect to the right of African governments to manage their own internal affairs independently.7 Not unexpectedly, the Chinese policy of non-interference has been welcomed by a diverse array of African leaders who are fed-up of the patronising and condescending attitudes of the Euro-American powers such as the U.S., the EU, and the UK, and their juridical economic institutions including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Investment Bank (EIB) among others whose conditionalities and strings to financial assistance have kept the continent on the lower rungs of the pecking order of global community of nations. Conversely, China has over the past two decades been ratcheting-up its financial largesse in the form of grants, debt relief, zero-interest loans, concessional loans, export credits, tariff exemptions, and foreign direct investment flows especially to the petro-states of the Gulf of Guinea, Chad, Sudan, and South Sudan among others in exchange of access to fossil fuel, biofuels, natural gas, logs, land, cotton, fisheries, and market access as well as geopolitical influence without strings attached.8 Nevertheless, despite its consistent support for the rhetoric of noninterference, Beijing’s implementation of the policy has become increasingly circumstantialised in the light of its growing geoeconomic interests and geopolitical agendas on the African continent. It would be noted in this analysis that as China’s levels of investments in Africa and reliance on African energy resources and markets have expanded, new realities and challenges have occasioned its flexibility on the implementation of its non-interference policy.9 As such, the current China’s involvement in peace and security initiatives on the African continent reflects a departure from the country’s noninterventionist foreign policy towards more active engagement not dissimilar to the Euro-American security paradigms. In practical terms, Beijing has, in recent years, deployed its political, economic, diplomatic, and military leverage in pursuit of itself-interested goals in Africa, Southeast Asia, and some other parts of the world. In the process Beijing has shifted from its historical and ideological uncompromising noninvolvement principle to selective, creative, and incremental engagement in bilateral, regional, and international cooperation in Africa regarding issues of peace, defense, and security.10 This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) now patrols the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the coast of Somalia and takes decisive action against pirates by moving beyond the ocean and crashing the bases of the pirates on the land. This indicates a strong resolve to resort to hard power which is tantamount to a ground war in foreign lands in direct contravention of its non-interference stance.11 Whilst this approach deviates from the established non-interference principle, it is in sync with Xi Jinping’s smart power strategy of flexibility and firmness in foreign policy relations. It is apparent that Beijing has been deploying its smart power resources in Africa as part of balancing its non-interference dogma and the emerging peace and security realities and challenges on the

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continent. To be clear, smart power here refers to a situation where both hard and soft powers reinforce each other.12 In other words, smart power relates to the possibilities of non-coercive military force. Through this approach, Beijing hopes to win the hearts and minds of both its domestic constituencies as well as its African hosts. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is argued here that noninterference dogma has never been an absolute principle for Beijing in the first place. In fact history records that while preaching the gospel according to non-interference and the sanctity of sovereignty, Beijing has in the past deeply participated in the liberation struggles and post liberation African conflicts. Specifically, some studies indicate that the Chinese instructors in guerrilla warfare trained revolutionaries from across Africa, some of whom were trying to overthrow post-colonial African governments.13 For example, Beijing supported three different armed groups that is, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) in Angola fighting a civil war.14 Similarly, in the 1990s Beijing allegedly supplied weapons to the post-genocide government in Rwanda as well as the shadow government in exile in eastern DRC trying to overthrow the Rwandan government at that time.15 Again, most recently Beijing aided the Sudanese government’s brutal campaign against its Darfur region by supplying Khartoum with arms in violation of its own doctrine of non-interference into the internal affairs of other states.16 Thus, while Beijing has been using the rhetoric of non-interference, particularly in re-entering Africa in the 2000s for its own economic, commercial, political, and diplomatic interests, it has blatantly violated the same doctrine whenever its interests are threatened. No wonder why some of the African founding leaders such as Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast and Hamani Diori of Niger came to see Chinese activities on the continent as nothing but interference in the internal affairs of African states.17 Notwithstanding the fact that China contributed to the liberation and independence of some African states, its diplomats were declared persona non grata in a number of African countries including Madagascar, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burundi, Central Africa Republic, Ghana, and Tunisia in the 1960s for reasons of interfering with domestic affairs of those African states.18 It is therefore the argument of this analysis that despite its policy rhetoric, Beijing has always treated the non-interference principle as an instrumental tool in its foreign affairs engagement. Against this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that Beijing has over the recent years re-adapted and renovated its non-interference policy in its current military forays to Africa. To be clear, under Xi Jinping, China is more concerned about projecting power, protecting its commercial interests and its nationals in Africa. It has gradually and yet steadily revised its earlier philosophy of ‘hide your potential’, ‘peaceful rise’, and ‘threaten no one’. Kwesi Aning was probably right when he observed that ‘China’s gradual acceptance of its role as a growing global leader and its

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development of a more long-term economic and diplomatic perspective have contributed to the change from a diplomatic to a more assertive rise’.19 However, notwithstanding Beijing’s ambivalence towards its application of the non-interference doctrine, the Africa-Sino bond is currently strong. The strategic partnership has been institutionalised through the creation of joint summits-the Forum on China-Africa cooperation (FOCAC) held every three years since 2000 and by many other bilateral agreements between China and some African countries as well as the diplomatic relations between Beijing and the African Union (AU). These have been further buttressed by the ChinaAfrica Defense and Security Forum (CADSF) that was launched in Beijing in 2018. Not surprisingly, some African leaders have described China with superlatives such as ‘an all weather friend’, ‘a strategic development partner’, and a trusted force in the fight against Euro-Western hegemonism’.20

Increased Military Presence As already explained, this analysis privileges the growing Chinese military influence in Africa. For some time, scholars, researchers, and observers have taken keen interest in China’s geoeconomic and geopolitical interests on the African continent and yet parallel to these interests, Beijing has been expanding its military presence to all the five regions (Central, East, North, South, and West) of the continent. It will be argued here that Beijing has been strengthening its security ties with some African nations as its interests, investments, assets, and the number of its citizens across the continent has grown. Interestingly, the rise of China is taking place at the time when the EuroAmerican influence is relatively declining in Africa and globally. For example, as a result of Donald Trump’s ‘Making America Great Again’ policy; the continued effects of the 2008/2009 global financial crisis to the economies of Europe; the difficult and complicated Brexit; the refugee and immigrant crises in the Euro-Western countries coupled with today’s global health scourge of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) imply further reduction in development aid as well as foreign direct investment as most of the countries adopt more inward looking policies as they grapple with their own internal affairs. Apparently, in 2019 the U.S. Defence Department was considering pulling out more than 700 troops who were involved in various peace-building operations in Africa.21 On the contrary, while the U.S. and its transAtlantic partners were considering scaling down their African operations, Beijing is currently doubling down its presence and influence on the African continent. It is commoncause that China is now Africa’s largest trading partner after having overtaken the U.S. in 2009. In addition China has US$300 billion in investments on the continent especially in the extractive industries and there is over one million Chinese working, investing, and living in Africa. It is also important to mention at this stage that in the FOCAC summit held in Beijing in 2018, Beijing pledged US$60 billion investment for a period of three years (2018–2021).22 As noted above, the financial loans, grants,

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and aid are all doled out without conditionalities hence they tend to bolster the bond of friendship between Beijing and the recipients of this financial succour.23 The friendship has been extended from economic and political to military cooperation. Subsequently, as at June 2018 China has defence industry, science, technology, and security ties with 45 African countries.24 The following provides a snapshot of the growing Chinese military influence in Africa over the past few years: ● There are approximately 2000 Chinese troops in the UN/AU peacekeeping missions in Africa including in DRC, Darfur, Mali, South Sudan, and Western Sahara; ● Several hundreds of African military officers study in China each year in schools such as the China Military Academy, the Dalian Naval Academy, the Air Force Aviation Academy, and the PLA’s National Defence University; ● China’s share of the continent’s arms purchase doubled to 27% in the last five years. Algeria, Angola, Gabon, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Uganda are among the major clients of China’s military small and light weapons; ● China has allocated $11 million for United Nations (UN) projects that include building African capacity to train police and soldiers for peacekeeping roles, regional operational analysis for peace keeping missions, and support for the AU’s initiative to ‘Silence the Guns’ and end conflict in Africa; ● China has offered $100 million in military aid to fund the AU Standby Force. In addition, it is currently building a logistics support facility in Botswana to support the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Standby Force. Moreover, it has raised 8000 strong Standby Force placed at the UN’s disposal for rapid deployment to conflict zones, the bulk of which are in Africa; ● China has established its first ever foreign military base in Djibouti which is used to project force and protect Chinese citizens and other interests in Africa and along its Maritime Silk Road across the Indian Ocean; ● China’s hospital ship, Peace Ark, visited 7 coastal African countries where it conducted free medical and humanitarian services to thousands of African citizens in a major show of soft power; ● China has launched a television series called ‘Peacekeeping Infantry Battalion’ to dramatise the lives of Chinese blue helmets in Africa; ● The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been conducting military drills in Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, and Nigeria, while its medical units worked with counterparts in Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Zambia to develop their combat casualty care capabilities. In Burkina Faso, it is training the military in counter-terrorism and infrastructure protection while it has opened a $30million military training centre in Tanzania at Mapinga;

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● The PLA Navy’s 27th and 28tht Anti-Piracy Task Forces visited ports in Cameroon, Ghana, and Nigeria after they joined the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). All the three countries have signed military agreements with Beijing on training, weapons acquisition, information sharing, maritime navigation, and maritime security; and ● Beijing launched the China-Africa Defense and Security Forum (CADSF) which outlines the new priorities for Chinese security engagement, including combating terrorism, and piracy, and protecting Chinese nationals and economic infrastructure.25 Some of these examples will be probed further as this discussion unfolds but is clear here that they do demonstrate the growing Chinese interests in the peace, defense, and security spheres in Africa. However, this apparent military expansion has led us to question the continued relevance of the principle of non-interference as one of the Chinese pillars of foreign policy.

Chinese Boots on the African Ground As explained later, Chinese interests, assets, investments, businesses, and nationals have not been safe owing to the ongoing conflicts and terror attacks across the continent. In its calculations, Beijing noted that a perceived lack of action on its part would have political consequences for the Communist Party and may even threaten Xi Jinping’s legitimacy.26 In this context, Beijing has apparently revised its traditional approach to peacekeeping in favour of a more robust approach. Aside from the previous era when China was reluctant to participate in the UN peacekeeping operations, it has now adopted a more enthusiastic attitude towards peace and security not only in Africa but also across the globe. In particular, Beijing has supported the AU peacekeeping missions in Sudan, Darfur, and Somalia among others. Records indicate that Beijing is currently the largest troop contributing country among the permanent members of the UN Security Council.27 As of March 2017, China had approximately 2,600 peacekeepers in ten of the sixteen ongoing UN missions and is now the second largest financial contributor to the UN peacekeeping budget after the United States.28 Apparently over 80% of China’s contributions are supporting missions in Africa, with approximately 1000 troops in South Sudan, 400 in Mali, and around 230 in the DRC and another 230 in Darfur. Available numbers also show that Beijing has sent 435 soldiers, 9 police officers, and 14 observers for the UN Mission in Somalia29 This is particularly significant at a time when the Euro-American powers are contemplating scaling down on deploying their military offices to peacekeeping missions in Africa.30 The Chinese spin doctors, Chinese public scholars, and publicists argue that the growing presents of the Chinese boots on the African ground and elsewhere is not a negation of the non-interference principle. Quite clearly, China is currently deploying only where there is UN sanctioned peace keeping operation which meets the

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following criteria: (1) the intervention should not violate the concerned state’s sovereignty; (2) the UN force must secure an invitation from the concerned state; and (3) the UN mission should use force only when all other options have proved ineffective.31 This is apparently in line with Article 4 of the AU Charter which stresses sovereign equality and non-interference except in grave circumstances such as war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. However, peacekeeping contributions have steadily become an important part of Beijing’s smart power strategy, allowing it to advance its interests in Africa while endearing it with its African hosts.32 There is hardly any doubt that China’s significant presence in UN peacekeeping operations in Africa is driven in part by its attempt to increase its geostrategic presence on the continent whose resources are crucial for its energy needs. Beijing has vast trade and resource investments in Africa, and it is argued here that its peacekeeping activities on the continent are largely motivated by a desire to protect and promote its investments, assets, and interests as well as its nationals particularly those associated with the BRI.33 Some observers note that Chinese peacekeepers are deployed in resource rich countries such as the DRC, the Sudan, and South Sudan. To be sure, 5% of China’s total oil imports come from South Sudan and its state firm, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has 40% stake in the joint venture that is developing the South Sudanese oil fields.34 Accordingly, the Chinese peacekeepers are well poised to protect civilian oil industry workers, the refinery, the pipeline, and the storage tanks in South Sudan. In this way, Chinese peacekeepers serve Beijing’s economic and commercial interests in Africa and the other way round. As such, Beijing will continue to view its peacekeeping as a valuable security cooperation tool in Africa and that it will take every opportunity to contribute to missions on the continent due to strategic, operational, and tactical benefit and influence it gains from them.35 Viewed from this perspective, Africa is likely to witness an increasing number of Chinese personnel in peacekeeping missions and other combat deployments in the years ahead as the BRI infrastructure projects take root on the continent. In short, while China’s views on non-intervention and on protecting state sovereignty remain central tenets in its foreign policy approach, as indicated above, it has also supported peacekeeping operations that have broader and more expansive mandates that include security sector reform and disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration, as well as deployment of boots as seen in Mali.36 However, this has not come without a cost though; available information shows that 18 Chinese nationals have been killed while serving in various UN/AU Missions, including 2 in South Sudan, 3 in Liberia, and 1 in Mali.37 There is no doubt that these fatalities may serve as a warning to Beijing of the increasing dangers its troops face in the protracted conflicts in Africa.38 Consequently, this may bolster Beijing’s resolve to ramp up its boots on the African ground.

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Arms Trading While Beijing constantly reiterates and underscores its non-interference doctrine in the affairs of the African states, it has not been able to escape the temptation that is associated with arms sales to governments and other non-state actors in Africa.39 Available evidence indicates that more than 60% of the entire continent operates equipment of Chinese origin with Chinese arms exports to Africa growing by almost 122% from 2007–2011 to 2012– 2016.40 In fact, between 2013 and 2017 China’s share of the continent’s arms purchase doubled to 27%. Thus, Beijing’s aggressive arms sales in African markets have placed it among the top five arms suppliers globally. Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Egypt, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe are among the major clients that have imported weapons from China in recent years.41 Arguably, China’s policy of non-interference makes it a particularly attractive and willing source of weapons for some African countries including despotic governments of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe and Sudan under Omar Al Bashir. Since many African countries attempt to break free of Euro-American rules and regulations about arms procurement, they tend to turn to China which does not burden them with external impositions associated with arms transfers and production.42 However, the challenge with Chinese arms exports lie with how some of the weapons are used and the hands in which they end up in. It is undeniable that when utilised responsibly by legitimate and accountable police forces, militaries or peacekeepers, Chinese arms can serve to improve security on the African continent. Nevertheless, available evidence indicates that in several contexts including Darfur, the DRC, and Zimbabwe, Chinese made weapons and ammunitions have contributed to conflict and insecurity on the African continent.43 To be clear, Chinese weapons have been used to commit violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by government forces, militias, and rebel groups alike. For example the sale in 2014 by China North Industries Corporation (Norinco) of US$20 million worth of arms and arms-related material to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the South Sudanese government’s armed forces, has engendered criticism for contributing to intrastate violence.44 Similarly, Zimbabwe received at least nine J-7 fighter aircrafts, six K-8 trainer aircraft, 10 T-69 tanks, 30 T-59 tanks, and as many as 100 T-63 armoured transport vehicles, radars, and radio jamming equipment which have been used against the opposition in that country.45 In fact, Beijing’s arms trade to Zimbabwe was widely condemned in 2008 when a Chinese vessel tried to deliver some huge quantities of weapons during a period of violent internal unrest in that country. Very few observers will deny the fact that Chinese military supplies to Zimbabwe have played a facilitating role in allowing the government to suppress opposition and hang on state power despite losing elections in several occasions.46 Apparently, these actions have led to criticism

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of Beijing’s role in Africa, particularly from critics who emphasise China’s ties with repressive regimes and its willingness to invest without imposing the types of conditions imposed by the Euro-American powers and their juridical institutions.47 Ironically, the U.S. and the other Global North powers have used the same means to build ties with repressive African regimes particularly in oil producing countries such as Algeria, Nigeria, Angola, Chad, and Equatorial Guinea.48 Nevertheless, while Beijing’s arms sales and peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities may seem contradictory policies, they are an integral aspect of China’s approach to its Going Global policy. For a long time the foremost arms suppliers to Africa have been France, the U.S., the UK, and the Russian Federation. China has realised that in order to achieve its geostrategic and economic ambitions it needs to be more competitive with the leading arms suppliers.49 At the same time, China does not want to be seen as the ‘enhancer of genocides’, authoritarian regimes, or supporter of despots in the African context. China therefore attempts to skilfully balance weapons sales with expanding its peacekeeping and peacebuilding in Africa in order to silence some of the criticisms churned by some of its Euro-American critics. While it is true that Beijing is not the only global power supplying weapons to African states, the affordability, accessibility, and acceptability of Chinese weapons enables protracted African wars, and their continued proliferation within the continent. Arms deal is most likely to persist because Beijing often does not adhere to UN arms embargoes, sanctions against African states, or their diplomatic isolation.50 Overall, it is argued here that with arms originating from China into Africa’s troubled zones, and in defiance to the UN embargo; and the Chinese determination to militarily protect its economic interests in Africa, conflicts in Africa have been exacerbated rather than reduced by Chinese arms trade.51 However, in its justification, Beijing contends that it adheres to the principles of exporting arms; it will not harm the world or regional peace and stability; it is open to strengthening the defence capabilities of the importers; and it will not interfere in other nations’ internal affairs.52

In the Name of Fighting International Terrorism With the surge of extremist groups like the Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as well as the weak governance of many African governments, terrorist attacks against UN/AU peacekeepers and foreigners have been on the rise, putting Chinese workers and Chinese interests under jeopardy in a number of African countries including Nigeria, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Somalia among others.53 With regard to terrorism due in part to Islamist misgivings about China’s treatment of its domestic Muslim Uighur population, al Qaeda and Boko Haram have pledged attacks against Chinese businesses in retaliation to Beijing’s behaviour.54 For example, the actions of several jihadist groups, such as

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Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram operating in the Horn of Africa peninsula and the Sahel region, have threatened the security of Chinese workers and caused economic losses to Chinese projects valued at over US$20 billion, thus necessitating a Chinese response.55 Arguably this has led to the revision of the non-intervention rhetoric by the Chinese defense and security authorities. Thus, in light of the insecurity posed by religious terrorist organisation, in 2015 President Xi Jinping announced that China will strengthen its cooperation with the international community to combat terrorism.56 It is therefore not surprising that Beijing has provided arms and funds to governments in Nigeria and Cameroon to take down Boko Haram, and in Somalia to fight the Al-Shabaab. Moreover, Beijing is now deeply involved in fighting organised crime, including human, drug, and wildlife trafficking; and maritime piracy in the Gulf of Aden, and in the Gulf of Guinea.57 Instructively, in a radical departure from its previous non-interference doctrine, in 2017 Beijing set up its first military base on the African territory, at the crucial geostrategic point of Djibouti which is a few km from the Lemonnier U.S. Naval Expeditionary Base. On paper the base was established as a logistical support facility for naval anti-piracy operations, UN/AU peacekeeping missions, and humanitarian cooperations, and for the Chinese force against the Somalian pirates as well as for helping to collect intelligence. In practical and more strategic terms the base is also used to protect the critical sea lane in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait for China as well as for evacuating Chinese nationals as will be explained anon.58 It is hardly surprising to the avid observers that Beijing has since expanded its Djibouti base to accommodate larger warships and is now using it to conduct live-fire military exercises. To be clear, the Gulf of Aden and its surrounding areas are strategic sea lines, since an average of 20, 000 ships pass through the Gulf annually, transporting nearly 12% of the world’s daily oil supply and 80% of international maritime trade with Europe.59 Therefore, the establishment of China’s first military overseas outpost in Djibouti, an East African country located in a strategically important point near several regional flashpoints points to Beijing’s serious geopolitical intentions beyond the non-interference cliché on the African continent. It should be noted however that the U.S., France, and Japan have long had bases in Djibouti while other emerging powers such as Turkey, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Qatar as well as the Russian Federation all have presence in the Horn of Africa. Nevertheless, while China still has far less of military presence than the U.S. and France in Djibouti, it is now clear that its role in Africa is evolving; the naval base in Djibouti is only one example of the increasing Chinese security presence on the continent. Some observers of Beijing military activities in Africa project that more Chinese military bases or strategic strong points will emerge on the other strategic African coasts including Luanda, Lagos, Walvis Bay, and Mombasa in order to support the Chinese investments along the BRI corridors.60 It is therefore concluded here that Beijing’s decision to establish a

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military base in Djibouti demonstrates its departure from its traditional application of non-interference, which was opposite to the Euro-American pattern of external military intervention and the setting up of foreign bases to project power.61 What makes the Djibouti case unique is that at its maximum human capacity, the Chinese base would come to represent close to 1% of the entire Djiboutian population thereby furthering the interests of Beijing in Djibouti beyond the original goals of the base.62

In the Name of Protecting Chinese Nationals The expansion of Chinese presence in the economic spheres on the African continent has exacerbated the already complicated situation in Africa. There are about 1 million Chinese nationals who live, work, and invest in Africa. Available evidence shows that in several African countries, violence and political instability are creating danger for these Chinese nationals living or working in Africa.63 Consequently, various publics in Africa accuse China for some of the continent’s problems including the destruction of environment, poor labour standards, and violation of human rights, land grabbing, dumping of cheap products, loss of markets, job losses, and bringing the deadly Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)—a disease that has killed hundreds of thousands of people globally. In response to some of these challenges, some African communities, opposition parties, and anti-Chinese groups have resorted to violence. For instance, on July 26, 2015, a Chinese security guard at China’s embassy in Mogadishu was killed and three embassy staff were wounded; in 2012, 25 Chinese workers were kidnapped in Egypt; in 2008, Sudanese rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked a Chinese-owned oil in Darfur and killed five workers; in April 2007, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) attacked the workers of the Chinese firm Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau in Ogaden killing nine Chinese technicians; and again in July 2007, Tuareg rebels kidnapped a Chinese executive of the China Nuclear International Uranium Corporation.64 The anger against the Chinese comes from the fact that the Chinese corporations mostly hire Chinese nationals to work on overseas projects at the expense of providing local employment opportunities. And even when local workers are hired, they often face racism and physical abuse from their Chinese supervisors alongside poor working conditions and poor remuneration. These challenges have sparked protests against Chinese developmental projects in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia and other countries which have sometimes included racial violence against Chinese businesses and individuals of Chinese extraction.65 More recently, Chinese have been attacked for being suspected of being COVID-19 transmitters in various African countries including Zimbabwe where one Chinese man was refused to board a public bus. This was partly in response to the humiliating treatment of Africans in Guazhong province as part of the COVID-19 containment in that country.

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Meanwhile, the Chinese corporations are showing no signs of changing their hiring practices or improving working conditions, as such, tensions between Chinese workers and local communities are also likely to worsen thereby eliciting adverse reactions from the local communities.66 Observers have also noted that with these attacks against the Chinese in Africa becoming more frequent, it is not difficult to imagine a future attack that will provoke a coordinated military response by Beijing.67 It is instructive to note that over the last few years, Beijing has developed its capacity and experience to evacuate its citizens from conflict zones. China has had to carry out several evacuations of its citizens amidst the outbreak of violence across the continent. For example, in 2008, over 200 Chinese nationals were evacuated from Chad after heavy fighting broke out between rebel forces and the government. Similarly, on 3 March 2011, China evacuated over 35 000 Chinese nationals from Libya following the outbreak of the anti-Gaddafi protest.68 In 2012, 239 Chinese were evacuated from the Central Africa Republic (CAR).69 Clearly, from Beijing’s perspective, the rising number of violent attacks against Chinese investments and workers, calls from the domestic Chinese audience for action, and surging economic loss have compelled the Chinese government to react. Thus, in the light of the increasing security threats to Chinese nationals in some African countries, Beijing has had to strategically reconsider its non-interference principle in order to counter security threats and to defend its economic interests, preserve its political legitimacy at home, and boost its image as a responsible great power.70

Implications on Decolonial Peace and Security This analysis has shown that the Chinese expanding military footprint in Africa has been both contradictory and complimentary to Beijing’s principle of noninterference. It has been demonstrated that beneath its persistent rhetorical commitment to non-interference, in practice Beijing has been changing its position in relation to its vested interests, assets, and investments on the African continent. In short, contrary to the popular wisdom, the application of Beijing’s non-interference principle has not been entirely consistent in Africa. It is therefore argued here that underneath the surface of official rhetoric, China’s engagements in multilateral initiatives of crisis management in Africa do not differ from that of the Euro-American powers to the extent usually assumed. Just like the U.S., the EU, the UK, France and the Russian Federation, China’s military expansion is set out to bolster its African markets, access to Africa’s fossil fuels, minerals, non-ferrous metals, logs, and fisheries. Moreover, it is likely that in the next few years, Chinese economic development projects in Africa will further expand in scale and scope as Beijing accelerates its BRI programmes on the continent. This will necessitate a further increase of the Chinese boots on the ground to protect its interests, assets, and investments that will be exposed to terror attacks and angry local communities

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who are generally excluded from the infrastructure projects that are funded by China. While Beijing deployed the gospel according to non-interference as its entry point to Africa, it is clear now that this has been abandoned or renovated as a result of its growing relative economic and military power. Evidently, Beijing has adopted a flexible approach in its implementation of the non-interference policy, thereby allowing China to protect its interests, assets, and investments wherever they are at risk. As such, the non-interference policy has thus served as a mechanism that Beijing has used to gain entry into African resources and markets where it can effectively compete with the Euro-American rivals. Now that China has transformed itself into a global power, it has strategically retreated from the non-intervention dogma in order to protect its geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geostrategic interests. Thus, in recent years Beijing has adopted the notion of creative involvement in place of non-interference. The notion of creative involvement as pronounced by Wang Yizhou, calls for Beijing’s active participation in international affairs instead of passive approach or intervention by force.71 However, these changes from non-intervention to constructive engagement in Chinese security practices and official foreign policy vocabulary do not imply that Beijing is completely abandoning its rhetorical commitment to the longstanding non-interference doctrine. Rather, non-interference remains crucial for Beijing’s core interests especially for its domestic purposes.72 Some observers argue that ‘the non-interference principle will for the foreseeable future continue to remain a mainstay of Chinese foreign policy due as much to its importance within a domestic context to the image that Beijing seeks to projects of itself to foreign audiences’, particularly those in Africa and other global South countries.73 It is important to reiterate here that where Chinese interests are at stake, the doctrine of non-interference is totally suspended without any pretence. For example, the doctrine of non-interference does not apply to Beijing’s ‘One China Policy’ in which China seeks to diplomatically isolate Taiwan. Clearly, China has used its smart power to coerce some African countries to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan. This has led to de-recognition of Taiwan by its former allies including Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Nigeria, and South Africa among others.74 This demonstrates that Beijing will use all the instruments at its disposal to cope with the challenges that arise including constructive engagement, bilateral and multilateral institutional cooperation and even coercion among others to pursue its geostrategic interests in Africa. Given the foregoing discussion, it is clear that solutions to African peace and security threats are to be found primarily within the continent itself, in the hands of African governments, politicians, and civil society as well as peoples.75 To achieve decolonial peace and security, African governments, political leaders, and civil society should be responsible for development and implementing sustainable solutions to address direct violence and its underlying causes on the continent. External actors such as China, the U.S., the

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UK, the EU, France, Russian Federation, and Germany and others can only play a secondary and supplementary role that is best guided by the decisions of African agency. To this end, African countries need to develop a common framework to guide their dealings with China and the rest of the external actors on the continent.

Conclusion This chapter has attempted to unpack the expanded Sino-military presence in Africa and its implications to the much vaunted Chinese doctrine of noninterference. It was argued that notwithstanding Beijing’s continued rhetoric of non-interference, its application has always been tied to China’s overriding national interests at any given time. It was further revealed that the noninterference policy has always been selectively and flexibly applied in pursuit of Chinese business and investment interests in Africa. While, it was noted that Beijing has adopted a more assertive approach away from the more docile non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states, the chapter concludes that the rhetoric on non-interference will remain at the core of Beijing’s narrative and any policy changes to its interpretation will be gradual, cautious, and confined to specific contexts. Finally, it was argued that for the continent to achieve decolonial peace and security; it will need African agency to play a more proactive role in shaping and directing any peace and security efforts and initiatives on the African continent.

Notes 1. P. Nantulya, Chinese Hard Power Supports Its Growing Strategic Interests in Africa, Africa Center (January 17, 2019). http://www.africacenter.org. 2. A. Ugwuja, The United States’ Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Africa’s Security in the Twenty-First Century, Renaissance University Journal of Management and Social Sciences (RUJMASS) Vol 4, No 1, (July 2018): pp. 61–84. 3. J. Zhang, From Non-Interference to Wolf Warrior: Chinese Foreign Internal Defense, Texas National Security Review, (2020). https://www.warontherocks. com. 4. S. Mumuni, China’s Non-intervention Policy in Africa: Principle Versus Pragmatism (2017). academicjournals. 5. Mumuni, 2017. 6. H. Wenping, ‘The Darfur Issues: A New Test for China’s Africa Policy’ in Cheru Fantu and Obi, Cyril (eds.), The Rise of China and India in Africa: Challenges, Opportunities and Critical Interventions (New York: Zed Books Ltd, 2010). 7. K. Aning, China and Africa: Towards a New Security Relationship in Cheru Fantu and Obi, Cyril (eds.). The Rise of China and India in Africa: Challenges, Opportunities and Critical Interventions (New York: Zed Books Ltd, 2010).

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8. G. Moyo, China’s Development Finance to Africa and the Spectre of Debt Distress in Oloruntoba, S. and Falola, T. (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). 9. S. Hess, Beyond the Rhetoric: Non-interference in China’s African Policy, African and Asian Studies Vol 9, (2010): pp. 356–383. 10. G. Grieger, China’s Growing Role as a Security Actor in Africa, Briefing, European Parliamentary Research Service (Brussels, 2019). 11. B. Kapuwa, Globalisation of Security: A Focus on Rival Powers in Africa, A Journal of globalisation studies (2012): pp. 54–66. 12 Neethling, China’s International Peacekeeping Contributions and the evolution of Contemporary Chinese Strategic Considerations, Strategic Review for Southern Africa Vol 37, No 2, (2016): pp. 7–28. 13. J. Meservey, The U.S. Should Call China’s Non-Interference Policy in Africa What It Is-A Myth, Issue Brief No. 4878, The Heritage Foundation (July 2018). 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. A. Osondu, Off and On: China’s Principle of Non-Interference in Africa, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences Vol 4, No 3 (September, 2017): pp. 225–234. ISSN2039-2117. 17. Ibid. 19. Aning, 2010. 20. Moyo, 2020. 21. S. Zheng, Beijing Security Forum Shows How Chinese Military Makes Belt and Road Route to Africa, (2019). https://www.amp.scmp.com/news. 22. R. Fisher, China Militarizes Its Influence in Africa, The National Interest (November 25, 2018). https://www.nationalinterest.org/. 23. Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: C. Hurst &Co. (Publishers) Ltd), 2008. 24. G. Moyo, M. Nhliziyo and R. Fayayo, The Entanglement of Zimbabwe in the US-China Geoeconomic Frictions: Defining Winners and Losers. iBusiness Vol 12, (2020), pp. 81-102. https://doi.org/10.4236/ib.2020.123006. 25. Nantulya, 2019. 26. Ibid. 27. Zhang, 2020. 28. S. Fang., X. Li. and F. Sun, China’s Evolving Motivations and Goals in UN Peacekeeping Participation, (2018). 29. Ibid. 30. H. Pant and A. Haidar, China’s Expanding Military Footprint in Africa, Observer Research Foundation (2017). 31. F. Aubyn, China’s Foray into African Security and the Question of NonInterference, African East-Asian Affairs, The China Monitor No 3 (September 2013): pp. 11–30. 32. Wenping, 2010. 33. Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), China’s Role in UN Peacekeeping, Institute for Security and Development Policy, (2018). https:// www.ISDP.EU. 34. Fang, Li, and Sun, 2018.

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35. C. Huang, Contributor Profile: The People’s Republic of China (27 April, 2017). 36. J. Hellstrom, Blue Berets Under the Red Flag: China in the UN Peacekeeping System, Swedish Defence Research Agency: Stockholm (2008). 37. Huang, 2017. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. E. Conteh-Morgan, Is China Playing a Contradictory Role in Africa? Security Implications of Its Arms Sales and Peacekeeping, Global Security and Intelligence Studies Vol 2, No 1 (Fall) (2016): pp. 80–102. 41 L. Thrall, China’s Expanding African Relations: Implications for U.S. National Security, Rand Corporation: Calif, (2015). 42. International Crisis Group (ICG), China Expands Its Peace and Security Footprint in Africa, ICG: Pretoria (2018). https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/ north-east/. 43. Conteh-Morgan, 2016. 44. Safeworld. China’s growing role in African peace and security, Report Safeworld (January, 2011). 45. L. Odgaard, China’s Policy on Development and Security in East Africa, South African Journal of Military Studies Vol 46, No. (2018): pp. 78–93. https:// doi.org/10.5787/46-2-1190. 46. P. Bbaala, A Political Economy of China’s Policy of Non-Interference: Experiences from Resource-Rich African Countries, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, Vol 7, No 6 (June, 2017): pp. 203–213. 47. Safeworld, 2011. 48. D. Volman, China, India, Russia and the United States: The Scramble for African Oil and the Militarisation of the Continent, Nordic African Institute: Uppsala (2009). 49. Volman, 2009. Ibid. 50. Conteh-Morgan, 2016. 51. Ibid. 52. S. Degang, China’s Soft Military Presence in the Middle East, (2018). ISBN 978-603-8206-50-8. 53. X. Xu, China’s Engagement in African Security Affairs in the Post-Cold War Era, International Relations and Diplomacy, Vol 5, No 7 (2017): pp. 412–425. 54. T. Phillips, Chinese Engagement in Africa: How will it affect U.S. National Security Interests? Research Paper No. 178, Research Institute for Europe and American Studies (August–September 2019). ISSN:2241-6358. 55. Grieger, 2019. 56. Pant and Haidar, 2017. 57. G. Manrique, Something New Out of Africa? Chinese, US and EU Strategies for the Continent, European Parliament: Brussels (2015). 58. International Crisis Group, 2018. 59. Xu, 2017. 60. C. Chien-Kai, China in Africa: A Threat to African Countries? Strategic Review for Southern Africa, Vol 38, No 2, pp. 100–122. 61. M. Chaziza, China’s Military Base in Djibouti, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No 153. Bar-lLan University, (2018).

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62. B. Barton, China’s Security Footprint in Africa: Towards an Evolution of the Application of Its Non-Interference Principle? (2018). https://www.theasiadi alogue.com. 63. Pant and Haidar, 2017. 64. Thrall, 2015. 65. J. Zhang, From Non-Interference to Wolf Warrior: Chinese Foreign Internal Defense, Texas National Security Review (2020). https://www.warontherocks. com. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Pant and Haidar, 2017. 69. Ibid. 70. G. Veiga, To What Extent Has China’s Security Policy Evolved in SubSaharan Africa? (2019). https://www.e-ir.info/2019/12/26/to-what-extenthas-Chinas-security-policy-evolved-in-Sub-Saharan-Africa. 71. Aubyn, 2013. 72. Veiga, 2019. 73 Barton, 2018. 74. T. Rich and B. Vasabjit, Running Out of Time? The Evolution of Taiwan’s Relations in Africa, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Vol 44, No 1, (2015): pp. 141–161. http://nbn-resolving.org/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:gbv:18-48180. 75. Safeworld, 2011.

CHAPTER 40

Africa’s Transitionssal Justice System in a Changing Global Order: The “Allure” of Rwanda’s Gacaca Transitional Justice System Tola Odubajo

Introduction Within a spate of ninety-days (Seventh April–Fifteenth July, 1994), the people of Rwanda experienced one of the most dehumanising atrocities of all time. The Rwanda genocide led to the death of an approximate eight-hundred thousand people. It also caused the devastation of the Rwandan economy, and left an indelible mark on the socio-cultural existence of the people. In summary, the Rwanda genocide exemplifies a complete debasement of human values, in which the ideal of common humanity was “thrown to the dogs”. The causes of Rwanda’s political upheaval are embedded in the politics of colonialism. Mamdani1 succinctly highlights this point with the argument that: …… Rwanda genocide needs to be thought through within the logic of colonialism. The horror of colonialism led to two types of genocidal impulses. The first was the genocide of the native by the settler. The second was the native impulse to eliminate the settler.

Uvin’s2 position on the colonial origin of the genocide is even more emphatic from the submission below:

T. Odubajo (B) Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_40

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During most of the colonial period, the Bazungu were convinced that the Tutsi were more intelligent, reliable, hardworking- in short, more like themselvesthan the Hutu. For many scientists as well as for many Rwandans, the origin of ethnic conflict and racism in Rwanda lie in this ideology cum practise of the Belgian coloniser; …….

By implication, the unusual pre-colonial harmonious coexistence among the three ethnic groups (Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa) was scuttled by the Belgian colonialist’s shenanigans and manoeuvrings. The Belgians had through the indirect rule system institutionalised a class-based socio-political system that projected the superiority of the settler Tutsi over the indigenous majority Hutu. Albeit, the political/administrative arrangement placed the Tutsi in a dominant socioeconomic position over the Hutu in pre-colonial times, yet there were no backlashes from this arrangement. However, the interference of the Belgian colonialist triggered a new twist in the hitherto warm relationships among the groups. Uvin3 submits thus: Hence, under indirect rule, social relations in Rwanda changed greatly: they became more uniform, rigid, unequal and exploitative, with a clear hierarchy from Bazungu to Tutsi, to Hutu, to Twa, with persons at each higher level having privileges denied to those at lower levels and disdaining those below them.

In furtherance of its own agenda, the Belgian government switched its loyalty and support for Tutsi dominance to the Hutu group prior to granting independence to the Rwandan state. Uvin4 reveals that the social revolution initiated by the Hutu that overthrew the Tutsi-led monarch had the “acquiescence, if not connivance, of the departing Bazungu”. Essentially, the Hutu-led rebellion was meant to destroy the monarchical oligarchy of the Tutsi which marginalised them from access to socio-economic and political power, in order to pave way for the creation of a Presidential Republic in which they would be the major player based on their numerical preponderance over the Tutsi and Twa. The intent on reordering the socio-political and economic landscapes of Rwanda led to series of uprisings between the early 1950s and 1960s. The Tutsi and Twa groups bore the brunt of the uprisings. They were killed in their thousands, leading to their seeking refuge in neighbouring Uganda. On so many occasions, the attempts by the refugees to return to Rwanda were repelled by Hutu hardliners, signalling their determination to expel both the Tutsi and Twa groups from Rwanda permanently. These incidents changed the socio-political and economic dynamics of post-independent Rwanda remarkably. The outcome of the violent crises led to the elevation and dominance of the Hutu and reversed the trend of pre-colonial and postcolonial Tutsi political and economic domination. The antagonism was essentially an ethnic war of survival triggered by the desperation to acquire and retain political power by both the Tutsi and Hutu

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ethnic groups. Even the relatively long period of peace was tainted with the constant reminder of the possibilities of another round of deadly clashes. The period of the late 1960s up till the pre-genocide early 1990s was characterised by “peace of the graveyard”. A recurrence of violent conflict was always imminent. In effect, the constant fear of recurrence and even deadlier confrontations is a function of the mechanisms and terms of settlement (peacemaking, peace-building and peace-enforcement) of earlier conflicts. Questions therefore arise as to the effectiveness of the mechanisms instituted for seeking justice for the aggrieved, and punishment for the guilty in the various pregenocide violent conflicts in Rwanda. From all indications, the issue of justice was not methodically handled after the various pre-genocide conflicts in Rwanda. The sheer brutality of the 1994 genocide reinforced the necessity for seeking enduring solution to the constant and prevalent Hutu-Tutsi crisis in Rwanda. A most innovative way of settling the scores and moving Rwanda onto the next stage of development was the adoption of the transitional justice mechanism. However, this was a transitional justice with a difference. It was the adoption of an ‘unusual’ system of justice seeking; the unorthodox indigenous gacaca justice mechanism. This system of justice seeking falls within the rubric of current dominant discourse in African epistemology that seeks alternatives to western ideals for combating Africa’s challenges. In recent times, African academia has been inundated with the search for African solutions to Africa’s challenges. Particularly, there is an aggressive tendency towards the decolonisation of scientific epistemology so that Africa’s indigenous processes are adapted to resolving Africa’s challenges of statehood; political challenges, economic underdevelopment and socio-cultural relations. The adoption of the gacaca system falls within the context of decolonisation of African policies. This chapter is poised to analyse and project the successes of the gacaca indigenous mechanism as was applied to the issue of transitional justice at the end of the Rwanda genocide. The chapter commences with the introduction, which is followed by the philosophy of transitional justice. Further, we shall provide a brief history of the Rwanda genocide, and subsequently, the meaning and context of gacaca court system in Rwanda. This part would also assess how the gacaca court system was deployed and the level of success that was attained through the innovation. Finally, the conclusion would dwell on the necessity of deploying African solutions for Africa’s problems.

Transitional Justice as Sine qua Non for Post-conflict Coexistence The practice of initiating a justice system is a fundamental requirement for seeking closure after a war or violent conflict situation. Presumably, the search for future peaceful coexistence must begin with seeking justice, which would ordinarily involve; listening to the aggrieved and bitter, prosecuting

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the accused and punishing the guilty, in addition to granting reparations or compensations for healing purposes. Thus, the phase between cessation of hostilities and the transition to warm and peaceful relations is organised around a justice system. In effect, there is a process of transition from the bitter confrontations of the past to a convivial future. The first fundamental step in the process of transitional justice is the truth-seeking phase. It is on the basis of the truth that appropriate institutional mechanisms can be initiated for preventing future atrocities. Truth-seeking therefore may be the first step in a long-drawn system of ‘fence-mending’ for the accuser and the accused that may invariably become the victim and the perpetrator of atrocities, respectively. The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy5 explains truth-seeking in the following manner: Truth-seeking measures help establish a narrative of the events that took place during a period of conflict and repression, with a particular focus on human rights violations. Through this established narrative, victim and marginalized persons are provided with a space to share their telling of events, to receive affirmation of their experiences, and to heal, by reclaiming their voices after suffering severe rights violations.

The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy6 goes further to underscore the need for ascertaining the veracity of the claims, and the responsibility for making recommendations on the basis of revelations. In other words: Through the investigative and fact-finding process, information that may otherwise have been unknown comes to light, steps are taken towards identifying violations and assigning blame for them, and recommendations are madepaving the way for additional justice measures, such as reparations, prosecutions, and institutional reforms.

After the truth-seeking phase and its numerous complements, the justice part of the process would be drawn from the recommendations of the appointed, presumed fair and just people of integrity. In summary, transitional justice is a process that draws on various measures in the quest to evolve a post-conflict peaceful coexistence. The measures are adapted in accordance with the local peculiarities of the war or conflict. In citing the United Nations, Mihr7 asserts that the measures: … are a set of judicial and non-judicial instruments and mechanisms, such as, truth-commission, vetting and lustration procedures, memorials, reparations, restitutions, or compensations, and even amnesty, and rehabilitation laws that redress the legacy of massive rights abuse either during wars ….. .

Since the 1990s, a number of post-conflict African states have adopted the transitional justice mechanism in their various attempts at healing the wounds

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of the past, in order to provide solidified platforms for future peaceful coexistence. In this respect, South Africa, Nigeria, Sierra-Leone, Liberia and Rwanda have all deployed transitional justice mechanisms for the enthronement of the better future. South Africa’s process was unique in content and context, because it was the first time issues of racial discrimination were brought to the fore in the processes of transitional justice. The transitional justice process was implemented after the transition from an apartheid state to a democratic state in 1994. The South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission process was conducted based on truth-seeking by encouraging victims of the apartheid era to relay their experiences and even confront their supposed abusers. As Gibson8 submits: “the truth and reconciliation process were worth its considerable price because it contributed positively to the initiation of democratic reform in South Africa”. In the final analysis, the process was focussed on healing the wounds of the past, and forging ahead as one people irrespective of race, gender or class. Like other African states, the Nigerian government took its cue from the South African experience and similarly initiated a transitional justice mechanism of a truth-seeking commission in 1999 immediately after the birth of a new democratic government, after long years of military dictatorship. The Human Rights Violation Investigation Commission was mandated to investigate cases of human rights abuses against individuals and groups since the first military coup of 1966.9 The mandate included the presentation of recommendations to government after the investigation had been concluded. The government encouraged all groups that had grievances since the 1966 military coup to present their cases before the commission. In some of the cases, both the accusers and the accused were presented the opportunity to confront one another. After a very long and tortuous process, the commission made recommendations that bothered on recompense, rehabilitation and prosecution, among others.10 Similar processes of healing collective wounds were deployed in Liberia and Sierra-Leone; two African countries that experienced gruesome civil wars. Essentially, the commissions focussed on truth-seeking in order to reconcile differences and achieve a sense of group catharsis. Despite the glaring flaws in the processes of the truth-seeking commissions instituted in Africa,11 the philosophy of transitional justice has played a significant role in throwing up issues of human rights concerns that would hitherto have been buried. Through this, individuals and groups may have been deterred from following the similar route of violent political conflict. Furthermore, most of the cases provided for, even if, façades of reconciliation among belligerents, and finally for some, a sense of closure was achieved. In all the transitional justice mechanism of truth-seeking highlighted above, the African governments deployed a foreign oriented system. The composition, agenda, membership, strategy, purpose, etc. are characteristic of the Western idea of transitional justice with roots in ancient Greek city-state of

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Athens.12 A modern version of the transitional justice tradition was instituted after the Second World War for the trial of the dramatis personae of the war at the International Military Tribunal in the Nuremberg trials.13 Others in this category are, Argentina in 1983,14 and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993.15 African states latched on to the opportunities in the 1990s because of their belief in the capacity of transitional justice mechanisms to offer the chances of fresh starts from the violent conditions of the past. The snag however is that the transitional justice processes of African states have been devoid of African-themed processes of justice. Indeed, the process is made to appear like African societies lack adequate justice mechanisms. This state of affair thus projects the Rwanda initiative of the adoption of the Gacaca Court System as a welcome development. Though the adoption of the indigenous Gacaca Court System was a “child of necessity” that emerged owing to the logistical, moral, ethical, social, and political challenges that emerged from the implementation of the western-styled transitional justice system, yet, it feeds adequately into the narrative of Africa’s ability to evolve solutions to its own problems.

The Gacaca Court System for Transitional Justice Prior to colonialism, Africa’s political entities were organised around peculiar but efficient, social, economic, political, administrative and justice systems.16 The justice system was planted on a framework of indigenous sources for its laws.17 Some of the sources include, conventions, general principles and accepted practises, among others.18 Also, the justice systems relied on appropriate compensation and punishment for cases decided upon. Thus, each political unit had a broad-based system of regulating behaviour and maintaining law and order. The colonial system distorted the justice system of the pre-colonial African political units. In some cases, well-established justice systems were overruled by European conceptualisation of justice. In many cases, most of the established laws of African societies were derided as being repugnant to natural justice and were therefore expunged from the statute books.19 Through a systematic process, the system of justice in pre-colonial African states began to lose their relevance and gave way to the full adoption of the Western-styled justice system. At independence, the African traditional justice system had been relegated, and merely served complementary role to the Western system of law and jurisprudence. The domination of the African legal system by the western ideal of justice did not erase the relevance of the systems; it only pushed them to the background, leaving the opportunity for the African system to be deployed when the occasion demands. This scenario played out in the institution of the transitional justice system in post-genocide Rwanda. The Rwandan government was compelled to deploy the Gacaca Court System of justice when it became apparent that the Western system had been overwhelmed.

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The Gacaca Court System is an ancient practice for the people of Rwanda. It evokes sentimental connections because of its communal approach to the delivery of justice. In literal terms, gacaca means grass. For the justice system, the meaning is symbolic and resonates with the character of the Rwanda society. The grass (gacaca) ensures no limitation for every member of the community to converge for the purposes of listening and deliberating upon cases brought to the whole community. The system is built around the appointment of highly respected members of the community to sit over cases, and pronounce judgement over cases brought before it. The unanimous verdict of the appointed justices present represents the judgement and is acted upon by the local traditional authorities.20 Essentially, this system is focussed on rebuilding community trust and peaceful coexistence through the dispensation of justice. It helps to tighten bonds of communal living, while also strengthening the belief system in the traditional authority. It aims to achieve closure for both the petitioner and the accused. Furthermore, it is built on the framework of forgiveness and reconciliation for the furtherance of the ethos of common humanity in the society. For Rwanda, the challenge of hearing heaps of cases in the post-genocide era was daunting for an already overstretched criminal justice system that suffered great human and material losses through the genocide.21 The government was therefore compelled to opt for a trusted alternative process—the Gacaca Court System. The National Assembly passed the usage of the Gacaca Court System of justice administration for the transitional justice process into law in October 2000.

Post-genocide Justice: Gacaca Court System to the Rescue The Rwanda genocide qualifies as one of the most devastating events for Africa in the decades of the 1990s. It compares with the Liberia and SierraLeone civil wars of same period. However, the number of human casualty and material destruction that occurred within a relatively short period is arguably incomparable to any known violent conflict in Africa. An attempt to understand the enormity of the genocide would require a deconstruction of the contradictions of the pre-genocide Rwandan society. The pre-colonial geographical space that later became known as Rwanda was home to three identifiable ethnic groups—the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa.22 The Hutu group is the majority, and is believed to be the indigenous people of the area. They represent eighty-five per cent of the Rwandan population. The Tutsi are the second largest group but in the minority, with fourteen per cent of the population. The Twa represents one per cent of the population. The Tutsi and Twa were migrant settlers that met the indigenous Hutu on the land. However, based on their famed presumed superior gumption and adroitness, the Tutsi captured and began to dominate the political,

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social and economic landscape of Rwanda. Incidentally, the Tutsi established a monarchical political system that usurped whatever powers the Hutu may have developed and practised. In terms of economic relations, the traditional Tutsi are mostly cattle-herders, while the Hutu are mostly crop farmers. Based on the economic dynamics, the social class structure placed the Tutsi as bourgeois, while the majority Hutu were proletariats. The social conditions of relations were met by the colonialists who accepted the norm and for a long time strived to preserve the prevailing conditions. This class-based arrangement of the Tutsi over the Hutu was reinforced by the European colonialists’ sentimental preference for the Tutsi, which derived from the Europeans’ unproven theory of Tutsi racial superiority. Prunier23 asserts: The result of this heavy bombardment with highly value-laden stereotypes for some sixty years ended by inflating the Tutsi cultural ego inordinately and crushing Hutu feelings until they coalesced into a highly resentful inferiority complex. If we combine these subjective feelings with the objective political and administrative decisions of the colonial authorities favouring one group over the other, we can begin to see how a very dangerous social bomb was almost absent-mindedly manufactured throughout the peaceful years of abazungu domination.

With the passage of time, the preference of the Belgian colonialists for the Tutsi oligarchy began to wane, following which they embarked on a systematic process of inciting the Hutu against the monarchical authority. The Hutu’s sense of entitlement was awakened by the fact of being the original settlers on the territory, and also by the fact of their numerical preponderance over other tribes in Rwanda. The unwillingness of the Tutsi leadership to part with its political and economic advantages led to confrontations between the two ethnic groups. According to Brown24 : In 1957, the Manifesto Bahutu directly challenged Tutsi overlordship and signalled the Social Revolution of 1959 which saw the realisation of Hutu Power through the electoral victory of Parmehutu (the Hutu Emancipation Movement), followed by the independence of Rwanda in 1961.

The Social Revolution signalled the beginning of the unrest that culminated in the 1994 genocide. With the election of the Hutu, Gregoire Kayibanda as president in 1962, it was apparent that the Tutsi had lost out in the inter-group power-play. This came with the expected heavy backlash. The change of political leadership prompted the migration of a high number of Tutsis to neighbouring states, particularly, Uganda and Burundi. To take back their positions of authority, the Tutsis organised a rebellion from Burundi, and invaded Rwanda. According to official record, an approximate twenty thousand Tutsis lost their lives in the uprising, which was eventually repelled.

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A twist to the political uncertainty was the military coup of 1973 that ousted the Kayibanda administration that was believed to have been sympathetic to the Tutsi cause. The coup leader, Juvenal Habyarimana who became Head of State, transmuted to a democratic president in 1978. A new attempt by the Tutsi to regain political leadership was made by the invasion of the rebel group—Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1990. But this attempt was equally repelled by the Hutu-dominated force of the Rwandan government. The tension and occasional clashes were the hallmark of the relations preceding the signing of the Arusha Power-sharing Agreement in 1993 to end the perpetual civil war. This state of affairs was truncated with the shooting of the aircraft conveying the Rwandan president in company with his Burundian counterpart over Kigali in April, 1994. The plane crash incident paved the way for an outright civil war through genocidal attacks. An estimated eight-hundred thousand people were killed, majority of whom were Tutsi, and also a significant number of Hutu moderates. All manners of atrocities were committed in the process of prosecuting the war. Some of these include; the use of child-soldiers, rape, attacks on the vulnerable, attacks on places of worship, etc. A coordinated resistance to the genocide came from exiled Tutsi refugees who deployed the power and resources of the RPF to march onto Kigali and cause the defeat of the extremist Hutu militia. After the cessation of hostilities, the nation forged ahead with the determination to emerge strong from the ruins of the genocide. With the knowledge that there cannot be peace without justice, the post-genocide government of Rwanda embarked on an ambitious project of arresting and prosecuting people that participated in the genocide. According to Westberg,25 “the sheer number of suspects imprisoned made apparent that Rwanda’s civil courts could not expeditiously adjudicate genocide cases”. The adoption of a transitional justice system thus became a fait accompli. The response to the necessity for a transitional justice system came from both the international community-backed, United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Gacaca Court System of the Rwandan government. The modern gacaca process, called Inkiko Gacaca shares similarity of purpose; truth and reconciliation, with the traditional gacaca system, but they differ in the sense of the formalisation of the process of the Inkiko Gacaca, and its recognition by the government. Westberg26 explicates the process thus: The system encourages truthfulness in the form of confessions by allowing sentence reduction for those who confess. Further, it takes justice to the people; anyone can make an accusation, and the accuser will have a chance to face the wrongdoer in a judicial process held in the community. A panel of judges then determines the person’s guilt.

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No doubt the Inkiko Gacaca had its failings, but its acceptance by members of the community it served cannot be questioned.

The Gacaca Court System as Success Story Inkiko Gacaca was “a child of necessity” that proved its worth in the stormy days of Rwanda’s search for justice. A fair assessment of its outcome should be made against the circumstances for which its adoption became compelling. Ingelaere27 notes: The fact that the ordinary justice system was non-existence after the genocide clearly motivated the spontaneous emergence of the gacaca activities and the gradual support for the gacaca by the authorities. The gacaca had to resume its former role, relieving the pressure on the ordinary courts. Immediately after the genocide, the latter were not just working slowly, as they had before; they were not working at all.

The Gacaca Court System however proved its mettle by delivering on its mandate of prosecuting as many cases as possible. In comparison with the alternative Western-styled, ICTR, Westberg28 asserts that: “The gacaca courts prevail over the ICTR as a mode of transitional justice …” This however does not obviate the flaws associated with the gacaca system. Some of these include procedural challenges, accused genocidaires fleeing justice, burden of legitimacy of the courts and rights of the accused.29 These flaws are overshadowed by the success of the Gacaca Court System, which includes; the economic benefits of the process to the Rwanda government, sociological and social relations benefits to the Rwandan people, psychological benefits to both petitioners and defendants, the positive projection of Rwandan culture to the rest of the world.30 Above all, the success should be viewed in the light of the existence of traditional African solutions to Africa’s problems. In effect, the gacaca system embodies the capacity of African states to effectively overcome their challenges by deploying their age-old mechanisms of tackling existential problems. Essentially, the Gacaca Court System has been instrumental in achieving national catharsis; which is a prerequisite for peaceful and harmonious coexistence. In today’s Rwanda, the memories of the genocide linger in the reality of a resilient people that are working towards overcoming their adversity, and focussed on the prospects of an assured future. The Rwanda case is an unfolding phenomenon about a people that have risen from the throes of war and devastation, to improve their lot through concerted efforts and collective action towards a more meaningful future.

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Hybridisation for Future Justice System Despite some of the flaws, the Gacaca Court system emerged as “poster policy” of Africa’s resilience in the ability to devise workable mechanisms for solving its problems. We must however be cautious in attributing the success of the Rwanda transition justice system solely to the strength of the gacaca system. Indeed, the moribund western legal institutions were handy in contributing to the success of the gacaca system. For the avoidance of doubt, the three systems of justice were deployed for the post-genocide transitional justice process. These were the international community sponsored; International Criminal Court Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the weakened formal domestic justice system, and the Gacaca court system. In reality, some form of collaboration existed among the three that aided the achievement of post-genocide group catharsis. The need for collaboration can be understood against the strength and weaknesses of the three methods of justice deployed for post-genocide reconciliation in Rwanda. Expectedly, the ICTR did not receive that much of local support, basically because of the experiences of other climes in which the role of an international tribunal set up by the United Nations to prosecute cases of human rights abuses did not record much success. An average Rwandese therefore did not put much trust in the system of the ICTR. Instructively, the pessimism was not unfounded because the ICTR performed relatively poorly. According to Unwin and Mironko,31 “the ICTR’s prime function is widely believed to be the reaffirmation of the international community’s own morality”. In the end, “the record of the ICTR is mixed”. For the domestic justice institution, the immediate post-genocide era posed a massive challenge for the dispensation of justice. The infrastructure had been devastated and the required human resource had been depleted by the war. It was an impossible task to dispense justice under the conditions of the ruins the justice system found itself. However with support from the international community, the regular formal courts rose to the occasion and contributed its quota to the post-genocide transitional justice system. Although the process was slow and long-winding, the courts still found its relevance in the postgenocide restitution process. The weaknesses of both the ICTR and the domestic legal system triggered the adoption and acceptance of the gacaca system. To a great degree, the generality of the local populace applauded the performance of the gacaca system. Indeed, the gacaca system played a significant role in managing the weaknesses of the ICTR and the domestic justice system to present a commendable transitional justice system. It must however be emphasised that the gacaca system equally parades its baggage of errors and gaps, which were neutralised by both the expertise of the ICTR and the resources of the domestic justice system. According to Clapham32 :

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The distinct lack of legal expertise within gacaca’s structure has been the source of much criticism regarding its success; justice of any kind is readily compromised if administered by those not sufficiently trained in the legal sphere as the gacaca courts prove.

The learning point here is that the gacaca court system cannot exist in isolation of the modern justice system. Rwanda has moved from the pre-colonial political entity into a modern-state system. Part of the pre-conditions for being a modern-state system is the existence of a legal system which parades some of the critical elements of the western-styled justice system. The critical aspect for Rwanda is to integrate the positives (involvement of the locals in the dispensation of justice) of the gacaca system into the practice of modern legal system. As Meyerstein33 advocates: Rather than try to force them into a Western model of a court, they should be appreciated as truly hybrid form emerging from Rwanda’s postcolonial condition that is perhaps uniquely capable of responding to the problem of mass atrocity produced by collective violence.

The advantage of a hybrid is numerous, but particularly the domestication of international legal codes/justice system that Rwanda is a party to. When there is such a merger of the western and local legal systems, Rwanda would be the better for it. Remarkably, the world also has lessons to learn from the gacaca system. As Clapham34 concludes: Fundamentally, the plethora of lessons that can be learned from this experiment are not exclusive to Africa. Despite the local and customary nature of gacaca, rather than constituting a specifically African solution, as an experiment in restorative justice, it proved to adhere to the core definitional notions of repair, responsibility and restoration.

Conclusion This chapter was focussed on amplifying the strength of African states in providing solutions to their problems. Africa possesses a reservoir of capabilities upon which the pre-colonial units functioned. The capabilities guided the processes of the political, economic, socio-cultural and indeed, the justice systems. The colonial intrusion that enforced Western-perspectives on the processes of the political entities undermined pre-existing systems. The Western system was regarded as superior, particularly in the realm of justice. In fact, most aspects of the African justice system were regarded as being repugnant to natural justice, and may only be applied as complements under unusual circumstances.

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The new wave of resurgence for Africa’s indigenous mechanisms and methodologies is indeed a welcome development that would project Africa’s abilities, at the minimum, for solving its own problems. As demonstrated through the impressive performance of Rwanda’s Gacaca Court System, the possibilities of success through African mechanisms and methodologies far outweighs that which Western systems can offer African states.

Notes 1. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton University Press), 2001, pp. 9–10. 2. Peter Uvin, Prejudice, Crisis, and Genocide in Rwanda, African Studies. Review, 40(2), 1997, pp. 91–115. 3. ibid., 96. 4. ibid., 96. 5. The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, Truth-Seeking as a Transitional. Justice Mechanism, 2018. See: https://timep.org/transitional-justice-project/ truth-seeking-as-a-transitional-justice-mechanism/. 6. Ibid. 7. Anja Mihr, An Introduction to Transitional Justice in, O. Simic, ed. Introduction to Transitional Justice (New York: Routledge), 1997, pp. 1–28. 8. James Gibson, The Contributions of Truth to Reconciliation: Lessons from South Africa, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50(3), 2006, pp. 409–432. 9. Emmanuel Zwanbin, The Challenges of Transitional Justice in Nigeria: Echoes from the Oputa Panel, 1999, Journal of Language, Technology, & Entrepreneurship in Africa, 8(2), 2017, pp. 73–91. 10. Nigeria. Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, HRVIC Report (Washington: Nigerian Democratic Movement), 2005. 11. Gabriel Twose and Caitlin Mahoney, The Trouble with Truth-Telling: Preliminary Reflections on Truth and Justice in Post-war Liberia. Peace and Conflict Studies, 22(2), 2015 pp. 85–112. 12. Adriaan Lanni, Transitional Justice in Ancient Athens: A Case Study University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 32(2), 2011, pp. 551–596. 13. Marcos Zunino, Justice Framed: A Genealogy of Transitional Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2019. 14. Coreen Davis, State Terrorism and Post-Transitional Justice in Argentina: An Analysis of Mega Cause 1 Trial (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 2013. 15. William Schabas, The UN International Criminal Tribunals: The Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2010. 16. Fyle Magbaily, Introduction to the History of African Civilization Precolonial Africa (Lanham: University Press of America Inc.), 1999. See also: Cheik Diop, Precolonial Black Africa. A Comparative Study of the Political and Social Systems of Europe and Black Africa, from Antiquity to the Formation of Modern States (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books), 1987. 17. Olusina Akeredolu, The Indigenous African Criminal Justice System for the Modern World (Durham: Carolina Academic Press), 2016.

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18. M’Begniga Abdoulaye and Ma Guang, African Customary Law and Modern Law from Western: An Overview of Their Roles and Impacts in African Societies, International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research, 5(1), 2017, pp. 188–192. 19. Bonny Ibhawoh, Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire’s Courts (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2013. 20. Timothy Longman, An Assessment of Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts. Peace Review, 21(3), 2009, pg. 304–312. See Pietro Sullo, Beyond Genocide: Transitional Justice and Gacaca Courts in Rwanda, The Search for Truth, Justice and Reconciliation (The Hague: Asser Press), 2018. 21. Ibid., 22. Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd), 2008. 23. ibid., pp. 9. 24. David Brown, Contemporary Nationalism: Civic, Ethnocultural and Multicultural Politics (New York: Routledge), 2000. 25. Megan Westberg, Rwanda’s Use of Transitional Justice After Genocide: The Gacaca Courts and the ICTR. Kansas Law Review, 59(2011), 2010, pp. 331– 367. 26. ibid., 337. 27. Bert Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Seeking Justice after Genocide (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press), 2016. 28. Westberg, 332. 29. Westberg, 335. 30. Westberg, 346–352. 31. Peter Uvin and Charles Mironko, Western and Local Approaches to Justice in Rwanda. Global Governance, 9(2), 2003, pp. 219–231. 32. Charlotte Clapham, Gacaca: A Successful Experiment in Restorative Justice? EInternational Relations, 2012, pp. 1–7. See: https://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/ 30/gacaca-a-successful-experiment-in-restorative-justice-2/. 33. Ariel Meryestein, Between Law and Culture: Rwanda’s Gacaca and. Postcolonial Legality. Law and Social Inquiry, 32(2), 2007, pp. 467–508. 34. Clapham, 4.

CHAPTER 41

Reconstructing Global Security and Peacebuilding in Somalia’s Changing Context John Mary Kanyamurwa and Betty Nangira

Introduction Peace and security have eluded Somalia for so long, subsequently leading the country to be labeled a “failed state,” especially after the collapse of central state authority in 1991. Consequently, the country has been and continues to be regarded as part of the threat to global peace and security on the African continent. This is largely due to the perceived potential for a haven for reprobate elements such as terrorists and pirates in the country. Somalia is a coastal country located in Africa’s horn, sharing a long border with the Indian Ocean. In terms of security, this is a central factor that contributes to its strategic location.1 The Somalis have traditionally been organized in clans and sub-clans, with the heads of these ethnic structures exercising all administrative, judicial, religious and welfare powers. Indeed, the clan and sub-clan heads’ powers and territorial jurisdictional control have been at the heart of the Somali conflicts for generations. Thus, the breakdown in peace and security in Somalia is hardly a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, while the country has been embroiled in successive conflicts for generations, the first vicious conflict occurred in 1897 when Somali native citizens in the Ogaden region revolted against Ethiopian colonial rule.2 The subsequent colonial takeover of the Somalia territories by the British, later forming the United Republic of Somalia at independence J. M. Kanyamurwa (B) · B. Nangira History and Political Science Department, Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_41

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in 1960, emphasizes the global and national dimensions of this country’s security challenges. Accordingly, this analysis identifies colonialism as part of the fundamental forces that shaped Somalia’s political instability as investigated within the collective security theory framework.3 Yet, whereas current deliberations on the Somali security question have exhaustively explored the condition of statelessness, violence, and vital components of peace and security reconstruction, they have barely scrutinized linkages between the global and national dimensions of the governance challenges in Somalia. Therefore, this chapter examines the central forces in the security reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts in Somalia. Further collective security interrogates the sources of security challenges sandwiched in the actors’ interests and the influence of the global security policy framework on the sustainability of peacebuilding ingenuities in the country in question.

Theoretical and Conceptual Perspectives This chapter is grounded in the theory of collective security, which emphasizes four assumptions implicitly perceived to be at the center of global security and peacebuilding landscape. First, the theory advances the view that security is an arrangement in which all states cooperate to provide anchorage for all by the actions of all against any errant state(s) or hostile entities. Collective security action is directed against a state or states whose intra or interstate actions challenge the existing peace and security order, using the force of arms.4 Second, the theory states that when diverse countries agree against any one country that perpetrates intra and/or interstate conflict, they are justified to take collective security and peace restoration or peacebuilding actions. In taking this course of action, states are guided by collectively agreed internal regulation itself, based on the principles of collective responsibility, neutrality, and collegiality. Third, this approach to peace and security is opposed to the pursuance of profound state self-interest when dealing with the aggressor or violator of peace and security within and outside state boundaries to ensure global peace. Yet, contrary to this scholarly postulation, security itself is part of the integral interests of international actors who, indeed, are in some cases, bound to express such individual motivations. Fourth, the theory of collective security advances that all nations, especially those with the requisite capabilities, willingly cooperate. This inclination sometimes implied accepting some degree of susceptibility, sacrifice and consenting to the core contributing nations’ leadership needed to organize for restoration, reconstructing, or maintaining collective security.5 Positioned in the global peace and security reconstruction discourse, the theory of collective security assumptions basically provide an explanation as to why the U.N and AMISOM have been at the center of security reconstruction efforts in Somalia. The concept of global security refers to a world order that guarantees peace, in which there is constructive, respectful, and legitimate conflict resolution mechanisms, and where all people feel free and safe from danger.6 This implies

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a guarantee for inclusive justice for all people, where there is no national, transnational, transcultural, human, and environmental threat to life and wellbeing. Accordingly, these core aspects are understood as central to global security and peacebuilding initiatives which are collectively enforced by any global security arrangements put in place.7 Aimed at promoting nonviolent relations among European states, global security has been at the core of international politics since the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The latter treaty, however, first gained scholarly attention after the 1815 Congress of Vienna which made conscious efforts to promote security beyond Europe.8 Evidence maintains that collective security is achieved by setting up a global cooperative organization under the auspices of international law, which gives rise to a form of global collective security governance operations. The collective security organization becomes an arena for diplomacy, the balance of power, and the mediatory power exercise necessary to maintain peace and security. To maintain or reconstruct global peace and security, military power is used, but only after it is legitimized by the collective security outfit, in the present case, the United Nations.9 The scholarship accumulated so far indicates that although global security has a worldwide connotation in a theoretical sense, its practical reality is ensured as a total of the efforts made by individual countries to maintain their individual national security. In other words, it is the inability to maintain peace and security in a given state, which drives the global institutions to commence restoration operations in such a country, such as the case of Somalia. Further, contemporary analyses suggest that, where necessary, states make regional and/or international interventions in intra or interstate conflicts as integral contributions to global security and peacebuilding. Such interventions are called into play where individual countries involved in intra or interstate conflict(s) fail to resolve it independently. Some of the interventions, seen in the context of global security and peacebuilding, take the form of security reconstruction and peacebuilding within the conflicting state(s).10 Indeed, according to Boutrous Boutrous Ghali’s 1992 U.N.’s Report on the Agenda for Peace and security reconstruction, peacebuilding involves actions undertaken to solidify peace and avoid a relapse into open, endless conflict.11 Understood in this perspective, interventions that involve security reconstruction and peacebuilding simply refer to the internationally recognized measures undertaken by international and/or regional agencies to restore and guarantee peace and security in countries that have failed to resolve the interand intra-state wars, on their own.12 Such interventions that involve peace reconstruction actions can be authorized by legitimate organizations such as the U.N. Security Council and supported by international humanitarian and funding agencies; regional unions such as the European and African Union.13 As a global south entity facing several internal conflicts which rendered it a failed state, Somalia, as discussed in this chapter, was one of those countries which needed the support of the global powers for security reconstruction.

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.

Methods We developed this chapter using a qualitative approach involving secondary methods of data collection and analysis. Specifically, the document review method was used. We obtained relevant online and printed academic journal articles, U.N. official documents, reports on Somalia from Uganda Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IGAD and AMOSOM reports, materials on security reconstruction and peacebuilding operations and strategic interventions on past and active initiatives. Online manuscripts were identified using different search engines and databases, including Google Scholar, Google Books, SAGE Premier Database, bookfi.org, Academic Search Premier, and ProQuest. The keywords used to search relevant online information included: global security approach to Somalia, actors in Somali conflict, the peace and security situation in Somalia, sources of challenges faced in the Somali conflict, U.N. peacekeeping and building missions to Somalia, the African Union (A.U.) peacebuilding operations and impact of global security policies on sustainable security in Somalia. These keywords facilitated the identification of all the references used to establish the security reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts in Somalia, challenges encountered in implementing these efforts, sources of these challenges, and the influence of global security policy frameworks on the sustainability of peacebuilding study site. The coding process followed this pattern of generalized concepts. Data analysis was guided by the themes identified in line with the objectives of the study.

Security Reconstruction and Peacebuilding Efforts in Somalia In Somalia, peace and security breakdown is as old as the country itself, an amalgamation of tribal entities who lived independently of each other for generations. While there was nervous calm during the colonial era and the better part of the first post-independence decade, tension and skirmishes between the clan and sub-clan heads were routine. The openly evident strains were deeply imbedded in what the clans and sub-clans perceived as marginalization at the hands of the central Government. Security reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts also started early in the country. The central Government was hashing out shaky peace deals with diverse clans and foreign states, such as Ethiopia, in the 1980s. Nonetheless, resulting from these large national political and security contradictions was the assassination of Abdirashid Ali Shermarke in 1969, the second post-independence president. But the linkages between national politics, global security frameworks and the consequent need for more pronounced peacebuilding efforts only became most apparent after Major General Siyad Barre took over power in October 1969.14

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Referred to as the Supreme leader, Barre exercised disproportionate coercive control that involved sidelining and oppressing top clan leaders as he co-opted and supported sub-clan elders as a divide-and-rule strategy, further engulfing his country in a pattern of insecurity.15 To deeply align Somalia with global security arrangements, Barre took some significant steps. Firstly, the president sided with the Soviet Union in the Cold War and embraced what he referred to as “scientific socialism.” The latter political brand ideologically combined the Marxist and Quranic principles that he used to guide his national “re-education” campaign. Contextually understood, the latter operation aimed to suppress opposition political groups and appeal to the Muslim country, strengthening the view that the Somali security challenges were double-pronged, characterized by national and global dimensions.16 Secondly, with the support of the Soviet Union, Barre ruled dictatorially from 1969 to 1976 and shrewdly moved to turn his 25-member Supreme Revolutionary Council into the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party. Arguably, this governance shift suitably aligned the Barre regime with the Soviet political and security apparatus in Moscow for the time it lasted. Thirdly, the military leadership renamed the country from the United Republic of Somalia to the Somali Democratic Republic.17 While it can contend as to what the political shifts were aimed at, they conceivably appoint Barre’s need to strengthen his hold on political power by theoretical demonstration and appeal to democratic constitutional rule, targeting both domestic and international audiences. It is also plausible that most of the reforms were aimed at his regime backers in the communist Soviet Union. Fourthly, the shift in global political and security alliances by Moscow to Ethiopia, chiefly occasioned by the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie’s regime in Addis Ababa, brought the United States into the global security arrangements of the region. The superpower readily stepped into the void left by the Soviet Union, providing Siyad Barre’s regime with close to US$100 million in economic and military aid per year from 1988 to 1989.18 To arrest the fast deteriorating security situation in Somalia, the U.S. aid provided direct airstrikes on rebel and terrorist bases in Somalia.19 Thus, while aerial strikes were used to minimize ground U.S. soldiers’ causality, they caused devastating local combatant and civilian deaths in Somalia. Barre also used his new allegiance with the United States as a platform to convince the Ethiopian Government to sign the 1988 peace agreement, which was intended to neutralize the strongest of the rebel factions based in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.20 Unfortunately, the U.S. aid and the new agreement with Ethiopia did not help much. The rebels continued fighting with even greater success, overthrowing Barre’s Government in January 1991. The failed state status dates from this period when a power vacuum was created in Mogadishu. Filling this void were many antagonistic power and security actors comprising clan factions, terrorist forces such as Al-Shabaab, one of the deadliest affiliates of the Al-Qaeda and global forces U.S. Army, which was first deployed in Somalia in late 1991.

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It is against this backdrop that global security reconstruction and peacebuilding interventions to guarantee peace and security first emerged in the region. With the focus primarily on ensuring peace and security in the country, global actors working under the United Nations’ auspices but led by the United States came on board. With similar perceived motivation, the European Union, the African Union (A.U.), and peaceful national coalitions joined the fold.21 The global and regional efforts to restore peace and security in Somalia started with establishing the United Nations Operation in Somalia I (UNOSOM I) based on U.N. Security Council Resolution 751 of 1992.22 Emphasizing the global security limitations, the U.N. mission hardly achieved its humanitarian convoy protection, securing population centers, and disarmament mandate, leading to its replacement by UNOSOM II in 1993. Thus, with a more improved mandate, which entailed enforcing the safe delivery of humanitarian assistance and creating a stable environment for distributing it throughout Somalia, UNOSOM II started its operations. The second U.N. mission was further assigned to accomplish disarmament and reconciliation, paving the way for restoring peace, law, and order. Nonetheless, UNOSOM II similarly underperformed, withdrawing in 1995 after the bloody Battle of Mogadishu. Led by U.S. forces to oust the Al-Shabaab who supported General Farrah Aideed, a Somali warlord, the violent hostilities leftover 73 American soldiers wounded, 19 of them killed, and 20,000 civilian deaths.23 The subsequent global security reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts only came in the form of a U.N. arms embargo on parties in the Somali conflict, which neither succeed in bringing peace nor stability in the country. The military equipment that sustained the civil hostilities continued flowing into the hands of the fighting factions, including the Al-Shabaab and the pirates in the Indian Ocean. With global security and peacebuilding efforts failing, the African Union (A.U.) deployed the short-lived Intergovernmental Authority on Development and Peace Support Mission in Somalia (IGASOM), a protection and training mission to Somalia in 2006. However, with the sustained Somali security deterioration, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) was established by the African Union’s Peace and Security Council and deployed in Mogadishu in March 2007.24,25 This mission was composed of six African countries, including Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia, which joined in 2014. Operating on a U.N. mandate, the AMISOM came into existence through a U.N. Security Council Resolution 1772 of 2007. The latter instrument gave AMISOM a broad six-month mandate to take all the measures necessary to protect the transitional Somali Government, support dialogue, and reconciliation by providing protection that would ensure safe passage for all the personnel involved. However, in very similar terms, AMISOM, like its predecessors, did not achieve its mandate in the granted period and is today still active in Somalia. Consequently, the mission’s mandate has periodically been extended and renewed every six months. The failure of AMISOM I and II

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and the continued extension of AMISOM have all not suddenly and deliberately occurred. There are intricate forces that have shaped these manifestations. Some of the same security dynamics in Somalia continue to influence the challenges that have undermined the security reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts in the past. Thus, the sources of these challenges and the policy interventions within the framework of existing global and regional security arrangements are discussed in this chapter.

Sources of Global Security Challenges and Peacebuilding Responses in Somalia UNOSOM I, UNOSOM II, the UN-sponsored sanctions on warring parties and the ongoing AMISOM mission were designed as part of the global response mechanisms to restore peace and security in Somalia. However, the first three peacebuilding initiatives underperformed while the last one remains functional, largely due to failure to accomplish its mandate as scheduled. But current scholarships suggest that due to its relative success compared to earlier U.N. missions, its operations have had to be regularly extended until to date. Further relevant results indicate that one of the reasons that constrained the success of the earlier U.N. interventions in Somalia relates to the political, economic, and cultural forces which the global security interventions faced along the way.26 The sources of these security challenges resonate with the interests, certainties, and weaknesses of the actors involved in these responses. These sources can be broadly clustered into domestic, regional, and global categories. Scholarship identifies some domestic sources of global security challenges and peacebuilding weaknesses related to clan-based violence, undermining the restoration of peace and security in Somalia. Indeed, it is essentially due to the ethnic power interests deeply rooted in the Somali tribal society’s paternalistic structure that peace and security have eluded the country for so long.27 Related perspectives to this debate suggest the ethnic structure is primarily made up of African Arabs, Bantus, and Baravans. While these ethnicities are culturally homogenous since they all observe the Islamic way of life, they have long been engaged in intra- and inter-clan violence resulting from engaging each other in ethnic expansionary wars. Significantly, the fundamental driving force which undermines peace and security is economic as all ethnic expansionary conflicts are chiefly driven by the desire to capture and occupy more territory and the resources therein comprising sheep, cattle, water, and productive land.28 Of immense bearing in this discourse are the clan heads and sub-clan heads’ role as vital ethnic violence drivers. For generations, the two groups have engaged in power struggles, albeit disguised as fighting for recognition of their ethnic identity. Regrettably, these vicious relations have posed a profound stumbling block for any global and regional peacebuilding responses introduced to Somalia to restore peace and security. Exacerbating these conflicts’

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levels is the relationship between the central Government and the Somali ethnic structure, with most post-independence governments in Mogadishu deliberately marginalizing the clan heads to work with sub-clan heads. A case in point is Siyad Barre, who fueled these racial clashes by funding and arming sub-clans to fight the clan heads, especially those who were or perceived to be opposed to his regime. Suffice to note that these intra-clan conflicts have continued to hamper any peacebuilding reconstruction efforts initiated in Somalia. Equally fundamental to interrogating the sources of internal peace and security challenges are the interstate territorial ownership interests over the Ogaden region. Dating from far back in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the territorial claims have become a source of conflict in Somalia. Earlier on, Ethiopia under Menelik II solidified her claim over the entity by conquering and colonizing the entire Ogaden region, a move that did not go down well with the Somalis. Accordingly, a cascade of political events led Siyad Barre to invade the Ogaden region in 1977, attracting the wrath of the Soviet Union-backed Ethiopians who completely routed the Somali army by 1978. A number of significant consequences with relevance to this chapter can be accentuated here. First, Ethiopia was able to occupy the entire Ogaden region, going beyond the 10% of the region it controlled before the war. Thus, in terms of strategy, Ethiopia was in a better position to enforce peace and security in its territory and derive more economic resources from the Ogaden. Second, Ethiopia was able to pursue its interests from this territory, which, inter alia, entailed Somalia’s destabilization. Ethiopia started arming the neighboring rebel clans and sub-clans in Somalia against the Barre regime, further confounding the horn of Africa’s peace and security question. Three, perhaps, of more pertinence to this debate was the global security dimension of the Ethio-Somali territorial conflict. Scholarship indicates that whereas Ethiopia was heavily supported by Moscow and its mercenary allies from Cuba, North Korea, and Yemen,29 Somalia was, on the other hand, militarily reinforced by the United States, albeit after the Ogaden conflict. Quite comparable to many African countries during colonialism, the strategy aimed to govern the Somalis in the most efficient ways relative to the colonialists’ political and economic interests and resources at their disposal. The colonial interests comprised easy access to cheap labor, raw materials (such as sugar, bananas, cotton, and livestock), and market control. More significantly, however, the colonial powers coveted control over this territory’s long coastline, which would strategically ease access to the Indian Ocean, where ports and maritime call centers could be established. Moreover, they would easily extend their political and security control over the territories they held and trade with the Far East through these marine transport facilities, particularly with India and China.30 The desire to maximize these interests, first during the colonial period and later within the Cold War politics under the independent country, posed serious challenges for political stability. Rather than providing solutions, the crystallization of all these interests in the country

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is much more visible in the escalation of peace vicious security contradictions, depicting both local and global sources of violence very much in play. As a source of peace and security challenges in Somalia, it ought to be noted the new political arrangement disempowered the clan and sub-clan heads feel, compelling them to start protracted resistance against the colonialists. The quest to regain traditional supreme authority by clan and sub-clan heads continued until shortly before independence, resuming shortly afterward.31 It is worth noting that, like in most of Africa, one of the sources of peace and security challenges in Somalia was in the government structure which the British colonialists crafted in the country as it did not have political roots on the ground. It had disempowered some of the key stakeholders, the clan and sub-clan leaders. Accordingly, the loosely united factions to which independence had been granted erupted into political turmoil as some clan heads started engaging in struggles for top power positions. These political struggles have since been at the core of Somalia’s insecurity irrespective of the phase of peacebuilding initiatives. Thus, the nature of Government is not only responsible for exacerbating the intra-and inter-clan conflicts but has also become a serious source of the peace and security challenges experienced in the country. Global associations to the peace and security situation in Africa, which date from the nineteenth Century and earlier periods, are vital in examining global sources that constrain security reconstruction and peacebuilding in Somalia. Key in this category of sources is the security contradictions mostly spearheaded by colonialist policies. It is noted that before the coming of the imperialists, the traditional Somali ethnic communities did not have a central government likened to Weber’s bureaucratic state.32 Each ethnic group was self-governing under the authority and power of its hereditary heads of clans and sub-clans. Under the political leadership of these ethnic heads, each group implemented its own home-grown conflict resolution mechanisms. Customarily known as Heer (traditional law), there existed a code of basically informal laws, which operated along with Islamic rules to resolve disputes and maintain peace among the clan members.33 However, when the French, Italian, and British colonized the different parts of Somaliland, they introduced their centralized model of Government, attempting to unify the disparate formerly self-governing ethnic groups under their colonies. Recent analyses have likewise linked the global sources of peace and security challenges in Somalia to the aftermath of World War I realties. For example, as a direct consequence of World War I, Italy became too weak to sustain some of its colonies, including northern Somaliland. As a result, Italy signed a treaty by which it handed over this colony to Britain as a trusteeship since the latter imperial power had occupied the southern part.34 To realize their interests at the least cost possible, the British cosmetically brought the northern and southern parts of Somalia under one colonial Government at the top. The British, nonetheless, left the colony differently operating at the local level, as the two parts continued to exist like separate political entities, with

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different legal, administrative, and educational systems.35 Therefore, the colonial Government was a superimposition manned by appointed chiefs, who mostly administered each part to maximize economic interests. Consequently, the two regions operating as independent political entities with the colonial Government at the top, the supreme authority of the clan and sub-clan heads in these entities was subdued. One can argue that the political structure has plunged the country into deeper waves and patterns of insecurity from the colonial period, during the post-independence era, beginning in 1960, up to date.36 Of similar significance among the global sources of the challenges that have undermined peacebuilding and security reconstruction in Somalia are terror organizations’ interests. Working with Al Shabab, a Somali outfit, the Middle East-based terrorists had operated in Africa’s horn since the early 1980s when they first opened their operating cells. Like the USA, the Soviet Union, and their allies during the Cold War, the terrorists also identified Africa’s horn in general and Somalia in particular as a strategic military site for achieving their goals. But with the overthrow of Siyad Barre in January 1991, Somalia was plunged into another phase of severe clan-based factional viciousness and insecurity in which terrorists had tremendous fighting space. During this time, the Al-Shabaab entrenched themselves in Somalia, using it as a base for conducting sea piracy and launching surreptitious attacks on neighboring states that they regarded as enemies.37 The most atrocious of these attacks was the 1998 synchronized double suicide bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam which killed over 220 innocent civilians and wounded thousands more. This prompted the African presidents to seek the intervention of the African Union (A.U.) and the U.N.’s approval to dislodge the planners from their Somali bases, thereby restoring peace and security in Somalia as a strategic means of neutralizing the growing terrorist threat. When the approval was readily granted, A.U. established the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) that entered Somalia in 2007.38 Yet, other sources of global security challenges in Somalia lay in the U.N. mission vulnerabilities. The escalation of local conflicts in the early years of the civil war, particularly in the 1990s were not well designed. Whereas these U.N. assignments were established as humanitarian and peacekeeping missions mandated to monitor ceasefires, protect U.N. personnel involved in the distribution of humanitarian aid, and disarm the warring clans, most U.N. mandate items were hardly accomplished. This was largely due to diverse loopholes that entailed limited mandates. They were not backed by satisfactory military power relative to the violent resistance the local warlords put up against them.39 Besides, the U.N. missions have been plagued by rampant resource mismanagement and corruption, evidence of which has been seen in several millions of dollars lost in thefts, and millions more wasted in officials’ overpriced goods, yet some equally faulty.40 Thus, the source of violence in Somalia after 1991 was neither due to the resurgence of power interests by the clan heads, which

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the Barre regime had suffocated for so long, nor the U.S. deployment in Somalia only, but also the ferocious terrorist activism in the country. Some apposite perspectives can be presented here. Firstly, the global terror organizations and Al Shabab, just like the American and European powers, viewed Somalia as a friendly base for advancing their interests. The interests for the latter organizations were principally subsumed into terror strategic security interests. Moreover, the planners viewed Somalia as an under-governed Muslim-dominated territory. They could easily spread terrorist ideology and training. Secondly, the Western powers, the Soviet Union, and the terrorists have each made spirited efforts to control Somalia to establish military sites for guaranteeing not so much Somalia’s internal peace and security but fostering their strategic security, diplomatic, and economic interests. Thirdly, whereas the specific U.S. interests in global security primarily comprised expanding space for capitalistic ideological objectives, there were also security-specific interests in the East Africa region. Key among these interests entailed guarding against radicalism and terrorism whose epicenter was in Sudan and the Middle East.41,42 On the other hand, the justification for the Soviet Union’s competition with the USA in the horn of Africa during the Cold War essentially lay in need to protect and provide military aid to the New Leftist Ethiopian government since 1974. Fourthly, unfortunately, irrespective of whichever global actor’s interests, Somalia’s peace and security were both calculatingly and inadvertently dented. By implication, while the theory of collective security accentuates, among other things, the perspective that security was a mechanism in which all states collaborated to jointly provide universal security “for all by the actions of all against any errant actor”, this has not been the case in Somalia as actors largely pursued their own individual interests. Generally, the sources of security challenges in Somalia were political, economic, and coordination in nature. Furthermore, while the sources of the challenges which have undermined security reconstruction and peacebuilding in Somalia were local, they were equally global in character. Thus, within the context of global peace and security frameworks, the sources of Somalia’s challenges manifested as global, national, regional, ethnic, and self-interests for the various actors in the conflict.

Influence of the Global Security Policy Framework on the Sustainability of Peacebuilding Efforts in Somalia The global security policy framework refers to a set of principles, procedures, and actions ratified by all U.N. member states to guide international peace and security through restoring, reforming, and promoting peace, security, and safety within these states. This framework is rooted in Article 43 of the United Nations Charter on Peace, Dignity, and Equality on a Healthy Planet. Guided

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by the above instrument, the framework provides the guidelines adopted as per Resolution 2151 f 20 of the U.N. Security Council at its 7161st meeting to guide all UN-backed security reconstruction peacebuilding interventions in any member country. These guidelines include protecting all U.N. agencies involved in extending humanitarian assistance to people caught up in violence-affected areas.43 Depending on the conflict’s nature and scale, the guidelines provide for imposing arms embargos, launching military intervention,44 promoting political mediation and reconciliation, all contingent upon what is deemed appropriate to resolve the conflict. Sustainable security restoration and maintenance, stability, development, poverty reduction, the rule of law, good governance and legitimate state authority while preventing a country from relapsing into conflict constitute part of the U.N. security guidelines.45 While the U.N. policy guidelines are all well-intentioned, their influence on the sustainability of peacebuilding efforts is largely determined by how they are implemented and the diversity of conditions on the ground. According to Ken Menkhaus,46 the implementation of these policy guidelines in the case of Somalia largely failed in terms of neutrality and, as a result, adversely affected the sustainability of peacebuilding efforts in the country. Besides, the U.N. policy guidelines hardly address the obnoxious permanent conditions that actually and potentially undermine peace and security sustainability. In Somalia’s case, such forces include clan and sub-clan political power needs, which are understood as part of the age-old fabric of the Somali power structure. Thus, it is difficult to realize sustainable peace and security in a situation where international global actors at the vanguard of implementing international security policy guidelines do so, favoring some of the conflicting factions against others. This is the exact scenario that has been experienced since the beginning of global peacebuilding intervention in Somalia’s conflict resolution process. First, the U.S. military as a leading implementer of the global security policy framework in Somalia was not neutral. The U.S. forces were fighting in favor of anti-Islamic warlords and against those who were advancing Islamic extremism as a basis for governing Somalia.47 The decision to back antiIslamic warlords was based on the U.S. intelligence that indicated that the warlords whose agenda focused on advancing Islamic extremism were clandestinely promoting terrorism backed by the Al Shabaab. However, this decision served to exacerbate instead of contributing to the sustainability of peacebuilding efforts in Somalia. It is noted that the warlords the U.S. forces backed were much weaker than those against whom they fought, security realities that further dented the sustainability of peacebuilding interventions in Somalia.48 The U.S. forces would have avoided this global policy implementation blunder and contributed to sustainable peacebuilding had it not made a biased decision in executing the U.N. security guidelines. The adverse influence of the global security policy guidelines on the sustainability of peacebuilding initiatives at the level of implementation in Somalia is summarized by Emily Wax and Karen DeYoung49 as follows:

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Leaders of the transitional (federal) Government (in Somalia) said they have warned U.S. officials that working with the warlords is shortsighted and dangerous. We would prefer that the U.S. work with the transitional government and not with criminals," the prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, said in an interview. "This is a dangerous game. Somalia is not a stable place, and we want the U.S. in Somalia. But in a more constructive way. Clearly, we have a common objective to stabilize Somalia, but the U.S. is using the wrong channels.

Evidently, the nature of the global security policy agenda implementation encouraged many warlords to continue fighting rather than engagement in genuine dialogue and reconciliation. The same policy implementation drawbacks affected the adversely affected AMISOM operations, undermining the sustainability of peacebuilding efforts in Somalia. Whereas AMISOM’s mandate was designed in line with the global policy guidelines sanctioned by the U.N. and A.U., AMISOM’s policy implementation was influenced by the Ethiopian. Consistent scholarship suggests Ethiopian influenced AMISOM favoritism of the Ogaden-based faction, which the former supports. Thus, the nature of ANMISOM’s policy execution has undermined the sustainability of Somalia’s peacebuilding efforts. The factions that have traditionally been at loggerheads with the Ogaden clans resist AMISOM’s peacebuilding efforts arguing that their purpose is to impose the Ogaden leaders on the rest of the clan leadership in Somalia.50 In a nutshell, while current data barely faults the design of the global security policy framework as mandated by the U.N., they suggest the existence of challenges at the implementation level of these security policies. Specifically, citing UNOSOM I and UNOSOM II cases, where the policy implementation forces were perceptively predisposed to some factions and against others, it became difficult to accomplish sustainable peacebuilding operations in Somalia. Similarly, scholarship alludes to AMISOM’s acquiesce to Ethiopia’s influence, which is understood as allegedly pushing the interests of the Ogaden clan to dominate Somali leadership as a loophole in the quest for a global security policy to shape successful and sustainable peacebuilding interventions in Somalia. The gaps in the potential influence of the global security policy framework vis-à-vis its projected consequent levels of sustainability were muted, with peacebuilding interventions appearing to be short term in nature. The strongest suggestion to this reality was manifested by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which continued fighting regardless of the formation of the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) backed by the U.N. as part of the ongoing peacebuilding efforts in 2007.51 Threatening to form a rival administration to the TFG, the ICU saw the U.N. forces, and later AMISOM, as simply promoting Ethiopian interests in Somalia, a factor that undermined the sustainability of peacebuilding efforts in the country. However, with U.S. military support, Ethiopia moved to successfully dislodge the ICU, paving the way for AMISOM operations.

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Moreover, as part of the global policy framework to support peacebuilding efforts, the U.N. Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Somalia, which was violated at the implementation level. First imposed in January 1992, the open-ended arms embargo on Somalia was amended in early 2007 to permit the Somali Government to acquire military equipment, although these sanctions continue to date. Yet, the ammunitions have continued flowing into the hands of the fighting factions, irrespective of the global policy framework for supporting Somalia’s peacebuilding efforts. Some of the drawbacks in the U.N. arms embargo have been traced to individual U.N. mission military commanders in Somalia who have allegedly been involved in arms racketeering, aiding some warring parties to access weapons. In a circumstance where those who should be enforcing the arms embargo to restore peace and security but are instead implicitly involved in violating this U.N. policy, it is difficult to expect the realization of sustainable peacebuilding operations. Thus, it is imperative to note that the influence of the global security policy framework on the sustainability of peacebuilding efforts in Somalia was undercut by a combination of forces that ultimately continue to affect peace and security operations in the horn of Africa. First, the initial U.N. mandates, such as those associated with UNOSOM I and UNOSOM II, constituted in the early 1990s and had grossly inadequate mandate relative to warring factions’ military resources. Besides, these initial U.N. missions in Somalia, while relatively well-designed within the global security policy as administered by the U.N., the missions failed at the policy implementation level. The U.N. forces took sides, and worse still, supporting the weaker factions considered moderate forces. Yet, this was a sufficient strategic security blunder leading to escalation of hostilities, and eventually, the end of these specific peacebuilding missions. Second, while AMISOM, starting in 2007, had a slightly upgraded mandate within which to ably and effectively respond to the diverse existential threats in war-torn Somalia, it also, to a certain degree, suffered from partiality perceptions in favor of Ethiopia’s preferred warlords.52 Third, whereas the policy framework for peace and security operations in Somalia was supportive and ample for peacebuilding operations, the U.N. missions in the country have not been able to enforce the U.N. embargo against warring parties in Somalia. Starting in 1992, the open arms embargo targeting Somalia has been in place for slightly less than three decades. Largely failing in clarity of coverage, scope, U.N. demands for an arms emargo for the country, inadequate authority and expertise of the U.N. sanctions committee; have similarly undermined the sustainability of the peacebuilding operations in Somalia.

Conclusions and Recommendations The Somali civil war’s dominant features unquestionably capture the depth, scope, and magnitude of the peace and security threats posed not only to Somalia’s sovereignty but also to Africa and the world’s stability. Thus, the

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levels, patterns, and sources of security breakdown in Somalia inescapably explain the global coalition’s character and density for the peacebuilding structure put together in Somalia, Africa’s need to shape its security landscape notwithstanding. Accordingly, it is the strong manifestation of the potential and actual national, regional, and global effects of peace and security collapse in Somalia that convinced a diversity of stakeholders at different levels to consider the present peace and security-building structure in Somalia. Nonetheless, while the purpose of this study has been accomplished, principally establishing the crucial issues around key actors, foundations of continuous violence and the effect of global security policy on the sustainability of peacebuilding operations, it also brings out additional pertinent peace and security truths. Firstly, within the framework of the collective security theory, which articulates, inter alia, that the security of one state is the concern of all, intellectual input is made concerning the operationalization of this model using Somalia as a case study. In addition, the unpackaging of the overarching global security structural processes, the composite regional and local procedures to bring stake-holding actors on board; emphasizes real-world peacebuilding activities. Secondly, by revealing the nature of practical peacebuilding operation loopholes, as the case of Somalia demonstrates, the security policy limitations within the global security policy framework are underlined. The major global security policy implementation challenges are thus conclusively illustrated, indicating the policy gaps which are sometimes inescapable, such as the Somalia ethnic structure, which cannot change overnight. Thirdly, the construction of innovative empirical understanding of security and peacebuilding, which this chapter has added to the existing body of knowledge on security, further sheds light on the mainstream security analysis that mainly underlines the linkage between the nature of the state and security systems in extant discourses. The present analysis brings out the role of non-state actors such as the clans, pirates, and terrorist organizations that must be considered in the peacebuilding coalition to stabilize Somalia. The study also examines the cultural and ideological dimensions of the local actors and suggests that a peacebuilding mission that does not directly incorporate these aspects will likely be limited in its accomplishments. While clans appeal to Somalis’ cultural sentiments, the Al Shabab mobilizes citizens mainly using the ideological tool, where Islam is perceptively presented as a marginalized religion. Yet, while the A.U. through AMISOM would wish to set the security agenda in a rapidly changing global order, the realities underlined by the collective security theory become eloquently relevant here. It is state security for all. Equally significant, however, are the resource limitation veracities that are better understood in the context of the existing global power structure. Thus, for a more successful peacebuilding initiative, this study suggests a complex global security regime that underpins regional efforts for lasting peace and security in Somalia, but more pointedly, take care of the global and local dimensions of the peace and security realities.

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Notes 1. Pariona, Ameber. “Where Is the Horn of Africa?” undated, 1. WorldAtlas. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/where-is-the-horn-of-africa.html. 2. Zapata, Mollie. 2012. “Somalia: Colonialism to Independence to Dictatorship, 1840–1976.” https://enoughproject.org/blog/somalia-colonialism-ind ependence-dictatorship-1840-1976. Accessed 15 May 2020. 3. Ibid. 4. Mwagwabi, Lawrence Wesley. 2010. “The Theory of Collective Security and its Limitation in Explaining International Organization: A Critical Analysis”. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2948271. Accessed 10 June 2020. 5. Joensson, Jibecke H. Understanding Collective Security in the 21st Century: A Critical Study of UN Peacekeeping in the Former Yugoslavia (Doctoral Thesis, European University Institute, 2010), 14. 6. Burchill, Scott et al. Theories of International Relations, Third edition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 8, 65. 7. Oladipo, B. Stephen. “Conflict, Global Peace & Security: The Role of Civil Defense” Asian Journal of Management Sciences and Education, 2(2013): 84. 8. Chigozie, Nnuriam Paul. “The Quest for Global Security and Peace, and the Rise of International Organizations: Historical Perspective” Equatorial Journal of History and International Relations, 1(2018): 1. 9. Ibid. 10. Tschirgi, Necla, and de Coning, Cedric. Ensuring Sustainable Peace: Strengthening Global Security and Justice through the UN Peacebuilding Architecture (Washington, DC: Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance, 2015), 1. 11. United Nations, 2010. “UN Peacebuilding: An Orientation”. http://www.un. org/en/peacebuilding/pbso/pdf/peacebuilding_orientation.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2020. 12. Bryden, Alan, Donais, Timothy, and Hänggi, Heiner. Shaping a Security Governance Agenda in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. Policy Paper No. 11 (Geneva: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), November 2005), 1. 13. African Union. “Policy Framework on Security Sector Reform”. Addis Ababa: African Union Commission, undated, 1. 14. Bakonyi, Jutta, “Moral Economies of Mass Violence: Somalia 1988–1991” Civil Wars, 11(2009): 4, 434–454. 15. Ingiriis, Mohamed Haji. The Suicidal State in Somalia: The Rise and Fall of theSiad Barre Regime, 1969–1991 (UPA, 1 April 2016), 74. 16. Zapata, Mollie. 2012. “Somalia: Colonialism to Independence to Dictatorship, 1840–1976.” https://enoughproject.org/blog/somalia-colonialism-ind ependence-dictatorship-1840-1976. Accessed 15 May 2020. 17. World Peace Foundation. 2015. “Somalia: Fall of Siad Barre and the Civil War.” https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/somalia-fallof-siad-barre-civil-war/. 18. Ingiriis, Mohamed. The Suicidal State in Somalia: The Rise and Fall of the Siad Barre Regime, 1969–1991 (United States: University Press of America, April 1, 2016), 148. 19. Grubeck, Nikolaus, Peacock, Tillie, and Fulton, Wayne. Civilian Harm in Somalia: Creating an Appropriate Response (Washington, DC, 2011), 14.

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20. International Business Publications of USA. Somalia: Investment and Business Guide, Volume 1: Strategic and Practical Information (Washington D.C: USASomalia, 2013), 47. 21. Bryden, Alan, Donais, Timothy, and Hänggi, Heiner. Shaping a Security Governance Agenda in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. Policy Paper No. 11. Geneva: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), November 2005, 1. 22. United Nations. “Somalia: UNOSOM”. Undated. https://peacekeeping.un. org/sites/default/files/past/unosom1mandate.html. Accessed 25 May 2020. 23. Kapteijns, Lidwien. “Test-Firing the ‘New World Order’ in Somalia: The US/UN Military humanitarian Intervention of 1992–1995” Journal of Genocide Research 15(2013): 428. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2013. 856085. 24. Ingiriis, Mohamed Haji. “Building Peace from the Margins in Somalia: The Case for Political Settlement with Al-Shabaab” Contemporary Security Policy 39(2016): 512. https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2018.1429751. 25. Williams, Paul D. “Joining AMISOM: Why Six African States Contributed Troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia” Journal of Eastern African Studies, 12(2018): 172. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2018.1418159. 26. Ligawa, William Oluoch. “Challenges Influencing Peace Building Strategies in Somalia: A Study of AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)” Open Access Library Journal, 4(2017): 1. https://doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1103249. 27. Third World Network. 2011. “Third World Resurgence: Understanding the Sources of the Somali Conflict”. https://www.twn.my/title2/resurgence/ 2011/251-252/cover04.htm. Accessed 25 May 2020. 28. Barawani, Mohamed A. Mohamoud. “Somaliland and Somalia Peace-Building Process: Actors, Interventions, and Experiences” International Journal of Development Research, 7(2017): 14, 248. 29. Ephrem, Yared. “Ethiopian-Somali War Over the Ogaden, 2016”. https:// www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/ethiopian-somali-war-over-ogadenregion-1977-1978/. Accessed 27th June 2020. 30. Tripodi, Paolo. The Colonial Legacy in Somalia (New York: St. Martin’s P Inc, 1999), 16. 31. Third World Network. 2011. 32. Third World Network. 2011, Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Novati, Giampaolo Calchi. “Italy and Africa: How to Forget Colonialism” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 13(2008): 41. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13545710701816810. 35. Zapata, Mollie. 2012. 36. World Peace Foundation. 2015. 37. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2008. “Somalia: Suicide Bombers Strike Bosaso, Hargeisa, Killing Dozens”. http://www.iri nnews.org/report/81175/somalia-suicide. Accessed 23 May 2020. 38. Bryden, Matt, and Bahra, Premdeep. “East Africa’s Terrorist Triple Helix: The Dusit Hotel Attack and the Historical Evolution of the Jihadi Threat” Combating Terrorism Centre, 12(2019): 1. 39. Menkhaus, Ken, “Calm Between the Storms? Patterns of Political Violence in Somalia, 1950–1980” Journal of Eastern African Studies, 8(2014): 4, 558– 572.

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40. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2008. “Somalia: Suicide Bombers Strike Bosaso, Hargeisa, Killing Dozens”. http://www.iri nnews.org/report/81175/somalia-suicide. Accessed 23 May 2020. 41. Kapteijns, Lidwien. Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 42. Rabasa, Angel. “The Growth of Radical Islam.” In Radical Islam in East Africa, 39–70 (Santa Monica, CA; Arlington, VA; Pittsburgh, PA: RAND Corporation, 2009). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mg782a f.12. Accessed June 3, 2020. 43. United Nations, undated. “Peace, Dignity and Equality on a Health Planet”. https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/peace-and-security/. Accessed 10 June 2020. 44. https://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/index-of-countries-on-the-sec urity-council-agenda/somalia.html. Accessed 10 June 2020. 45. United Nation. “Peace, Dignity”. undated. 46. Menkhaus, Ken. 2007. 47. https://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/index-of-countries-on-the-sec urity-council-agenda/somalia.html. Accessed 10 June 2020. 48. Wax, Emily, and DeYoung, Karen. 2006. “US Secretly Backing Warlords in Somalia”. https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/153/ 26268.html. Accessed 10 June 2020. 49. Ibid. 50. Williams, Paul D. 2009, 1. 51. Mary Harper. Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State (London, Zed Books, 2012). 52. Malito, D. V. “Neutral in Favour of Whom? The Intervention in Somalia and the Somaliland Peace Process” International Peacekeeping, 24(2017): 280–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2016.1250626.

CHAPTER 42

Unipolarity, Emerging Powers, African Security and the Place of Africa in the International System 1993–2017 Kadishi Ndudi Oliseh

Introduction A holistic view of international relations and the international system has shown that the world has had different types of polar structures ranging from the multipolar system to the bipolar system and then to the unipolar system. All these systems came at different times and meant different things. What is evident in all is a country or a group of countries that possess political, economic, and military power to control the world system and relations. The late Twentieth Century was known as the end of the Cold War. The most striking feature of this post-cold war period was its unipolarity.1 Throughout the presence of the different system and from a different event that has taken place in history which Africa and Africans have been at the forefront, from the slave trade, colonialism, World War 1 and 2, Cold War and Post-Cold war period, etc. African has always played a role. This has led to the presence of different powers in the trajectory of Africa economic, political, military of each African states. During Post-cold war period, the USA has had relations with Africa, but despite unipolarity, there are pieces of evidence of emerging power who are vocal and vigorous in their pursuit for relations with Africa. 2 Their presence cannot be overlooked in Africa as Africa is important on the global and geopolitical stage. There has been a lot of international interest in Africa due to her role in global affairs,3 and powers such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, and K. N. Oliseh (B) Department of History, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_42

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other emerging power has viewed Africa to be a potential market for exportation and a secure resource partners,4 because Africa economy is bigger than its landmass which is a combination of the USA, most of Europe, China, and India. The continent is filled with natural resources, and the maritime zone under Africa jurisdiction totals about 13 million square km.5 Africa is a large market. The core question remains: Is the unipolar system still valid? Does it still have its dynamics in place, given the rise of other powers such as China, Russia, Brazil, India, Japan etc., contending for African security?

Conceptual Clarifications It is important to shed light on some of the concepts relating to this work, namely Security and Unipolarism.

Security The concept of security is ambiguous. It is multi-dimensional and is essentially a contested term. Different scholars have conceptualized security based on their perspectives and securitization issues. An example is J Ann Tickner, who describes security as a situation whereby a society promotes a viable ecosystem by eliminating physical and structural violence by dismantling hierarchical boundaries between women and men, poor and rich.6 In general, security has been understood to be synonymous with the accumulation of power. It has been regarded as a commodity, and power as the means of achieving it; thus, security additionally comprises the ability to pursue cherished political and social ambitions, the ability to make “life-choices”.7 With the end of the cold war and the 9/11 bombing, military security has gained momentum. There are different security forms, such as economic security, environmental security, identity security, social security, and military security.8 Other forms of security include human security, food security, and national security. Horsfall is right when he posits that: Security involves the protection of life and property and the provision of a peaceful and tranquil atmosphere in which individuals can pursue lawful activities. (National) security is the total of measures and efforts of both government and the people of a country to detect, prevent, eliminate or ameliorate all sources of danger and risks, whether internal or external, natural or man-made, threatening the collective interest of the citizens of the country.9

This study will be based on a view of security as the ability to pursue ambitions using power (military and economic power). This is evident in America, Russia, China, Brazil, and India in African Security.

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Unipolarism Unipolarism is one of how power is distributed in the international system. This simply means that a single power controls the international system. It is a structure whereby the system is completely dependent on the distribution of power and influence of that single power globally. Unipolarity in international politics is a distribution of power in which one state exercises most of the cultural, economic, and military influence.10 According to Kenneth Waltz, a unipolar system possesses only one great power that faces no competition, and at present, the United States is the only “pole” to possess global interest.11 The emergence of Unipolarism in the international system has been traced to what is called the “unipolar moment,” which has been traced to the close of the twentieth century, which shows that nations around the world seek security and order by aligning themselves and their policies behind America.12 An example of unipolarism in the post-cold war international system in which America was the preeminent power with military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in whatever part of the world it chooses to involve itself, for example, the Persian Gulf when the United States acted unilaterally with extraordinary speed.13

The Development of America Unipolarity, U.S. African Relation 1993–2017, and the Presence of AFRICOM 2007–2017 The U.S.–Africa Relation is new in the international system, and since the late Twentieth Century was known as the end of the cold war, and the most striking feature of this post-cold war period of unipolarity which aided control of the USA and its hegemonic practices and relationships around the globe including Africa. Unipolarity was such that the United States had a greater share of world power than any other country in history.14 To further explain the above point, the nineteenth up to Mid-twentieth Century was known for the occurrence of the world wars. During this period, politics was such that different powers possessed political, economic, and military power and controlled the international system. This period was termed the multipolar system. It was a system resting upon three or more points of support for balance. It is important to note that the United States was a protagonist in this system, but this multipolar system collapsed largely due to their intricacy.15 The collapse of the multipolar system ushered in what is called the post1945 era. The International System in the post-1945 war steered in a structure which was called the Postwar bipolar system.16 This means that two powers controlled the international system. It was a structure resting upon two support points, namely the Soviet Union U.S.S.R and the United States of America U.S.A. It reflected the fact that political, economic, and military powers lied in the two powers. The two powers played a role in what happened

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in the international system. The pressure of the bipolar world encouraged these powers to act internationally.17 The Cold War was characterized by mutual distrust and hostility between the two superpowers; it led to the polarizing ideologies, competing for economic systems and underscored the urgency of cooperation across national borders. Thus, with a need to control and maintain their spheres of influence, the two superpowers saw the world international system divided into two camps.18 This led to the creation of different structures such as international cooperation and collaboration of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the WARSAW Pact.19 The structure made alliances in the bipolar system more stable. This structure went through drastic changes when one superpower collapsed. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold war ended. This end ushered in a new and sporadic era in global politics,20 whereby America emerged as the only power that had the capacity for political, economic, and military power. This capacity was needed to control the world system and relation. This was what the unipolar system became; that is, the United States became the sole superpower. The emergence of America as the Unipolar power was a result of the end of the cold war. The U.S.A was left in a preeminent position in the world without a major strategic rival. This led to the character domination of the unipolar power whereby the U.S.A became a decisive player in any conflict worldwide; this position allows the USA to carry out American internationalism by claiming that,21 it would be necessary to preserve peace, prosperity. The unipolar capabilities in all areas have offered the USA. The opportunity to try and modify the global system towards its image fosters or forces transition to democracy, market capitalism, globalization, and international trade policies. The USA has tried to create a more liberal order, fostering liberalization, keeping disorder, and threatening the international system at bay. An example of this is President Bush’s policy that reflected a strong commitment to pursue expansion of democracy, markets, and law rule.22 Post-cold war American foreign policy has been framed and associated with unipolarism because foreign policy exhibits behaviors like actively participating in binding regional institutions, fighting terrorism, and inhibiting nuclear proliferation. Thus, the U.S. foreign policy has shaped and responded to the international system, and over the course of the 1990s, America’s dominance in the world loomed larger and wider. Thus, the world (the international system) before America’s unipolarism was dynamic because it changed from a multipolar system to a bipolar system and to what is present now, which is the unipolar system. From the above, it could be noted that America’s unipolarism has consumed the globe, especially with The New World Order. During Post-cold war period, the USA had relations with Africa, but despite the presence of unipolarity, there are shreds of evidence of emerging power who are vocal and vigorous in their pursuit of relations with Africa.23

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The U.S.–Africa relation has undergone different changes in the international system since the 1990s. In the 1990s, as argued by Political scientist Nicolas van de Walle U.S–Africa relation was marked to be in a low point, and in 1995 a conclusion that the United States see very little strategic interest in Africa was made the U.S. Security Strategy for sub-Saharan Africa. The end of the twentieth century saw a reduction of peace corps volunteers in Africa.24 From the twenty-first century, most especially the President Bush administration from 2001, there was a gradual consent that there was a need to address Africa’s challenges and opportunities. This led to different actions such as establishing U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, etc. When President Obama was sworn into office in 2009, he further attempted to strengthen the relations with Africa through the Power Africa initiative, the Young African Leaders Initiative, U.S.–Africa Leaders’ Summit, etc.25 With all these and initiatives that took place, there were also security initiatives, security measure, and joint endeavors with regards to Africa due to the level of insecurity in African countries. America’s military activities are visible in the third world, especially Africa, and the presence of America’s unipolarism is evident in their participation in economic decisions, international trade, democracy, encroachment on different territories to resolve threats which continually appear through nuclear proliferation, failed states, ethnic conflict and violence especially in the Middle East26 and Africa. It is important to note that Africa has been affected by security issues since the end of the cold war; this includes terrorism, the proliferation of small and light weapons, intractable conflict, migration, to mention a few. These security issues have continued to shape African security, which has been recognized as a threat to global security and have led to security institution such as G8, UNSC into the global dialogue. The dialogue and meetings in global institutions are such that in most cases, the USA precedes, and Africa seems to not have a strong representation. Africa is faced with marginalization, looked at as a client rather than a stakeholder in African security. In some cases, the “African voice” has been defied, example of this was in Libya when a no-fly zone was erected, but this was defied, and the UN and USA launched an attack on Libya.27 This has paved a problem for African Security as it seems like Africa cannot handle her security issues, and in an attempt to try, the United States use force in a highly contested way because there is no country powerful enough to prevent the United States. With the 9/11 terrorist attack, America became more determined to combat terrorism. This became evident in the intensification of The American foreign policy, which was framed in such a way that “if any state was seen to be engaged with terrorism, the state becomes an enemy they should attack” thus, the policy has been framed and associated with unipolarism in the sense that foreign policy exhibits behaviors like actively participating in

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binding regional institutions, fighting terrorism, and inhibiting nuclear proliferation. Thus, terrorism has spread across the world. Alqueda, Boko Haram of Nigeria and ISIS are good examples. They have also become global problems and have brought nations together with America at the forefront in combating them and making her a unipolar power in Africa. The American response to September 11th led to the establishment of a direct military presence, with a new U.S. military base set up in Djibouti, and the bolstering of the military capabilities of proxy state and non-state actors. Strategically situated, the military base in Djibouti houses a rapid-reaction force capable of conducting operations in Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, and Yemen. Djibouti hosts a Voice of America radio transmitter (used recently to threaten bombing of "terrorist camps" in the Sahel) and, in return, will receive $30 million a year in U.S. aid.28

America’s unipolarism is evident in America’s relationship with Africa. Examples include Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan, to mention a few. This is seen in the different sanctions, use of force, etc. After Libya abandoned its nuclear-weapons program, the United Nations lifted its sanctions, and diplomatic relations between Libya and the United States resumed.29 Fearing American coercive power, Sudan cooperated with the United States by providing intelligence in the “war on terror,” and both the United States and the United Nations lifted sanctions against Sudan.30 The United Nations recently imposed an arms embargo and targeted sanctions on human-rights violators in Darfur, at U.S. instigation.31 The United States suspended military assistance to Nigeria after President Obasanjo published a letter critical of any U.S. action in Iraq. Before that, Nigeria had been the main recipient of U.S. military aid in sub- Saharan Africa. The aim of increased military assistance to sub-Saharan Africa is now to “bolster the capacity of African military forces to protect oil production and transportation facilities”.32

The above has shown the predicament of African countries: they are under the USA’s grasp because of USA interest. Also, a dilemma that affects African security is that they are affected by economic and military incapability, and this has aided security problem which affects African Security; having recognized this, the USA tends to aid different African countries but most time is in exchange for something, and if any country riles the USA they will pay for it later as the USA protects her interest no matter the cost. America’s interest, especially since 9/11, includes two interlined reasons, namely: oil and the potential terrorist threats. Thus, despite the emergence of

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second powers such as China, Japan, North Korea, the USA still protects her interest no matter the cost. The U.S. executive branch may have been eager, in competition with China, to gain access to Sudan’s oil, whose production was set to double from 2002 to 2005, but U.S. Congressional politics prevented it from doing so.33

It is important to note that there is only one first-rate power, which is the United States, but other powers are trying to contend its place in Africa, despite that. For any power to fully rival it, it must possess military and political, economic, military, and technological power because all these strengths/powers are necessary for unipolar power status to be attained by any country. Also, United States of America (USA) exertions abroad is in ways an essential pillar of the American economy, and until that is demolished, America will still stand as the sole dominant power in global affairs. Also, America is a commercial, maritime, trading nation and thus needs an open border and a stable world environment to thrive. To achieve this end, the USA has to remain the unipolar power.34 Correspondingly, in 2014., U.S.A military presence was visible in the transportation of Rwandan soldiers and their equipment on a C–17 into the CAR to aid French and African Union operations against militant.35 In an attempt to protect her interest such as the oil in the Gulf of Guinea, America has tried to militarize the area through the establishment of Unified combat command for Africa known as the U.S African Command (AFRICOM), although it has been noted that Nigeria did not agree to this. What is important to this work is that if America situated its presence in the seas, it would control security issues in that area. This can be a benefit to African security. America has also initiated a joint endeavor between several U.S. government departments and six African partner nations, which is The Security Governance Initiative. The SGI focuses on increasing security, the rule of law building civilian and military institutional capacity.36 Since the emergence of Donald Trump as president, this argument is whether the U.S.A can maintain its unipolar status, especially with some of Trump’s policies. For instance, with his trade agreement rollback, his attempt to build a wall to checkmate Mexicans’ influx into the USA. Some theorists and historians have an on-going debate that America is declining in recent times as the president is said to be running its economy to the ground and thus would not retain her unipolar role for long.37 Some argue on the basis that America’s Unipolarism would end due to the presence of second-ranked power such as Germany and Japan that are economic dynamos, Britain and France can deploy diplomatic, and, to some extent, military asserts, China, Russia, and North Korea that possesses several elements of military, diplomatic, and political power.38

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Sino African Relations and Its Economic and Security Presence in Africa China African relation and contact is not a new phenomenon as it has been traced to the earliest indirect trading contact in the Ming Dynasty; this relation was recorded to have waned due to European colonization up to the 1947 Chinese communist revolution. Thus from the 1950s, the Chinese-African relationship metamorphosed, which was evident in the 1955 Bandung conference, to establish African and Arab desks in the ministry. There is also evidence of China Championing the South–South corporation. There were several visits which were made by delegates when African Countries gain independence between 1982 and 1983.39 It is apparent that China–Africa relations changed from the “politics in Command” of the 1950s–1970s to the “economics in command” since the 1980s.40 China has created the African economic and technical cooperation unveiled by the Chinese Premier Zhao Zhang in the 1990s. Due to economic growth, China returned to Africa, and in January 2006, China released the China African Policy.41 Thus, 2006 was known for the formalization of China’s economic engagement and penetration. It was called China’s “Year of Africa.” China attempts to aid its economic growth by securing resources and foreign markets, which had begun in the 1990s.42 China’s government and commercial actors see in Africa a source for natural resource imports, a growing and relatively underutilized market for exports and investment, and an opportunity for Chinese firms to gain experience and increase domestic employment…. China’s emerging security interests in Africa are driven by, and subordinate to, Beijing’s larger goals of safeguarding economic development and increasing political influence. As a regional power with expanding global interests, China is in the process of defining its security practices, missions, and presence in some of the world’s most unstable areas.43

In light of the above, it is evident that China is recognized as one of the emerging power or second-ranked power that has emerged to be a threat to the USA. And her interests, to mention a few. China recognizes Africa’s potentials and thus has become trading partners that evolve continually; in 2009, China became Africa’s leading partner, overtaken the U.S.A, and in 2013, its trade with Africa was recorded to be $200 billion. China’s relations with Africa focus on raw materials, trade, investments in construction, military, manufacturing, services, etc.44 Regarding China, security interest, and military presence, China follows the “no-strings-attached”; China remains an arms supplier to Africa in a nostrung attached way. With regards to defense engagement and peacekeeping, China/Beijing uses an approach called the hand-on approach. It is visible with the presence of China 2200 personnel in United Nations peacekeeping missions in Africa, other example includes the deployment of its first-ever peacekeeping infantry battalion in South Sudan, deployment of a warship

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to patrol off the Horn of Africa for Anti-piracy patrols to mention a few. The building of the China military outpost in Djibouti is the first of its kind regarding overseas military endeavors, especially in Africa. This outpost is located close to the only U.S.A permanent military base in Africa known as Camp Lemonnier. It is said to be approximately eight miles from Camp Lemonnier.45 Regarding economic and Sino–African relationship, there is the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) created by China in 2000, there is also a visible trade relations and construction going on in Africa, from the creation of railways and roads such as the Tanzim railway, tons and tons of roads in several African countries.46 The China–Nigerian relationship, just like any other relationship, has its challenges as it continues to evolve; critics have highlighted how the staff is treated in Africa and how there is a lack of commitment toward their employees’ skill empowerment. There have also been complaints about the poor quality of goods that it imports. Another critic mentioned was Beijing’s focus on elite-to-elite engagement.47 The global race in Africa with the participation of the emerging powers, and of China, in particular, is accompanied by new trade and investment patterns and new diplomatic initiatives that are bringing about tangible economic and social transformations in the continent. China’s export-oriented economy has benefitted raw materials exporters worldwide, and its trade with Africa has grown steadily during the past decade reaching $160 billion in 2011 from just $9 billion in 2000.48

Africa and Russia Russia has a historic presence in Africa and has had an exceptionalism approach, although faced by some challenges that reduced Russia initiatives toward maximizing economic gains. Russia has a profile in Africa, which is visible in Russia’s support and ties to African elites and African countries’ movements for liberation.49 During the Cold War, the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R), which Russia was part of, was a military-industrial center dominated by military and defense facilities and trade. Also, U.S.S.R had production industries, which made it a hub for minerals and resources. The minerals and resources were gotten from different states in the Union, but this ended after the cold war ended, and there was a need for energy resources and minerals. This reason led to part of why Russia attempts to foster great economic ties with African countries.50 With the above in mind, Russia’s two main aspects of Russia and African relations bore down to interaction with trade and Army, a military-industrial complex (MIC) and Mineral Economic complex. Russia business interest in Africa covers military, mineral, financial, energy sector among others, and these business interests in Africa is represented through large state-owned

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consortia. 51, 52 It has been noted that the expansion of multilateral ties and relations with Africa is an opportunity for Russia to have an ally. The 2013 Russian Foreign Policy, which President Putin approved, aimed to expand and enhance cooperation with the African state, which was both bi-lateral and multilateral.53 Military relations and trade carried out by Russia include supporting some African countries during the war, paying off debts; for example, during the Angola Civil war, Russia supported and later wrote off 70% of the debt amazed during the war. Russia also participates in the arms trade and thus sells arms, which is detrimental to African security, as seen in North Africa and some subSaharan African countries that purchase these arms. In 2015 $713,865,000.75 in revenue from arms trade was gotten by Russia from arms trade in Africa. Other African countries that have patronized Russia’s arms trade include South Africa, Uganda, etc. Uganda spent more than $635 million on six fighter aircraft in 2011–2012.54 To promote African security and peace, Russia has collaborated with the African Union (AU) and African countries. This has been visible in Russia contributing toward the AU peace Funds, training some African country policemen as peacekeepers. Russia has gone further to contribute to different United Nations peacekeeping missions and activities via staffing, and an example is the 91 personnel that is in the UN peacekeeping missions as of April 30th, 2016.55 Russia has invested in financial services in Africa. An example is the bank opened in Angola, this was the first foreign majority-owned bank, and it was called the Vneshtorg bank. In, Nigeria, Russia owns 24.9% of Ecobank which was purchased by Russian Renaissance, Russia went further to invest in Namibia and Côte d’Ivoire.56 Russia also has some of its company involvement in some Natural resource projects. Over 30 Russian companies are involved in African natural resource projects. In South Africa alone, active Russian companies include Renova Group, OJSCMMC Norilsk Nickel, EVRAZ Group S.A., and OAO Severstal. In Zimbabwe, Russia has developed a $3 billion platinum mine. This points to Russia’s need for African mineral resources. Energy resources are also in demand. In early 2015, Rostec, Russia’s massive state-owned conglomerate, announced plans to construct a $3 billion oil refinery in Uganda.57

Russia activities and relation with Africa as compared to other countries is lagging behind other emerging powers. Also, there is an unequal relationship and an unbalanced trade ratio between Africa and Russia between 2012 and 2015. Africa has something to offer in the global world.

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Africa Contributions to the Emergence of the Current Global Order Africa has, in different ways, contributed to the old war and the world. Africa currently plays a role in the current global order. From natural resources such as diamonds, minerals, etc., the important impact of Africa’s metal and minerals plays a role in the sustainability of the industrialization of the West and increasingly Asia. The African continent is estimated to hold 37 percent of key global natural resources, and easier access to markets will likely increase competition and could fuel instability.58

Africa contributes to labor and knowledge, military, security culture, etc. In January 2001, Nigeria was the leading contributor to UN peacekeeping operations in the world; In the east, Uganda and Tanzania serve as important peacekeeping contributors—the former is the largest participant in AMISOM, the latter is now the 13th largest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, with more than 2,000 personnel deployed to six UN Missions, Peacekeeping stalwarts Ghana and Senegal maintain strong contributions to the UN, with more than 6,500 currently deployed to a dozen missions.59

Contemporary Realities of Africa’s Placement in the New World Order and the Dilemma of Africa Security With America and other emerging power, there arises the issue of the realities of Africa placements. There is a chance that Africa will be dependent and marginalized. The real danger of marginalization for Africa comes from the interdependence component of the new order. The coalescence of the extra African world into regional integration schemes promises to reduce Africa’s already diminishing capacity to participate in world trade. For a long time, development economists agreed that trade was the engine of growth; the implications for this was that Africa benefitted from integration in the world economy through the export of its primary commodities. The resurgence of European internal dynamism, Christopher Stevens notes, will have the greatest impact on Africa by reducing the absolute level of trade and investment patterns.60

It is important to consider that American and other emerging power have played a role in African Security directly and indirectly, positive and negative. But there is a need for Africa to create meaningful solutions and contributions to security issues and global security. If attempts and actions are made and

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carried out by African countries, the quandary of African security would be minimal. There is the presence of uneven global integration, international inequality in the form of North–South dichotomy,61 increased international economic dependency (inflation, dependence on a foreign market, import of resources, currency exchange rate, America’s military bases around the world, unequal/uneven development, marginalization, social dislocation, anddecline of labor.) In a nutshell, some critics see globalization as a way of securing America’s prosperity and spreading American values.62 Negative consequences in the third world countries, especially Africa, include migration, brain drain, drug trafficking, intensification of poverty, debt, loss of culture and language, intensification of ethnic conflicts, the influx of refugees, globalization and aids pandemic,63 the proliferation of small and light weapons/weapons of mass destruction to mention but a few. This has promoted a quandary in African security.

Conclusion The paper submits that since the end of the Cold War, Africa and African security have been faced with a dilemma. There are several reasons for this dilemma, including the external interest, especially from different countries and power, e.g., the USA, Russia, and China. Their interest has led to their needs and wants to overshadow African interest. According to different scholars, the major global power contaminates or hijacks Africa’s initiatives at resolving its security problems. There has been a growing presence of different powers and international actors that have seen Africa as a place of interest, and this has led to these actors and powers to prioritize Africa in their foreign policy covering the diplomatic, military, and economic sphere. All in a bid to search for markets, resources, and allies, it has looked at the presence, evidence, influence, and role of the different power in Africa and African security. The USA’s presence and leverage have been reduced as China, Russia, India, Japan, Brazil has recognized Africa’s potential. The complexity of African Security and the issues attached to it cannot be overlooked; in that vein, one pole USA cannot be the sole contributors or power. It is important to note that the unipolar power often does not call the shots in different security organizations (international organizations such as UNSC, NATO, G8) and these most times play out in things that suit America and their foreign policy. This has kept Africa as a client rather than a major stakeholder in African security and global security, thus causing a quandary in African security, especially with the end of World War and the emergence of new powers such as China, North Korea, and Japan. Also, America and the emerging powers have contributed positively in battling some of the security issues and dilemma of African security such as terrorism, etc., but to tackle the dilemma of African security, Africa, and Africans should be included to

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participate more in global organizations to have a say and control over her security.

Notes 1. Kraummer C. “The Unipolar Moment” in Reading in American Foreign Policy: Historical and Contemporary Problems. ed. Bernell D. (New York: Pearson Education, Inc. 2008). p. 313. 2. Li Xing. “Conceptualising the Dialectics of China’s Presence in Africa” in Emerging Powers in Africa. eds. J.Van Der Merwe, Ian Taylor and Alexandra Arkhangelskaya (Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan. 2016), p. 77. 3. Martin Kindle. “ African Security Futures: Threats, Partnership, and International Engagement for the New U.S. Administration”, PRISM , Vol. 6, No. 4 (2017). p. 15. 4. Ibid Li Xing. “Conceptualising the Dialectics of China’s Presence in Africa”. p. 77. 5. Alan Hirsch and Carlos Lopes. “Post-Colonial African Economic Development”, Historical Perspective Africa Development, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, Vol. XLV, No. 1 (2020), p. 32. 6. Ann J Tickner. Re-visioning Security in International Relation Theory Today. (Ken Booth and Steve Smiths Publication, 1994) p. 194. 7. Ann J Tickner. The Concept of Security p. 6 retrieved on 24/01/2018 available at http://wwwspringer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocu ment/9783642292989-c2.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1356740-p174313173. 8. Baldwin David, “The Concept of Security”, Review of International Studies , Vol. 23: 5–26 (1997). p. 23. 9. Horsfall, 1991 in Agbo. U.J. 2013. “Political Economy of Policing and Insecurity in Nigeria” in Nigeria ate 50: Politics, Society and Development. Eds. Sofela B. Edo V.O. Olaniyi R.O. (Ibadan: John Archer Publisher Ltd. 2013) p. 451. 10. Jiang, Shiwei. “Is Bipolarity a Sound Recipe for World Order—As Compared to Other Historically Known Alternatives” in ICD Annual Conference on Cultural Diplomacy in the USA Options on the Table, Soft Power, Intercultural Dialogue & the Future of US Foreign Policy. 2013. 11. Waltz K. “ The Stability of a Bipolar World”, Daedalus, (Summer 1964). Vol. 93, No. 3: 881–909, p. 887. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20026863. 12. Ibid. Kraummer C. “The Unipolar Moment”. p. 315. 13. Ibid., p. 315. 14. Javis. R. “The Making of a Unipolar World” in The Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Washington Quarterly Vol. 29 no. 3 (2006), p. 1. 15. Bernell D. Reading in American Foreign Policy: Historical and Contemporary Problems (New York: Pearson Education, Inc. 2008), p. 296. 16. Ibid., p. 296. 17. Ibid., p. 296. 18. Wells S.B. Pioneers of European Integration and Peace 1945–1993. (U.S.A: Bedford St Martins, 2007), pp. 2–3. 19. Bernell D. “ Reading in American Foreign Policy”. p. 297. 20. Ibid., p. 313. 21. Kraummer C. “The Unipolar Moment”. p. 313.

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Bernell D. “Reading in American Foreign Policy”. p. 47. Li Xing. “Conceptualising the Dialectics of China’s Presence in Africa”. p. 77. Martin Kindle. “ African Security Futures”. p. 15. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid. Martin Kindle. “After the Cold War: A New World Order” in Reading in American Foreign Policy: Historical and Contemporary Problems. Ed. Bernell D. (New York: Pearson Education, Inc. 2008). Shola J. Omola. “Towards an African Voice in the Global Security Dialogue” in Ibadan Journal of Peace and Development, Vol. 1 (2012), p. 124. Pádraig Carmody. “Transforming Globalisation and Security: Africa and America Post-9/11”. Africa Today, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2005) Available at http:// www.jstor.org/stable/4187846. Accessed: 24–01-2015 in p. 101. Fidler, Khalaf, and Pádraig Carmody. “Transforming Globalisation and Security: Africa and America Post-9/11”. Africa Today, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2005) Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4187846. Accessed: 24–01-2018 in p. 100. De Waal and Abdel Salam 2005. in Pádraig Carmody. “Transforming Globalisation and Security: Africa and America Post-9/11”. Africa Today, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2005) Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4187846. Accessed: 24–01-2018 in p. 100. Pádraig Carmody. 2005. “Transforming Globalisation and Security: Africa and America Post-9/11”. Africa Today, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2005.) Available at http:// www.jstor.org/stable/4187846. Accessed: 24–01-2018 in p. 100. Volman 2003a: 579 in Pádraig Carmody. “Transforming Globalisation and Security: Africa and America Post-9/11.” Africa Today, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2005) Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4187846. Accessed: 24–01-2018 p. 100. Pádraig Carmody. “Transforming Globalisation and Security: Africa and America Post-9/11”. Africa Today, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2005). Available at http:// www.jstor.org/stable/4187846. Accessed: 24–01-2018 p. 100. Ibid. Martin Kindle. “African Security Futures” p. 23. Ibid., p. 29. Kraummer C. “The Unipolar moment” p. 315. Ibid., p. 316. Akamu G. Adebayo. In the Sphere of the Dragon: Chinas Economic Relations with Africa in the New Millennium. Monograph Series No 2 (Department of History, University of Ibadan. 2010), pp. 4–7. Li Xing. “Conceptualising the Dialectics of China’s Presence in Africa” p. 78. Akamu G. Adebayo. “In the Sphere of the Dragon” p. 4. Sue Onslow. 2009. A Review of Africa and the New ‘Scramble’ in the PostCold War Era Reviewed Work(s): Africa in World Politics: Reforming Political Order by John W. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild: Southern Africa by John Farley: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Africa and China by Ampiah Naidu and Sanusha Naidu: South Africa and the European Union: Self-Interest, Ideology and Altruism by Gerrit Olivier. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1, Taylor & Francis, Ltd, p. 264. Lloyd Thrall. “China’s African Interests and Strategic Perceptions” in China’s Expanding African Relations: Implications for U.S. National Security. RAND

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50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63.

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Corporation. (2015), pp. 9-18 Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/10. 7249/j.ctt15zc655.9. Retrieved on 24/01/2018. Martin Kindle. “African Security Futures” p. 25. Ibid., p. 26. Akamu G. Adebayo. “In the Sphere of the Dragon” pp. 10–14. Martin Kindle. “African Security Futures” p. 26. Li Xing. “Conceptualising the Dialectics of China’s Presence in Africa” p. 78. Alexandra Arkhange lskaya and Nicole Dodd. “Guns and Poseurs: Russia Returns to Africa” in Emerging Powers in Africa. Eds. J.Van Der Merwe, Ian Taylor and Alexandra Arkhange lskaya (Switzerland. Palgrave Macmillian. 2016), p. 159. Alexandra Arkhangelskaya and Nicole Dodd. “Guns and Poseurs: Russia Returns to Africa” pp. 162–167. Ibid., p. 164. Alexandra Arkhangelskaya and Nicole Dodd. “Guns and Poseurs: Russia Returns to Africa”. in Emerging Powers in Africa. Eds. J. Van Der Merwe, Ian Taylor and Alexandra Arkhangelskaya. (2016), p. 164. Ibid., p. 167. Ibid., pp. 164–170. Ibid., p. 171. Ibid., p. 167. Ibid., p. 169. Martin Kindle. “African Security Futures” p. 21. Ibid., pp. 23–24. Gilbert M. Khadiagala, “Thoughts on Africa and the New World Order, The Round Table” The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 81, 3No. 24 (1992) p. 53. Ako-Nai R.I and David I.D. “Globalisation, Human Development and The Female Gender in Nigeria”. p. 275. Robert A. D., Bresen T.H., Fredrickson G.M., et al. American Past and Present (New York: Pearson Education Inc. 2007.), p. 637. Vaughan O., Wright M, and Small C. Globalisation and the Politics of Marginality. (2005). p. 218.

Part VI

Africa and Global Religions and Creativity

CHAPTER 43

Beyond the Assemblage of Rhythms and Tunes: Post-colonial African Music and the Struggle for Liberation Taiwo Oladeji Adefisoye and Tolu Elizabeth Ifedayo

Introduction The trajectory of Africa’s struggle for liberation from the shackles of colonial rule, external, intermediate, and proximate imperialists’ dominations, neocolonial influences, and post-colonial flagrant misrule will not be complete without exploring the roles of traditional and orthodox music. While notable studies have attempted to explain issues around post-colonial Africa’s sociopolitical liberation, a major lacuna is still left in the literature to be filled. Hence, this study’s need is to conceptualize the word “liberation,” as it concerns post-colonial African society, which has been narrowly viewed within the context of the region’s socio-political independence and freedom from colonialism. One of such arguments is put forward by Onyebadi, who posits that: Music permeates significant aspects of African society, culture, and tradition (so much that), the history of colonialism and independence in the continent will

T. O. Adefisoye (B) Department of International Relations, Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Ondo, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] T. E. Ifedayo Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_43

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be incomplete without adequate attention to the music and songs that were used to mobilize people to agitate for political freedom1

However, this study approaches the subject-matter from a broader angle to encapsulate socio-cultural, political, and economic liberation in Africa’s pre and post-colonial era. Generally, in post-colonial Africa, music goes beyond the assemblage of words and tunes. Still, there is a deep reflection of experiences in many cases and an attempt to query past and existing orders. The potency of music, as a vehicle for social-cultural, economic, and political mobilization and awakening, however, did not end with the colonialists’ occupation; rather, it continues to be used to challenge prevalent socio-economic and political disorder, including abuse of power, military despotism, corruption, nepotism, and pilfering, among other societal ills. Like political philosophy and thought, music within Africa’s context is an attempt to understand socio-cultural, economic, and political issues and craft ways of solving them. Therefore, post-colonial music has acted as a veritable tool for engendering social re-engineering, socio-cultural revitalization, and continuous political liberation in Africa. For a continent such as Africa, which has been laden with centuries of internal and external contradictions, music has to be a sustaining tool, especially in challenging what is perceived as “evil.” Post-colonial African musicians such as Fela Anikulaop-Kuti, Mariam Makeba, Lucky Dube, Youssou N’Dour, Seydou Kone (Alpha Blondy), Majek Fashek, Sunny Okosun, to mention but a few, are African music icons that deployed their lyrical prowess for social and political mobilization, nationalists’ struggles, and to promote social cohesion and unity. This chapter examines the role the music/songs of selected notable postcolonial African artists played (and still play) in Africa’s socio-political liberation struggles. It is important to clarify that “liberation” in the context of this work encompasses agitations for the abolition of colonial rule, neo-colonial influences, and socio-economic and political frictions on the African continent. Specifically, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube, and Majek Fashek are purposively selected for this study. Besides the songs of these post-colonial African music legends, the contributions of Bob Marley to Africa’s liberation were highlighted. It must be mentioned that, although Bob Marley was not directly African, he was sympathetic to the African cause and identified with Pan-Africanism.

Music and Politics in Africa Across Africa, music has always acted as a vehicle for expressing socio-political ideas and conveying important messages to instruct, mobilize, correct; and in some cases, incite. Onyebadi puts it that “musicians articulate their perceptions of the existential conditions in their community or polity, highlight the importance of those issues, promote and recommend ideas and solutions to their audiences in the lyrics of their songs”.2 Musicians, among whom Bob Nesta

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Marley is prominent, are acknowledged globally to have used their brands of music to fight racism, and other forms of socio-political inequalities; and at the same time, canvassed for peace and unity. In post-colonial Africa, music is an integral part of cultures, as there is hardly a vocation, activity, and ceremony that are not accomplished by music. Ojukwu, Obielozie, and Esimone3 amplify this assertion and explain that “the ancient African societies did not demarcate their daily activities from their music.” Barber points out that “music is the first form of popular culture in Africa, which has been (noticed and) studied outside the African continent”.4 Beyond such notice, however, “music performances in Africa went beyond the borders of mere entertainment but were greatly geared towards socio-cultural features”.5 In contrast with the West, Lara Allen argues that: Public contestation of issues is largely done through the mass media in Western societies, (but) in Africa, people find other ways of voicing who they are… and what they want. I argue that music constitutes one of the primary media through which such needs are fulfilled.6

Other notable studies have provided vital cues on the important role of music in political agitations and mobilization in Africa, so much more that the stories of nationalists’ agitations and the political independence of many countries on the continent will be incomplete without recognizing the place that music played. Labinjo7 ; Grass8 ; Satti9 ; Gakahu10 ; Onyebadi11 ; Onyebadi12 ; Okeke13 are prominent works that have made valuable attempts at interrogating the political contents and messages of music and songs in post-colonial Africa. For instance, Satti asserts that Mohamed Wardi, the Sudanese music icon deployed his lyrical prowess to provoke nationalistic consciousness among his country-people and quickly supported democracy as much as he condemned authoritarian and despotic leadership.14 The same can be said about the liberation struggles in Kenya and South Africa where a handful of Mau Mau songs were “a discourse about liberation from colonial injustices”15 ; while in the latter, the songs of Mariam Makeba were perceived by the Apartheid government as “offensive.” Hence, Onyebadi concludes that “Africa offers a huge tapestry of political messaging through songs and music”.16 However, it is important to note that the relevance of music in many African countries’ socio-economic and political histories did not end with the struggle for political independence, as music continues to challenge flagrant misrule, societal inequalities, and injustices. Musicians including Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube, Majek Fashek, Sunny Okosun, Seydou Kone, Youssou N’Dour, Femi Kuti, and others are prominent musical figures that have at one point, or the other used their songs to advance political causes on the African continent. Fela and N’Dour ventured into active national politics at different times in Nigeria’s and Senegal’s histories respectively, ostensibly to contribute their quotas toward national development.

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Despite the important roles of music in Africa’s political arena, music has not been positive, while anti-government musicians have not had it so easy. Craige and Mkhize had observed that the anti-Tutsi lyrics in Simon Bikindi’s songs, where he called them cockroaches, vicious hyenas, and blood-thirsty murderers, contributed to the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda when an estimated 1 million people were exterminated.17 Also, Onyebadi18 opines that “musicians who sing against sitting presidents in the continent frequently face official harassment and jail times.” Fela Anikulapo-Kuti presents a good example of such harassment, as the musician was arrested and detained several times. At the same time, his house was raided many times by military regimes at different times in Nigeria.

X-raying Africa’s Socio-economic and Political Woes Through Music Fela Anikulapo-Kuti Simply known as “Fela,” and fondly labeled “The Abami Eda” (the mysterious one), Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti was born on 15 October 1938 in Abeokuta, Nigeria to influential upper-middle-class parents.19 His father was a renowned teacher and preacher, while the mother was a prominent feminist and an anti-colonial voice with several records to her accolade. Fela’s music career was said to have started between 1959 and 1961 while he was a student at the Trinity College of Music in the United Kingdom when he formed a jazz musical band known as Koola Lobitos.20 However, events took a turn during his maiden American musical tour, where he met a female civil rights activist, Sandra Smith (later known as Sandra Izsadore). It is well acknowledged that it was Izsadore that exposed Fela to radical political ideas and activism.21,22 Bell narrates that: She (Sandra) met the Nigerian musician when he and his band were in Los Angeles in 1969. At that time, Sandra Smith was heavily involved with the civil rights movement, was connected with the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, and was even then fighting for the cause that she now admits needs to go much further. She imparted her wisdom and her beliefs upon Kuti, helping to lead him down his path of heightened political awareness when he returned home to Nigeria.

However, Fela’s making cannot solely be attributed to his meeting with Sandra, as the music legend took time to understudy the politics and culture of the African people. This was evident in his ability to delve into African kingdoms’ core traditional practices and beliefs in his lyrics. The synopsis of these processes led to two major events in the musical career of Fela. The first was the abandoning of Jazz music, which has its origin in the West, and the adoption of Afro-beat, with resounding African traditional undertone.23 The second event was that Fela changed his name from

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Ransome-Kuti (a name given to his missionary grand-father, Canon J.J Kuti by an English missionary group) to “Anikulapo,” translated as “he who has death in is quiver and cannot be conquered by any human entity.”24,25 This action shows Fela’s keenness to get rid of every “British colonial identity that was meaningless in his ethnic Yoruba language.”26 In the same vein, Fela renamed his music group to the “Egypt 80 Band” as a means to “reiterate the African foundation of his art.”27 Fela significantly adopted the perverted form of the English language, which is pidgin-English for his lyrics. His musical lyrics were a direct affront against colonial and Western chauvinism, governance-failure, socio-economic and political inequalities, injustices, and human rights abuses. Fela, Societal Inequalities, and Economic Hardship To protest the general societal discontent, which was evident in poor infrastructure, high cost of living, unemployment, and law enforcement agencies’ high-handedness, Fela sang “Shuffering and Smiling” (Suffering and Smiling) in 1978. In the song, Fela presented the almost-a-daily-routine of the Nigerian masses in urban centers, especially Lagos, which was Nigeria’s capital at that period. He decried the deplorable state of infrastructure, evident in poor mass transit, bad roads, epileptic electricity and water supplies. Besides, Fela bereted the high-handedness and brutality of officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force and the Army, who were quick to use extra-judicial means to instill “discipline” in erring members of the public, whom they infamously called “bloody civilians.” Fela remarked (about the masses) that: Them go reach road, police go slap (Getting to the street, police will harass/slap); Them go reach road, army go whip (Getting to the street, army officers will whip).28 It is important to note that one of the commonest features of the Nigerian State (and other African countries) under military rule, which was the norm, rather than the aberration during Fela’s era, was police brutality. Consequently, civil-military relations in the country were marred, while Nigerians were better described as subjects rather than citizens. Kunle Amuwo29 captures this and explains that: Military regimes succeeded themselves without necessarily resembling one another in toto; not only have politics as a public vocation lost its character and texture, on account of its demonization by political Generals, the consequent militarization has also denied the Nigerian people of their citizenship. A subjective, as against a participant, political culture has been hoisted on the political landscape and foisted on the people.

The woes of the masses as portrayed by Fela in the above lyrics are further compounded by perceived lateness to work, owing to incessant traffic lock-jam mostly caused by bad road, which eventually results from querying and (eventual) loss of jobs. The synopsis of such hapless development is that poverty is exacerbated while, crime rate increases. Those workers who were lucky to

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escape being sack, had low monthly take-home salaries that were insufficient amidst rising inflation rate and massive corruption and waste in the public service. The Adebo Commission of 1971 on the Wages and Salaries of Workers stated that: It is clear not only that there is intolerable suffering at the bottom of the income scale because of the rise in the cost of living, but also that the sufferings are made even more intolerable by the manifestation of affluence and wasteful expenditures, which cannot be explained on the basis of visible and legitimate means od income.30

In a similar note, Fela captured the gory consequences of military domination over the civil society in Africa in his song, “Sorrow, Tears, and Blood.” He described the numerous troubles and unrests of the era, culminating in sorrow, tears, and blood as the trademark of military regimes.31 It is important to note that military intervention in politics is ostensibly one of the most unsavoury developments in the political histories of many African states. Many debates have been advanced to either explain the causes of military intervention in many African counties’ politics or to profile Africa’s military dictators and chronicle their misdeeds. Bratton and Walle32 , Ekeh33 , Kolawole34 , Amuwo35 , Herbst36 , Thompson37 ,and Igwe38 have made distinct contributions to the discourse. Kolawole posits that “what stands out is that the military shared striking semblance with Africa’s colonial masters, whose missions were simple to oppress, repress, and exploit.”39 Amuwo40 explains that military rule in Africa was characterized by rampant greed, crass opportunism, and unbridled self-aggrandizement, resulting in the acceleration of corruption from a level of an arithmetic progression to that of a geometric progression. Summarizing the effects of the military on Africa’s socio-economic and administrative spheres, Alex Thompson sarcastically captures that: In many cases, few Africans missed their deposed governments once the military had intervened. Indeed, with their apparent discipline and sense of national purpose, remain in uniform were often welcomed. Certainly, with their simple hierarchical structures in which officials are expected to obey orders (rather than bargain over policies), military regimes had added a head-start in tackling such as bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency. The notion that soldiers can bring their parade-ground precision to institutions of government, however, has proved to be somewhat optimistic. In reality, the military introduced an additional set of problems to the administration of post-colonial African states.41

The second part of the song “Sorrow, Tears and Blood”, Fela challenged the cowardly nature of many Africans who were afraid to challenge oppressive regimes/rules, rather have become entangled in the conundrum of cynicism, hopelessness, and despair. Fela remarked thus:

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My people self dey fear too much… (my people are even too fearful/cowardly), We fear to fight for freedom (we are afraid to fight for freedom), We fear to fight for liberty (we are afraid to fight for liberty), We fear to fight for justice (we are afraid to fight for justice), We fear to fight for happiness (we are afraid to fight for our happiness), We always get a reason to fear (we always have reason(s) to be afraid).42

However, in the latter part of the song, Fela indirect called on the African people to resist oppressive rule. He berated African leaders’ inability under the umbrella of the Organization of African Unity (O.A.U), to challenge Europeans’ domination in Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) and the Apartheid rule in South Africa. Analyzing Africa’s Leadership Crisis and the Problems of Neo-colonialism Leadership has been identified as the commonest diagnosis of the ailment of many African countries. With respect to Nigeria, Anam-Ndu43 aptly states that such leadership affliction has, over the years, developed an indignant resistance to all forms of treatment. Elaborately, Fela captured the problem of leadership in Africa and its attendant implications on the posture and future of the continent at the international level. He itemized Africa’s leadership crisis’s salient effects to include bad government policies, promotion of mediocrity, scarcity in the midst of abundance, poverty, inequalities, and modern slavery. He equally expressed fear for the continent’s future but called on the people to stand to fight for the continent’s future and survival. Fela also recognizes the indelible contributions of those who lost their lives in Africa’s independence liberation struggles. As Olaniyan has rightly observed, leadership issues occupied the frontline in Fela’s music.44 Really, the development crisis of many African countries is intricately tied to failures of leadership. Agagu posits that “leadership is so crucial to the understanding of development because strategies and policies are products of the leadership and are implemented by the same”.45 Claude Ake, the foremost African Political Economist, explained deeply that: Strategies and policies are made and managed by government in office and political elite in power in a historical state and under a particular configuration of social forces. One cannot understand development policies or strategies, let alone the possibility of development, without referring constantly to the nature of the state and the dynamics of the social forces in which it is embedded.46

Commenting on State-failure in Africa, Herbst47 posits that in countries where political leaders steal so much from the state, the productive sources of the economy is killed; service-delivery is affected and limited to a small urban population and at the expense of a vast majority in the rural areas. This is the reality in many African states where state-failure, in most cases is caused by

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inequitable distribution of wealth, ethnicity, and greed. This has led to many African leaders’ failure to preserve social orders, thereby leading to civil wars and violent conflict. Jeffrey Herbst explicates that: The human toll resulting from the inability of African leaders to preserve order has been extra-ordinary. Of the fifteen “complex emergencies” declared by the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, eight (Angola, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, the Great Lakes, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan) are in Africa. In such situations, populations have been subject to horrific abuses as warlords and teenagers with machine guns terrorize and extort the unarmed. Economic systems have become so fragile that any meteorological disruption has the potential to cause disaster. Many of these emergencies have compelled both citizens of the countries affected and outsiders too, at least implicitly, acknowledge that state consolidation has failed and that external intervention is necessary.48

In the song, African Problems, Fela also mentioned the need to “teach Africans” what he called “new mentality”. In other words, Africans need to be emancipated from mental slavery and delivered from their fixations on what is Western. Africa’s fixation on Western ideas has been identified as one of the foremost causes of poverty on the continent. To buttress this point of view, in 1977, Fela sang “Colonial Mentality (Colo-mentality).” In the song, the music icon “set the stage for his vitriolic criticism of African leaders by describing them as people who were still entrapped in Colonial mentality”.49,50 Lucky Dube Labeled as the “South Africa’s Singing Peace-maker,” Lucky Philip Dube started his music career at the age of eighteen in a band known as the Lover Brothers. The Band played a Music brand called Mbaganga, which was popular among people of Zulu extraction.51 However, the need to touch the world with music made him to abandon Mbaganga for Reggae. Like other legendary African music icons who sang about Africa’s liberation, Dube’s was intolerable of bad leadership. Particularly, Lucky “challenged ordinary Africans to overcome the continent’s problems by fighting back, however with love, respect and, especially, togetherness”.52 Notably, Dube has twenty-two albums to his name, among which songs are The Hand that Giveth (1989); Well Fed Slave/Hungry Free Man (1997); Crime and Corruption (1999); Political Games (2006) directly queried the socio-economic inequalities, political corruption, and gamesmanship on the African continent. In particular, Dube used Crime and Corruption to decry the obvious unresponsiveness of the political elite to the massive poverty among the masses of the people while they lived in affluence.53 The song is a deep reflection on the internal trajectory of poverty in Africa. Although the integration of former colonies into the periphery rather than the core of world’s capitalism and the imbalance in the global economic

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order (among other reasons) are often regarded as major causes of poverty in Africa54,55 ; these notions have been queried by other authors. The ground for such deviation implicitly rests on the position that political and bureaucratic corruption, coupled with mismanagement of the economy, are more responsible for Africa’s poverty. In sharp contrast to the well-celebrated work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by the Guyana civil rights activist, historian, and writer, Walter Rodney; Stanley Igwe in his book How Africa Underdeveloped Africa posits that “Africa’s poverty woes are intricately caused by corruption”.56 Besides, the African state can be situated into what is described by Darbon57 and Frimpong-Ansah58 as “predatory” and “vampire” states, respectively. Fatton also advanced what he called Predatory Rule.59 Fatton argued that “the ruling class becomes predatory and uses the state to further its interests”.60 He opines that “the state is an organ of dominance; and that ruling class consolidation processes require the brutal accumulation and use the most brutal forms of state extraction namely predatory rule”.61 All these are done at the expense of the people that they claim to serve. In a similar vein, Political Games (2006) was used by Dube to condemn the falsehood around political context and the obvious mistrust between the political class and the masses, occasioned by failures of the former to deliver the dividends of governance to the latter.62 One of the undesirable features of many African states is that the dominant class utilizes the state as a critical resource in the struggle for local and personal interests. In this wise, the state becomes an arena of corruption63 and a source of “spoils” for politicians. According to Dube, the irony of this foregoing is that political class, despite swindling the populace, claims to be “acting in the people’s best interest,”; thereby giving false hope to the people. The outcome of such falsehood is manifested in poverty, youth employment, and general social discontent. Lucky Dube captures such hapless realities in his song Well Fed Slave/Hungry Free Man (1997).64 Commenting on Dube’s disposition, Onyebadi posits that: In a way, Lucky Dube called for a revolution by the masses against their oppressors. In the song, he suggested that the suffering masses had a choice: Continue to live under the yoke of the squalor that defined their existence or do something to redress their misfortune. In other words, remain a slave or be a free person.65

Majekodunmi Fasheke (Majek Fashek) Majekodunmi Fasheke, popularly known as Majek Fashek, was born in February 1963 in Benin-City, the capital of the then Bendel State, comprising today’s Edo and Delta states, South-south, Nigeria. His music career began early in life when he joined a Reggae group known as Jastix. Fashek went solo in 1987, when Jastix disbanded, and quickly swept into the limelight that same

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year with the release of a hit song “Send down the rain” in the album “Prisoners of Conscience” in 1988.66 The release of the song “send down the rain” coincided with one of the worst droughts Nigeria as a country ever witnessed. Harris explained that “Send Down The Rain” seemed to coax a rainstorm that ended one of the worst droughts in Nigeria’s history; an event that earned him the label of “a prophet”.67 Fashek later became one of Africa’s greatest reggae-influenced performers and was often referred to as the “spiritual heir of Bob Marley”.68,69 Majek Fashek’s songs, particularly those related to Africa, were direct responses to the most critical needs on the continent—peace, unity, and development. He passionately sang about the elusiveness of peace in Africa but called on Africans to embrace peace and unity as vehicles for progress. His popular song “So Long,” released in 1990, contains strong historical and political messages for Africa and its descendants in America. Fashek remarked that “Arise from your sleep Africa… Arise from your sleep America, there’s work to be done Africa…There’s work to be done America… if we unite, we will be free, so long, for too long…”70 In a bid to awaken Africa from its obvious socio-cultural, economic, and political slumber, Fashek deployed strong lyrical prowess with a good sense of history to remind Africans of the unique inventions before the unwarranted expedition and later subjugation and displacement by European usurpers. Specifically, the musical icon made mention of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, which remains a wonder to the world, as a unique invention of the continent. In a similar vein, the tragedy of racism and identity loss was subtly captured by Fashek in the song. However, he concluded that no race was superior, but only “the Angels of God.” More significantly, Majek Fashek sang about disunity and conflict, particularly on the African continent and among Christians (Jews) and Muslims.71 It is expedient to remark that the African continent has been embroiled in a series of conflicts for over sixty years. Conflicts with ethno-religious colorations have perhaps been the most prominent forms. The Global Peace Index (GPI) identifies72 Africa as one of the regions that qualify to be in the category of “war,” has crossed the figure of one thousand battle-related deaths in a year’s time. The report also placed Africa among the three least peaceful regions in the world.

Conclusion A discourse on the role of music in Africa’s socio-cultural and political struggles will not be complete without mentioning the influence of Bob Marley, the Jamaican Reggae icon and civil rights activist. His songs, including Redemption Song, Zimbabwe, Africa Unite, Buffalo Soldier, and War, are songs that contained Pan-African messages. Notably, Bob Marley’s songs and personality contributed to nationalists’ consciousness in Africa, influencing many notable African artists, including Lucky Dube and Majek Fashek.

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In general, music is and will remain an integral part of political agitation, social mobilization, and socialization in Africa. In particular, the iconic music and songs of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube, and Majek Fashek contributed immensely, not only to political discussions, but remain veritable sources of inspiration for the new and upcoming generations of music-activists on the African continent. Ironically, all three artists are late (Fela in September 1997, Dube in 2007, and Fashek in June 2020); their contributions towards political enlightenment and the growth of civil/social rights activism in Africa remain indelible. However, there is the need to ask that despite the contributions and impact of post-colonial African musicians in which Fela, Dube, and Fashek stand-out, why is the African continent still enmeshed at the basement of socio-economic and political underdevelopment? This would be a major task for future studies in this area of research.

Notes 1. Uche Onyebadi, “Political Messages in African Music: Assessing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy”, Humanities, 7(129) (2018): 1. 2. Uche Onyebadi, “Political Messages in African Music: Assessing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy”, Humanities, 7(129) (2018): 1. 3. Ebele Ojukwu, Ekizabeth Obielozie, and Chinyere, Esimone, “Nigerian Values and Contemporary Popular Music: A New Look”, OGIRISI: A New Journal of African Studies, 12 (2016): 114–129. 4. Karin Barber, “Introduction”, In Barber, Karin (ed.). Readings in African Popular Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, Oxford: James Currey (1997): 1–12. 5. R. Chukwudi Okeke, “Politics, Music and Social Mobilization in Africa: The Nigeria Narrative and Extant Tendencies”, International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, 86 (2019): 28–41. 6. Lara Allen, “Music and Politics in Africa”, Social Dynamics, 30(2) (2004): 1–19. 7. Justin Labinjo, “Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Protest Music and Social Processes in Nigeria”, Journal of Black Studies, 13 (1982): 119–35. 8. Randall Grass, “Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: The Art of An Afrobeat Rebel”, The Drama Review, 30 (1986): 131–48. 9. A. Mohamed Satti, “Musical Messages: Framing Political Content in Sudanese Popular Songs”, In Onyebadi, U. (ed.) Music as a Platform for Political Communication, Hershey: IGI Global (2017): 187–203. 10. Nancy Gakahu, “Lyrics of Protest: Music and Political Communication in Kenya”, In Music as a Platform for Political Communication”, In Onyebadi, U. (ed.). Hershey: IGI Global (2017): 57–73. 11. Uche Onyebadi, “Bob Marley: Communicating Africa’s Political Liberation and Unity Through Reggae Music”, International Communication Research Journal 52 (2017): 56–78. 12. Uche Onyebadi, “Political Messages in African Music: Assessing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy”, Humanities, 7 129 (2018).

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13. R. Chukwudi Okeke, “Politics, Music and Social Mobilization in Africa: The Nigeria Narrative and Extant Tendencies”, International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, 86 (2019): 28–41. 14. A. Mohamed Satti, “Musical Messages: Framing Political Content in Sudanese Popular Songs”, In Onyebadi, U. (ed.). Music as a Platform for Political Communication, Hershey: IGI Global (2017): 187–203. 15. Nancy Gakahu, “Lyrics of Protest: Music and Political Communication in Kenya”, In Onyebadi, U. (ed.). Music as a Platform for Political Communication, Hershey: IGI Global (2017): 57–73. 16. Dylan Craig, and Nomalanga Mkhize, “Vocal Killers, Silent Killers: Popular Media, Genocide, and the Call for Benevolent Censorship in Rwanda”, In Drewett, Michael and Cloonan, Martin. (eds.). Hampshire Popular Music Censorship in Africa, Ashgate Publishing Limited (2006): 39–52. 17. Uche Onyebadi, “Political Messages in African Music: Assessing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy”, Humanities, 7 129 (2018). 18. John Doran, “Fela Kuti—10 of the Best”, (2016). Available online at: https:// www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/may/05/fela-kuti-10-bestsongs. Retrieved on 11/06/2020. 19. John Doran, “Fela Kuti—10 of the Best”, (2016). Available online at: https:// www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/may/05/fela-kuti-10-bestsongs. Retrieved on 11/06/2020. 20. Carlos Moore, Fela, Fela: The Bitch of a Life, London: Allison and Busby (1982). 21. Mike Bell, “Fela Kuti Mentor Sandra Izsadore Still Trying to Change the World Through Music”, Calgary Herald, (2016): Available online at: https:// calgaryherald.com/entertainment/music/fela-kuti-mentor-sandra-izsadorestill-trying-to-change-the-world-through-song/. Retrieved on 14/6/2020. 22. Mike Bell, “Fela Kuti Mentor Sandra Izsadore Still Trying to Change the World Through Music”, Calgary Herald, (2016). Available online at: https:// calgaryherald.com/entertainment/music/fela-kuti-mentor-sandra-izsadorestill-trying-to-change-the-world-through-song/. Retrieved on 14/6/2020. 23. Justin Labinjo, “Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Protest Music and Social Processes in Nigeria”, Journal of Black Studies, 13 (1982): 119–35. 24. J. Doran, “Fela Kuti—10 of the Best”, (2016). Available online at: https:// www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/may/05/fela-kuti-10-bestsongs. Retrieved on 11/06/2020. 25. J. Gregory Caroll, Composing the African Atlantic Sun Ra, Fela AnikulapoKuti, and the Poetics of African Diasporic Composition. PhD Thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA (2013). 26. J. Gregory Caroll, Composing the African Atlantic Sun Ra, Fela AnikulapoKuti, and the Poetics of African Diasporic Composition. PhD Thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA (2013). 27. Uche Onyebadi, “Political Messages in African Music: Assessing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy”, Humanities, 7 129 (2018). 28. SongLyrics.com, “Songs and Albums of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti”, (2020). Available online at: http://www.songlyrics.com/index.php?section=search& searchW=FELA&submit=Search&searchIn1=artist&searchIn2=album&search In3=song&searchIn4=lyrics. Retrieved on 12/06/2020.

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29. Kunle Amuwo, “The Military Factor in Nigerian Politics”, In Kolawole D.(ed.). Issues in Nigerian Government and Politics, Ibadan: Dekaal Publishers (2005): 11–28. 30. Adebo Commission, First Report of the Wages and Salaries Review Commission, Lagos: Federal Ministry of Information (1971). 31. Bratton Michael and van de Walle, Nicholas, “Neo-patrimonial Regimes and Political Transition in Africa” World Politics, 46 4 (1994). July. Available online at: http://www.la.utexas.edu/users/chenry/core/Course%20Materials/Bratto nAfrWP94/0.pdf. Retrieved 23/6/2020. 32. Peter Ekeh, “The Concept of Second Liberation and the Prospects of Democracy in Africa: A Nigerian Context”, In Beckett, P. A and Young. C. (eds.). Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria, Rochester and New York: Cambridge University Press (1998). 33. Dipo Kolawole “Colonial and Military Rules in Nigeria: A Symmetrical Relation”, In Kolawole D. (ed.). Issues in Nigerian Government and Politics, Ibadan: Dekaal Publishers (2005): 1–9. 34. Kunle Amuwo, “The Military Factor in Nigerian Politics”, In Kolawole D. (ed.). Issues in Nigerian Government and Politics, Ibadan: Dekaal Publishers (2005): 11–28. 35. Jeffrey Herbst, “The Past and Failure of State Power in Africa”, In Herbst, J. (ed.). State and Power in Africa, New Jersey: Princeton University Press (2000): 251-272. 36. Alex Thompson, “Military Intervention in African Politics”, In Thompson, A. (ed.). Introduction to African Politics, London and New York: Routledge (Tylor and Francis Group) (2004): 130–148. 37. Stanley Igwe, How Africa Underdeveloped Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria: Prime Print (2012): 84. 38. Dipo Kolawole “Colonial and Military Rules in Nigeria: A Symmetrical Relation”, In Kolawole D. (ed.). Issues in Nigerian Government and Politics, Ibadan: Dekaal Publishers (2005): 3-4. 39. Kunle Amuwo, “The Military Factor in Nigerian Politics”, In Kolawole D. (ed.). Issues in Nigerian Government and Politics, Ibadan: Dekaal Publishers (2005): 11–28. 40. Alex Thompson, “Military Intervention in African Politics”, In Thompson, A. (ed.). Introduction to African Politics, London and New York: Routledge (Tylor and Francis Group) (2004): 137–148. 41. SongLyrics.com, “Songs and Albums of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti”, (2020). Available online at: http://www.songlyrics.com/index. Retrieved on 12/06/2020. 42. A. Ekeng Anam-Ndu, Leadership Question in Nigeria: A Prescriptive Exploration. Lagos: Geo-Ken Associates Ltd (1998): 15. 43. Tejumola Olaniyan, “The Cosmopolitan Nativist: Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and the Antinomies of Postcolonial Modernity” Research in African Literatures, 32 (2001): 76–89. 44. A. Alaba Agagu, “The Nigerian State and Development: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration”, In Agagu, A.A. and Ola, R.F. (eds.). Development Agenda of the Nigerian State, Akure: Lord Keynes (2011): 16. 45. Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa, Massachusetts: Brooking Institution Press (2001): 3.

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46. Jeffrey Herbst, “The Past and Failure of State Power in Africa”, In Herbst, J. (ed.). State and Power in Africa, New Jersey: Princeton University Press (2000): 254–255. 47. Jeffrey Herbst, “The Past and Failure of State Power in Africa”, In Herbst, J. (ed.). State and Power in Africa, New Jersey: Princeton University Press (2000): 255. 48. Uche Onyebadi, “Political Messages in African Music: Assessing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy”, Humanities, 7(129) (2018): 6. 49. SongLyrics.com, “Songs and Albums of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti” (2020). Available online at: http://www.songlyrics.com/index.php?section=search&sea rchW=FELA&submit=Search&searchIn1=artist&searchIn2=album&search In3=song&searchIn4=lyrics. Retrieved on 12/06/2020. 50. Uche Onyebadi, “Political Messages in African Music: Assessing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy”, Humanities, 7(129) (2018): 3. 51. Africa Update “Lucky Dube Investigation”, (2007). Available online https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15560410. at: Retrieved on 20/6/2020. 52. SongLyrics.com, “Songs and Albums of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti”, (2020). Available online at: http://www.songlyrics.com/index.php?section=search& searchW=FELA&submit=Search&searchIn1=artist&searchIn2=album&search In3=song&searchIn4=lyrics. Retrieved on 12/6/2020. 53. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Washington, D.C: Howard University Press (1972): 96–98. 54. Alex Thompson, “Africa’s Pre-Colonial and Colonial Inheritance”, In Thompson, A. (ed.). Introduction to African Politics, London and New York: Routledge (Tylor and Francis Group) (2004): 17–20. 55. Stanley Igwe, How Africa Underdeveloped Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria: Prime Print (2012): 84. 56. Dominique Darbon, “L’Etat prédateur”, Politique Africaine, 39 (1990): 37– 45. 57. H. Jonathan Frimpong-Ansah, The Vampire State in Africa: The Political Economy of Decline in Ghana, London: James Currey (1991). 58. Robert Fatton, Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa, Boulder: Lynne Rienner (1992). 59. Robert Fatton, Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa, Boulder: Lynne Rienner (1992). 60. Ibid. 61. SongLyrics.com, “Songs and Albums of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti”, (2020). Available online at: http://www.songlyrics.com/index.php?section=search& searchW=FELA&submit=Search&searchIn1=artist&searchIn2=album&search In3=song&searchIn4=lyrics. Retrieved on 12/6/2020. 62. Masahisa Kawabata, An Overview of the Debate on the African State, Working Paper Series No.15, Japan: Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies, Ryukoku Universit (2006): 24. 63. Uche Onyebadi, “Political Messages in African Music: Assessing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy”, Humanities, 7(129) (2018): 15.

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64. O. Ayomide Tayo, “Majek Fashek: The Rain-Maker Returns to Heaven”, (2020). Available online at: https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/ majek-fashek-the-rainmaker-returns-to-the-heavens/p1nmm9l. Retrieved on 21/06/2020. 65. Craig Harris, “Artist Biography—Majek Fashek”, (2020). Available Online at: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/majek-fashek-mn0000236645/biography. Retrieved on 21/06/2020. 66. O. Ayomide Tayo, “Majek Fashek: The Rain-Maker Returns to Heaven”, (2020). Available online at: https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/ majek-fashek-the-rainmaker-returns-to-the-heavens/p1nmm9l. Retrieved on 21/06/2020. 67. Craig Harris, “Artist Biography—Majek Fashek”, (2020). Available Online at: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/majek-fashek-mn0000236645/biography. Retrieved on 21/06/2020. 68. SongLyrics.com, “Songs and Albums of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti”, (2020). Available online at: http://www.songlyrics.com/index.php?section=search& searchW=FELA&submit=Search&searchIn1=artist&searchIn2=album&search In3=song&searchIn4=lyrics. Retrieved on 12/06/2020. 69. Parole-Musique.com “Majek Fashek—African Unity Lyrics”, (2020). Available online at: https://www.paroles-musique.com/eng/Majek_Fashek-African_U nity-lyrics.p02064946. Retrieved on 21/6/2020. 70. Institute for Economics and Peace. Global Terrorism Index—Measuring the Impact of Terrorism, IEP, (2014). Available online at: http://vis ionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2014/11/GTI-2014web.pdf. Retrieved on 17/11/2017.

CHAPTER 44

Beyond Riots: Africa’s Fela Kuti and His One Man Political Protest in the Changing Global Order Olukayode Segun Eesuola

Introduction and Background Recent occurrences around the world are compelling behavioural scientists to, more than ever before, intensify research efforts on the individual’s protest against the political system as a fundamental aspect of political behaviour. In a sense this may be due to the expansion of democratic frontiers around the world. Democracy recognizes citizens’ rights to express protest; and many countries of the world now practise it in some ways. Even the less than 50 that are non-democratic sometimes get confronted with protests over one political issue or the other. Old cultures are changing, and countries that were hitherto adjudged politically “peaceful” are now engaged in contentious political activities in which the individual play key roles. Scholarly interrogation of political behaviour therefore needs to extend significantly towards the individual. Without that, “we cannot systematically study what citizens actually believe and how they act”.1 In 2011 North Africa witnessed a one man self-immolation protest that ignited larger citizens’ revolts across the Middle East. Tunisians would later form the phrase ‘Benzoazi Revolution’ from the name of the self—immolator whose action triggered similar uprisings across Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, Bahrain and other states in North Africa and Arab. In what has come to be called the Arab Springs. Some other individuals: Abdou O. S. Eesuola (B) Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_44

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Abdel Monaam and Hafiz Ghogha’s were principal actors respectively in the Egypt and the Libya cases. What runs across Arab Springs is the plethora of individuals who publicly exhibit discontents towards their political systems, some to the extent of triggering popular revolt that threatened the political establishments and attracted global attention. There are people with such convictions in different parts of the world. They include Ogou Thibault and Lawrent Metongnon in Benin Republic, Noam Chomsky in the United States and others in many parts of the world. Fela Anikulapo Kuti was such an individual in Nigeria between 1970 and 1997, and with his one man political protest he made contributions to changing global order. The question thus arise as to how an individual can consider protest as his highest achievement in life! It was in this context that Fela declared as follows. The day I carried my mother’s coffin to Dodan Barracks (in protest), my brother, on the 30th September 1979, people of this country didn’t know what I faced on that day to do that… but, men, I had to do it… you see, they gave order to destroy the coffin that was placed in my house when I was in Berlin and I promised I must put it there. I knew I would succeed in getting it there but it was a big row…they wanted to shoot me and all that, but I came out of it. That is my greatest achievement in life. (F. Anikulapo Kuti, personal communication, cited in B. Hoskyns, August 1984)

The background of the above citation is that Fela’s residence, Kalakuta Republic had been razed on February 18, 1977 by Nigeria’s post-civil war military junta whose corruption, nepotism and other incredible anomie Fela’s songs and actions protested against. In protest, Fela defied and indeed dared heavy military resistance and embarked on the suicide mission of personally taking the dead mother’s casket to the office of the military Head of State. From where come such individuals who confront very brutal and despotic political regimes without considering the fatal consequences? Why do such people delight in rebellious behaviours and actions even at the expense of their lives and those of their families? Are there theoretical conclusions we can derive in analyzing the lives of such individuals as lived in their political systems? Fela was born in 1938 in Nigeria but studied Music at Trinity College, Britain. In 1970 he did a tour of the United States and returned with politics filled songs that they used to protest against the Nigerian military establishment. He did this until 1997 when he died. The current paper attempts to explain how Fela Kuti from protest potentiality to protest behaviour and protest action all through the 27 years of what he called “No Agreement”.2 Of all musicians’ in Nigeria and other African countries’, Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s Afrobeat songs have been generally labelled “protest”,3 and many of the songs have strong international dimensions. For instance, at the peak of global debates over the issue of human rights especially during apartheid South Africa, Fela in Beast of Non Nations interrogated the logicality of Prime Minister Botha presiding over apartheid South Africa but still “friend”,

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sitting in same meetings with acclaimed human rights champion, President Ronald Regan and UK Prime Minister Margret Thatcher; yet without decisive sanctions against apartheid: Botha na friend to Thatcher and Regan Botha na fried to some other leaders too All together, dem wan dash us, human right

Botha is friend to Thatcher and Reagan Botha is friend to some other leaders also All together, they want to give us, human right

By implication, the ideas of human rights and global unity, in addition to veto power and other dominant practices of the United Nations were, in Fela’s view, a ruse—nemo dat quad non habet. This is why Fela conclude that countries of the world were organized into a bad society that he tagged “Beasts of Non Nations” instead of United Nations.4 Beasts of Non Nations Egebekegbe na bad society Beasts of Non Nations oturugbeke

Beasts of Non Nations A bad society

In this paper we explore literature of political protest and identify the gap of individual’s action, like that of Fela Kuti. We freely draw from Fela’s lyrics for the purpose, and, through content analysis of the lyrics, we conclude that Fela, as well as many other individual Africans, have contributed to changing global order in their different ways. The paper personae here, Fela Anikulapo Kuti did his own though the Afrobeat popular music from Nigeria, but impacts spreads across the world. Political protest, in its general sense, often “involves attempts by individuals or groups to address or stop perceived injustices within a political system, without overturning the system itself…where protesters do not rely exclusively on traditional ways of political participation, such as voting, either because they have no right or access to them or because they do not consider them effective”.5 Auvinen (1996: 78) says it “is often taken as ‘rallies, demonstrations, riots and strikes which have an expressed political target and, or involve conflict behaviour against the political machinery”, while, according to Kritzer (2001: 133), it “refers to public group activities utilizing confrontation politics to apply stress to specific target for the purpose of affecting public policy” (cited in Kritzer, 2001: 630). Beyond the foregoing conceptualizations of political protest are those that attempt to clarify what constitutes and what causes it, and these are where extant theories and literature concentrate. This “What and Why” tradition of protest cannot be unconnected with the Marxian idea of necessary and inevitable class struggle that creates perpetual clashes between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Auvinen (1996) further patronized the What and Why tradition by highlighting a number of other causative factors of political protest

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through what he calls ‘conceptual model’, and in which he argues that bad economic performance in a state, ethnic dominance, authoritarian political regime and low level of economic development are causes of protest against the political system. Auvinen asserts that these factors often lead to relative deprivation, especially among the urban middle classes and youths, who, as he claims, are the major victims of such socio-economic situations. This rests on Auvinen’ position on Ted Gurr’s deprivation theory, but with the caveat that the political environment must be conducive for protest and collective action to manifest against a political system. That “conducive environment” is a “democratic” one which permits “individual and group political association and expression” (p. 383), and “where successful protests must have previously held” (p. 384). As a radical departure from the deprivationist and materialist orientation, Falaiye’s (2008) position over the African American experience on Black Nationalism links political protest to political legitimacy, claiming that the former often occurs where “the institutions of the society such as the courts, the traditional political parties, the police and the educational institutions are no longer seen as willing and able to meet the pressing needs” of people. At the same time, the works of Conway and Feigart (1976), as well as many other socialization theorists insist that the form of political behaviour that an individual exhibits—protest or apathy for example—is primarily a function of agents of socialization such as the family, the school and peer influence that have come to define their personalities over the years. Opp (2009) observes that while “protest refers to behavior” he warns at the same time that “there is disagreement on what form of behavior constitutes protest”, and situating political protest in the context of political behaviour might have provoked other intellectual contributions that emphasize categorization, motives and forms. From the categorization point the question may be raised about whether political protest is such regular attitudes as scepticism and apathy; or a high risk behaviour such as riot, hunger strike, self-immolation and suicide bombing that have all been witnessed in history. Categorization may as well be a matter of scholarly orientation, considering how attention of scholarly research is favourably skewed towards voting, elections and psephology which are treated as “regular” forms of political behaviour much over activities of political protest and social movement (Schussman and Soule 2005). This explains why Freeman (1999) and Schussman and Soule (2005) project political protest as a normal form of political participation, and though it is what Olafsson (2007) calls “non institutional forms of relating to the authority”, it might be difficult to dichotomize protest as normal political behaviour, even when it manifests as riot, terrorism and even suicide bombing. Furthermore is the position that political protest is “inherently political”, and that in the neo liberal polity especially, it has become “a taken for granted part of the repertoire of citizens’ political activities” schussman and soule (2005: 1084). Charles (1996) and Jasper (1998) also consider political protest as one of the many forms of interacting with elites, opponents or the state.

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Political protest and other forms of contentious politics are regular and normal forms of political participation (Kittel and Opp 2018). To others such as Useem and Useem (2001) and Herring (1989) for instance, political protest and allied activities are not as “normal”. Useem and Useem’s position is that it is not only a non-conventional form of political participation but also “a high risk political behavior”. In fact, there is a semblance of a psychoanalysis by Kaplan and Xiaoru (2000) in which it is declared that individuals who participate in political protest often do so in order to compensate for some lacuna in their personality or achievement. Kaplan and Xiaoru’s (2000) interpretation of political protest is compensatory, declaring that individuals who participate in it often do so in order to compensate for some lacuna in their personality or achievement. This position along with others’ “have hypothesized that participation in political protest reflects the need to increase one’s self feelings of self-worth, or to reduce a person’s feeling of unworthiness” (Kaplan and Xiaoru 2000: 599), and that while participating in political protest, social tasks that are ordinarily too heavy for an individual to attain become easy in groups (p. 599). The categorization may be a matter of many factors ranging from disciplinary background to scholarly orientation and worldview, so, it may be difficult to reconcile. What may not be easier to debate is that it is difficult to foreclose some form of political protest or the other as citizens and other members react to the state policies and practices in every political system. This means that political protest has explainable causes, so, they cannot be unexpected in the society, making it difficult to dismiss as abnormal. But what about the cases of certain individuals who perpetually protest against the system, those who do not wait for triggers, those who do not mobilize anyone or wait to be mobilized before confronting the establishment of political matters that should be the concern of all? There is need for a systematized exploration and explanation of the making of those individuals who are protest personified. What do we see in their socialization right from the family to school, peer group, career choice and all? What other factors shape ether world to make them such individuals? All of the foregoing call them theoretical contributions that are dominant in the literature have mainly focused on the group aspect of political behaviour. The approaches are what and why based, that is, definitions, causes and, by extension, categorization in the sense of the behavioural normalcy or otherwise of political protest. Marx’s class struggle pioneered the “why” factor which was later augmented with Gurr’s frustration and aggression thesis. Both focus more on economic determinism. Extant literature is also well positioned that the tendency of political protest is high among young adults under democratic political environments which allow them to express their thoughts and demand accountable leadership. In all these, for the sake of emphasis, explanatory frameworks are often from the group perspectives. Even that group itself is rarely interrogated enough concerning the action of protest that they assume. This is despite the declaration that “political protest involves attempts by individuals or groups

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to address or stop perceived injustices within a political system, without overturning the system itself”’.6 There seems to be a deafening silence on the individual either as initiator and perpetrator of protest at the level of themselves, or participant in those organised by groups. This lacuna creates the need to explore political protest from the perspective of the individual, and the case of Fela Anikulapo Kuti of Nigeria is a perfect way to do it. A way to take off the discourse is to use Bandura’s Social Learning Theory which is an explanatory framework for the behaviour of the individual in relation to the social environment. The theory holds majorly that individuals learn not just what they know, but also what they do in terms of behaviour, from other individuals in the society, rather than from their mental initiatives. As an interdisciplinary explanatory tool in the area of behaviour, the SLT hangs on the five basic assumptions that the individual is born tabula rasa until they get modelled by agents of socialization, first through trial and error where his activities are either positively or negatively reinforced. The retention or otherwise of the behaviour depends on the kind of reinforcement; and all these occur based on reciprocal determinism. Albert Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory does not disagree with Skinner (1953) and other behaviourists’ classical and operant conditioning which seem to suggest that only the person learns from the environment (McLeod 2016). Bandura declares that behaviour is learned from the environment through observational learning, and then submits that such learning is based on reciprocal determinism, a causal relationship in which the society learns from the individual, the very things the individual learns from it. This is the slight advancement, and reciprocal determinism also implies that so long as man exists within and interacts with others in the society, he or she continues to learn new things that will influence his behaviour even as others learn from him too.

Fela’s Political Protest: Potentialities, Behaviour and Action One can begin exploring Fela’s protest against the Nigerian political system through Bandura’s social learning theory. Born in what then could be called a Christian home, Fela’s mind, like any other child’s was quite open at birth, until he began to gather consciousness from his parents’ protest behaviour and actions. For Fela, both father and mother were rebels and activists against the political system. Amongst other things, the father was a reverend who never preached in church but instead ran a school where English colonial culture was discouraged and white educational inspectors were never allowed to visit. Fela’s father, Israel Oladotun Ransome Kuti pioneered the leadership of the Nigerian Union of Teachers as it was formed in July 1931. The Union was the strongest workers’ union for a long period in Nigeria. Fela’s mother was part of both the Russian and Chinese revolutions and, at a time when such

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was never recorded in the history of Yoruba people, she led the protest rally that unseated the Alake of Egba land during the colonial Nigeria. As Bandura would propose, Fela would have seen his parents as models and imitated their ways of life. This process of imitation did not on its own trigger the political Fela as declared by his elder cousin and another radical that he was not “ in no way political until he returned from his United States tour” of 1969 (W. Soyinka, personal communication, November, 2010). Fela’s socialisation into protest behaviour was climaxed by his travel to the United States of America in the age of radicalism where he met Sandra Isidor who seriously radicalized him through exposure to books and the several contradictions of the American society. Could this be what Niemi (1973) mean by “political ideas, like consumption of cigarette and hard liquor, do not just begin at one’s eighteen birthday…for in their political habit as consumption habit young people are influenced by their parents and other family members and their school”? (p.117). While socialization at the family and school levels instilled protest potentiality in Fela, and the tour to the United States climaxed it, the socio-political contradictions in the Nigerian state between 1970 and 1997 transformed the potential to behaviour. This political system was post-colonial, in which the elite was of weak economic background. The elite thus resorted to the use of political offices to steal state’s wealth to improvise a “proper” ruling class (Ake, 1981, 1985). Eesuola (2012) asserts that in that system, the political class became predators, and instead of working towards coalescing values that would institute hegemony and create the social order that would foster development, they concentrated on developing coercive state instruments for the dual purpose of abetting their looting and resisting possible protest from any citizen or group. With this system, the police and the military became mercenary and venal; and with the latter in political power for a long time till Fela died, the political system remained repressive, oppressive and kleptomaniac. Deviance was a major way in which Fela’s protest behaviour manifested. Haralambos and Holborn (2004) explain deviance as “means to stray from the accepted path of the society; those acts which do not follow the norms and expectations of a particular social group” (p. 330). Deviant behaviour violates popular social norms, and the majority of the society often disapproves of it and dissociate themselves from people who partake in it. While Functionalists such as Durkheim (l938) argue that deviance is a normal part of the human society, and that a society of saints will not be natural but hypersensitive to human behaviour, the interactionists rely on the interaction between deviants and those who define it to conclude otherwise. They claim that deviance does not refer to acts and activities that are detrimental to the society as they are often portrayed; rather, it is mere sentiments of those who so describe them. (Haralambos and Holborn 2004: 346). One of the most influential deviance interactionists in fact asserts:

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Social groups create deviance by making rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not the quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the applications of others of such rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. The deviant is one to whom the label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label. (Becker 1963, cited in Haralambos and Holborn 2004: 346)

This means that deviance does not conform to logic in many cases. It is often sentiment driven, hence Fela’s public defense of his celebration of sexual orgies that many people often criticize as vulgar and corrupt. One day, I go play for Kano Someone come meet me, say, Make I no sing this kind song o, Small pikin dey there I tell am say My son wey dey here, no be small pikin? I don teach am everything: fuck, woman o, Because me I no believe say The thing wey pikin go know when him grow up Must be hidden for am when him young? If God no want make him know, Him no go put am there Na Christians and Muslim dey hide am Dem say na immoral How can the sweetest thing be immoral? Dem dey craze!

One day, I went to Kano for a show Someone accosted me, saying, That I should not sing vulgar songs Because minors were in the audience Then I asked Isn’t my son here a minor too? I have taught him everything: sex, women Because I do not believe that What a child will know in adulthood Should be hidden from him at childhood, What God does not want the child to know, He will not create in his body Christians and Muslims that hide them They say they are immoral How can the sweetest thing be immoral? They are crazy! (Fela Kuti, Akunkuna 1984)

On the ground of logic, it is difficult to answer Fela’s fundamental questions in the foregoing opening regarding why an action is considered deviant. As earlier highlighted, it is the dominant values of the society that determine the quality of every social action. In whichever way deviance is perceived, what is evident is that every society refers to as deviant, whatever activities or acts that are not generally accepted by her dominant class. The dominant class in every society often coalesce their beliefs and sentiments into consensus values, build and exhibit such values as the shared sentiments of all people, and use the same as control mechanism over all members of the society. Departure from these shared sentiments is often called deviance, and people who so depart are called deviants. Fela was a deviant Nigeria of that time because he attempted going completely antagonistic to the dominant norms and values. Deviance has always been somewhat related to protest, but scholars differ considerably on the exact relationship between them. This is the sense in which Useem and Useem (2001), Hollander and Einwohner (2004) and Olafsson

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(2007) perceive protest as a non-conventional form of political participation and in fact, “a high risk political behavior”. Most of the activities of Fela and the members of his Kalakuta Republic could not but qualify as deviance in the Nigeria during the period under study. Because every dominant idea in a society is the idea of the dominant class, European and American sociopolitical values permeated Nigeria. The cultural, social and political practices of the pre-colonial people became barbaric, their religions became superstitious, their language became vernacular and their spirituality became fetish (Babalola 1974; Oloruntimilehin 1976). All too soon, the Nigerian postcolonial ruling elite is labelled as fetish, vernacular, barbaric and superstitious: in short, deviant; whatever behaviour in many cases that did not conform to their values, using the schools, the churches and other colonial agents of socialization. The majority of what is considered as Fela’s deviant behaviours such as marrying twenty seven wives, the numerous teenager concubines, ancestral worship and cannabis use were not directly against African culture, they were considered as deviant because they transgressed Euro western religious values. This rejection of African culture is one of what Fela was partly protesting against in his songs. Our position is not to pronounce judgement on the use of cannabis, celebration of sexual orgies, nudity and other forms of deviant activities have no unintended negative consequence on the society. It had been argued that Fela defiled many young ladies, introduced many people to hemp smoking and contributed immensely to sexual immorality among the youth while his protest lasted in Nigeria (Moore 1982). Fela did it all as protest behaviour. In the Kalakuta, all sorts of things happened to demonstrate the possibility of a free, communal, Africanised, a-religious welfare state that Fela’s political protest was always asking for as against the poverty and lack of freedom that characterized the Nigerian military regime. But this free society also inevitably indulged in the use of drugs, indiscriminate and unprotected sexual activities, and crime. Perhaps this is why Olaniyan (2004) respond in the following innuendo: Fela destroyed Nigerian youths, but only the kind of mindless, pliant youth the dictator carves. Many of those students who were in Fela’s Kalakuta Republic graduated to become fearless journalists, educators, civil rights lawyers and social activists; they were the bulwark of opposition to the hideous dictators General Ibraheem Babangida and General Sanni Abacha, even Obasanjos’ second coming as elected in 1999 has not been spared ... (Olaniyan: 86).

Theoretically explored, the Ika Meji thesis in the Ifa indigenous system expressly postuulates the idea of deviant behaviour, and can stand as a framework for the current discourse. Ika Meji recognises the possibility of utilising deviant behavior “wanran-wanra” to target social change as Fela attempted in Nigeria, but expresses that such is commonly unsuccessful due to reluctance of people to join the struggle even when they well understand it. The Ifa

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indigenous system significantly functions as the epistemological foudation of the Yoruba people ad their civilization. There are many alternative postulations of deviant behaviour in the dominant literature: the Cultural Transmission and Differential Association theories which believe that deviance is learnt like any other behaviour, the Structural Strains and Anomie theories which explain that deviance is a response to social strains, the Control Theory which tries to explain why most people conform and then tag the few who do not as deviants; then the Labeling theory which sees deviance not as activities, but the name people give to them.7 Also available to explain deviant behaviour are others such as the Subcultural theories and the Medicalization theory. In relation to the present paper, the labelling theory readily explains why Fela indulged in most of the activities that the Nigerian dominant class considered deviant. Fela wanted to show that given their corruption, highhandedness, repression and moral decadence, the Nigeria’s dominant group lacked the moral justification to condemn as deviant, his (Fela’s) own behaviour. The labelling theory is a variety of Symbolic Interactionism, and it explains how different people or segments of the society interpret different behaviour and subsequently label them. Pioneered mainly by Becker (1963) and Spitzer (1975), the theory argues that deviance does not refer to acts and activities that are detrimental to the society as they are often portrayed; rather, they are mere sentiments of those who describe them. Becker, one of the main proponents asserts that, Social groups create deviance by making rules whose infractions constitute deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not the quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application of others of such rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. The deviant is one to whom the label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is a behavior that people so label (Becker 1963, cited in Haralambos and Holborn 2004: 346).

Fela’s protest behaviour also manifested as an exit from the state. Although it was Osaghae (1999) who first coined the phrase “exiting the state” in his discussion of the relationship between the Nigerian state and its civil society, the scenario of citizens trying to willingly isolate themselves from their state—as Fela did in his 1974 declaration of the Kalakuta Republic—is quite historical, and it is often done in protest against certain dominant political situations. Jean Jack Rousseau’s classical statement, “Man is born free but everywhere in chain” applies here, and the chain partly refers to some dominant practices to which a man is not favourably disposed but is compelled to adopt due to the repressive and coercive powers of the state. Exit then becomes one of the options. Exit can be geographical, in which case a citizen moves out of a state’s geographical location to another state’s in protest against the dominant order. This is the case in migration of many African citizens to North America and Europe which caused what in Nigerian parlance is called brain drain. Exit can

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also be substitutional, in which case citizens consider the state ineffective, and seek substitute and alternative means of achieving what the state is supposed to provide to them. Town associations and community development groups in some areas of Africa exemplify some forms of citizens protest against the state by “bypassing it; by defining them in relation to economic, political and cultural systems which transcend the state” (Bayart 1991:60). The last one is ideological, in which a citizen, again in protest, declares himself and members of his family non-citizen of a state by refusing to respect norms, rules, and civic responsibilities. In all these cases the citizens are either trying to escape corruption and excessive theft (Osaghae 1999), or lawlessness on the part of the state agents (Hoff and Stiglitz, 2004). Generally, those who exit the state do so in reacting to, or protesting against what Du Toit (1995) calls “a domineering yet ineffective state” (p. 3 l), so, exit, like loyalty, is a product of state power relations that exist in a polity (Ake 1995, cited in Osaghae 1999: 86). It is within this context that Fela’s creation of the Kalakuta Republic can be assessed. Fela declared his Kalakuta Republic in protest against the overbearingly repressive yet ineffective Nigerian Military State and to escape obeying their laws which he claimed were made by criminals. Fela insisted that the military was an unconstitutional government and any law made by it was illegal and indeed criminal; that which only criminals like the soldiers should obey. Olaniyan explains that Fela’s Kalakuta was supposedly independent of the Nigerian Republic, with Fela himself as president. “He fortified the security of his republic and electrified the fence (p.56) … Kalakuta had its own laws and constitution…In the Kalakuta Republic, Fela with his deconstructive insight, sardonic humor, and exhilarating sounds taught young people to see the state as fundamentally illegitimate, selfish, dictatorial, even unpatriotic and un-African; and to see many of its policies as irredeemably foolish” (p. 85). We have positioned deviance and exit from the state as Fela’s protest behaviour against the Nigerian state, and this is from the simplistic sense of behaviour as the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others. Action, from the same source, is said to be “the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim”. Thus, what is behavioural is that which has become a way of life due to socialization and many other factors. It is regular and predictable. Action on the other hand is episodic. Though not expressively different from behaviour, it reacts to, and is targeted at certain issues at particular points in time. This is where Fela’s music is located in this paper. Music, from time immemorial has always been used for political expression irrespective of how far back in history one wishes to go (Conford 1941). It plays roles in general socio-political engineering and conflicts among classes in the society (Ayu 1986; Craig 1998; Street 2011), especially given the Marxian position that the history of all human societies is the history of class struggle. Ayu in particular asserts that there is little doubt that music, as a work of arts, “has the potentiality for developing consciousness” among the oppressed

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class, while, on the other hand, “for the class in dominance, it is an extra tool for concretizing hegemony” (1986: 3). Music played pragmatic roles in the United States’ struggle against colour subjugation and racism. As the civil liberty groups advanced the course of their struggle against racial discrimination, a host of musicians made several albums that aimed at sensitizing more people to join the struggle, while, at the same time strengthening the convincement of others already in it. Examples of musicians involved include Phil Orchis, John Lenon, Patti Smith, Tom Paxton, Peter Seeger and Edwin Starr. Even in other parts of the world where there were no specific internationally publicized movements like the United States’ Civil Rights’, musicians continued to direct their songs towards addressing certain contradictions in their societies: Bob Merely of Jamaica, Victor Jara of Chile; Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekala of Southern Africa (Ayu 1986). In Bolivia and other parts of Latin America, Kunin (2009) reveals, the Altiplano music remains an artistic manifestation that is considered a tool for the demand for social justice by both youngsters and national, local and international institutions” (p. 1). Afrobeat was Fela’s music of political protest. Afrobeat is a bimorphological concept: “Afro” and “beat”. It was invented by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, purposefully for protesting against the socio-political contradictions that confronted and are still confronting Nigeria and Africa (Olaniyan 2004; Olorunyomi 2003; Oikelome 2009). It is conglomeration of artistic, political and spiritual activities that Fela often presented in songs, dance, musical participation (underground Spiritual game), and yabbis. To Fela who invented it, Afrobeat was the major means of projecting African ideas and concerns into the larger local and international spaces. The Afrobeat genre of popular music with an unusual style of “politically charged lyrics and anti-establishment politics”, through which he periodically “launched comprehensive venomous critique of both institutions and individuals he considered as causes and perpetrators of Nigeria’s reigning incredible anomie” (Olaniyan 2004: 4). This suggests why Olaniyan (2004: 4) declared in reference to Fela’s songs, writings and actions that “it is rare that the work of a popular musician intervene so cogently in current dominant problematics in the social sciences and humanities”. Corroborating Olaniyan’s foregoing assertion are the following words of a foremost Fela—influenced musician, Lagbaja, in tribute to Fela his mentor: When he starts to yab Dictators go dey shake Oppressors go dey fear When he put mount for song Philosophy go de flow (cited in Olaniyan 2004: 6)

When he starts to banter Dictators shudder in alarm Oppressors quake in fear When he begins to sing Philosophy issues forth

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Using such socio-political concepts as “dictator” and “oppressor” to describe the targets of Fela’s protest, and describing Fela’s utterances as essentially philosophical, Lagbaja merely prompts scholars who have explored Fela in several dimensions, asserting several issues such as his ingenious and unique creation of the political genre of popular music called Afrobeat (Oikelome 2009), his political philosophy (Olaniyan 2004), Fela as a “moral reformer” (Olaniyan 2004), a cultural nationalist (Olorunyomi 2003), a protest musician (Ayu 1986), and, to mention just a few, a socio-political soothsayer who constantly saw the political tomorrow of Nigeria and indeed Africa (Mabinuori 2003). Another action is Fela’s creation and sustenance of social movement, the Young African Pioneers (Mabinuori 1986; Olorunyomi, 2003; Olaniyan 2004, etc.) which later metamorphosed into a newspaper publication. Fela also formed a political association, the Movement of the People (MOP), that was to be used as a platform for contesting in the Nigerian general elections of 1979. Although the Movement of the People was not registered, it commanded a vast following among the youth of Nigeria and other African countries. In its entirety, the actions of Fela’s political protest against the Nigerian state is best summed up in what follows: The Afrobeat vision as espoused by Fela is largely scattered in his public lectures, media reviews of interviews he granted, his private correspondences, short articles in the few books that have devoted chapters to his life and art, and views expressed by the artist in his YAPNEWS, a newspaper of the Young African Pioneers (YAP) founded by Fela in the late seventies for the propagation of the anticipated African revolution. Such materials have either abridged or further expanded aspects of his outlook as expressed in the manifesto of the Movement of the People (MOP). While the manifesto is primarily designed for Nigeria, it is set in a tone that makes it a replicable document for the entire African continent (Olorunyomi 2003: 33).

Summary and Conclusion Many individuals have exhibited protest against the global political system, and their contributions include drawing attention to the inequality in international division of labour, justice as well as power play. Not only Fela as an African has made contributions in this regard, but also Bob Marley who, like Fela, sang for freedom and emancipation of the black race around the world. In particular, Fela, as an individual, used his music to protest the hypocrisy of western styled civilization which preaches democracy to Africa but practices the seeming opposite in which the likes of Reagan and Thatcher, among others, supported the inhuman treatment that underpinned apartheid and other forms of subjugations. To date, the majority of the socio-political issues that Fela protested against remain relevant in the politics and governance of Nigeria, Africa and the entire

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world (I. Mabinuori, personal communication, December, 2010). Fela’s political protest action was multi-dimensional: Fela, as stated earlier, also attempted to create own state: the Kalakuta Republic, in protest against the Nigerian state. As a musician, his songs in many cases confrontationally addressed and protested against socio-political problems in Nigeria and Africa, and the songs hit so hard that successive Nigerian governments, especially during the military interregnum, labelled most of them NTBB, that is, Not To Be Broadcast (Olaniyan 2004; Olorunyomi 2003). So, unlike many Nigerian musicians in his generation who either indulged in “the illusory notion of arts for arts’ sake” (Ayu 1986: 3), or who simply sing- praised the ruling class for reinforcing their incredible anomie (Olaniyan 2004), Fela ‘s life and career metamorphosed into serious protest against the Nigerian establishment; and in such a way that had not been witnessed (or studied?) in the social sciences and humanities (Olaniyan 2004). Against this background, there is a need to acknowledge the issues surrounding individual political protests as contribution to global literature and theories of political behaviour. The individual and group protests against the political system are quite different from each other. The group political protest is often triggered by certain socio-political conditions that frustrate protesters, and it often becomes action through a particular trigger. Such is observable in the Arab Springs and many protests of the world, including the recent EndSARS in Nigeria. The protest of an individual is different. Socialization, exposure, education, the political system all plays some different roles in them. As seen in the Fela’s case, socialization created protest potentialities while the political system in general metamorphosed the potentiality into behaviour as well as action, both of which manifested in deviance, exit from the state, counter-culture, music, arts, book writing, newspaper publishing, formation of political association, name change, family pattern and others. These are usually not the same ways the group political protests manifest.

Notes 1. Klingemann, H. (2007). Citizens and the state. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2. Aniklapo-Kuti, Fela. (1977). No Agreement. Producer: Fela Kuti. Label: Celluloid Records. 3. Olaniyan, T. (2004). Arrest the music! Fela and his rebel arts and politics. USA: Indiana University Press and Olorunyomi, S. (2003). Afrobeat: Fela and the imagined continent. Ibadan: IFRA. 4. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Beasts of No Nations. 1989. 5. Walton, H. (1985). Invisible politics. New York, NY, USA: SUNY Press. 6. Turner, R. (1969). The theme of contemporary social movement. British Journal of Sociology, 20, 390–405. 7. Shaw and Mckay in 1972 propounded the Cultural Transmission Theory which is similar to the Differential Association Theory put forward by Edwin Sutherland in 1949, where he suggested that criminal behaviour is learned. The ideas underlying strain theory were first advanced in the 1930s by American

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sociologist Robert K. Merton, whose work on the subject became especially influential in the 1950s. Control Theory, or Social Control Theory, states that a person’s inner and outer controls both work together to negate deviant tendencies. Developed by Walter Reckless in 1973, Control Theory comes under the Positivist school of thought. Travis Hirschi also made significant contributions as well. The first as well as one of the most prominent labeling theorists was Howard Becker, who published his groundbreaking work Outsiders in 1963. John Dewey. A question became popular with criminologists during the mid-1960s: What makes some acts and some people deviant or criminal?

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News, Aljazeera. (9 October 2020). “#EndSARS: Nigerians protest against police brutality". https://www.aljazeera.com. Aljazeera Media Network. Niemi, R. (1973). Collecting information about the family: A problem in survey methodology. In Denis, J. (Ed.) Socialization to politics. New York: John Willy and Co. Nigeria-consulate-frankfurt.de. (2020). “Nigeria Economy". O’Connor, J. (1973). The fiscal crisis of the state. New York: St Martins. O’Leary, Z. (2004). The essential guide to doing research. London: Sage. Oikelome, A. (2009). The stylistic content of the Afrobeat of Fela Anikulapo Kuti (Unpublished Ph.D Dissertation, University of Ibadan). Okon, Desmond. (2020). Nigerians insist on disbandment of SARS as IGP bans killer police unit for third time. NG. Business Day Newspaper. 4 October. Olafsson, J. (2007). Deviance: A comment on the logic of protest. TRAMES, 11 (61), 432–442. Olaniyan, T. (2004). Arrest the music! Fela and his rebel arts and politics. Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press. Oloruntimilehin, O. (1976). History and society. Ile Ife: University of Ife Inaugural Lecture. Olorunyomi, S. (2003). Afrobeat: Fela and the imagined continent. Ibadan: IFRA. Opp, K. (1990). Post materialism, collective action and political protest. American Journal of Political Science, 34 (1), 212–235. Opp, K. (2009). Theories of political protest and social movement: A multidisciplinary introduction, critique and synthesis. New York: Routledge. Osaghae, E. (1999). Exiting from the state in Nigeria. African Journal of Political Science, 3(1), 83–98. Oshodi, T., Njoku, M., & Odiogor, H. (2010). From solidarity melodies to rhythmic opposition: Music and politics in Nigeria (1960–2010). In Akinboye, S. & Fadakinte, M. (Eds.), Fifty years of nationhood? State, society and politics in Nigeria (1960–2010). Lagos: Concept. Parson, T. (1963). Some reflections on the place of force in social process. In Harry, E. (Ed). International war: Problems and approaches. New York: Free Press. Peterson, S. (1990). Political behaviour: Patterns in everyday life. London: Sage. Robert, P. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY, USA: Touchstone. Salaudeen, Aisha. (2017). Nigerians want police’s SARS force scrapped. Aljazeera. 15 December. Schussman, A., & Soule, S. (2005). Process and protest: Accounting for individual’s protest participation. Social Forces, 84 (2), 1083–1108. Academy: 39(4). Skinner, B.F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Macmillan. Spitzer, S. (1975). Toward a Marxian theory of deviance. Social Problems, 22, 638– 651. Soyinka, W. (2006). You must set forth at dawn. Ibadan: Book Craft. ———. (2010). Personal Interview, Victoria Island, November. Sreedhar, S. (2010). Hobbes on resistance: Defying the Leviathan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Street, J. (2000). Prime time politics: Popular culture and the politicians in the UK. The Public, 7 (2), 75–90. ———. (2011). Music and politics. Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Willey and Sons.

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Swanson, Richard. (2013). Theory building in applied disciplines. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in movement, social movement and contentious politics. Second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrow, M., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Terchek, R. (1974). Protest and bargaining. Journal of Peace Research, 11, 133–144. The Cable News. (2020). 23 October. Turner, R. (1969). The theme of contemporary social movement. British Journal of Sociology, 20, 390–405. Ulmer, S. (1961). (ed). Introductory readings in political behaviour. Chicago: Rand, McNally and Company. “UPDATE Nigeria Government Debt: % of GDP”. Retrieved 9 September 2019. Useem, B., & Useem, M. (2001). Government legitimacy and political stability. Social Forces, 3:57, 840–852. Veal, M. (2000). Fela: The life and times of an African musical icon. Philadelphia: Temple University. Verba, S., Schussman, K., & Henry, B. (1995). Voice of equality, civil voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press. In Greenstein, F. (1975). Handbook of Political science. Cambridge, MA: Addison Wesley. Walton, H. (1985). Invisible politics. Albany, NY, USA: SUNY Press. Weber, J. (1983). Research in social anthropology. London, UK: Royal Anthropology Institute. Zurcher, L., & David, S. (1981). Collective behaviour, social movements in Social Psychology. In Rosenberg, M. & Turner, R. (Eds.), Basic books, 447–482.

CHAPTER 45

African Pentecostalism in a Changing Economic and Democratic Global Order James Kwateng-Yeboah

Introduction The end of the second world war ushered the dominance of certain global institutions and ordering principles. These principles included economic liberalism (e.g., free trade, privatization, investment), political liberalism (e.g., democracy, national sovereignty, human rights), and the rise of multilateral institutions (e.g., United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund) through the hegemonic leadership of United States. In recent times, scholars have observed that principles and institutions of the global order are in “crisis,” considering, for example, the rise of Trumpism and unprecedented international relations; the resurgence of populism and nationalist anxiety; and the unilateral withdrawals from international agreements (e.g., Brexit).1 These incidents have reinvigorated debates about the current global order and the kind of changes or crisis we are witnessing in that order.2 Despite proliferating literature on the subject, scant attention has been paid to religion as a source of transformation and adaptation in the global order. This is particularly surprising, considering how politics, states, and social movements around the world have, for several centuries, incorporated originally religious (especially Christian) ideals of liberalism in “ordering” the world.3 Indeed, recent transformations occurring in Africa through the expansion of

J. Kwateng-Yeboah (B) Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_45

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global religious movements are rarely discussed in current debates about the global order. Global Christianity in particular has experienced profound changes in its demographic composition. Whereas in 1910, eight in every ten Christians were from Europe and North America,4 in 2018, Africa became “the continent with the most Christians.”5 Scholars estimate that “by 2050, there will likely be more Christians in Africa (1.25 billion) than in Latin America (705 million) and Europe (490 million) combined.”6 This continued expansion of Christianity in Africa is most evident in the exponential growth of Pentecostalism—a branch of Christianity that emphasizes “the experience of the working of the Holy Spirit and the practice of spiritual gifts,”7 such as prophecies, tongues speaking, dreams, visions, healings, and miracles. Described as “the largest global shift in the religious market place,”8 Pentecostalism remains a strong numerical force in Africa and beyond, representing about a quarter of Christians worldwide.9 Considering the phenomenal growth and expansion of African Pentecostal Christianity, this chapter examines to what extent religion constitutes a source of change or adaptation in principles of the global order. Specifically, the chapter investigates how African Pentecostalism engages in democratic governance and neo-liberal development thinking and practice, using the cases of Ghana and Nigeria. Drawing insights from recent observations and literature on Ghanaian and Nigerian Pentecostal discourses, the chapter argues that African Pentecostal leaders tend to negotiate secualarist assumptions of national democratic governance their service on state and civil society institutions. And their declaration of what may be termed as “electoral prophecies.”10 The chapter further shows the potential of African Pentecostalism to alter the meaning of “development” in the neoliberal economic order through their emphasis on personhood more than statehood. Thus, for most African Pentecostals, personal transformation precedes structural transformation.11 In terms of structural transformation, African Pentecostal economies (e.g., tithing) also offer learning avenues for African governments regarding the mobilization of funds from populations based on principles of reciprocity, accountability, and a sense of belonging. Overall, this chapter posits a religious domain of African agency in the changing global order, whereby dominant institutions and principles of modernity such as nation-state democracy and neo-liberal development thinking are reconstructed and negotiated by Pentecostal religious actors. Such religious reconstructions in modern political and economic spheres are aptly captured by the Shmuel Eisenstadt’s notion of “multiple modernities.”12 In the following section, I first examine principles and institutions constituting the contemporary global order. I draw on the recent work of political scientists, Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Stephanie C. Hoffman, highlighting principles of national sovereignty and economic liberalism as "foundational" in the chaging global order.13 This is followed by a theorization of the nature and place of religion in the global order, using insights from

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Huntington’s “clash of civilization” theory14 and Shmuel Eisenstadt’s “multiple modernities” paradigm.15 Invoking the multiple modernities paradigm as a more meaningful characterization of the current global order, the last section presents case studies from Ghanaian and Nigerian Pentecostalism to demonstrate how religion in Africa is part of the processes of constructing alternative modernizations. It is important to clarify my use of the term “African Pentecostals” or “African Pentecostalism.” Scholars of Pentecostalism have observed numerous typologies of Pentecostalism, namely, Classical Pentecostalism, NeoPentecostalism, Charismatic Christianity, Charismatic Renewal Movements, among others.16 The great diversity within Pentecostal and/or Charismatic churches in Africa and beyond makes it difficult to generalize across them. Therefore, I use the terms “African Pentecostalism” and/or “African Pentecostals” with emphasis on Christian churches and adherents that prioritize “experience and spirituality rather than in formal theology or doctrine.”17 This parameter of “African Pentecostalism" and/or, "African Pentecostals," embraces churches in Sub-Saharan Africa, some of which are also of originally western “classical” Pentecostal initiative (e.g., the Ghana’s Assemblies of God Church, Church of Pentecost, and Apostolic Faith Church) as well as the newer independent African initiated Charismatic churches since the 1970s (e.g., Nigeria’s Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Winner’s Chapel International, and Citadel Global Community Church). Whereas the former “classical” Pentecostals are characterized by “a retreat from the world or an anti-material or holiness stance” the latter Neo-Pentecostal or Charismatic churches are “most definitely of this world and express frequent concern for good health, wealth, and general success of adherents in this life time.”18 Yet, both streams place emphasis on experiential forms of spirituality, considering their continuities/discontinuties with the earlier African independent churches (AICs) such as the Ghanaian Sunsum sore (Spiritual churches), the Nigerian Aladura (praying churches), and the South African Zionist churches.19

Theorizing the Place of Religion in the Changing Global Order Political scientists Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Stephanie C. Hoffman argue that despite the ongoing changes in the contemporary global order, there still remains two “foundational” principles: “national sovereignty and economic liberalism.”20 The authors contend that these two “substantive” principles are sustained by a third “procedural” principle of multilateral rules that regulates the conduct of national governments in the contemporary global order.21 National sovereignty denotes state-led principles of sovereign equality and national self-determination, where national governments are “the primary actors responsible for and implementing international rules and policies.”22

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Economic liberalism, on the other hand, generally refers to economic openness and interdependence between countries through free market, trade, and privatization.23 Although Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hoffman neither mention religion nor clearly state whether adherence to principles of national sovereignty and economic liberalism is voluntary or imposed, their characterization of the contemporary global order is admittedly a Western-centered hegemonic framework with longstanding roots to the project of modernity. As political scientist Gilford Ikenberryrightly stated, the contemporary global order is generally “a way of thinking about and responding to modernity—its opportunities and its dangers.”24 Such classical assumptions of modernity, depicted in Western characterizations of the global order, presume that the growth of institutions and principles such as the nation-state, liberal democracy, and economic liberalism will ultimately reduce or extinguish religion’s influence at societal, institutional, and individual levels.25 Following such modernist assumptions, general characterizations of the global order have tended to confine religion to “marginal” and “privatized” roles.26 However, an alternative characterization of the global order—Huntington’s “clash of civilization”—brings religion to the fore of international relations. Thus, whereas Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hoffman ignore religion and project nation-states as primary actors in global governance, Huntington contends that nation-states are rather constituted by—cultural and religious civilizations— that ultimately tend to shape global policy issues ranging from human rights to immigration, trade and commerce, and the environment.28 Huntington’s “clash of civilization” essentially projects religion as source of conflict and contestation in the global order. His theory critiques Western hegemonic assumptions of modernization, while showing how values of democracy, liberalism, and secularism, as cultural patterns that emerged from the Christian West, are not easily transferable to other civilizations.29 For Huntington, insofar as the West seeks to promote their values of liberalism as universal principles, countering and conflicting responses will emerge from other civilizations (e.g., Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, African) that appeal to religion and culture.30 Huntington’s thesis has been widely criticized by various scholars, primarily for its essentialist, ahistorical, and geographically bounded view of civilization.31 It is against such criticisms that sociologist José Casanova forwards the “multiple modernities” paradigm as a more fruitful characterization of the changing global order the place of religion therein.32 The “multiple modernities” paradigm is a third way characterization between the Westerncentered understanding of the global order and the clash of civilization thesis. Coined by Schmuel Eisenstadt, multiple modernities theory maintains that “cultural and historical backgrounds lead different civilizations to have sufficiently different interpretations of the core features of modernity, so as to result in various distinctive ‘modernities.’”33 For Eisenstadt, “the best way to understand the contemporary world…is the see it as a story of continual

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constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs…carried forward by specific social actors…and also by social movements…pursuing different programs of modernity, [and] holding very different views on what makes societies modern.”34 The multiplicity of modernity here does not mean that modernity is meaningless. As Eisenstadt responded to critics, the core of modernity is defined neither by institutional nor organizational structures but rather by cultural and ontological orientations of human autonomy.35 By acknowledging historical and cultural specificity/difference in the modernization process, the multiple modernities paradigm accords the Western-centered experience of modernization an important, albeit not homogenous and hegemonic reference point. Building on the comparative civilizational analyses of China, Japan, and other South East Asian countries, Eisenstadt argues that the multiple modernities paradigm allows non-Western societies to appropriate universalistic elements of modernity in ways that do not necessarily imply “the rejection of either specific components of their traditional identities, often also couched in universalistic—especially religious—terms.”36 In sum, although the contemporary global order rests on foundational principles of the nation-state sovereignty and economic liberalism, religion constitutes a major source of transformation and adaptation of these principles in the name of multiple modernities. As I will show below using the cases of Ghanaian and Nigerian Pentecostalism, religion tends to be a part of the continual negotation and reconstitution of what it means to be a modern democratic nation-state in a neoliberal economy order.

African Pentecostalism in a Changing Global Order Pentecostalism and Nation-State Democracy In this section, I examine how African Pentecostal leaders are engaged in national democratic governance in Africa, using the cases of Ghana and Nigeria. Drawing on field observations and recent academic literature on Ghanaian37 and Nigerian38 Pentecostal public and political discourses, I show how Pentecostal leaders participate in national democratic governance by taking up leadership positions at the state and institutional levels. Thus, African Pentecostal leaders are able to draw on their religious backgrounds, while serving at state and civil society institutions. They employ religion in democratic electoral processes such as campaigning for peace, preventing and resolving conflicts, and declaring electoral prophecies. Rather than arguing that these Pentecostal public and political discourses promote and/or inhibit democratization, the discussion below, in forwarding the multiple modernities paradigm, seeks to demonstrate how religion enters the public and political spheres not only to defend itself against marginalization and privatization, but to also re-define and to re-negotiate modernity’s dominant principles and institution, notably, a secular democratic nation state.

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Generally, African Christian leaders and churches have been engaged in national politics since the advent of Christianity. 39 In the case of Ghana, Frederick Acheampong’s doctoral research has shown the distinctive political strategies adopted by different churches from the colonial era (prior to 1960), to the struggle for independence (mid-1950s–1960s), to the postcolonial era involving transitions from autocratic to democratic rule (1970s to early 1990s).40 During the colonial era, Christian engagements with the political sphere were influenced by foreign missionary groups, now constituting the Historic Mission Churches (HMCs, e.g., Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist).41 These churches mediated political disputes between local authorities and colonial administrators. Those from African Initiated Churches (AICs), forerunners of African Pentecostalism, lacked direct political engagements with the colonial state due to conflicts with European Christianity. During the struggle for Ghanaian independence, Christian public and political discourses were again championed by the HMCs, who had gained the leverage of colonial religious establishment and education. Many African nationalists, including Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, were trained in HMC schools and benefitted from the print media platforms of HMCs for anticolonial advocacy.42 In the immediate years after independence, the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference (GCBC) and the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) became the main agents of Christian political engagements in Ghana. Leaders of these groups consistently issued communiques on government policies, sought public audience with politicians, and reprimanded the government on the abuse of human rights and religious discrimination.43 Thus, Christian engagements in the Ghanaian political sphere from the colonial era to the 1980s were mainly led by HMCs. It was not until the 1990s, during transition from military to democratic rule, that Ghanaian Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs) established public and political presence. In 1990, the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC, founded in 1969 but legally registered in 1971) submitted a proposal to the Consultative Assemblies for deliberations on Ghana’s return to democratic rule. As discussed by Acheampong, the GPCC drew attention to the failed one-party system earlier introduced by Kwame Nkrumah. Using biblical texts that espoused principles of life (Genesis 2:7), freedom (Genesis 2:16–17), and sin (Genesis 6:5), the GPCC maintained that liberal democracy will help to control the human quest for absolute power and domination.44 The GPCC also used Matthew 5:13–14 to project Christians and the church as the “salt and light of the world,” meaning the moral vanguards of society.45 Through their biblically based deliberations with the Consultative Assemblies prior to Ghana’s 1992 constitutional democracy, the GPCC seeded the ground for Pentecostal public and political discourses in Ghanaian democracy. Importantly, the GPCC’s use of biblical texts in national deliberations of constitutional democracy demonstrates the argument of this section: that religion, specifically African Pentecostalism, enters the public and political spheres

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not only to defend itself against marginalization and privatization. It also shows how religious actors appear to re-define and to negotiate dominant secular principles of the global order. In the case of Ghana, the GPCC leaders problematize modernity’s boundary between the religious and the secular in the quest for nation-state democracy. Since 2000, the GPCC, together with the National Association of Charismatic and Christian Churches (NACC, founded in December 1999), have sought active participation in Ghana’s democratic process by serving on civil society and state institutions to influence government policies and to resolve or prevent political conflicts. Notable among these institutions is the National Peace Council (NPC), established by an act of Parliament (Act 818) in 2011 “to facilitate and develop mechanisms for conflict prevention, management, resolution, and to build sustainable peace” in Ghana.46 The NPC is an independent state institution composed of 13 members from religious (Christian, Islamic, African indigenous religion) traditional (chieftaincy institution), private sector and professional groups, and representatives from the office of the President. In Ghana, some members of the Peace Council who are also leaders of Pentecostal-Charismatic churches often draw on their religious backgrounds to advocate for peace during democratic elections. For example, in 2012, the Council together with the Manhyia Palace (Ashanti Kingdom) persuaded presidential candidates of the 2012 Ghanaian election to sign the Kumasi Declaration: a campaign against recurring violence, impunity, and injustice in democratic elections.47 This was during a time when the Ghanaian public was concerned about a possible outbreak of electoral violence. In 2019, the NPC provided their platform for dialogue toward the preparation and passage of the Vigilantism and Related Offences Act of 2019 (Act 999). In the recently held December 2020 Ghanaian elections, the NPC called on presidential candidates to sign a peace pact before the elections.48 In all of NPC engagements, Christian leaders, especially from Pentecostal and Charismatic circles, have been central. Thus, as members of state and civil society institutions, Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders do not play a marginal or privatized role in institutions of the global order. Instead, they are actively involved in shaping the meaning and practice of nation-state democracy in Ghana. Another form of Pentecostal public and political discourse is the recent surge in what may be termed as “electoral prophecies.”. Although Emmanuel Sackey related the term “election prophecies” to “pre-election declarations in the public sphere, pertaining to the outcome of national elections by religious clerics who attribute their revelations to the will of God,”49 I use the term “electoral prophecies” to shift the discourse of prophecies to the whole gamut of electoral activities. Thus, electoral prophecies typically predict the future outcome of activities relating to democratic election process, including voter registration, political campaigns, voting, election results, and post-election disputes. These prophecies are declared by self-acclaimed “prophets” in typical congregational settings, on a one-on-one basis with concerned public actors,

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through call-in radio and television programs, and via online and print newspapers, as well as social media. Although scholars have discussed, in complex ways, the prevalence of prophetism in African Christianity,50 few have devoted attention to electoral prophecies in democratic activities, presumably because of the lack of social-scientific methods of investigation into the spirit world, and the lack of credibility to these prophecies. In Nigeria, the phenomenon of electoral prophecy gained wider public significance in the 1990s, during transition from military to democratic rule.51 It was also during this period that such Pentecostal leaders as Pastor Tunde Bakare, Apostle Johnson Suleiman, and Pastor Enoch Adeboye rose to prominence in the Nigerian public sphere through the use of modern media technologies. In 1993, Tunde Bakare, declared a prophecy to deter Chief Moshood Abiola (alias M.K.O. Abiola) from contesting the 1993 Nigerian presidential elections: “Is there no old man in MKO’s house to restrain him because once he begins, he will not come out alive.”52 This prophecy attracted huge public attention to “the deception embedded in the transition program steered by General Ibrahim Babangida,”53 who eventually annulled the 1993 Nigerian elections. In June that same year, Bakare proclaimed a revelation during his church service: “two pieces of meat hanged by a tiny thread with labels on them. One piece labeled SDP; the other was labelled NRC. Then a fat cat dressed in the camouflage uniform of the Nigerian Army came and swallowed up both of them.”54 Bakare attributed this prophecy to the end of Babangida’s rule and the ascendancy to power of General Sani Abacha. Abacha’s military rule was largely criticized by Nigerian Pentecostals, and his political power was rumored to have been generated by the use of evil juju.55 Indeed, it was public knowledge that Abacha employed Muslim clerics to offer daily sacrifices of live rams to maintain political power.56 It is important to note here that the inter-religious tensions between the Southern Christian majority and the Northern Muslim majority in Nigeria have played a key role in Nigerian democracy. These tensions concern the struggle for political legitimacy and the control of authoritative roles at state levels, which have differed at various times for both Christians and Muslims in Nigerian history.57 However, with the rise of Nigerian Pentecostalism in recent times, there has been “the Christianization of politics”58 or “a Christian scramble for a role in national public life.”59 This phenomenon represents an “attitudinal” imperative among Pentecostals to Christianize the Nigerian state or to strive for Christians’ involvement in public office.60 For instance, the advent of Olusegun Obasanjo was considered by many Pentecostals as “an answer to prayer for a Christian president after two decades of Muslim political dominance.”61 Bakare had earlier prophesied on March 7, 1999, that Obasanjo, then President elect, would die before assuming office as he was not Gods choice for Nigeria: “...Obasanjo is not your messiah. He is King Agag and the prophetic axe will fall upon his head before May 29.”62 Contrary to Bakare, Obasanjo was sworn in as President and Bakare

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was arrested but later released. Ebenezer Obadare described Obsanjo’s regime as the “Pentecostalisation of governance” whereby the Nigerian public sphere was controlled by a Christian “theocratic class” who paid “lip service” to the secularity stance of the Nigerian state.63 In summary, the question of how Pentecostalism affects Africa’s development potentials in regard to nation-sate democracy is very complex one. Should be religious and spiritual discourses continue to define modern liberal democratic institutions? Or should this trend be reversed, and religion be ostracized for building secular institutions that foster accountable governance? Paul Gifford has argued that “spiritualizing politics” distracts Africans from the practical realities of inefficiency in their economic and political structures.64 For him, an “enchanted African Christianity” (African Neo- Pentecostalism) militates against development by diminishing human agency and functional rationality in modernity.65 Other scholars, notably Brigit Meyer, maintain that imaginations of a spirit world “are not mere reflections of ill-understood social, political and economic conditions. Rather they are fields within which people produce meanings, enabling them to analyze critically and thereby shape their life condition.”66 While the credibility of electoral prophecies can be questioned, it is important to note that many political parties in Africa appropriate religious practices in their political discourses in both functional and dysfunctional ways. Pentecostal leaders who engage the nation-state with prophecies are occasionally invited to state functions for spiritual support, and are recognized by politicians and government officials, as was the case in the victory of the New Patriotic Party in the 2016 Ghanaian elections. Notwithstanding the popularity of electoral prophecies, African Pentecostals also utilize other “practical” strategies including the establishment of educational institutions, conferences, and training programs to reform values in the political sphere.67 Thus, rather arguing for a lesser or greater role of religion in nationstate democracy, it seems more fruitful to consider African Pentecostal public and political discourses in nation-state democracy as a continual negotiation about what makes societies modern.68 The idea of modernity has historically animated not only descriptions of what modernity is, but also prescriptions for what modernity ought to be, and for the “proper” place of religion in the modern world. Prescriptions of modernity have tended to project modern societies as structurally differentiated by institutional spheres (economic, political, religious, social, religious, cultural), with a European derrived legacy of church-state separation that confines religion to a separate “institutional” or “privatized” sphere. However, considering how the nature of “religion” in African settings is quite different from definitions derived from modern and/or western institutional frameworks, religion in Africa has continued to be deeply interwoven in various facets of life that collapses the religious—secular divide, while negotiating the European derived principle of church—state separation. Meyer argued that in Ghana, “what happens in the material world—from the level

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of a person’s body to the nation and even the globe—is held to be backed by spiritual forces.”69 It is “important to realize that ‘the spiritual’ and ‘the physical’ here are completely entangled… spirits and the spiritual are within and in the midst of ‘the physical,’” shaping the way people act, think, feel, and come to know the course of things.70 All of this is to say that religion in Africa has generally been a source of contestation and negotatiation in the meaning and practice modernity, as expressed in principles and institutions of the global order. The ongoing contestations of nation-state democracy through Pentecostal discourses signify how cultural and historical elements also accompany modernization processes in ways that ultimately lead to what Eisenstadt calls “multiple modernities.”71 In the Ghanaian and Nigerian contexts, social actors such as religious leaders, politicians, intellectual activists, and government officials have, historically and culturally, pursued different programs of nationstate democracy that hinges on the relation between religion and modernity. Whereas the nation-state seeks to enforce a secularity stance in constitutional democracy (in like manner of western societies), religious and political actors seek to re-enforce the indivisibility of religion from modern institutional spheres. These contestations signify African autonomy to continually reconstruct what it means to be a democratic nation-state in the contemporary global order. Pentecostalism and the Neo-liberal Economic Order Economic neo-liberalism gained prominence in Africa in the 1980s, when many newly independent states were already facing huge debt crisis, rising inflation, and deteriorating terms of trade due to the failed promises of stateled modernization. Neo-liberal economic development in Africa emphasized economic stabilization, international trade, and structural adjustment. These programs were championed by two multilateral institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Both agencies diagnosed Africa’s development problems in terms of economic mismanagement, poor state policies, over-regulation of markets, and lack of individual choices.72 Their proposed solution for Africa was to privatize state-owned enterprises, devalue currencies, reduce market regulation, develop the private sector, and slash welfare programs. As many scholars of African economy observed, Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the IMF and World bank failed to significantly improve the living standards of many Africans, as poverty increased across the continent decades after 1980.73 It was also within the above socio-economic context that Africa witnessed the stupendous growth of Pentecostal-Charismatic churches and their quest to radically alter the meaning of “development” in the neo-liberal order. Contrasting mainstream notions of development, African Pentecostals project a meaning of development that pays attention to personhood, not statehood

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only. This Pentecostal paradigm of development conceives personal transformation as a necessary pre-condition for structural transformation.74 In this framework, religion is neither separable from development nor simply seeks to play a “functional” role to secular frameworks of western-centered development discourses.75 Rather, the very notion “development” is reconceptualized as a holistic process that mobilizes both spiritual and material resources toward the flourishing of life in all forms. Thus, “development” through the prism of African Pentecostalism is more nuanced than neo-liberal economic thinking and practice. Beginning with personal transformation, many African Pentecostals envision development as a “revision of consciousness,”76 that involves the “changing the hearts and minds…”77 and the “reformulating of subjectivities.”78 This “inside-out” approach to development, for lack of a better word, starts from attitudinal and behavioral changes which, for Pentecostals, are instigated by a “Born-Again” conversion. In his ethnographic study of Pentecostals in Zimbabwe, David Maxwell observed that the new Pentecostal believer, once born again, is considered to have received empowerment from the Holy Spirit that enables inner change.79 This change leads the born-again believer to maintain, in theory and often in practice, strict moral injunctions against dishonesty, marital infidelity, substance abuse (e.g., alcohol and tobacco) secular entertainment (e.g., night club), and other forms of corruption. By doing so, limitations are placed on wasteful consumption patterns. Money is channeled to personal growth and to church activities including bible studies, choir practices, prayer meetings, evangelism, missionary activities, empowerment seminars, academic and professional courses, and entrepreneurial programs. Through engagement with various church-centered activities, the new believer develops a new sense of self about who they are, who they are not, and how they would like to or should be. This “re-socialization” process, according to Maxwell, “makes the born-again believer more industrious and socially mobile than many of their ‘unsaved’ neighbors.”80 Thus, after having observed the failure of state-led development in the years after independence, many African Pentecostal churches are embarking on unconventional notions, methods, and practices of development sustained by individual agency. In this regard, Dena Freeman argued that African Pentecostal churches are “more effective change agents”than other development actors (e.g., secular NGOs) because the former’s development apparatus extends to aspects of change that the latter ignores: personal transformation that reconstructs African moral sensibilities, local family values, and community ideals that often stand in the way of structural transformation.81 Regarding structural transformation, African Pentecostalism serves as a transnational religious movement with potency to generate funds for local developmental projects in ways that African governments do not. Whereas in Africa, developmental projects are heavily financed by foreign donors including the IMF, World Bank, and western donors, Pentecostal churches in Africa and

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the global African diaspora are now actively engaged in transnational networks where funds and remittances are transferred to churches for projects including roads, educational and health facilities, universities, banks, multipurpose auditoriums, publishing houses, and private business enterprises.82 Scholars have documented such projects initiated by various churches through Pentecostal giving of tithes, offerings, and “seed sowing.”83 However, what has been less explored is the sharp contrast between the challenges faced by African governments to mobilize revenue from their own population through taxes, and the tenacity of African Pentecostal churches to generate funds from their adherents through tithes. The mobilization of tax revenue poses enormous challenges to African economies due to informality. In Ghana for example, tax revenue to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2018 was 12.6%—one of the lowest across the West African region.84 Since 2000, the highest tax-to-GDP ratio in Ghana was 14.1% in 2017. Out of a taxable population of 15.7 million people as of 2017, only about 1.2 million people are registered taxpayers.85 The Ghana Revenue Agency (GRA), which handles the mobilization of tax revenue, faces organizational and structural inefficiencies including the segmentation of taxpayers; ineffective monitoring of large informal sector; over-centralization of authority at head office; poor internal communication system; poor record keeping and payment culture of taxpayers; negative public perceptions of staff integrity on the use of tax revenue; and ineffective taxpayer education.86 In 2012, Daniel Armah-Attoh and Mohammed Awal examined the knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes of Ghanaians toward tax payment administration.87 Using a nationally representative sample of 2400 participants from the Afrobarometer Survey Round 5 (2011–2013), the authors found that most Ghanaians have general knowledge about specific taxes required by law: 56% know that they are obligated to pay income tax; 79% know their obligations for property taxes; and 77% know of license fees.88 Yet, about 74% of Ghanaians express a “perceived lack of transparency” in the usage of tax revenues and a “perceived lack of integrity” among tax officials.89 Half of Ghanaians perceive “some” tax officials are involved in corruption whiles 41% consider “most or all” of these officials as corrupt.90 The authors concluded that “the odds of tax evasion significantly increase with residence in urban settlements, rising perception that taxes are high or unaffordable, that the tax system is unfair, and that tax officials are corrupt.”91 Comparing the administrative machinery of government taxes and Pentecostal tithes in Ghanaian urban centers, there are lessons from Ghanaian Pentecostal churches for the Ghanaian government on how best to mobilize revenue from their populations. In many Pentecostal churches in Ghanaian urban centers, regulations concerning the administration, collection, payment, and usage of tithes— a tenth of believer’s monthly income paid to the church— are detailed in church documents and periodic reports. For example, in Ghana’s Church of Pentecost (CoP), tithing regulations are stated in the Ministers’ Handbook, originally published in 2008. Tithes collected at

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local assemblies are counted at once and announced to congregations the following Sunday. Primary records and receipts of every tithing member are kept and checked for administrative and welfare purposes. Officers responsible for keeping records of tithes at local assemblies are changed every three months to ensure transparency. Tithe Evaluation and Monitoring teams are formed at the church district and area levels to ensure that the local assemblies keep proper accounts. Members are periodically informed about how tithes are used and disbursed to enable them appreciate tithing.92 According to CoP’s finance report for 2019, figures for tithes and offerings increased by 7.31% compared to 2018.93 The major question here is, why are government agencies unable to efficiently generate taxes in the same urban areas where Pentecostal-Charismatic churches apparently flourish through tithing? Are religious organizations in African urban centers assuming a more efficient administrative machinery for generating financial resources than government agencies? Many answers can be provided from varying social, religious, and economic perspectives. Below are three suggestions. First is the “returns” for tithe-payers versus taxpayers. Unlike government taxes, the principle of tithing for African Pentecostals is generally understood as “transactional” or “reciprocal.”94 When seeds of money are sown as tithes, adherents are taught to expect different forms of divine harvest in terms of employment, good health, fertility, international travel, and general advancement in life. While it is difficult to empirically verify the returns for each tithing believer, testimonies about the material efficacy of tithing abound in many Pentecostal churches.95 Thus, many African Pentecostals seem favorably disposed to the payment of tithes, and more so, in return for miraculous fulfilment of their existential needs. Unfortunately, such favorable dispositions do not easily transfer to government taxes, considering the poor returns for public goods, public welfare, and other social services. Second is the degree of accountability provided for tithe-payers versus taxpayers. Many African governments receive external funding from foreign donors, and as such, appear more accountable to them. Pentecostal churches, due to their internal generation of funds, appear more responsive and accountable to the internal demands of their adherents. Therefore, churches continuously adapt to trends that suit the intelligibilities of adherents, considering that their financial survival depends on attracting large and sometimes wealthy congregants. In this regard, many Pentecostal churches try to be accountable to their members by preparing weekly, monthly, and yearly reports that outline how monies received through tithes, offerings, and donations are spent. Third is the locus of identity involved in tithing versus taxation. Thus, the sharp contrast between dispositions toward tithing and taxation reveals the prioritization of religious over national identities in the changing global order. This partly attests to Huntington’s observation that religion has become a basis for identity and commitment, considering how the processes of modernization and social change have displaced longstanding ties to nation-states.

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For many African Pentecostals, tithing evokes a religious sense of belonging, not just believing. Tithing also demonstrates adherents’ identity and commitment to their religious organizations within the nation-state. Gerrie ter Haar observed this phenomenon among Africans in Europe when she asserted that “African Christians in Europe are ‘first and foremost Christians and only secondly Africans.’”96 This is not to undermine the inherent complexities of national, continental, and religious identities, but it is to draw attention to how religious identities and practices complicate the meaning of development in the neo-liberal economic order. Altogether, African Pentecostal-Charismatic churches, while present in countries suffering from the ills of the global market economy, demonstrate their resilience and potential to be self-reliant and self-resourced. They seek to re-negotiate and to re-define development thinking and practice, ultimately revealing a religious domain of African agency in the global economic order.

Conclusion This essay examined how African Pentecostalism engages in democratic governance and neo-liberal economic development, using the cases of Ghana and Nigeria. Drawing on recent observations and existing literature on Ghanaian and Nigerian Pentecostal political and economic discourses, the essay argued that Pentecostal leaders participate in national democratic governance by occupying state and civil society institutions, preventing and resolving political conflicts, campaigning for peaceful elections, and declaring prophecies pertaining to the outcome of democratic elections. Rather than simply arguing that these Pentecostal discourses help and/or hinder nation-state democracy, the essay demonstrated that religion enters modern political and economic spheres to resist marginalization and privatization in the changing global order. With examples from Ghana, the essay showed how Pentecostal and other Christian organizations used biblical texts in their public deliberations on national issues pertaining to constitutional democracy. The point here was to demonstrate that religion constitutes part of the transformation and adaptation of national democracy. The essay further argued that African Pentecostals have potency to radically alter the meaning of “development” through their emphasis on personhood more than statehood. Thus, for many African Pentecostals, personal transformation instigated by Born-Again conversion (and church-centered re-socialization process) precedes structural transformation. In terms of structural transformation, the chapter argued that African Pentecostal churches offer learning avenues for African governments on how best to mobilize revenue from their populations, using the three principles of reciprocity, accountability, and belonging. Altogether, this chapter demonstrates a religious domain of African agency in the changing global order, wherein dominant principles and instituions such as nation-state democracy and economic development are continually reconstructed and negotiated by

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Pentecostal religious actors. Such ongoing reconstructions, as discussed above, are appropriately captured by the multiple modernities paradigm.

Notes 1. G. John Ikenberry, “The End of Liberal International Order?,” International Affairs 94, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 7–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/ iix241. 2. Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Stephanie C. Hofmann, “Of the Contemporary Global Order, Crisis, and Change,” Journal of European Public Policy 27, no. 7 (July 2, 2020): 1077–1089, https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2019. 1678665. 3. Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: Religion and Politics in Europe from the Enlightenment to the Great War (London: HarperCollins, 2005). 4. Todd M. Johnson and Kenneth R. Ross, eds., Atlas of Global Christianity 1910–2010 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 8. 5. Todd M. Johnson, Gina A. Zurlo, Albert W. Hickman, and Peter F. Crossing, “Christianity 2018: More African Christians and Counting Martyrs,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 42, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 21, https:// doi.org/10.1177/2396939317739833. 6. Johnson et al., 21. 7. Allan Heaton Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 6. 8. David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). 9. Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, 6. 10. Fredrick Acheampong, “Pentecostals and Politics in Ghana’s Fourth Republic: From Enclave to Engagement” (Doctoral Dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 2018), http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/handle/10063/7664; Afamefune Patrick Ikem, Confidence N. Ogbonna, and Olusola Ogunnubi, “Pentecostalism, Electoral Prophetism and National Security Challenges in Nigeria,” African Security 13, no. 1 (January 2, 2020): 28–53, https://doi. org/10.1080/19392206.2020.1731111; Richard Burgess, “Pentecostalism and Democracy in Nigeria Electoral Politics, Prophetic Practices, and Cultural Reformation,” Nova Religio 18, no. 3 (February 1, 2015): 38–62, https:// doi.org/10.1525/nr.2015.18.3.38. 11. Gerrie ter Haar, How God Became African: African Spirituality and Western Secular Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 77. 12. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129, no. 1, (2000): 1–29. 13. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, “Of the Contemporary Global Order, Crisis, and Change.” 14. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). 15. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities.” 16. See, for example, Allan H. Anderson, “Varieties, Taxonomies, and Definitions,” in Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, ed. Allan Anderson, Michael Bergunder, André Droogers and Cornelius van der Laan (University of California Press, 2010), 13–29.

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17. Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, 6. 18. Jane E. Soothill, Gender, Social Change and Spiritual Power: Charismatic Christianity in Ghana (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 37. 19. Johnson K. Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics: Current Developments within Independent Indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana, African Charismatics (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 19–23. 20. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, “Of the Contemporary Global Order, Crisis, and Change,” 1077–1078. 21. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, “Of the Contemporary Global Order, Crisis, and Change.” 22. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, 1078. 23. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, 1078. 24. Ikenberry, “The End of Liberal International Order?,” 9. 25. Bryan R. Wilson, Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment, New Thinker’s Library (London: Watts, 1966). 26. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 19. 27. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. 28. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 26, https://doi.org/10.2307/20045621. 29. José Casanova, “Cosmopolitanism, the Clash of Civilizations and Multiple Modernities,” Current Sociology 59, no. 2 (March 1, 2011): 259, https:// doi.org/10.1177/0011392110391162. 30. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” 29. 31. Casanova, “Cosmopolitanism, the Clash of Civilizations and Multiple Modernities,” 259. 32. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities.” 33. Elsje Fourie, “A Future for the Theory of Multiple Modernities: Insights from the New Modernization Theory,” Social Science Information 51, no. 1 (March 1, 2012): 57, https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018411425850. 34. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” 2. 35. Eisenstadt, 5; Fourie, “A Future for the Theory of Multiple Modernities,” 56. 36. S.N. Eisenstadt, “The Reconstruction of Religious Arenas in the Framework of ‘Multiple Modernities’,” Millennium 29, no. 3 (December 1, 2000): 598, https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298000290031201. 37. Acheampong, “Pentecostals and Politics in Ghana’s Fourth Republic.” 38. Ikem, Ogbonna, and Ogunnubi, “Pentecostalism, Electoral Prophetism and National Security Challenges in Nigeria”; Burgess, “Pentecostalism and Democracy in Nigeria Electoral Politics, Prophetic Practices, and Cultural Reformation.” 39. John S. Pobee, “Religion and Politics in Ghana, 1972–1978 Some Case Studies from the Rule of General I. K. Acheampong,” Journal of Religion in Africa 17, no. 1 (January 1, 1987): 44–62, https://doi.org/10.1163/157 006687X00046; Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 40. Acheampong, “Pentecostals and Politics in Ghana’s Fourth Republic.” 41. Acheampong, 8.

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53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

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Acheampong, 11. Acheampong, 15. Acheampong, 54–55. Acheampong, 54–55. “Vision I Mission I Objectives,” National Peace Council (website), accessed January 23, 2021, https://www.peacecouncil.gov.gh/about-us/vision-i-mis sion-i-objectives/. Republic of Ghana, “Kumasi Declaration: Taking A Stand Against Electoral Violence, Impunity, and Injustice in Ghana,” 2012, http://www.unesco.org/ new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/SHS/pdf/kumasi_declaration_signed. pdf. Rex Mainoo Yeboah, “President Akufo-Addo, Former President Mahama Sign Peace Pact | Politics GhanaToday,” GhanaToday, December 4, 2020, https://ghanatoday.gov.gh/politics/president-akufo-addo-former-presid ent-mahama-sign-peace-pact/. Emmanuel Sackey, “Election Prophecies and Political Stability in Ghana,” in Christian Citizens and the Moral Regeneration of the African State, ed. Barbara Bompani and Caroline Valois (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017), 49–62, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315277653-4. Cephas N. Omenyo and Abamfo O. Atiemo, “Claiming Religious Space: The Case of Neo-Prophetism in Ghana,” Ghana Bullettin of Theology 1, no. 1 (2006): 55–68. Burgess, “Pentecostalism and Democracy in NigeriaElectoral Politics, Prophetic Practices, and Cultural Reformation,” 42; Ikem, Ogbonna, and Ogunnubi, “Pentecostalism, Electoral Prophetism and National Security Challenges in Nigeria, 31.” “Pastor Tunde Bakare: Hits, Misses of His Prophecies,” The Whistler Nigeria, June 22, 2017, https://thewhistler.ng/pastor-tunde-bakare-hits-misses-of-hisprophecies/. Ikem, Ogbonna, and Ogunnubi, “Pentecostalism, Electoral Prophetism and National Security Challenges in Nigeria,” 38. “Pastor Tunde Bakare.”. Burgess, “Pentecostalism and Democracy in Nigeria Electoral Politics, Prophetic Practices, and Cultural Reformation,” 45. Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 231. Henry Bienen, “Religion, Legitimacy, and Conflict in Nigeria,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 483, no. 1 (January 1, 1986): 60, https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716286483001005. Ebenezer Obadare, “Pentecostal Presidency? The Lagos-Ibadan ‘Theocratic Class’ & the Muslim ‘Other,’” Review of African Political Economy 33, no. 110 (September 1, 2006): 57, https://doi.org/10.1080/03056240601119083. Afe 1964- Adogame, “Politicization of Religion and Religionization of Politics in Nigeria,” in Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria, ed. Korieh,Chima J. and Nwokeji, G. Ugo (Oxford: University Press of America, 2005), 130. Obadare, “Pentecostal Presidency?” 666. Burgess, “Pentecostalism and Democracy in NigeriaElectoral Politics, Prophetic Practices, and Cultural Reformation,” 47. “Pastor Tunde Bakare.”.

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63. Obadare, “Pentecostal Presidency?”. 64. Paul Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 161. 65. Paul Gifford, Christianity, Development and Modernity in Africa (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). 66. Birgit Meyer, “‘Delivered from the Powers of Darkness’ Confessions of Satanic Riches in Christian Ghana,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 65, no. 2 (1995): 237, https://doi.org/10.2307/1161192. 67. Burgess, “Pentecostalism and Democracy in Nigeria Electoral Politics, Prophetic Practices, and Cultural Reformation.”. 68. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” 2. 69. Birgit Meyer, “Religious and Secular, ‘Spiritual’ and ‘Physical’ in Ghana,” in What Matters?: Ethnographies of Value in a Not So Secular Age, ed. Courtney Bender and Ann Taves (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 97. 70. Meyer, 97. 71. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities.”. 72. World Bank, “Accelerated Development in Sub Saharan Africa: An Agenda to Action” (Washington, DC, US: World Bank, 1981). 73. Paul Mosley, “Has Recovery Begun ? ‘Africa’s Adjustment in the 1980s’ Revisited,” World Development 21, no. 10 (1993), https://doi.org/10.1016/0305750X(93)90093-O. 74. Haar, How God Became African, 77. 75. Philipp Öhlmann et al., African Initiated Christianity and the Decolonisation of Development: Sustainable Development in Pentecostal and Independent Churches (London: Routledge, 2020), 2–3, https://doi.org/10.4324/978036 7823825. 76. Martin, Pentecostalism, 287. 77. Ter Haar, How God Became African, 77. 78. Dena Freeman, ed., Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa, Non-Governmental Public Action (New York: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2012), 12, https://doi.org/10.1057/978113701 7253. 79. Maxwell, “’Delivered From the Spirit of Poverty?” 353. 80. Maxwell, 353. 81. Freeman, Pentecostalism and Development, 3. 82. Opoku Onyinah, “Distinguished Church Leader Essay: The Church of Pentecost and Its Role in Ghanaian Society,” in African Initiated Christianity and the Decolonisation of Development, ed. Öhlmann, Philipp, Gräb,Wilhelm, and Frost,Marie-Luise (London: Routledge, 2020), 189, https://doi.org/10. 4324/9780367823825-15. 83. Öhlmann et al., African Initiated Christianity and the Decolonisation of Development. 84. Government of Ghana, “Ghana Beyond Aid Charter and Strategy Document” (Government of Ghana, 2019), 37, https://thinknovate.org/wp-content/upl oads/2019/05/Ghana-Beyond-Aid-Charter-and-Strategy-Document.pdf. 85. Government of Ghana, 37. 86. Daniel Armah-Attoh and Mohammed Awal, “Tax Administration in Ghana: Perceived Institutional Challenges,” Afrobarometer Briefing Paper 124 1 (2013): 9.

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Armah-Attoh and Awal. Armah-Attoh and Awal, 3. Armah-Attoh and Awal, 4. Armah-Attoh and Awal, 4. Armah-Attoh and Awal, 7. Onyinah, “Distinguished Church Leader Essay,” 188. Church of Pentecost, “The Church of Pentecost—General Headquarters Financial Report for the Year Ended December 31, 2019,” 44th General Session of General Council Meetings (Accra: The Church of Pentecost, 2019), 3. 94. J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Contemporary Pentecostal Christianity: Interpretations From an African Context (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2013), 81. 95. Asamoah-Gyadu, 92–93. 96. Roswith Gerloff, review of Review of Halfway to Paradise: African Christians in Europe, by Gerrie Ter Haar, Journal of Religion in Africa 30, no. 4 (2000): 506–508, https://doi.org/10.2307/1581593.

CHAPTER 46

Pentecostalism and the African Diaspora: A Case Study of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in North America Rotimi Williams Omotoye

Introduction The history of Christianity in Nigeria was in phases. Many efforts had been made in the past by this researcher in documenting the phases of Christianity in Nigeria. In summary, the first phase was an attempt by the Catholic Portuguese that came to Benin and Warri in the fifteenth century.1 Many other academic scholars had written on the mission and reasons for its failure. For example, Erivwo, Ajayi, Omoyajowo, Ayegboyin, etc. The second phase was the propagation of Christian Missionary activities in the nineteenth century. Different Christian Missionary bodies, such as, the Methodist, Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.), which later became the Anglican Church, Baptist, and Catholic Church, made some efforts in converting the adherents of African traditional religion and Islam to Christianity by adopting some strategies of the mission. Some of these were the introduction of western education, hospitals, and job opportunities.2 The third phase of Churches emerged at the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century. The African Independent Churches (AIC), such as Cherubim and Seraphim, Christ Apostolic Church, Church of the Lord (Aladura), and Celestial Church of Christ emerged in propagating the gospel in Nigeria.3 The Pentecostal Churches became more noticeable and important in Nigeria in the 1970s. Since then, they have been increasing daily. Some of R. W. Omotoye (B) University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_46

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such churches are the Deeper Life Christian Church, Mountain of Fire and Miracles, and Living Faith Church. To be specific, our focus in this paper is the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Nigeria and its extension to the United States of America. Many scholars have written books and articles on the Church locally and internationally. The word “Pentecostalism” has been defined severally by different scholars. Burgess opined that “Pentecostalism” is an umbrella term for African Movements and Churches which stress the experience of the Spirit. Ojo states that “the Churches share common phenomena through literature, crusades, camp meetings and rely on the ‘new birth’ and the power of the Holy Spirit.” Owoeye believes that “Pentecostal Churches are Churches that emphasize the working of the Spirit in the Church, especially with ecstatic phenomena like prophecy and speaking in tongues, healing and exorcism.”4 Therefore, the Pentecostal churches have some peculiar features different from the Mainline Churches. Pastor Josiah Akindayomi founded the Redeemed Christian Church of God in 1952 in Lagos, Nigeria. The church’s founder named Pastor Enock Adejare Adeboye as his successor at a meeting held in the United States of America in 1979. Even though, the latter was a latecommer to the Church, having joined in 1973. The founder died in 1980, and Adeboye automatically assumed the leadership of the Church.5 The methodology adopted in this paper was historical, and primary and secondary sources of information were also used. The functionalist theory of Emile Durkheim was considered in the course of writing the paper. “A man does not recognize himself, and he feels transformed, and consequently he transforms the environments which surround him.”6 The research of Omotoye on RCCG has indicated that the Church has contributed significantly to national development in Nigeria. Omotoye mentioned some contributions, such as Evangelism, Effective Use of Media, Education, and Economic Development. Other areas of development are Political involvement, Public Awareness, Sports and Physical Fitness, Revenue Generation for Government, and Provision of Employment Opportunities.7 The present paper’s scope is to look at the roles of Nigerian immigrants in North America, in the spread of the RCCG. And some significant contributions the organization is equally making in the course of history. In a nutshell, the evangelization of the RCCGNA is seen as a reversed mission. Nigerians missionary drive in the diaspora is mainly responsible for the continuous propagation of Christianity, which is dying gradually because of globalization in the developed nations. According to Aderibigbe, “there are now about 1,000 parishes of the RCCGNA. The region designated as North America comprises North America, Canada, and the Caribbean, and membership of the church comprises almost exclusively African immigrants. However, the majority of these are Nigerians.”8

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The RCCG is one of the fastest African Initiated Church in North America. As of 2005, the population was about 25,000. Who are the Nigerian/African Christians in RCCG in North America? Evidence and research have shown that there are two major blocks. The first are Nigerians who voluntarily went to America as Professionals, Businessmen, women, Teachers, etc. who accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ in a new dimension. The majority of such people were Christians before leaving Nigeria. Many of them were members of the Mainline Churches or African Independent Churches at home. They became “born again” and decided to leave their former churches. Different reasons are adduced for such a paradigm shift. The claim of being “redeemed” is a factor that cannot be neglected in the course of history. The idea of closeness being enjoyed in terms of needs is also germane, especially in a foreign land where an “individualistic lifestyle” is the order of the day. In the Pentecostal Churches, there is much embracement, affinity, and closeness than in the Mainline churches. It is also observed that there are more opportunities to express one’s spiritual ability and leadership prowess in the Pentecostal Churches than the Mainline Churches. Many young men and ladies who are willing to express their interest in leadership and worship freedom are more comfortable in such organizations. Researches within Nigeria University Campus Fellowships confirmed this position. Many of the Nigerian Pentecostal leadership were leaders in their University Campus Fellowships. The second categories of Pastors in North America were already ordained by the RCCG in Nigeria before they were posted to oversee some parishes. In order words, they went there to build up the established parishes of those living in America. The experience acquired in Nigeria would help them get quick results in the growth and development of such young churches. They are officially invited by the parish churches with invitations presented at the American Embassy in Lagos or Abuja for easy passage. Many of the Pastors in this category are full-time Pastors that rely on the church for survival, while the earlier category is most often part-time Pastors with other means of livelihood. There is no doubt that students in tertiary institutions play prominent roles in the expansion of Pentecostal churches in Nigeria. A visit to any tertiary institution has shown that there are many such fellowships proclaiming their churches’ tenets. The RCCG, according to Aderibigbe, “began with the establishment of the Redeemed Christian Fellowships in May 1998” with the establishment of the Redeemed Christian Campus Fellowship and Christ the Redeemers Friends Universal.8 The members of such groups are professionals, well educated, vibrant, energetic, and later fully employed in different places in Nigeria. Many of them are employed and understood the gospel of giving and reaping abundantly. The idea of paying tithes as recorded in the book of Malachi 3 is assimilated and adopted by the young working-class Christians. It is observed that the exodus of such a working class of people from the Mainline churches is affecting the growth and economy of the later churches.

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Introduction of RCCG to North America The RCCG was introduced to North America by a Nigerian student named Fadele James. He was a student at Western Michigan University. He combined pursuit of his education with a job at an automobile factory in Detroit to maintain and provide for his welfare. Aderibigbe recorded that “the humble beginning described by Fadele has today become a formidable transnational mission outreach of the RCCG with about 400: 320 in North America, Canada, and the Caribbean, known as the RCCGNA.”9 Pastor Samuel Omotunde Oladeru is a Senior RCCG Pastor based in New York. He was an Anglican member at Christ Anglican Church, Erin Ijesa, Oriade Local Government area of Osun state.10 He was an Electrical Engineer based in Lagos before winning the American Lottery. On getting there, Pastor Tunde and Lanre, his wife, became Pastors and presently serving at the Destiny Sanctuary For All Nations, 116–29 Sutpin Blvd, Suite D Jamaica Queens New York. Another prominent figure in the establishment of the RCCG in North America was Pastor Tola Odutola, a Senior Pastor of Jesus House, Baltimore. He was the Chairman of the Redeemers Leadership Institute (RLI) in North America. He resigned as a member of the Church, having served for thirty years. According to him, he left because, the Church did not take care of him as expected. He and his wife, Pastor Kofo Odutola are to start an independent Church in America.11 This is not unexpected because; schism is a significant challenge in African Independent Churches and Pentecostal Churches. Pastor Odutola was a Chartered Accountant at Peat Marwick, KPMG in Nigeria. He was also at DHL as Treasury Controller and Business Development Manager before being called into full-time ministry. In addition to being the Senior Pastor at Jesus House Baltimore, Pastor Tola is the Regional Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCGNA) North America Region 9 (NAR9). He also was the founding chairman of the Redeemer’s Institute (RLI). RLI is the Leadership arm of the Redeemed Christian Church of God North America (RCCGNA), which provides continuous training for Religious Leaders worldwide. Pastor Tola is the Chairman of Alpha Leadership Conference (ALC), an organization charged with promoting and teaching leadership skills to all people of all nations. He consults, mentors, and coaches Pastors, regularly speaks at Leadership Conferences, Seminars, and other Leadership Development Opportunities. Research has shown that the RCCG is worried about many immigrant Pastors that are leaving the Church and going with the assets of the Church. Therefore, the church requested every Pastor to fill a form indicating the church’s property at their disposal. Some Pastors felt that this directive was not acceptable that they had worked for the church for so long without much welfare packages for them. The action of the Church was seen as “modern-day Slavery” by some of the Pastors that believed that they had served the church diligently for some years.

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It is necessary to note, that the method of registration of Churches in America and Nigeria are not the same. In Nigeria, the name of a Church is registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission (C.A.C.). The Church is regarded as a non-profit organization and tax-free. However, with the newly assented law of Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020 approved by President Muhammadu Buhari, the Federal Government has the power to change the Trustee of any religious organization. This Act has been vehemently opposed and rejected by the Christian Association of Nigeria. According to CAN, the law is unacceptable, ungodly, reprehensible, and an ill-wind that blows no one any good, as well as a time bomb waiting to explode”.11 The controversial aspect of the Act is Sect. 839 (1) and (2), which empowers the commission to suspend trustees of an association(in this case, the Church) and appoint the interim managers to manage the affairs of the association for some given reasons”.12 The American government views churches as a franchise. The assets and church properties are registered in the name of Pastors. The liberal position of the American Government probably has facilitated the idea of immigrants going into the establishment of churches indiscriminately. There are about 750 churches of RCCG in the United States of America located in different states from available records. Some of the Centers of RCCG Churches and the Founders in the State of Texas Are Listed Thus: 1. Salvation Centre –Austin, 7952 Anderson Square, Austin, led by Pastor Wale Odufuye. 2. House of Glory, %070 Broadway Street, Perland, led by Pastor Victor Akindana. 3. New Life Chapel, 9525 Town Park Drive, Houston, led by Pastor Obi Agada. 4. Tower of Refuge, 11,050 Southwest Freeway, Houston, led by Pastor Benson Akintunji. 5. Dominion Chapel, 1203 Craven Road, Stafford, Pastor Bayo Fadugba. 6. Restoration Chapel, 107 South Alta Vista Street, Beeville, Pastor Christian Okpalo. 7. Abundant Grace, 15,825 HI Bellaire BLVD, Houston, Pastor Peter Oloso. 8. Daystar Chapel, 10,909 Sabo Road, STE-228, Houston-Pastor Joel Uzoma. 9. Christ Chapel, 8100 Westglen Drive, Houston-Pastor Oretayo Salau. 10. Pavillion of Redemption, 15,227 Sugarland, Pastor Ade Okonrende. 11. Restoration Chapel, 13,406 Beechnut Street, Houston, Pastor Kamal Sanusi. 12. Restoration Springs, 21,127 Aldine Westfield Road, Humble, Pastor Godwin Okoye.

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13. The King’s Palace, 5371 east Fifth Street, Katy, Pastor Tunde Badru. 14. Lighthouse for All Nations, 2090 FM 157, Suite 200; Mansfield, Pastor Isaac Adeyemi. 15. Living Faith Chapel, 3314 Franklin Avenue, WACO, Pastor Olatunde Odedeji. 16. Household of Faith, 5001 New York Avenue, Arlington, Pastor Oluwafiropo Tusin. 17. Abundant Life, 1907 S. Sycamore Street, Palestine-Pastor Solomon Fatade. 18. Holy Ghost Zone, 2921 Galleria Drive, Suite 100, Arlington-Pastor Bolade Ade-Jagun. 19. House on the Rock, 4437 Matthew Road, Grand Prairie, Pastor Joseph Kuye. 20. Grace Chapel, 2807 West Interstate 20, Grand Prairie-Pastor Michael Oyeniya. 21. Heaven’s Glorious Embassy, 3800 East Parker Road, Plano-Pastor John Omewah. 22. Bread of Life, 2700 Broadway BIVD, Garland, Pastor Chris Adetoro. 23. Restoration Chapel, 2122 Mannix Drive, San Antonio, Pastor Bimpe Okanlawon. 24. Kingdom Embassy, 6809 N. Loop 1604 W. San Antonio-Deacon Ibukun Omotayo. 25. Dallas Central Parish, 2636 Walnut Hill Lane, Suite 350, Dallas-Pastor Ekundayo Israel 26. Solid Rock Parish, 6221 Richmond Avenue, Houston,-Pastor James IHE. 27. Rehoboth Parish, 3305 Pleasant Valley Ln, Suite B; Arlington-Pastor Kola Adeleke.13 The number of these churches kept increasing on a daily basis. The daily lifestyle of the Pastors indicates the “goodness of God” as they claim in their daily preaching. The churches kept on attracting immigrants to their folds with the type of sermons they are preaching. We observed that they emphasize more of “living well” on earth than preaching about heaven and salvation to the people. We believe that the flamboyant lifestyles of the Pastors and their leaders are attracting more immigrants to be interested in establishing RCCG churches in North America and Europe. There is doubt that the unemployment rate and economic recession all over the world could also be responsible for an increase in the establishment of Churches in America. In order to have control over the churches, the leadership of the RCCG in Nigeria/America came with a policy of the church having full control over the assets and finances of the church. The regulations and directives are not acceptable to many of the young Pastors. Hence, some of them are breaking

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away from the RCCGNA. The number of break-away churches kept increasing on a daily basis. Some of These Breakaway Churches Are Listed Below: 1. Winners House—Pastor Nwosu Godwin, Dumfries, Virginia, NAR-1, Province 3. 2. House of David—Pastor Tai Olamigoke, Houston, Texas, NAR-2, Province 2. 3. Living Word Chapel—Pastor Dave Arogbonio, NAR 2, Province 4. 4. Strong Tower Parish, Minneapolis, Pastor Olowokere, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 5. Dominion Centre, Cincinnati—Pastor Emmanuel Elendu, Cincinnati, NAR 3. 6. Jesus City Church—Pastor Dupe Omotoso, Morrisville, North Carolina, NAR 4. 7. Restoration Dominion—Pastor Peter Ihueze, New York NAR 6. 8. Agape House Of Worship Pastor Jide Lawore, Roselle, New Jersey, NAR 6. 9. Praise Court—Pastor Gbolahan Bamgbopa, Far Rockway, New York, NAR 6. 10. Gethsemane Sanctuary—Pastor Felix Adenusi, Pikeville, Maryland, NAR 8. 11. Jesus House Elkridge—Pastor Milverton Ojegun, Linthicum, Maryland, NAR 8. 12. Kings Chapel—Pastor David Ariyibi, Baltimore, Maryland, NAR 8. 13. Grace Chapel- MD (Waldorf)—Pastor Olabanji Folanyan, Warldorf, Maryland, NAR 8. 14. Jesus House, Baltimore—Pastor Tola Odutola, Baltimore, Maryland, NAR 9. 15. Jesus House, Houston—Pastor Bally Akogun, Houston, Texas, NAR Headquarters. 16. Winners Assembly—Pastor Raphael Adebayo, Dallas, Texas, NAR Headquarters. 17. Jesus House Dallas—Pastor Femi Omotayo, Farmers Branch, Texas, NAR, headquarters. 18. Chapel of Revival and Miracles—Pastor Val Egbudiwe, Mesquite, Texas, NAR Headquarters.14 We decided to list the above churches and their founders, to know that about 98% of the founders are Yoruba from South-western, Nigeria. It may be necessary to ask: What are the reasons for the breaking away of the churches? The RCCG started as a conservative assembly in 1952 under the leadership of Pastor Josiah Akindayomi.15 His educational and social status was low when compared with his successor. The incumbent took over in 1981 as

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General overseer of the church in Nigeria and Overseas. He is a PhD holder in Mathematics, and a former lecturer at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. There is no doubt that his religious commitment, humility, and social class assist in the church’s growth. Many innovations are being introduced as the church is expanding in Nigeria and other countries and continents. Pastor Adeboye, in his preaching, always emphasizes being “born again” and heaven-bound. He encourages the establishment of churches within a few kilometers, discipline, and holiness in his teachings. As an educated person, many young Professionals, Entrepreneurs and Businessmen, and women are permitted to serve as part-time Pastors and workers in the church. This has reduced the financial burden on the church to a certain extent. The members are taught the theology of generous giving and payment of tithes, as indicated in Malachi 3 as mandatory in the church. There is no doubt that the church is wealthy by understanding payment of tithes and generous donations. The money received at the local parish is to be sent to the headquarters of the Church in Dallas. The International Campsite in Nigeria is also benefitting immensely from the finances of the churches in America. This system is making the local churches and Pastors looking to the center for financial assistance to meet their local needs for the development and upkeep of the Pastors and their families. Therefore, the Pastors see the system as overcentralization of power at the center. It is believed that, this was not so in the past. Our investigation revealed that the new system was adopted to minimize financial recklessness and impropriety at the local churches and develop the headquarters centrally. Many projects are being done at the International center at Mowe, in Ogun State, Nigeria, and Redemption Camp, Floyd, Texas. Each parish is expected to remit about 70 percent of their income to the center. It is also observed that many of the Parish Pastors had invested personal fortunes in establishing the churches with the hope of getting “dividend” from their labors. The new tactics of requesting them to hand over the churches to the RCCG authorities are seen as exploitative and another way of enslaving them. Some of the Pastors are full time on the job; to relinquish the churches would mean that they would live at the mercy of the church authorities. The structure of the church within this region consists of 19 zones in the United States and the Caribbean, and 3 in Canada, making a total of 22 zones, according to 2009 figures. Each of the zones is headed by a coordinator with the headquarters in Dallas under the leadership of Pastor James Fadele, as the chairman of the board, the highest governing body of the RCCG North America. Each zone is further divided into parishes headed by pastors, assistant pastors, or deacons, depending on the available personnel.16 It may be necessary to ask: Why are the immigrants interested in the RCCGNA? As earlier mentioned, there are two groups of RCCG members from Nigeria in America.

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America is an individualist environment different from African society, where they live communal life and share things in common. The Mainline Churches in America and Nigeria are likened with the characteristics of Church and Sect typology as pronounced by Ernst Peter Wilhelm Troeltsch, a German liberal Protestant theologian.17 He succeeded in making a clear distinction between the features of the two institutions of a Church and a Sect. In the church, the relationship is not so close; but in a sect, they share things and interact more. Therefore in Pentecostal churches, the affinity and family life is more interesting. Challenges of life are shared, and solutions are found together. Many Nigerians arrived in America for the first time without having relations or friends. The Church becomes the first place of association and relationship where friends are made. The researcher was opportune to attend Sunday services at RCCG Amazing Grace, which was established by Dr. Mrs. Moradeke Ibigbolade Aderibigbe at the University of Georgia, Athens, the U.S.A. anytime l visited the University for Academic Programmes between 2012 and 2019.18 I observed that majority of the worshippers are Yoruba people from South-western, Nigeria. The official language of the congregation is English so as not to be seen as an ethnic-based church. I did not meet any Afro-American or Americans in the Church! There are some worshippers from other African countries in attendance at any Sunday service. The theology of prosperity is attractive to Africans in Diaspora. Every person in a foreign land will like to live well, and be able to meet the financial situation in America. My observation in America is that nothing is free. Things are expensive, compared to Nigeria, where you can easily get some free items at ridiculous prices. The type of sermons being given is to encourage the worshippers that with God, all things are possible. Therefore the new immigrants, in particular, would naturally prefer such sermons of assurance and survival. Accommodation may be a big challenge for anybody arriving in America. A church building may be a temporary place of refuge. There is also an opportunity to stay with a church member for some months before a permanent place of abode is gotten. Some years ago, l attended an International conference in Padova, Italy, in 2004. The theme of the conference was Pentecostalism and African Diaspora. Many Nigerians/Africans in Italy were in attendance. A significant challenge they were encountering was accommodation. In view of this, many of them were living temporarily in the Churches. The Security agencies saw them as illegal immigrants and threats to the peace of society. It was reported that, occasionally, such immigrants are arrested by the security agencies. In the RCCG and other Pentecostal Churches in the U.S., the immigrants, especially the “new arrivals,” are given lectures, symposia are organized, and some Professionals in Government and Business are invited to educate the newly arrived immigrants. They are taught about their rights and privileges in America, the types of businesses they can do, and the jobs available in the

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community. Computer training is organized for people that are not Computer literate, so as to facilitate employment. Historians are invited to give lectures on the relationship between America and Nigeria. More importantly, job opportunities are exposed to them, to make a living and be independent of living or relying on the church and members of the church. Van Dijk opined that: Religious terms, concepts, and organization address the modern predicament of the stranger …and offer the individual the means and technique to create a subject identity that fits the condition of translocality – (that is) of not being part of a geographically fitted community and of belonging to a category that is perceived to threaten the “smooth evenness” of everyday life (the existential meaning of life).19

The RCCGNA is now having a permanent Redemption Camp situated in Floyd, Texas, in 2007. This is like the Redemption Camp of the church in Nigeria. The annual programs are being done at the center which is noticeable by the United States Government. Therefore, the church is contributing significantly to the religious and socio-economic development of the state. The camp is being developed like the Camp at Mowe in Ogun state. The land is being allocated to interested church members to build houses, and employment is being provided to the Africans in the diaspora. This is a significant way of improving the economic base of American society. One of the missions of a Church is education. The RCCGNA is following the footstep of RCCG in Nigeria in that regard. The Redeemer University in Nigeria started her temporary site at the Camp in Mowe before relocating to Ede in Osun state. Our investigation has shown a plan of establishing a University at the Campsite in Floyd, Texas. It will be an opportunity for those already working and would like to further their education to do so and a revenue source for the church. As a private institution, it will allow the children of Africans in the Diaspora to have access to tertiary education.

Challenges of RCCGNA The researcher has been keenly monitoring events in the RCCG in the American States of Georgia, Texas, and the city of New York in the last eight years. These are familiar terrain and environment for the researcher. It is observed that the majority of the leadership and worshippers of the church are Africans in general and Nigerians in particular. It is also observed that the majority of the Nigerians are Yoruba people from South-western, Nigeria. Even though the Yoruba language is not encouraged as a medium of communication, there is no doubt that the Yoruba language is generally used as a mode of greetings and felicitations after Sunday services and other programs during the week. The “Great Commission” of Jesus Christ in the gospel of

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Saint Matthews 28:19–20 is for all nations of the world. There is a need to intensify more efforts in bringing in more people from other ethnic groups in Nigeria, other African countries, worshippers from Afro-Americans, and Americans to the Church. The mission of Jesus Christ is beyond any cultural divide and language. From the church’s available records and data, the founder of the church was Pastor Josiah Akindayomi, a Yoruba man from Ondo town in Ondo state. His successor and incumbent, Pastor Enock Adejare Adeboye, is an Ijesa man from Ifewara, Osun state, Nigeria. Many Pastors that are leading in North America Province are equally from Yoruba states. Even when it was speculated that Pastor Adeboye was to retire from active service, a Yoruba man was named his successor. This is an indication of the dominance of the Yoruba people at the leadership level of the church. It has been noted that the founder of the RCCG in America was James Fadele, who incidentally is a Yoruba man too. The trend of events indicates that the leadership of the Church is actually dominated by people from the South-western part of Nigeria. According to Aderibigbe, “An estimated 95 percent of pastors heading the different parishes in RCCG North America, comprising the Caribbean and Canada are made up of immigrants from Nigeria with the overwhelming majority of them being Yoruba.”20 The just quoted opinion is a confirmation of the geographical spread of the Church. We must commend the leadership of the Church in discouraging Yoruba’s native language and even native dressing in the church. It is rare to meet any immigrant wearing native dress at services. It is also noted that the cold weather is not also convenient to permit the wearing of native dresses. In attracting more Christians from other climes, we observed that hours of service on Sundays and during the week is limited, unlike what is obtainable at home. Service on Sunday is about one hour and thirty minutes, while weekly programs are held twice a week for about an hour. Whereas, home service is held almost every day of the week. In America, time is precious and highly valued. In fact, some are on duty in their places of work on Sunday. Therefore, the survival and protection of one’s job are quite essential and necessary. We observed that the RCCGNA is more accommodating than the Church at home. Women are permitted to wear trousers to the church; men are free to hug ladies, ladies attend services without covering their hairs, and the Yoruba attitude of junior ones prostrating and kneeling are not encouraged or permitted. Men are seen with dreadlock hairdo, earrings, and chains on their necks in the church. This is a clear way of showing that one is in a different culture and environment. We believe that this “paradigm shift” from Yoruba culture should be a way of paving room for the American way of life. However, our observation has shown that many non-Yoruba and other African Christians are not yet in the church. The Afro-Americans, and Americans too are far away from the Church. However, it is germane to note that, the immigrants should be commended for a “reversed mission” in America. The Christian

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missionary of the nineteenth century is almost gone into oblivion and extinction. The immigrants are now preoccupied with mission work and the revival of Christianity in America.

Conclusion Pastor Josiah Akindayomi founded Redeemed Christian Church of God in 1952 in Lagos. The man of God was not “too educated,” but God used him like Biblical Peter, a fisherman, to establish the Church. Pastor Enock Adejare Adeboye, a former University teacher at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, was his successor. Even though, a latercomer to the church, his education, charisma, and commitment to the work of God has made the church to become an international denomination. Today, RCCGNA has become a denomination to be reckoned with internationally. The church is contributing significantly to the religious and socio-economic life of the immigrants in America. However, it is observed that the majority of the members of the church are Yoruba people from South-western Nigeria. Efforts are being made to bring more people from other ethnic groups in Nigeria and Africans from other countries. The church has put some strategies of attracting people from different cultures to the church by subsuming some known traditional ethics of the home church. More importantly, the gospel of Jesus Christ, as recorded in Acts of the Apostles 1:8 “you will be my witnesses in Judea, Samaria and uttermost parts of the World,” is being fulfilled by the immigrants in America.

Notes 1. Rotimi Williams Omotoye, One Hundred and Fifty-ninth Inaugural Lecture titled: Christianity as a Catalyst for Socio-economic and Political change in Yorubaland, Nigeria: An Account of a Church Historian, presented on 25th June, 2015. 2. Ibid. 3. Rotimi Williams Omotoye, The Contributions of Christianity to the Development of Western Education in Yorubaland, South-western, Nigeria (1854–2015) in Y.O. Imam, R.W. Omotoye, P.O. Abioje, A.I. Ali-Agan (eds) Religion and Human Capital Development Essays in honor of Prof.Yasir Anjola Quadri (Department of Religions, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, 2017), 73–74. 4. Rotimi Omotoye, The Church and National Development: The Case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, International Journal of Current Research in the Humanities No. 12, 25–49, Ghana, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana, 2011. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibigbolade Aderibigbe, African Initiated Churches and African Immigrants in the United States: A Model in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, North America (RCCGNA) in Ibigbolade Ade S. Aderibigbe and Carolyn M. …Jones Medine (eds) Contemporary Perspectives on Religions in African Diaspora (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

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8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Pastor Tunde Oladeru is a childhood friend from Erin Ijesa, Oriade Local Government, Osun State. 11. Nigeria Tribune, dated 21st August, 2020, 8. 12. Ibid. 13. Names of the Churches accessed on theRCCG platform. 14. Ibid. 15. Rotimi Omotoye, The Church and National Development: The Case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. 16. Ibid. 17. Ernst Troeltsch was a theorist on Church and Sect Typology. 18. Dr. Mrs. Moradeke Ibigbolade was the founder of Amazing Grace RCCG at the University of Georgia, Athens, USA. 19. Ibigbolade Aderibigbe, 252. 20. Ibid.

CHAPTER 47

“Return My Power, or You Die!” Charismatic Church and Political Leaders Hankering for What in Africa? Leon Mwamba Tshimpaka and Christopher Changwe Nshimbi

Introduction The reform of most African countries south of the Sahara between the late 1980s and early 1990s emphasized economic management and liberalization of trade. But this occurred within the broader context of neoliberal political reform, which sought to transform autocratic and largely one-party states into liberal democracies. Additional issues—such as good governance and (albeit negatively) corruption—would later augment the interpretation of the notion of democracy and its attendant attributes including, various rights and liberties as measures and indicators of democratic consolidation. The West and institutions of global governance urged these reforms on African and other developing countries.1 In the absence of a preconceived model or universal definition of democracy, what the West urges on these countries is a set of principles that define relations between governors and the society that they governed.2 To illustrate, the types of democratic governance 27 member states of the EU practice differ one from another and so, when the EU engages in democracy promotion in Africa, it supports principles of democracy common to all members’ systems including, fundamental freedoms, human rights, citizens’ participation, and the rule of law.3

L. M. Tshimpaka · C. C. Nshimbi (B) Department of Political Sciences‚ Institute for Strategic and Political Affairs (ISPA), University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_47

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Substantial literature exists on democracy (or claims that it is non-existent) in Africa. Most of that literature, however, does not really engage in a detailed discussion of democratic principles which the EU promotes on the continent. Take, for instance, fundamental freedoms and particularly those that relate to worship. And even at a level higher than the individual’s freedom of religion are relations of institutions within which the freedoms are exercised in a country. The literature on African politics, international relations, and development rarely engage with these issues. This is most probably because it is bogged in the binary arguments/polemics whether African countries are real democracies. This chapter bypasses those polemics to examine engagements within the sphere of the democratic principles that the West promotes in Africa and which African countries do indeed adopt, albeit in variation, just as do the respective EU member states.4,5 The chapter focuses on the principle of freedom of worship and analyses activities in this principle at a higher level and a scope broader than the individual’s exercise of the principle. That is, it approaches the principle from the macro and perspective of relations between institutions within a country and in which the freedom of worship is exercised. Specifically, it examines engagements between religious and political actors within a nation-state that applies the democratic principle of freedom of worship. The context is relations between church and state within a given nation-state. The chapter thus examines the activities of and engagements between respective actors from these institutions. The purpose is to understand the motives of actors on either side in engaging with each other. But also, what are the possible implications of their actions/activities and how does the application of the contextual/relevant democratic principles impact state governance? While individuals and communities operating within religious institutions in a country are free to worship, their representative institutions should not have any prerogative that makes them instruct democratically elected officials or governments to institute public policies.6 As Stepan argues, while religious groups and individuals can publicly advance their values in civil society and sponsor movements and organizations in political society, their actions should not negatively encroach on other citizens’ freedoms or violate the law and democracy.7 However, he also points out that the courts may impose constraints on political parties that might be in violation of democratic principles and, in this, points to the minimal framework of freedoms within which (citizens in) the church and the democratic state, respectively, operate vis-à-vis church–state relations. The next section discusses the literature on the church, state, and church– state relations in an attempt to provide the conceptual and theoretical context in which the chapter engages with the realities of engagements between political leaders and charismatic church leaders in the two African countries of focus in the chapter. This is followed by a brief illustration of church and state relations as seen in interactions between selected leaders of charismatic churches and political leaders and/or politicians vying for political office in Zambia and

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the DRC. The data used in the section is sourced from newspapers, television news networks, and YouTube. The last section concludes.

Church–state Relations: Theoretical and Conceptual Context for Examining Relations Between Religious and Political Leaders in Africa At a theoretical level, this chapter engages in debates on the notions of state and church and insofar as these relate to church–state relations and as concerns Africa. The Western countries that support and promote democracy in Africa provide a history in which the evolutionary nature and theoretical interpretations of church–state relations can be understood. This would benefit conceptualization and application to African polities in this chapter. On the Church Depending on context, a church can refer to either a religious building or a community of believers. This chapter defines a church as a religious community of people tied by common beliefs that constitute social structure and principles which embody patterns of a shared life that God desires for all of society.8 The church is perceived to be the manifestation of the reign of God and driven by the highest vision of human norms. Borrowing from Father Murray’s thoughts, there are three important aspects that characterize the church.9 Firstly, the church is perceived as a spiritual authority with rights circumscribed by the direct mandate from Christ without suffering, during its exercise, any interference of and dependence upon any human institutions, even within its own constituted structures. Second, it is considered a juridical institution with its own internal order of law, competent like other juridical institutions of solving and handling its internal affairs and conflict. Lastly, the Church is a community of the faithful, a visible society with a limited membership open to all under based on certain qualifications, as is true of any other visible society.10 These interpretations corroborate with those who assert that it is “a religious and social organization, driven by moral and social principles as contained in the fundamental teachings and doctrine of Christian faith.”11 This balanced view of the church makes it possible to look at it comprehensively in line with the study at hand. It helps to identify a church as a religious community different from other communities within a larger community, society, or country. Equally, the definition enables us to single out the religious community driven by the Christian faith from other religious communities driven by distinct faiths, such as Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islamism, and ancestral.12 For the study at hand, this religious community includes various denominations within the Christian faith, including charismatics, Roman Catholics, Protestants, and the Salvation Army. The theological

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schools and practices that shaped each of their Christian faiths vary.13 The church can be visible or invisible depending on which context it is conceptualized.14 As Matthew 28:19–20 in the Bible states, the church has the mandate to make disciples for Christ out of nations. This implies undertaking evangelism, baptism, and teaching with compassion and love through missionary work in order to bring the nations to observe what Christ commended his disciples. This means that politicians are part of the nations to be evangelized, baptized, and taught in the church.15 It, therefore, makes sense to focus on charismatic churches in Africa for purposes of our study and discuss practices that affect adherents who are politicians. The African continent has witnessed a bourgeoning of Pentecostal/charismatic churches in the past few decades, rising to 35 percent of all Christians from 13% in 1970.16 The church contributes to the well-being of society on a daily basis. It plays a crucial role in various sectors that affect the lives of ordinary citizens. This includes politics too and complements what Father Murray underscores that society constitutes the civil and political.17,18 The church is an important stakeholder in society with a mission to improve well-being and help maintain social order. On the State Numerous schools of thought inform the understanding of the state. Our chapter is focused on a few relevant theorists including, classical Greek scholars or organic theorists dominated by Aristotle and Hegel; contractualists or social contract theorists like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and JeanJacques Rousseau; conflict theorists or Marxists championed by Karl Marx; and divine right theorists among which St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas are prominent.19 Classical Greek scholars view the state as a logical and natural consequence in the development of human society. Family and village are genitors of the state according to Aristotle, Hegel, and their colleagues. That is, the state emanates from a combination of several villages that are built on a cohort of families within a village. This forms a large, self-sufficient community that continues to exist and promotes good life. Social contract theorists believe that a deliberate social contract between people for the protection of their rights, liberties, and freedom leads to the emergence of the state. The state is understood to be an essence of protection of their human rights and belongings. The divergent ideas that define contractualists converge on the fact that individuals surrender certain rights and liberties and delegate them to the state in exchange for services such as protection. Marxists consider the state to arise from conflict between the rich class and poor class over respective economic interests.20 Marxists see the state as a tool for class oppression controlled by the dominant economic group, which subjects the “have-not” class in a state of perpetual subordination. Divine right theorists underscore the preparation of human beings for the salvation and glory of God as the essence of the state.

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According to the theory, the state, themed as an earthly kingdom of human beings is a pure creation of God and consequently subjected to the universal order of society understood as the city of God.21 Hence Thomas Aquinas’ assertion of the final beatitude as the essence of the state and virtuous living. In this chapter, we deploy both Marxist and divine rights theory interpretations of the state because they respectively present it as governed on the basis of a social contract between elites and those they rule over and as a divine creation. Max Weber defines the modern state as “the human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”22 With regard to the organizational definition, the state is viewed in a concrete way as a set of political organizations manifest in the form of governmental institutions, particularly the (semi)-independent entities and networks involved in making and carrying out policy, rules, and decisions.23 The state can functionally be considered a set of institutions that have particular goals, purposes, or objectives. The institutions are public and private and constitute networks of interrelations given shape by ideas, traditions, and embedded in the culture.24 The state may, therefore, be identified with a range of institutions not normally classified as part of the public sphere. In this regard, any organization whose goals or purposes overlap with state functions automatically becomes part of the state. The state could also be defined by its consequences, such as the maintenance of social order. In this way, it is identified with those institutions or patterns of behavior that have stabilizing effects. This view of the state can cause confusion by equating the state to other social institutions such as family, which can also foster social cohesion like the state. But a family can, of course, not be equated to the state, even if it is to be found within it. The two functional definitions of state just discussed conceptualize it as a unitary actor but not as a network of individuals.25 The latter views the state as “ an organized political entity with a territory.”26 However, Marxists, neo-Marxists, and pluralists alike focus on the state as a central actor political and economic processes.27 The state can be distinguished from other entities and how it relates to them. Some cardinal ways in which to distinguish the state from other entities include people and status of membership, government, territory, sovereignty, permanent character, organized system of laws, and international recognition.28 Government is an important instrument that enables the state to exercise its political, military, and economic power through specialized people in order to regulate social order. But it is not the sole actor. As Schmitt points out, “the concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political,” meaning that the state is the foundation of all political activities.29 Without a sound state, politics suffer decay, and so do the economy and society. Government grants to the state its character that distinguishes it from other human institutions like family or church.30 The government also protects the state’s territory and enforces constitutional rules to maintain state independence visà-vis other states. It is also expected to defend state sovereignty within the

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international sphere against any invasion or external interference in spite of the size and quality of its human and natural resources. The state is the highest structure with the power to provide the general citizenry with the idea of well-being.31 A sense of nationhood, government, constitutive laws, territory, and sovereignty, constitute the five key features of the state. The state is a means of national identification for citizens within land governed by responsible political elites entrusted with the responsibility to regulate social order and conduct international relations.32 Our discussion in this chapter uses the concept of state interchangeably with government or political elites who are viewed as its representatives. The state fulfills five basic functions in order to build an inclusive society including, creating spaces for participation in political decision making so that the polity becomes inclusive and open for ordinary citizens; providing human security for people against any wants and, outside and inside aggressors and criminals; providing distributive justice so that people are treated as equals, fairly, and without any forms of discrimination; providing basic public goods that enable the general citizenry to live their lives in dignity; and creating an infrastructure to facilitate economic life and making rules to let economic life be fair.33 That is, in terms of scope of activity, the state has a strong institutional capacity to create and enforce laws and policies.34 It has a high degree of power and autonomy to exercise its powers over any other social force in the society.35 All the above functions are important for the discussion in this chapter because the state is expected to establish an inclusive and cohesive society centered on the security, justice, and well-being of citizens.36 The modern state engages with entities such as civil society organizations, the private sector, and international institutions in order to effectively perform its function as a regulator of social order. The strength of the state is also identified by its three competencies, namely, authority, legitimacy, and capacity.37 These three competencies engender effectiveness, validity, and integrity. Otherwise, the state is considered to be a fragile state.38 That is, a country that has no control over its territory most often also lacks sufficient legitimacy because part of the country does not recognize the state as its representative. Similarly, states that have insufficient institutional capacity will have a hard time exerting authority over their territory. States that have no capacity will lose their legitimacy because they are unable to provide public goods such as security, justice, and basic social services.39 State failure occurs in respect to a wide range of political goods of which the most important ones are the provision of security, a legal system to adjudicate disputes, provision of economic and communication infrastructures, the supply of some form of welfare policies, and increasingly also opportunities for participation in the political process.40 The state in pre-colonial Africa typically comprised diverse kingdoms and chieftaincies of diverse cultures and ethnicity, religious practices and beliefs, and traditional customs.41 Post-independence African leaders copied an exotic European notion of state imposed over a multicultural system.42 Colonial laws

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are thought to nurture the stigmatization of African states as pseudo-state and quasi-state that dictate national political-economic policies.43 The modern African state occasioned by artificial colonial borders is criticized for triggering ethnic tensions, religious divides, and tribalism. The post-independence African state bears the influence of colonialism and neoliberal dogma while political elites are said to have turned into neo-colonialists, who oppress fellow citizens through doctored constitutions. Efforts to consolidate political power at all costs characterize post-independence states in Africa. The states are managed by self-interested groups that seek self-preservation, selfaggrandizement, and hegemonic power, which is detrimental to the common good.44 The quest for political power thus drives the relationship between the state and other entities like the church in a country. Former freedom fighters and political liberators in such African states as Zimbabwe, Angola and DRC are criticized for having become new oppressors of fellow citizens in the quest for political power.45 They exclude ordinary citizens from political decision-making processes. A significant proportion of African citizens, therefore, find it difficult to consider the state as the legitimate framework for the exercise of power. Conflicts thus occur in parts of the continent because states do not fairly exercise their monopoly of the legitimate use of force over their territories. African states are perceived to exist only judicially besides still being in a formative state.4647 ; Therefore, political ideologies do not attract any partisanship among voters during elections because of what are perceived to be authoritarian tendencies in the performance of state functions. Winning elections at all costs is what really matters for most African politicians. Because of this, a significant number of political elites strongly associate themselves and consult with spiritual mentors in charismatic churches to help them secure political office. The African politicians consult charismatic church leaders for prophetic prayers and religious paraphernalia from the charismatic church leaders to help them secure positive outcomes in elections. On Church–State Relations A number of contending arguments engage with the importance of religion in politics and church–state relations. As far back as the 1960s, secularization theorists believed that God was dead and that religion would become irrelevant in society.48 Modernist scholars downplay the importance of religion in society in preference for scientific analysis. The church’s influence in society thus minimizes as people lose confidence in spiritual interpretations and matters. For the modernists, there is also a decline in religious influence since the state has taken over the welfare functions once performed by churches. With the emergence of fundamentalism, a paradigm shift occurred in world politics in the late 1970s. New scholarship on religion, politics, and fundamentalism has since considered religious actors as important in societal politics.49

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The religious economy school of thought, for one, engages with secularization and modernization theorists by demonstrating the capability of religion to develop society from the micro level up to the international level.50 With regard to church–state relations, rational-choice theorists argued that religious pluralism and exuberance arise from the deregulation of the church by the state. Economic sociologists view church–state relations as determinants of economic growth within a country.51 Interest-based theories of religion and politics advance politico-economic development in their discussion of church– state relations.52 These include the emergence of modern states, the increase in modern conservative religious movements, and the emergence of antireligious protests. Many religious, political movements such as Christian Democratic parties emerged from these interest-based theories of religion and politics. Debates on the separation of church and state in the USA inform contemporary debates on church and state relations.53 The debates developed around the struggle over a redefinition and/or reclamation of the contribution of religion to American public life. The issue of prayer in public schools was at the center of the discourse and involved different stakeholders, including government, judiciary, religion, the scientific community, historians, sociologists, theologians, and political theorists. Five views also defined the American debates on separation of church and state. They include the strict separationist, pluralistic separationist, institutional separationist, non-preferential, and restorationist.54 This chapter does not delve into the development of these views in the interest of space. It instead highlights how they shaped debates on church–state relations. Strict separationism refused to acknowledge the ontological status in the law for churches and other religious entities. It promoted a purely secular state and denied churches their institutional rights. Pluralistic separationists argued for a neutral state that is not subject to or a recipient of civil religion as a higher law.55 The view posits that civil religion favored self-righteous nationalism nurtured by nativist religion. The pluralistic view considers the contemporary nation-state to be strictly human-made and not a divine institution. Institutional separationists envision a theocentric state contrary to pluralistic separationists, who subject the state to civil religion as the higher law.56 This is because they consider the ideal philosophy of life to go beyond and unite the state. Apart from being considered theistic, this philosophy of life was understood to be historically advanced by the Judeo-Christian faith in western nations. Institutional separationists and pluralistic separationists converge on the importance of civil tolerance in public debates. They agree on curtailing the direct use of religiously motivated speech in official public spaces.57 Nonpreferentialists encourage the state to favor religion but not those who do not profess religious beliefs.58 Restorationists are the only ones who encourage a bond between the state and a particular religion.59 They also assign limited duties to civic officials in defense of the dominant religion. Restorationists promote a religious state and argue that a neutral state is impossible. In line with the restorationist view, church and state are divinely ordained and

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meant to strengthen each other in a mutual relationship. According to Noll, restorationists believe that the USA is a Christian nation.60 They promote the unity of the USA through the restoration of Christian values.61 This chapter adopts restorationist views on church and state relations that encourage mutual engagement in mutual respect between the two entities. Relationship in this sense does not, of course, mean interference or dominance. American debates on church–state relations were also informed by institutional separationist and functional interactionist arguments.62 The American Lutheran Church, for example, rejects the idea of a relationship that promotes the prominence of either state over church or dominance of church over state. By institutional separation, the Lutheran church encourages institutional freedom of either church or state to discharge their respective duties under the Almighty God. As for functional interaction, it outlines the mechanisms in which state and church are both engaged while pursuing their respective objectives. In this context, the Lutheran Church in America discourages theories that caution absolute separation of church and state because they would be an impediment to the true expressions of functional interaction. To the Lutheran church, functional interaction is an ideal where institutional separation is maintained, and engagement is not used to induce prominence of one entity over the other. Both institutional separation and functional interaction strengthen and support the views of the restorationists that inform the understanding of church and state relations in this chapter. In Europe, two historical traditions, apocalyptic and Origenian, have respectively informed the debates on church and state relations. Composed by Tertullian (150–220) and Hippolytus of Rome (170–235), the Apocalyptic tradition disapproved of a relationship between the church and the Roman Empire.63 As for the Origen-Eusebian tradition, it was convinced that the Pax Romana in the Mediterranean world constituted an opportunity for the advancement of Christianity and the church. That is, given its philosophical background, the Origen tradition was in favor and optimistic at the same time as the Roman Catholic.64 Origen (184–253) epitomized the above propitious coincidence between the church and Roman Empire with the birth of Jesus Christ during the Augustus Caesar era.65 Here, the King was acknowledged to be an imitation of God on earth. But still, priests disapproved of the primacy of the imperial power when it was not necessary. The latter also embraced and adjoined the Origen-Eusebian theory of a Christian emperor empowered by God to adjudicate in both spiritual and secular affairs.66 The foregoing historical evolution of debates on church and state in the USA and Europe informs the contemporary theory of church and state relations.67 This brings the discussion to an attempt to understand if a convergence is possible between the rights of the church vis-à-vis the duty of the state and the duty of the church vis-à-vis the rights of the state. The point at which this happens can be distorted. This is because either the state or the church can encroach each other’s space of action. Despite this, relations between them are generally characterized by peace and order.68 They share a common space

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that can be ecclesial to the church and political to the state.69 The overlapping of church and state territories makes mutual interaction for a peaceful and cohesive society necessary. Polarity and similitude are two forms in which the church and state relations occur. The two entities are portrayed as two divided kingdoms such as sacred and the profane; spiritual and temporal; imperium and sacerdotium; and heavenly and earthly.70 The church, in its prophetic work, transforms lives and social behaviors through shared moral beliefs, values, and norms. Stephens posits that the church should recommit itself to “biblical strategies of human service and social transformation.71 These will result in an inside-out transformational process, shifting from personal to social, from values and beliefs to actions and interventions.” The church, in this way, demonstrates the love of God, which its pastors preach and is seen to engage in efforts to improve the living conditions of congregants and others through charitable work and services in sectors such as education and sanitation.72 This means that the church is not just generally conservative or fundamentalist but also affects the general public. The non-preferentialist view, for example, argues that the church provides a community to citizens in an often-impersonal world. Churches are the foremost institution in society next to the family that exists between the individual and the power of the state. Churches constitute an important source of stability and meaning in life and continuity with the past. Churches also run many worthy educational and charitable organizations.73 The church also reminds the state of the state’s responsibility to protect vulnerable citizens through a distributive justice system and even distribution of resources. By doing so, the church acts as a watchdog of the state. It preaches human rights and social justice and discourages authoritarian practices. In some cases, especially in Africa, the church sides with oppressed citizens and antagonizes authoritarian regimes. It becomes politically involved in educating the populace on civil rights and responsibilities that enable them to actively own political decisions that affect their lives through peaceful demonstrations and protests.74 In short, the church can play a democratizing role in society for political stability and the well-being of ordinary citizens. But, church and state relations can change. Three approaches explain a change in relations between church and state, namely, structural approach, rational-choice approach, and political approach.75 The structural approach argues that broad social changes lead to changes in the relation between the church and state. The secularization theory has influenced the structural approach by predicting the decline of the church authority due to modernity. Social changes are understood as the growth of the state and the rise of the pluralism of religion. The rational-choice approach argues that individual decision-making by political elites determines how comfortable states become with religious institutions. Political actors are motivated primarily by a desire to preserve their ability to remain in office and to maximize their economic resources, and thus “when restrictions on religious liberty have a high opportunity cost as measured in terms of political survival, government revenue,

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and/or economic growth, deregulation of the religious market results.”76 The political approach posits that the relation between church and state changes because of conflict between clerical and secular groupings.77 We adopted a hybrid approach to the relationship between church and state in order to understand regime transformation from uniting to separating the two entities. The combination of the rational-choice approach and political approach helps explain how charismatic pastors in Africa enter into relationships with politicians to offer prophetic prayers, anointing, and religious paraphernalia on the one hand and the moment at which discrepancies arise within the relationships because of conflicts on the other hand. This hybrid approach informs our attempt to understand changes in church and state relationships in two African countries. The changes in the relationships seem to arise because politicians desire to secure political positions by seeking prophetic prayers and religious paraphernalia to influence elections in order to achieve positive outcomes. A further desire is to consolidate and hold on to political power by all means, especially after assuming political office. We argue that this relationship, however, may become conflictual, and politicians and religious actors might then accuse each other of encroachment in each other’s spaces. Politicians are thus ready to antagonize the church in the quest to consolidate political power. Our focus on changes in the relationship between church and state is on the political sphere and not on service delivery, charitable work, or education. We are fully aware of the multiple spheres in which the church and state relate with each other. The church may, for instance, work with the state in the spheres of education and social welfare but still be at loggerheads with it in the political sphere. Democratization processes in the political sphere are characterized by changes in relationships between church and state. The next two sections discuss some of these changes in Africa, starting with a brief continental overview and then in Zambia and the DRC. On the Church and Politics in Africa African religions before the advent of colonialism were traditionally anchored in African beliefs, customs and cultures. Christianity and Islam came with Portuguese missionaries, Arab expansion into Africa and the slave trade.78 While these religions spread, African religions were marginalized and suffocated by colonial rule. No harmonious relationship existed between traditional African religion and colonial rulers. Traditional African religious leaders violently opposed brutal colonial administrators and preached against colonial rule. They asserted that Western religious leaders condoned colonialism and were clerical allies of the oppressors. For instance, the Mwari religion of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was viewed as a counterforce traditional religious sect to resist colonialism.79 The British colonial administration, on its part, for instance, prohibited and suppressed the Katawere of Akim Kotoku of the Gold Coast (now Ghana).80

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Pan-Africanist and nationalist political elites teamed up against colonial oppressors with traditional African sects as well as with other reformed churches during the struggle for independence in the 1950s. However, this relationship did not last immediately after independence, as political elites in most post-independence African states turned into oppressors of their own citizens. Thus, discontented and marginalized citizens turned to Western church leaders for help to deal with political elites who had failed them. Since the transition to democratic governance in the 1990s, most political regimes in Africa adopted multipartyism with accompanying freedoms such as assembly and worship. The freedom of worship has contributed to the proliferation of various religious movements and denominations, especially of the Charismatic and Pentecostal kind in many African countries. Some of the charismatic churches are criticised for being materialistic.81 In the face of deteriorating economic conditions and escalating poverty, the church in many African countries helps alleviate suffering. The church also helps populations voice out the concerns and demand for better services from the state. The church in Africa has therefore become a mediator between the people and the state. Some denominations step simultaneously into influential political spaces to advise politicians to provide prophetic prayers as well as help mobilize voters in their large congregations. This might bring the church and state into relations of a multidimensional nature.82 This situation gives rise to political pastors, priests, or Imams preoccupied with setting up politicians in political office rather than in the faith. They become kingmakers rather than disciple-makers. In this pentecostalisation of politics, political leaders rely on Charismatic pastors to negotiate with the electorate during electoral campaigns. There is sufficient evidence that ethnicity is not the only basis upon which people vote in Africa but that they may do so on religious grounds too.83 Interestingly, politicians, on the one hand, soon seem to ignore the work that goes into negotiating this vote for them after they are inaugurated or sworn into office. On the other hand, the political advice and support charismatic church leaders give to such politicians deviate from the principles of state neutrality, free exercise of religious rights and freedom, consensual values, and public financial aid to religious institutions, with which theories of church–state relations in democratic societies engage. Such church–state relationships seem to center on self-centered agreements between politicians and charismatic leaders. This chapter explores and zeroes in on a couple of such self-centered relationships between charismatic pastors and politicians to argue that the relationships do not often last. The next section reveals these reasons.

Charismatic Church Leaders and Political Leaders Hankering for What in Africa? a Brief Discussion Our discussion of church and state relations is represented by interactions between two respective significant actors from/in either institution, namely, leaders of charismatic churches and political leaders and/or politicians vying

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for political office in Zambia and the DRC. The focus on relations between the Charismatic church and the state helps us mainly discuss the controversial Seer 1 and his purported engagements with Zambian politicians and Bishop Pascal Mukuna of the DRC. We, however, also look at other similarly controversial cases in which there seems to be either a continuation or discontinuation of church and state relationships around the African continent. Seer 1 and Zambian Politicians The 1996 Constitution of Zambia declares it a Christian nation. The vast majority of the country’s population is protestant, with people belonging to various denominations as well as the Roman Catholic Church. Government and political elites variously collaborate with the church and church leaders in different spheres and sectors of the country in efforts to build a peaceful and cohesive society. This is the context in which some politicians also seek the help of popular charismatic pastoral leaders to pronounce prophetic prayers upon politicians and predict positive outcomes for them in general elections. The relationship between the Patriotic Front (PF), which held office from 2011– 2016, and one such prophet is said to have soured after the general presidential and parliamentary elections held in 2016. Nigerian Prophet Seer 1, whose real name is Andrew Ejimadu, founded Christian Freedom Ministries in Zambia and was perceived to be the PF’s spiritual mentor. He was, however, deported after the elections, which PF won, in 2016 on allegations of rape. The allegations were made in a letter written by PF National Youth Chairperson, Mr Kelvin Sampa, to the Nigerian High Commission in Zambia (Lusaka Times 2020).84 Seer 1 refuted the allegations. He took to social media and television to threaten PF members in government with death if they did not return the power he had given them for victory in the elections. During a Sunday service in Limpopo Province of South Africa, where he moved to after deportation, Seer 1 threatened, “I give one week to all PF members who collected power from me to win the 2016 elections to return it. If not, they are going to die one by one. […] I will come back with their names […]. I am not trying to seek attention here, but I just want my things back” (Kananyka, January 2020).85 Seer 1 went on to challenge PF members to denounce him if they never knew him or visited his home in Lusaka to receive power for victory in the elections. Seer 1 not only attacked the government but fellow church leaders in Zambia too. He, for example, accused the Zambian government for not respecting God’s servants despite being a Christian nation.86 This was after police arrested a prominent charismatic church pastor who went on air to denounce the PF administration for not doing enough to stop ritual killings that had rocked the nation.87 After substantiating his allegations with a Bible verse, “Do not touch to my anointed,” Seer 1 denounced what he said was the

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complicity of fellow church leaders with politicians in dealing with the recurring ritual killings in the country. Seer 1 also appeared on a local television station, Diamond TV, and lamented: if Zambian men of God were like me, politicians wouldn’t be misbehaving the way they are doing now in Zambia.88

The PF asserted that Seer 1’s allegations were nothing but false hate and propaganda against President Lungu and his government. In June 2020, the PF youth leadership, through its chairperson, protested against Seer 1’s attacks by writing to the Nigerian High Commission in Lusaka. It requested the commission to denounce what it said were sustained unwarranted inflammatory, malicious, slanderous, and criminally defamatory attacks against a legitimate government. Kelvin Sampa’s letter to the commission read in part, Mr Ejimadu, the founder of Christ Freedom Ministries, once lived in Lusaka, Zambia and was arrested and deported in 2016 for allegedly raping a teenage girl among other numerous allegations against him. For months on end, Mr Ejimadu has been running a sustained hate and propaganda campaign via social media and Television platforms against President Lungu and his government. He has been using these platforms to maliciously and criminally defame and malign President Lungu and his senior government officials.89

The Nigerian High Commission promised to address the PF youth wing’s concerns. Seer 1 did refrain (albeit for a while) from his malicious attacks on the ruling party and members. He claimed that those he had helped ascend to power had returned the paraphernalia with which they had gained the victory.90 Seer 1 continued his attacks on the PF but shifted from calling on PF members to return his power to denouncing corruption in the PF. He directly accused Zambian President Edgar Lungu of being corrupt and lacking strong leadership. Seer 1 amplified his criticism in the Covid-19 moment when President Lungu announced that churches were allowed to hold services amidst the spread of coronavirus. Seer 1 also prophesied/predicted that leader of the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND), Mr Hakainde Hichilema, would win the forthcoming 2021 general elections and PF would be ousted from political power.91 Seer 1’s allegations, assertions, utterances, or prophecies clearly caused a big divide in Zambia. On one side, there were those who sided with the Zambian government and refuted Seer 1’s assertions. For instance, Apostle Sunday Sinyangwe, founder of Shalom Embassy International, says Seer 1 is a charlatan who plays on people’s minds.92 Observers, on the other side, do not mind whether Seer 1’s allegations are true or false. To them, it is a sign of the country’s deliverance from a corrupt and ungodly political regime.

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Bishop Pascal Mukuna and Democratic Republic of Congo Politicians The DRC is perceived to be a Christian country and predominantly Roman Catholic.93 The Roman Catholic Church boasts of significant influence and contribution to the well-being of the country. It has more than 43 million baptised congregants, which accounts for nearly 60 percent of the DRC’s total population.94 To counterbalance the perceived sacred hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church, then-President Joseph Kabila officially granted legal status to the Council of the Revival Churches of Congo and other charismatic denominations in February 2003. The previous regime had denied the protestant churches this status. The unprecedented recognition induced a harmonious relationship between the charismatic churches and Kabila’s ruling coalition. It emboldened Charismatic pastors to seek audience with President Kabila and his officials in government. Prophet Dennis Lessie, founder of the Kinshasa-based Arc of Noah Church, would even go on to say that President Kabila occasionally gave money to pastors in charismatic churches to help contribute to development.95 Other charismatic pastors, however, supported the ruling coalition in secret to avoid public fallout. Charismatic pastors are also said to have supported the Kabila regime during the DRC’s 2011 and 2016 electoral crises when the Roman Catholic Church was, on the other hand, critical of the ruling coalition. Bishop Pascal Mukuna, the founder of the Christian Assembly of Kinshasa (ACK) and President of a popular Kinshasa-based football club, the Renaissance, was a key spiritual ally of President Kabila. It is even alleged that his football team received financial support from President Kabila’s prominent political lieutenant. During the 2018 elections, Bishop Mukuna was part of the team that campaigned for Kabila’s pick for president, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary.96 After marrying his second wife, Bishop Pascal Mukuna went to officially introduce her to the then-first lady, Mrs Olive Lembe Kabila.97 All the above prove how the charismatic Bishop Mukuna was connected to both the biological and political family of the then-President Kabila.98 Bishop Mukuna is reported to have mocked major opposition candidate Martin Fayulu, for contesting newly elected President Felix Tshisekedi’s victory during a Sunday church service in February 2019. He then asked his congregation to applaud former President Kabila for a peaceful transition of power after the 2018 elections.99 Bishop Mukuna has, since the end of 2019, surprisingly become critical of former president Kabila. He criticizes him for being responsible for 18 years of state capture and authoritarian practices.100 The charismatic Bishop Mukuna uses pastoral speeches during church services, television, and social media platforms to call for public rejection of the alliance between Kabila’s political coalition, FCC, and President Tshisekedi’s Camps for Change (CASH). He accuses the FCC of hampering President Tshisekedi’s ability to deliver campaign promises to Congolese. In February 2020, Bishop Mukuna

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launched the Citizens for Patriotic Awakening (CEP).101 The aim of the organization was to awaken patriotic consciousness in Congolese against Kabila’s political interference in Tshisekedi’s rule.102 The first Deputy President of the CEP, Advocate Jean-Claude Katende put it this way: Our struggle is to awaken the patriotic consciousness of the Congolese so that together we can participate in the awakening demonstrations that the CEP will organize to demand effective alternation. The CEP is not a political movement. It is quite simply a social movement that asks the Congolese to be awake and demand changes.103

During the inaugural press conference in Kinshasa, Advocate Jean-Claude Katende called on Congolese to adhere to the CEP, which did not concern only church congregants but the whole nation. In May 2020 Bishop Mukuna filed a case with the Constitutional Court against former President Joseph Kabila for a number of crimes.104 Among them were the alleged assassinations of the Human Rights activists, Floribert Chebeya, Fidèle Bazana, and Armand Tungulu; two experts of the United Nations, Sharp and Catalan; the killing of members of the Bundu dia Kongo sect in 2008 in Kongo central; the deadly repression of protests during electoral crises and other extract judiciary killings. In his own words: I denounce all these crimes to your office so that an investigation can be opened and that Mr. Kabila answer for these crimes that occurred during his reign.105

Like Seer 1 in Zambia, Bishop Mukuna’s allegations created a rift in the DRC. His criticism of Kabila surprised Congolese political observers, who characterized Bishop Mukuna as opportunistic and tribalistic. They asserted that he sought the attention of the new President, Felix Tshisekedi. But Bishop Mukuna refuted the assertions and justified his actions with a Bible scripture that said, “Every authority comes from God.” This, according to him, obliged him to side with national leadership established by God and expose any plots against the good deeds of the president. Bishop Mukuna called for the alleged plotters to “be tried for the crimes they have committed and sent to prison so that the DRC takes off.”106 Bishop Mukuna cautiously supports those who sympathize with the new regime. Various other examples that point to complex relationships as well as the continuity and discontinuity of such relationships between church and state in Africa exist. The Rwandese government, for instance, shut down over 7000 churches because of alleged noise pollution and lack of theological bases. Critics question the validity of the bases upon which the churches were shut down. In Nigeria, charismatic pastors like Ekotie are openly involved in politics and contest for the presidential office. It is said that other charismatic Nigerian pastors receive billions of Naira from politicians, especially during election

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campaigns, in order to mobilize voters for the politicians. This has led to an increase in corrupt pastors driven by selfish interests and a desire for political influence.

Charismatic Church Leaders and Political Leaders in Africa and Implications for State Governance: Some Concluding Remarks This chapter sought to understand the motivations behind engagements between religious and political actors in the context of church–state relationships in African democracies. It also sought to uncover the possible implications of the actions/activities of these actors and how the application of contextual/relevant democratic principles to these relationships impact state governance. The focus was on the principle of freedom of worship and analysis of the activities within this principle at the national level. Hence, it examined engagements between religious and political leaders in Zambia and the DRC, respectively. The democratic principle of freedom of worship is practiced in both countries, which are respectively dominated by protestant and Roman Catholic and charismatic churches. The freedom of worship is exercised to such a point that political figures consult with leaders of charismatic churches in order for the latter to help the former realize political ambitions. Religious leaders provide prophetic prayers and religious paraphernalia to politicians for the politicians to be victorious in elections. The cases presented in the chapter, however, show some fallout between the two after elections are won or lost. In the case of Zambia, the charismatic church leader who claimed to have given power to politicians and orchestrated their electoral victory would actually be deported post the e107 lections. This provoked him to resort to publicly denouncing the politicians on social media and television. This, in turn, prompted the ruling political party to seek the intervention of the Nigerian High Commission in Lusaka to censor the prophet. In the DRC, the religious leader who once enjoyed a good relationship with then-President Kabila—to the extent that Kabila’s key lieutenant financially supported the church leader’s football team—would turn around after elections to even file court cases against Kabila on allegations of crime. The empirical examination of how church leaders in the two African countries step outside the ecclesiastical lane to negotiate spaces of (political) influence in the state arena where secular experts/technocrats operate challenges traditional and mostly Western postulations on the practice of democracy in Africa. The chapter avoids the polemics about the existence or not of democracy in Africa. It shows that the freedom of worship in the nascent democracies of the two countries exhibits actions that break barriers that theoretically draw a clear line of separation between church and state, which, while acting within the boundaries of a nation-state, are generally held to function in a mutually exclusive manner. Theory generally postulates that

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the two may work together in certain spheres, as the church in the DRC and Zambia indeed does by contributing to education and service delivery. It is profoundly interesting to see actors on either side of the relationship exercise their freedom. They not only just enjoy it but also cross over to attempt and help the other actor enjoy the right within their own sphere of operation.

Notes 1. John Williamson, “Democracy and the ‘Washington Consensus,’” World Development 21, no. 8 (August 1, 1993): 1329–1336, https://doi.org/ 10.1016/0305-750X(93)90046-C; Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017); Samuel O. Oloruntoba, Regionalism and Integration in Africa, 1st ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016), https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-1-137-56867-0_1. 2. Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, “What Democracy Is…and Is Not,” Journal of Democracy 2, no. 3 (1991): 75–88; Lorenzo Fioramonti, European Union Democracy Aid: Supporting Civil Society in Post-Aparthed South Africa (London: Routledge, 2010). 3. Lorenzo Fioramonti, European Union Democracy Aid: Supporting Civil Society in Post-Aparthed South Africa. 4. Claude Ake, “Rethinking African Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 2, no. 1 (1991): 32–44; Staffan I. Lindberg, “The Surprising Significance of African Elections | Journal of Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 17, no. 1 (2006): 139–51, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/thesurprising-significance-of-african-elections/; Nandini Patel et al., “Consolidating Democratic Governance in Southern Africa: Malawi” (Johannesburg: Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa [EISA], 2007). 5. Fioramonti, European Union Democracy Aid: Supporting Civil Society in PostAparthed South Africa. 6. Alfred C Stepan, “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations,’” Journal of Democracy 11, no. 4 (2000): 37–57, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2000. 0088. 7. Stepan. 8. Solomon O. Akanbi & Jaco Beyers, “The Church as a Catalyst for Transformation in the Society,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 73, no. 4 (2017): a4635, https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i4.4635. 9. John Courtney Murray, “Contemporary Orientations of Catholic Thought on Church and State in the Light of History,” Theological Studies 10, no. 2 (May 4, 1949): 177–234, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056394901000201. 10. Donald Wolfe, “The Unitary Theory of Church-State Relations,” Journal of Church and State, (1962): 47–65; Joseph C. Fenton, “Principles Underlying Traditional Church-State Doctrine,” The American Ecclesiastical Review 126 (1952): 452–62. 11. Akanbi & Beyers. 12. Anthony Gill, The Political Origins of Religious Liberty, the Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), https:// doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511790805.

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71. John B. Stephens. “Conflicts over Homosexuality in the United Methodist Church: Testing Theories of Conflict Analysis and Resolution” (1998). 72. Akanbi & Beyers. 73. Esbeck, “Five Views of Church-State Relations in Contemporary American Thought.” 74. William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation (University of California Press, 1985). 75. Brian Dickey, Elaine Martin, and Rod Oxenberry, Rations, Residence, Resources: A History of Social Welfare in South Australia since 1836, Social Service Review (Netley, SA: Wakefield Press, 1986), https://doi.org/10. 1086/603686; Roger Finke, “Religious Deregulation: Origins and Consequences,” Journal of Church and State 32, no. 3 (June 1, 1990): 609–626, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/32.3.609; Stephen V. Monsma and Christopher J. Soper, Challenge of Pluralism: Church and State in Five Democracies, Pro Rege, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2009). 76. Gill, The Political Origins of Religious Liberty. 77. Philip Gorski, “The Return of the Repressed: Religion and the Political Unconscious of Historical Sociology,” in Remaking Modernity, ed. Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 161–190, https://doi.org/10.1515/978082238588 2-006. 78. Adu A. Boahen, ed., General History of Africa, VII: Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935, 1st Edition, vol. VII (Paris and London: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization & Heineman Educational Books Ltd, 1985). 79. Boahen. 80. Boahen. 81. Danoye Oguntola-Laguda. Religion, leadership and struggle for power in Nigeria: a case study of the 2011 presidential election in Nigeria. Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 41, no. 2 (2015): 219–233. 82. Aernout J. Nieuwenhuis. “State and Religion, a Multidimensional Relationship: Some Comparative Law Remarks,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 10, no. 1 (January 1, 2012): 153–174, https://doi.org/10.1093/ icon/mos001. 83. Danoye Oguntola-Laguda, “Religion, Leadership and Struggle for Power in Nigeria: A Case Study of the 2011 Presidential Election in Nigeria,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae (SHE) 41, no. 2 (2015): 219–33, .https://doi.org/ 10.17159/2412-4265/2015/225. 84. Lusaka Times, “Nigerian High Commission to Zambia Assures PF It Will Address Seer 1 Concerns,” Lusaka Times, June 20, 2020, https://www.lus akatimes.com/2020/06/20/nigerian-high-commission-to-zambia-assures-pfit-will-address-seer-1-concerns/. 85. Lusaka Times, “SEER 1 Calls for Patience among Zambians over His Plan to Expose PF Politicians,” Lusaka Times, February 3, 2020, https://www.lus akatimes.com/2020/02/03/262163/. 86. Zambian Observer, “Chingola Pastor Arrested On Radio For Speaking Out On Ritual Killings,” Zambian Observer, January 24, 2020, .https://www. zambianobserver.com/chingola-pastor-arrested-on-radio-for-speaking-out-onritual-killings/.

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105. Eddy Isango, “Un Évêque Controversé de La RDC Porte Plainte Contre l’ancien Président Joseph Kabila”; Vitrine RDC, “Pascal MUKUNA Saisit La Justice Contre Joseph KABILA.” 106. Media Congo, “Joseph Kabila Doit Être Jugé, Évêque Mukuna.”

CHAPTER 48

Reimaging Women Ritual Space: Gender and Power Dynamics in African Religion Abosede Omowumi Babatunde

Introduction Africa’s cultural and social identities are embedded in the traditional beliefs, values, and practices of the diverse societies. The local traditions and belief systems have evolved from the collective experiences articulated in Africa’s mythology. Over time the influence of colonialism and modernity has whittled down the relevance of Africa’s traditional cultural traditions and their impact on African societies. This also gave rise to some critiques and controversies about the African traditional religion. Scholars like Allen (2008) described the African traditional justice as vaguely formulated conceptions about African ways of doing things. Other criticisms centered on the perceived patriarchal structure of traditional religion and practices, which tends to foster discrimination of women (Bennett 2008; Aiyedun and Ordor 2016). This paints a picture of a patriarchal-based religion that curtails the right and empowerment of women. This chapter explores the complex gendered power relations and dynamics inherent in African traditional religion and spirituality. African traditional religion has to do with the indigenous ritual practices derived from cultural traditions, customs, and norms of the societies (Orji and Olali 2010). Mac Ginty (2008) explains that tradition signifies the age-long practice or norm in existence for a considerable duration. This practice or norm may undergo constant processes of changes and adaptation to the social environment. A. O. Babatunde (B) Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_48

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The masculine-based projection of Africa’s spirituality and mythology has been encapsulated in women’s gender construction as subordinate and male dominance that permeates African societies’ socio-political structure. The divergent views about the structure of power, myths, and culture have been politicized to sideline women’s contribution to the spiritual and political sphere. This chapter thus challenged the notion of the primacy of male deities in African religion and spirituality. It demonstrates that African female deities have exercised formidable ritual powers and authority like their male divinities. The prowess of African female deities transcends the confine of African societies and accorded them ritual spaces in other parts of the world. Through interactions with African slaves, the indigenous religious practices, rituals, and beliefs of Africans have become integrated into the spiritual practice of many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Norman (2015) describes how the transnational African-derived religious practice was brought to the Americas by enslaved ethnic Yoruba from the West African coast (modern-day Nigeria) beginning in the eighteenth century. She explains that the African indigenous religion was initially preserved in places like Brazil and Cuba, from where it recently proliferated among African-Americans in the United States beginning in 1959. In the Western world, African ritual practices have been syncretized with Christianity and adapted according to local custom. Some of the African female deities and the male divinities have been prominent in the ritual practices of these Western societies (Michel 1984). In Latin America, for instance, the African traditional religion has been tagged Afro-American religion and given names such as Regla de Ocha or Santeria in Cuba, Vodou in Haiti, and Candomble in Brazil. It is alternatively known as Yoruba, Lucumi, Regla de Ocha, or Santería in Cuba and the United States and involved propitiation of eguns and the orisha, a multitude of deities that represent various forces of nature and natural phenomenon (Norman 2015). Apart from West Africa, the indigenous religious practices were also drawn from East and South Africa, particularly from the traditional Yoruba, Fon, and Bantu beliefs. Like the African indigenous religion, the Afro-American belief system centered on the belief in a one all-powerful God called Oludumaré and multiple lesser deities referred to as orixas, vodun, and inkices Latin America. While ancestral spirits are known as “Baba Egum” in Brazil, it is called “Egungun” in other parts of South America (Curry 1997). Prominent among the African female deities worshipped in the Western world include Nana Buluku, Yemanja, Oba, and Osun, while male deities like Ogun and Sango have occupied prominent ritual spaces among devotees in America. Some estimates showed that at least 100 million devotees of African deities practice a diverse form of the African indigenous religion in the United States and Latin America (Fisher 2006; Norman 2015). Women divinities occupied prominent ritual spaces in the Afro-American religious practices and are accorded leadership roles in the religious spheres.

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The practice of African traditional religion in America has engendered a transnational cultural and religious assimilation that foster the revival of African’s traditional cultural heritage (Gregory 1999). Norman (2015) submits that some African Diasporas have returned to the continent to reconnect with their ancestral traditions and have encouraged the local African communities to reclaim this heritage. In Nigeria, for instance, African Diasporas’ devotees of the Osun goddess have returned to the country to be initiated as priestesses of the deity. Thus, the ritual spaces occupied by the African female deities have played vital roles in fostering the revival of Africa’s cultural and historical identity that was displaced through slavery and colonialism. The UNESCO recognition of the Osun Sacred Grove as one of the world heritage site in July 2005 has further promoted African cultural heritage in the global arena. This, thus, point to the powerful ritual spaces occupied by the African female deities and the critical roles they have continued to play in the preservation of African cultural heritage. Gluckman (1969), in his study of the Barotse of Zambia, uses the term “multiplex relationships” to describe the power relations within the African ritual practices. Gluckman’s (1969) “multiplex relationships” is relevant in explaining the intricate network of gendered power relations and dynamics central to the analysis of African mythology. Historical and contemporary insights into African mythology demonstrate that the female deities and their male divinities played key roles in developing African societies and other parts of the world. In other ritual functions as healers, diviners, and priestesses, women are also accorded recognition and political authority. The patriarchal-based articulation of African traditional religion has been traced to the influence of Abrahamic religions on African societies (Kumari 2013). This narrative projects the image of male deities revered by all and sundry and female deities celebrated mainly by the female folks or through the influence of the male deities they are related to. This is captured, for instance, in the account of the Yoruba deity, Sango, who is known as the husband of the female deity associated with the rivers, Osun. The Yoruba mythology narrative described how Sango influence paved the way for Osun’s ascendency in the spiritual realm, and the reverence accorded her by other spirits (Kumari 2013). Other accounts like that of the Akan and Bantu-speaking societies have depicted the ritual spaces occupied by female deities within the confine of their social relations with some male divinities in their lives (Day 2020). This projection tends to overlook that many of the African female deities, who were married to male divinities, have exhibited autonomous mystical powers and functions unconnected to their primordial husbands’ ritual functions. These ritual spaces have been complementary in ways that strengthen their contributions to African societies’ development and the global community where these deities are revered. Thus, the projection of the female deity’s image, which draws ritual powers from the male deity within the spiritual realm, is tied to the politics behind the masculinization narrative dominant in African religion cosmology discourse.

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Female deities have been constructed in the realm of motherhood and givers of fertility (Mokwena 2004). Despite the critical functions, the female divinities are also carried out through healing, cleansing, and bearers of wealth, prosperity, and social equilibrium, which intersect with the functions of male deities in the ritual realm. Day (2020) explains that women roles within the spiritual realms as priestesses, healers, and secret cults such as the zaar cults (Ethiopia, Somalia, Egypt, and Eritrea) and Iya Mi (Yoruba, Nigeria) demonstrate the expansive ritual capacity they possessed. The construction of African female deities’ ritual power within the realm of motherhood also downplays the spiritual essence embedded in motherhood within African spirituality. In the post-colonial era, the viability of African traditional religion and practices may have diminished, and it has still shown considerable resilience as it evolved and changed in a way that continues to illustrate and attest to the overlaps of masculine and feminine mystical power across diverse societies in African and other parts of the world (Zartman 2017). Feminist anthropologists have offered some critical gendered insights on the heterogeneity in African traditional religion and spirituality that point to the complex structure of the ritual spaces and practices (Barnes 1990; Olupona 2014). This chapter highlights the centrality of female deities in the ritual spaces in African traditional religion and spirituality that accorded them recognition across the world. In some contexts in Africa and American societies, female deities have occupied ritual spaces that supersede those of the male deities, while other contexts depict the reverse or overlaps of ritual spaces by the African god and goddess (Olupona 2002; Mokwena 2004). In addition to the introduction, the chapter has four parts. Firstly, it denotes the conceptual understanding of African traditional religion and spirituality. Secondly, it interrogates the gender construction of African traditional religion. Thirdly, using historical and contemporary examples establishes the heterogeneity, overlaps, and complementarity of African deities’ ritual spaces. Finally, the chapter articulates the formidable ritual spaces occupied by the female deities and divinities in African societies and other parts of the world. The chapter concludes that the gender discourse on African traditional religion and spirituality needs to recognize the essentiality of the female deities and their primacy and their male counterpart in a way that transcends gender bias.

Construction of African Religion and Spiritually Religion comprises interconnected systems of symbols and guidelines that serve as a path or gateway to ultimate transformation (Galtung 1997). It is embedded in individual and group subconscious and shaped their responses to social practices and interactions. Religion has considerable influence on the cultural behavior and perceptions of groups and individuals in interpreting social phenomena (Dahal and Bhatta 2008). Religious values, norms, and

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behaviors are regarded as an integral part of the interactions between individuals and among groups, which helps in constructing a value system and world-view (Said et al. 2001). Traditional religion denotes the age-long ritual practices emanating from cultural traditions, customs, and norms of a given society (Murdock 1967), impacting social relationships across cultural boundaries. In African societies, traditional religion plays an integral role in their rich cultural heritage and belief system (Babatunde 2017). The myth surrounding the ritual practices reflects the beliefs, values, and norms of African societies. They represent the relics of ancient times and are still relevant in contemporary African societies. The traditional religion is thus embedded in the sets of beliefs and myths that explain the influence of the supernatural on a given society’s cultural behavior and illustrate the social relation and gendered power relations and dynamics within the ritual spheres. The power of the ritual is applied in influencing the social behavior of the participants to enforce complaints to social order (Cox et al. 1994). The traditional religion centered on the belief in a Supreme Being, regarded as Heaven and Earth; a multitude of lesser spiritual deities or divinities; and ancestral spirits. In some West African societies, the Supreme God is commonly referred to as Amma, Olodumare, or Olorun. In a part of East Africa, Mulungu is another name associated with the Supreme God. The African deities are regarded as the emíssaries of the Supreme Being and comprises of both female and male divinities who performed complementary tasks based on the ritual powers bestowed on them. However, gender discourses on African religion have situated the female deities in subordinated positions, linking their ritual powers to their social relations to their male counterparts. The myriad roles women played within the ritual spaces as healers, diviners, priestesses, and secret cults have also not been duly acknowledged in a way that recognizes the critical agency of women in the African traditional religion spheres. Although they shared some common cultural practices, African societies also exhibit some remarkable variation in their customs, norms, and belief system. The diversity in ritual practices logically suggests that gendered power relations among the male and female deities vary. Exploring the gendered power relation in the traditional religion in diverse African societies is essential in establishing the primacy of the female’s ritual power and the male deities and deconstructing the male-centric notion that relegates the female deities to a subordinated position.

Gender Framing of African Religion and Spiritually The mainstream discourse on African traditional religion has largely advanced the notion that the African traditional religion promotes a patriarchal system that places women in a subordinated society position. It has also reinforced the universal conception of women’s lack of agency, in which their critical contributions to society have remained largely unacknowledged and unappreciated.

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The portrayal of the African deities in the image of a male god is perceived to give its male adherents the cultural-religious currency of power (Idumwonyi and Eduviere 2020). The female deities are projected to have drawn ritual power from their male counterparts or given a masculine representation in their ritual prowess description. African deities, both male and female, are projected in the image of nature, including the earth, the sun, the moon, and the forest. Since nature represents the very essence of life, the female deities, like their male counterpart, represent the custodian of human existence. African traditional societies have pantheons of deities too numerous to mention. Johnson (2018) identified some of the deities in Africa that are well known across the continent and the world. These include Ala (Igboland, Nigeria), Agé-Fon (Dahomey Kingdom, Benin Republic), Modjaji (South Africa), Kibuka (Buganda Empire, Uganda), Nana Buluku (West Africa subregion), and Adroa (Central Africa). Three out of the six deities, including Ala, Modjaji, and Nana Buluku, are female divinities. In African cosmology, the narrative of these female deities, some of who were married to gods, perhaps accounted for the perception that they occupied an inferior position to the male deities. Idumwonyi and Eduviere (2020) suggest that the popular belief is that most of the spiritual beings are male (Mende, San), who have divine wives (Ganda, Yoruba, Bemba, San, Mende) and mothers (Bemba). Numerous accounts of African myths have shown that some of the female deities’ ritual powers are not tied to a divine husband. For instance, Ala, (also known as Ale, Ani, or Ana) goddess of the earth, who was regarded as one of the most revered deities in Igboland, was married to Amadioha, known as the sky god. The Igbo cosmology did not depict the supremacy of Amadioha’s ritual power to that of Ala, and that Ala derived her ritual power from her husband. Ala was not only considered as the goddess of the earth; she was also regarded as the deity of fertility, morality, and creativity. She possessed the ritual prowess that made her be categorized among the most powerful deities in Igboland and across the continent and globally. The patriarchal setting in African societies where the male is considered the head of the family and the wife is placed as the subordinate has been extended to the religious spheres. A female deity married to a male god is automatically placed in an inferior position. Such assumption did not consider the fact that the deities’ ritual spaces differ from the social spaces in which the male is regarded as the head of the family and the wife the subordinate. This assertion is not to preclude the fact that male deities have contributed to the ritual power and reverence accorded their primordial wives in some contexts. For instance, in Yoruba cosmology, Sango, a prominent male deity in Yorubaland (Nigeria), was acclaimed to have married female deities, including Oya. It was narrated that Sango contributed to the ritual powers and reverence that Oya enjoyed. In Dahomey (Benin), Agé-Fon, is a male deity in the ancient Dahomey Empire, referred to as the son of the Mawu-Lisa (the moon, goddess and sun, god), who gave him the power and responsibility to protect and guide hunters in the wilderness. His ritual power was drawn from his divine father

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and mother. The case of Oya and Age-Fon depicted two contrasting cases that underscore the need not to generalize based on a specific context that is not reflective of other contexts. It may be argued that the position of a mother differs from that of a wife. Yet, we need to understand that women’s biological function is used as a social construct to place them in a subordinated position and deny their agency. The point made is that females and male deities can have a prerogative of ritual power and at the same time derived power from one another within the ritual spaces. In West Africa, Nana Buluku is regarded as a prominent female deity; she was accorded female Supreme Being in the West African traditional religion. Nana Buluku, alternately known as Nana Buruku, Nana Buku, or Nanan-bouclou among the Fon in Benin, Ewe in Togo, and Ekan in Ghana, exemplified the image of a powerful female deity, which contrasted the popular narratives about the primacy of the male deities linked to the image of a male-like God. In West African mythology, Nana Buluku, who was believed to appear in the image of an older woman, was regarded as the creator of the world (Falola and Amponsah 2012). In Nigeria, the deity is prominent and revered among the Yoruba and Igbo traditional societies, where she was known as Nana Bukuu and Olisabuluwa, respectively (Washington 2005). The deity was regarded as the mother supreme creator who gave birth to twins, the moon spirit Mawu, the sun spirit Lisa, and other deities across the universe (Rich 2009). Another contention relates to the belief that female devotees mainly worship female deities. This is true for some deities, based on their ritual functions centered on fertility for women seeking children. Examples include Osun, a female deity in Yorubaland, Nigeria, revered for her fertility ritual power for women seeking children. In Yoruba mythology, Osun is regarded as one of the wives of the powerful Sango deity (god of storm and Thunder). Another example is Okorobojo, a female deity in Ilaje, South-western Nigeria, worshipped by the women based on the belief that she can give children to barren women. Nevertheless, while these feminine deities are associated with the fertility of the womb, many of them also performed other ritual functions such as fertility of the soil, wealth, and prosperity. Yet, their ritual power of fertility of the womb is given more prominence. Indeed, other relevant cases have shown ample contradictions that point to the prerogative powers that female deities also possessed in the ritual spaces. In South Africa, for example, among the Balobedu people, Modjaji is revered as the rain goddess, who resides in the body of a young woman, the princess Dzugundini, of the Balebedu Kingdom. The female deity has ritual power over rain and is highly revered and celebrated among deities’ pantheon. Her power over rain accorded her both male and female devotees who made propitiation to the rain deity. In Igboland, Nigeria, Ahia Njoku is a female deity, who is also known as Ifejioku, and associated with yam harvest. Yam is a staple food in Igbo society, mostly cultivated by the men. The deity is generally worshiped by the Igbo

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people, both male, and female and celebrated during the yam festival, known as the Ahanjoku festival. Among the Ilajes, Aiyelala is a very powerful female deity regarded as a guardian of social morality and administrator of justice (Awolalu 1996). Aiyelala is revered and worshiped by both male and female adherents who make propitiation at the deity’s shrine to seek social justice. African women have also occupied other prominent ritual spaces as diviners, healers, secret cults, and priestess. These women possessed mystic power and served as intermediaries between the supernatural and the natural. Women have been associated with the secret cults, which help in unraveling mysteries beyond human comprehension in African societies. However, the contention is that female secret cults’ ritual functions are hardly visible within the ritual and spiritual realm. Mokwena (2004) points to the case of South Africa in which there are as many female and male ancestors. Yet, Idumwonyi and Eduviere (2020) suggest that the case of South Africa is one of the few exceptions, arguing that in most contexts, African ancestors and ancestress are not accorded the same authority or ritual ceremonies by their followers. Women are also hardly provided with the ancestral shrine, notwithstanding the age or mystical position they may have attained in the ritual sphere and their contribution to societal development. Nevertheless, an inquiry into African mythology revealed that some of the female divinities, for example, Ala, of the Odinani, in Igboland (Nigeria) is regarded as the ruler of the primordial beings who hold all the deceased ancestors in her womb. In Yoruba cosmology, Egungun (literally translated as masquerade) is regarded as the collective spirits of the ancestral dead. While Egungun is usually depicted in the male image, Egungun-Oya is a female deity regarded as the mother of the Egungun. These examples suggest that women’s ritual power encompasses ritual spaces in which male divinities are given primacy. While women may not be granted the same ritual ceremonial rights as men, this does not apply to all contexts. In fact, many female deities have befitting shrines that are still in existence in the contemporary era. Among the Yoruba deities, Osun is a relevant example of a female divinity widely celebrated in a befitting shrine refers to as Osun groove, which has been recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site. African ancestor cults are regarded as the living dead, that is, the dead elders accorded honor as legends and regarded as the object of worship by their family, kin, the larger clan, or community (Kopytoff 1971; Olaoba 2008). In some African societies, it is considered taboo for a woman to perform a ritual in an ancestral family shrine (Douglas 1984). Yet, an inquiry into some other cultures reveals that women are forbidden from entering or performing a ritual in the ancestral shrines when they are going through their menstrual flow as they are believed to be unclean. For example, among the Ilaje, women are barred from entering the ancestral shrine during their menstrual flow. The belief is that women will no longer be able to conceive a child. This buttress Idumwonyi and Eduviere (2020)’s claim that women in their pre-and

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post-menopausal age are accorded recognition within the African traditional religion more than the “impure” menstruating women. Thus, menstrual blood is fundamental to women’s religious and spiritual status in the ritual realm. Yet, menstrual blood can also be a determinant of women’s socio-political status. Pre-and post-menopausal women could never be allowed to reign as a king (Idumwonyi and Eduviere 2020). Such restrictive cultural traditions perpetuate women’s subservience and invisibility within the ritual arena, notwithstanding numerous narratives attested to women’s prominence in African mythology. This assertion is consistent with the views of feminist anthropologists that the substance of “impurity” tied to the menstrual blood is indicative of the politics of exclusion deployed as a robust tool by the key actors and players in taming, controlling, and sidelining women in African traditional religious spheres (Kilson 1976; Douglas 1984; Idumwonyi and Eduviere 2020). Women’s menstrual cycle denotes the biological functions that they have no control over its flow at a particular point in time. By implication, women’s lack of control over their menstrual flow suggests that its activation is indeterminate, such that it may surface at any point in time, even during a spiritual spell, in which the power of the supernatural forces may seem incapable of halting the flow of blood (Isichei 1991). This kind of prejudiced perspective overlooks the substance of menstrual flow in the conception of life or as a medium of creation of human life. African mythology has shown that women’s status as givers of life (mother) can confer ritual power passed down to their children who also become supernatural beings. Examples include female divinities like Nana Buluku and Mawu. Some female deities, such as Osun, Oya, and Ala (among the Yoruba and Igbo kingdoms)’s ritual functions and prominence, are linked to their spiritual capacities as children the barren. As Day (2020) submits, motherhood itself denotes an important trope of power in societies where reproduction was a vital source of social continuity and expression of wealth. In Yoruba cosmology, IyaMi symbolizes a very powerful spiritual being, described as the spiritual essence of the African women, and refer to as the Womb of Existence in terms of their biological function of menstruating, conceiving, birthing wombs of existence (Adefila and Opeola 1998; Washington 2005). Feminists contend that women have hardly been accorded public ritual responsibilities within the secret cults except for a few like the Iya Mi, also refer to as Aje (witches or the art of witchcraft), Iyanifa (mothers who own Ifa), and not like a Babalawo (father of the mysteries) among the Yoruba (Idumwonyi and Eduviere 2020). In fact, feminist anthropologists perceived the labeling of IyaMi as a witch to reinforce gender bias geared toward denigrating their ritual power, arguing that witch connotes culturally inappropriate terms that muddle the true meaning and essence of the ritual power of IyaMi (Adeduntan 2008). IyaMi is regarded as one of the prominent and powerful female secret cults representing the very essence of motherhood. In Yoruba cosmology, IyaMi,

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is believed to possess prerogative ritual power and functions as the force of creator, sustenance of life and existence, and bearers of fortune and misfortune (Pritchard 1937; Beier 1958; Washington 2014). IyaMi commands reverence from other secret cults, diviners, and priests in Yoruba societies, especially among the Ijio, Ketu, Imeko, and Egbado people of Oyo, Lagos and Ogun state of Nigeria. A major festival known as Gelede festival is performed to celebrate and placate Iya Mi to bring good fortune and wade off bad fortune from the communities (Drewal and Drewal 1983; Lawal 1996). Historical records in other African societies have shown a dualistic structure of ritual spaces occupied by women and men in the secret cults. In West Africa, secret cults such as the Ogboni among the Yoruba of southwest Nigeria, the Ekpo (Leopard) and Ekpe (Spirit) societies in Southeastern Nigeria are projected in the masculinity image. While it may seem unclear if women are part of these secret cults, research has revealed the centrality of women divinities in the Ogoni traditional cosmology, which is encapsulated in the belief in a Supreme Deity regarded as a woman (Anikpo et al. 2015). Thus, it is believed that the Ogoni originates from the womb of the female Supreme Deity refer to as the Great Mother. In Sierra Leone, the popular Poro and Sande secret societies of the Mende have a dual structure in which the Poro represent the male secret cult, while the Sande represents the secret cult for the women (Opoku 1978). The Poro and Sande are both regarded as powerful secret cults that played complementary roles within the traditional religion sphere as the custodians of social justice and morality in Mende societies. The construction of the Poro and Sande’s ritual power and functions was not based on the perception of supremacy or subordination in the ritual spaces. Apart from the dual-secret cult, an example of exclusive female secret cults is that of the Isikhuan (royal singers’ guild) attached to the Oba of Benin’s palace, who played major roles in the palace ritual ceremonies (Idumwonyi and Eduviere 2020). Women’s agency in terms of their significant contribution to African religion and spirituality through their ritual prowess as deities, secret cults, healers, and diviners have been not visible and recognized because it is largely regarded as tangential and subsumed under the notion of male primacy in the ritual spaces. This is despite that the existing narratives have shown ample evidence that indicates that African deities, both female and males demonstrated formidable ritual prowess and forces in the administration of justices, social cohesion, and development in African societies (Bascom 1969). The ritual potency of these mystics’ forces is still viable in contemporary African societies, particularly at the subnational level where the traditional religion has continued to be relevant as integral aspects of the cultural traditions of the people (Osaghae 2000; Zartman 2017).

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Gender Overlaps and Complementarity in African Religion and Spirituality African mythology’s historical narratives depicted a complex ritual structure in which there are gender overlaps and complementarity of the ritual spaces occupied by the African masculine and feminine supernatural and spiritual beings. In contemporary African societies, gender overlaps and complementary in the African traditional religious practices have been sustained. For instance, Utas (2009) study on traditional healing for the survivors of sexual abuse during the Sierra Leone civil war point to what he referred to as the traditional healing complex comprising several overlapping actors, in which female herbalists occupied a prominence ritual space, accompanied by other spiritualists from other religions. In the Sierra Leone traditional healing complex, the female secret cult known as Zoe Mammies, the heads of the female secret societies played formidable roles in the traditional healing process for the survivors of sexual abuse in the aftermath of the Sierra Leone war, alongside other spiritualists, including the Muslim healers and teachers, refer to as Mori-men and Karamokos and Christian pastors. In their article, Tade and Olaitan (2015) elucidated on the ritual functions of the male and female traditional spiritualist in crime control in Iraye-Oke communities in Lagos, Nigeria, in which the elegboogi (traditional medicine men and women) and Babalawo (diviners) featured prominently in the detection of crime and protection of the community. In this contemporary era, the case of the Iraye-Oke depicts the gender overlaps in the ritual functions of the male and traditional female spiritualists. Among the Afro-American devotees of African deities, women as priestesses and the male priest have played profound roles in the orisha worshippers’ ritual practices (Curry 1997; Norman 2015). Idumwonyi and Eduviere (2020) described the centrality of women’s ritual power in Benin (Nigeria) socio-political system in which consultation with women spiritualists is an integral aspect of the installation of the male monarch. Like the case of Benin, women’s mystic power has been deployed in the enthronement of male monarchs, including Oba, Olu, Alaafin, Igwe, Emir, Odionwere (community head), Okaegbe (family head) in a different part of Nigeria (Pritchard 1937). These examples demonstrate that women’s ritual functions are complementary, not merely secondary to their male divinities. Feminists suggest that women and men as conduits of the spirits are revered by their adherents during spiritual possession without reference to gender distinction (Isichei 1991; Jell-Bahlsen 2000). At the point of spiritual possession, women can temporarily transform their “inferior” social status into a state of prestige (Idumwonyi and Eduviere 2020) in the religious sphere within their societies, where they serve as an intermediary between the supernatural and the mortals. Thus, Silva (2013) avers that the spirit makes no distinction based on sexes; as a female or male, or the bodily part about the vagina or phallus during the spiritual possession of the body, as an emissary of the supernatural. It logically follows that females’ and males’ spiritualist ritual powers

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transcend their gender identities’ confines. It also indicates that the possession of ritual powers accorded women with the capacity to navigate their subordinated position. Thus, through their ritual power, women can exercise authority in the public domain based on their position in cultural societies or religious sects. This assertion is established by drawing inference from various societies, including that of the Mende of Sierra Leone, to illustrate how women possession of ritual power like the Sande (female) which complemented the Poro (male) secret cults have placed women historically in a position of culturally defined concepts of gender complementarity. The case of the Buganda kingdom in the Great Lakes region also exemplifies the ritual function of the Lubuga priestess, regarded as the sister of the Kabaka, king of the kingdom. The Lubaga performed vital ritual functions as a priestess and later as the guardian of the king’s tomb after his death that accorded them a formidable status in the socio-political system of the kingdom (Lebeuf 1963; 102). In the Ashante region of Ghana, the dual-sex system operates in a way that the queen mothers exercise public authority and perform ritual functions in tandem with male rulers (Kilson 1976; Day 2020). The queen mothers are vested with the authority to lead the women of the community and the selection and endorsement of the male leaders of the community.

Women Formidable Status in African and Afro-American Traditional Religion and Spirituality Feminist anthropologists’ exposition on the roles, functions, and status of the female deities point to the formidable status they have occupied and the reverence they are still accorded to date by their male and female devotees. Like the male divinities, the female deities have not only been the custodian of local tradition, customs, and norms, they have played vital roles in the progress and development of African and Afro-American societies. Some of these deities’ ritual powers extended beyond African societies to other regions of the world, including Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. In Yoruba societies, for instance, Oya, also refer to as Oya-Iyansan or Iansa in Latin America, is one of the prominent deities, well celebrated beyond Yoruba societies (Washington 2014). Oya is regarded as one of the wives of Sango, the god of Thunder. Yet, as a deity in her own right, Oya is highly regarded as the deity associated with the winds, lightning, storms, death, and rebirth. She is the acclaimed goddess of the Niger River, known as Odo-O . ya in Yorubaland (Washington 2014). In Haiti, Oya is accorded a similar ritual space with one of the Haitian god known as Maman Brigitte, syncretized with the Catholic Saint Brigit.

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Yemaya is one of the renowned female deities in Yoruba society whose fame and reverence also extended as far as Latin America, especially in Uruguay, Haiti, south of Brazil and Cuba, where she is worshipped mainly as the sea or ocean goddess. In Brazil, Yemanja is one of the most popular orixás, deities from the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomble. A colorful all-white celebration is done yearly in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, thousands of her devotees in her honor (Brown 2003). The deity is often portrayed in the image of a mermaid and is also known as Yemoja, Iamanjie, Yemanja, Yemonja, Yemowo, depending on the dialect of the Yoruba tribe of her devotees (Bascom 1969). In Yorubaland, Yemaya is the acclaimed deity of the moon, and water, who has the ritual power of fertility for children and wealth. The deity is believed to dwell in the rivers and oceans, and a particular river in Yoruba land, known as Ogun River, is dedicated to her (Bascom 1969). Yemaja was married to Obatala, also known as Orisa-nla, one of the primordial divinities in the Yoruba belief system given molding the human body by Olodumare (Supreme being) (O . ladipo 1992: 19). In Yoruba cosmology, Yemaja is associated with women as a guardian and provider of children to barren women and healing. It is also believed that the deity gave birth to the first mortal human being (Bascom 1969). Oya and Yemoja symbolize female deities who are married to powerful male deities and are well recognized based on their unique ritual powers and functions, not because of their connubial relation to their primordial husbands. Their ritual functions tied to nature and life is complementary to that of their divine husbands. In Yoruba societies, the highly revered river female deities include Yemoja, Osun, Erinle, Oba, and Yewa, while Olokun is regarded as the sea’s male deity. Oba, as one of the Yoruba river goddess associated with the Oba river, is also regarded as the daughter of Yemoja as well as one of the wives of Sango (Bascom 1969). Oba, Oya, and Osun are river goddesses who were also married to Sango and are well known and revered in Yorubaland and beyond, particularly in Latin America (Bascom. 1969). Osun, as a female deity, is associated with divination, wealth, and prosperity in the Yoruba Ifa Literary Corpus (Elebuibon 2013). In African traditional religion, female and male deities are believed to be emissaries of the Supreme Being who granted these divinities ritual powers and authorities irrespective of their gender identities (Olupo.na and Rey 2008). The yearly Osun-Osogbo festival, a 12-day yearly celebration in August in honor of the deity, attracted tourists and devotees worldwide to the ancient Osogbo town (Woosnam et al. 2015). In South African mythology, Mbaba Mwana Waresa is a female deity among the Zulu, associated with the fertility of the land, water, and rain. She is believed to have authority over rainbows, agriculture, and harvests (Rogers 2004). She is one of the most celebrated and revered deities in the Zulu kingdom. She is regarded as the daughter of the sky god, Umvelinqangi (Conway 2003). In Zulu mythology, her ritual power was not linked to her divine father; rather, she was celebrated and revered as a powerful deity in her

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own right. Among the Fon people of Dahomey Kingdom (present-day Benin), Gleti is one of the female deities with authority over the moon. She is regarded as the mother of all the stars (Coulter and Turner 2000). Among the Ewe people of the Volta region, Togo and Ghana and Dahomey of the Benin Republic and other West African societies, Mawu, also refer to as Mahu, is known as the secondary creator goddess associated with the Moon (Greene 1996). In African mythology, she is believed to be the twin of the male god Lisa. Both Mahu and Lisa are regarded as the children of female divinity Nana Buluku, and they also gave birth to a male deity known as Age-Fon (Johnson 2018). The case of Mawu and Lisa typifies the essence of motherhood that depicts a female deity’s ritual power who gave birth to a generation of deities, both female and male divinities with their unique ritual power that cannot be categorized based on superiority and inferiority. As earlier stated, Ala is one of the most prominent deities in the Igbo pantheon and the deity of the earth. Although the female divinity was married to the sky god, Amadioha, she was revered for her ritual power as the earth’s deity, morality, fertility, and creativity. Her ritual functions that extended to fertility for the soil are vital for food production to generate a great harvest and meet the predominantly farming Igbo communities’ survival needs. Ala and her husband, the sky god, are believed to work together to ensure the survival of the Igbo society. Among the Yoruba, IyaMi Aje is regarded as Odu, which symbolizes the essence of motherhood in terms of the biological and spiritual creation and nurturing of life (Idowu 1962). Aje is primarily associated with women and female deities, particularly Osun and Yemoja (Washington 2005), based on their biological functions in childbearing, yet male divinities such as Obatala, Obaluaye, Ogun, and Oduduwa are believed to possess the power of Aje (Adefila and Opeola 1998). Adefila and Opeola (1998) suggest that even though Iyami Aje is largely associated with women and female goddesses, male deities with the ritual power of fertility of the womb and the people’s protection are also perceived to possess the power of Aje. Thus, IyaMi Aje encapsulates the ritual powers inherent in the creation and protection of the living being (Washington 2005). Female deities have continued to occupy formidable ritual spaces in African and Afro-American traditional religion, in ways that they cannot be relegated into the marginal fringes in the ritual realm in these societies.

Conclusion Historical and contemporary narratives of African mythology have contradicted the gender assumption of African male deities’ supremacy over the female deities. The accounts of diverse African and Afro-American societies demonstrate that female deities have prerogative ritual power as much as that exercised by the African male deities. It also projects the ritual power and political authorities wielded by female deities in the exercise of their other

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ritual functions as healers, priestesses, spiritualists, and diviners that exemplify the gender overlaps and complementarity of African religious practices in diverse African societies. African spirituality and religious practices depict complex power relations that transcend gender identities in diverse societies. Existing studies have highlighted the resilience of traditional religion and spirituality, but the gender discourse has hardly recognized the formidable positions, roles, and functions of female deities in the ritual spaces. This chapter illustrates the gendered power relationships and dynamics within the ritual spaces in African traditional religion and spirituality. The analysis demonstrates the overlaps of ritual power and prowess of male and female deities and women and men’s roles within the African spiritual realm. This analysis also depicts the complex structure of the ritual spaces occupied by male and female deities that point to their interdependency roles and function in African societies. It demonstrates that the male-centric conception of primordial African beings has been deployed to foster the patriarchal sentiments that make women’s formidable contribution to traditional religion largely invisible, unrecognized, and relegated to the margin of the public spheres. The ritual spaces occupied by the African female deities have extended beyond African societies to other regions in the world, including Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, where they have influenced cultural practices of their devotees in these societies.

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Barnes, S.T. (1990). Ritual, Power, and Outside Knowledge. Journal of Religion in Africa. Vol. 20, 3: 248–268. Bascom, W.R. (1969). The Yoruba of South-Western Nigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc. Beier, U. (1958). Gelede Masks. Odu: Journal of Yoruba and Related Studies. Vol. 6: 5–23. Bennett, T.W. (2008). Official versus Living Customary Law: Dilemmas of Description and Recognition. In Claassens, A. and Cousins, B. (eds.), Land, Power and Custom: Controversies Generated by South Africa’s Communal Land Rights Act. Cape Town: Juta. pp. 138. Brown, D.H. (2003). Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual and Innovation in an AfroCuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Conway, D.J. (2003). Magick of the Gods and Goddesses: Invoking the Power of the Ancient Gods. The Crossing Press. pp. 1–448. Coulter, C.R., and Turner, P. (2000). Encyclopedia of Ancient Deities. Routledge. pp. 1–610. Cox, H., Arvind Sharma, M.A., Sachedina, A., Oberoi, H., and Idel, M. (1994). World Religions and Conflict Resolution. In Johnston, Douglas and Sampson, Cynthia (eds.), Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 266–284. Curry, M.C. (1997). Making the Gods in New York: The Yoruba Religion in the African American Community. New York: Garland Publishing Dahal, Dev R., and Bhatta, Dev R. (2008). The Relevance of Local Conflict Resolution Mechanisms for Systemic Conflict Transformation in Nepal. St. Louis, MO, USA: Washington University. Day, L.R. (2020). African Women Traditional Chiefs and Rulers. In Yacob-Haliso, O. and Falola, T. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies. Springer Nature, Switzerland. pp. 1–17. Douglas, M. (1984). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. Drewal, H.J., and Drewal, M.J. (1983). Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Elebuibon, Y. (2013). Invisible Powers of the Metaphysical World: A Peep into the world of Witches. Ancient Philosophy Institute. Falola, T., and Amponsah, N.A. (2012). Women’s Roles in sub-Saharan Africa. Greenwood Publisher. pp. 1–232. Fisher, M.P. (2006). Living Religions: An Encyclopedia of The World’s Faiths. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Galtung, J. (1997). Conflict Life Cycles in Occident and Oríent. In Fry, Douglas P. and Bjorkqvist, Kaj (eds.), Cultural Variation in Conflict Resolution: Alternatives to Violence. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 41–49. Gluckman, M. (1969). Ideas and Procedures in African Customary Law. London: Oxford University Press. pp. 22. Greene, S.E. (1996). Religion, History and the Supreme Gods of Africa: A Contribution To the Debate. Journal of Religion in Africa. Vol. 26, 2: 122–138. Gregory, S. (1999). Santería in New York City: A Study in Cultural Resistance. New York: Garland. Idowu, E.B. (1962). Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief. Ìbadan: Longman’s Publication.

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Idumwonyi, I.M., and Eduviere, O.O. (2020). Women and African Traditional Religion. In Yacob-Haliso, O. and Falola, T. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies. Springer Nature, Switzerland. pp. 1–17. Isichei, E. (1991). Change in Anaguta Traditional Religion. Canadian Journal of African Studies. Vol. 25, 1: 34–57. Jell-Bahlsen, S. (2000). The Lake Goddess Uhammiri/Ogbuide: The Female Side of the Universe in Igbo Cosmology. In Olupona, J. K. (ed.), African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings, and Expressions. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. Johnson, E.O. (2018). Six Popular African Deities that were Worshipped Long before the Introduction of Christianity. https://face2faceafrica.com/article/6-popular-afr ican-deities-that-were-worshipped-long-before-the-introduction-of-christianity/7. Kilson, M. (1976). Women in African Traditional Religions. Journal of Religion in Africa. Vol. 8, 2: 133–143. Kopytoff, I. (1971). Ancestors as Elders in Africa. Africa. Vol. 41 (1) January. Kumari, A. (2013). Iyanifa: Women of Wisdom. USA: Maat Group. pp. 40. Lawal, B. (1996). The Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Harmony in an African Culture. University of Washington Press. Lebeuf, A.M. (1963). The Role of Women in the Political Organization of African Societies. In Paulme, D. (ed), Women of Tropical Africa (trans: H. M. Wright). Berkeley: University of California Press. Mac Ginty, R. (2008). Indigenous Peace-Making Versus the Liberal Peace. Cooperation and Conflict. Vol. 43: 139–161. Michel, de Certeau. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. (trans: Steven Rendall). Berkeley: University of California Press. Mokwena, M. (2004). Interrogating Traditional African Spirituality through a Gendered Lens. In Religion and Spirituality. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, No. 61. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Murdock, G.P. (1967). Ethnographic Atlas. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press. Norman, L. (2015). I Worship Black Gods: Formation of an African American Lucumi Religious Subjectivity. (Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences). O . ladipo, O. (1992). The Yoruba Conception of a Person: An Analytical-Philosophical Study. International Studies in Philosophy. Vol. 24 (3): 15–23. Olaoba, O.B. (2008). Yoruba Legal Culture. Lagos: New Age Publishers. Olupona, J. (2002). Imagining the Power of the Goddess: Gender in Yoruba Religious Traditions and Modernity. Princeton: Lecture, Princeton University. Olupona, J. (2014). African Religions: A Very Short Introduction. New York: OUP. Olupo.na, J.K. and Rey, T. (Eds). (2008). Orisa Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yoruba Religious Culture. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Opoku, K.A. (1978). West African Traditional Religion. Accra: DEP International Private Limited. Orji, K.E., and Olali, S.T. (2010). Traditional Institutions and Their Dwindling Roles in Contemporary Nigeria: The Rivers State Example. In Babawale, T., Aloa, .A., and Adesoji, B. (eds.), Chieftaincy Institution in Nigeria. Lagos: Concept Publication Concept for Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, Lagos, pp. 401–414. Osaghae, E.E. (2000). Applying Traditional Methods to Modern Conflicts: Possibilities and Limits. In Zartman, I. Williams (ed.), Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts: African Conflict “edicine. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. pp. 201–218.

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Pritchard, E.E. (1937). Witchcraft Oracles and Magic. London: Oxford University Press. Rich, S.A. (2009). The Face of “Lafwa”: Vodou and Ancient Figurines Defy Human Destiny. Journal of Haitian Studies. Vol. 15, 1/2: 262–278. Rogers, L. (2004). Edgar Cayce and the Eternal Feminine. Star Enterprises International. pp. 22. Said, A.A.A., Funk, N.C., and Lynn, M.K. (2001). The Role of Faith in Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution. Washington, DC. The United States: School of International Service, American University. Silva, S. (2013). Remarks on Similarity in Ritual Classification: Affliction, Divination and Object Animation. History of Religions. Vol. 53, 2: 151–169. Tade, O., and Olaitan, F. (2015). Traditional Structures of Crime Control in Lagos, Nigeria. April 2015. African Security Review. Vol. 24, 2: 1–15. Utas, M., 2009. Sexual Abuse Survivors and the Complex of Traditional Healing (G)local Prospects in the Aftermath of an African War. (G)local Prospects in the Aftermath of an African War. Mats Utas (Policy Dialogue No. 4). Uppsala: Nordic African Institute. Washington, T. (2014). The Architects of Existence: Aje in Yoruba Cosmology, Ontology, and Orature. Oya’s Tornado. p. 318. Washington, T.N. (2005). Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Aje in Africana Literature. Indiana University Press. Woosnam, K.M., Aleshinloye, K.D. and Maruyama, N. (2015). Solidarity at the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove—a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tourism Planning and Development. Vol. 13, (3): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568316.2015.110 4380. Zartman, I.W. (2017). Relying on One’s Self: Traditional Methods of Conflict Management. In Aall, P. and Crocker, C.A. (eds.), The Fabric of Peace in Africa: Looking Beyond the State. Centre for International Governance Innovation.

CHAPTER 49

Spatial Navigation as a Hermeneutic Paradigm Ifa, Heidegger and Calvino Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Introduction The discursive formations represented by Heideggerean thought, Ifa and Invisible Cities provide a rich framework for the exploration of spatial navigation because, through their distinctive conceptual and imagistic strategies, they foreground and investigate the methods and consequences related to the manner in which human beings navigate the framework of possibilities available to them. Along with the correlative significance of this thematic orientation, they are also unified in employing, within the idiom distinctive to each of them, the imagery of spatial navigation as an imaginative framework through which they examine the subject of strategies and consequences of navigation within realms of possibility, which I identify as constituting their unifying thematic focus.

Theoretical Framework Spatial Navigation in Relation to the Experience of Decision Making In order to explore the strategies and consequences created by the interpretation and management of the framework of possibilities constituted by human life, in relation to the discourses under study, I adopt two operative concepts

O. V. Adepoju (B) Lagos, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_49

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as guides in this paper. These concepts are “navigation” and “space,” which I correlate to create “spatial navigation.” In speaking of spatial navigation I transpose the experience of decisionmaking and its consequences in the course of human life to the sphere of navigating in space. In doing this I try to concretize and objectify an otherwise subtle, protean, and elusive phenomenon so as to make it more accessible to study. I expect that this metaphorical transposition will assist me in clarifying my subject matter through identifying and highlighting its most significant features. I describe the experience of decision-making in terms of navigation, because, like the experience of finding one’s way intelligently within a spatial environment, which navigation entails, decision-making involves making sense of clues as to the possible consequences of specific actions within a framework. This framework is defined not so much by physical structures, as influence movement in space, but by the range of possibilities that exist within specific situations. This framework may also be seen as realized in the total range of situations represented by a human life viewed as a field of possibilities. I interpret the act of decision-making in relation to the range of choices and possible consequences available, known or unknown to the decision-maker, as navigation and the field of possibilities as a spatial field.1 Invisible Cities in Relation to Spatial Navigation A central aspect of our analysis is centered in a close study of the communicative strategies at play in Italo Calvino’s work of contemplative prose poetry, Invisible Cities. This work consists of an exploration of the travels of the Venetian explorer, Marco Polo, though not simply in terms of movements between points in space. Through the portrayal of the existential framework of decisionmaking in relation to spatial navigation, these travels come to symbolize the act of spatial navigation as representative of the human effort to navigate within the context of possibilities constituted by the spatio-temporal framework of human existence. In relation to its metaphorical depiction of the experience of spatial navigation in terms of broader networks of decision-making and possibility, we further examine the work’s depiction of the effort to reflect on the philosophical implications of the manner in which decisions and actions emerge in relation to and shape the space of possibilities manifested by human life. Central Informing Schools of Thought: The Ifa System of Knowledge and Divination and Heidegger’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics This analysis is carried out in relation to the ideas of particular schools of thought. The major ideational frameworks we draw upon are the Ifa system of cosmology and divination which has its origins among the Yoruba of Southern

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Nigeria, and Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics as developed in Being and Time and What is Philosophy? The Ifa system provides a wealth of images and ideas that clarify and amplify our basic conceptions while Heideggerean phenomenological hermeneutics provides an overarching conceptual scheme with which these investigations are integrated. The Ifa system assists in creating imagistic models which employed as frames of interpretation because it depicts the decision-making experience in terms of the spatial and navigational metaphors I have adopted as my conceptual guides. Within this framework it also suggests illuminating images which crystallize central aspects of the ideas developed here, thereby clarifying and elaborating upon my preoccupations. Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics thus assists in developing a philosophical depth in my analysis of the subject matter. Heidegger’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics A. Central Ideas Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics represents a conception of the significance and methods of the process of interpretation. Interpretation may be seen as representing the act of making choices between alternative possibilities of meaning. Interpretation, therefore, involves decisions in favor of or against contrastive perspectives. Hermeneutics may be understood as the study of as well as the practice of the principles of interpretation. The subject of interpretation could be textual or existential, the latter consisting of the lived experience of the human being, with or without reference to texts. Heidegger’s phenomenological thought consists in a process of oscillation between two aspects of hermeneutics. One of this is textual hermeneutics, which is the study and practice of the principles of textual interpretation. The second is phenomenological hermeneutics, which involves the interpretation of the character of being through a study of the concrete particulars of human existence. Heidegger argues that the central question of philosophy is the inquiry into the nature of being, the quality or qualities that characterize existence as distinct from nonexistence. He also considers imperative the idea that this study be centered in a focus on the concrete particulars of the existence of the human person as a representative manifestation of the nature of being. From his perspective, the study of the human person is fundamental to the knowledge of being in general because the unique self-reflexivity of the human being enables him or her to both manifest and reflect on the act of being. Holt-Jensen sums up this perspective quite lucidly:

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The central concept in Heidegger’s philosophy is Dasein (i.e. ‘being here’),a German word meaning a human subject’s existential being in the world. As human beings, we are, on the one hand, interwoven with the environment and processes that make up the world, and, on the other, we step out of this unity to observe, experience and reflect on and choose between possible ways of being in the world.2

B. Imagistic Representations Heidegger concretizes his phenomenological hermeneutics through the use of imagery and symbolism that incidentally enables an explicit correlation of his work with our study of the philosophical implications of spatial navigation as a hermeneutic activity representative of the strategies and consequences of decision-making. He describes the process of philosophical inquiry into the nature of being in terms of walking a pathway of inquiry that brings the inquirer to a clearer understanding of the issues involved, and possibly to answers to the queries he or she has been pursuing. He represents the space of understanding in which the path of inquiry culminates in terms of a clearing in the forest. The forest could be seen as symbolizing the zone of the unknown and the clearing as indicating the space of enlightenment carved out of the unknown through the path of inquiry. In employing the ambulatory image of walking, with its visceral suggestion of concrete embodiment and activity in representing philosophical inquiry, Heidegger suggests the emphasis of his thought on the cardinal value of exploring the embodied, lived reality of human experience for insight into the nature of being. Walking is an activity that occurs in space within a temporal framework. Visualizing exploratory thought, therefore, in terms of walking suggests the philosopher’s focus on the spatio-temporal framework of human life as it contributes to shaping human existence.3 C. Ideational and Imagistic Relationships between Heidegger’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics and Calvino’s Invisible Cities Two aspects of Heidegger’s philosophical strategy link his work with the linguistic and imagistic focus of literature, particularly as demonstrated in Calvino’s Invisible Cities. One of these is his analysis and development of linguistic forms as suggestive of the human understanding of the nature of being. Another is his use of imagery and symbolism. His work demonstrates the view that the imagistic language represented by literature, and, particularly by poetry, is peculiarly alive to those profound subtleties of existence he struggles to sensitize his audience to through his writings. His work, therefore, demonstrates textual hermeneutics in its deployment of philological and poetic strategies and employs phenomenological hermeneutics in relating these to the concrete particulars of human existence, in relation to the individual as a distinctive unit as well as a social being.

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The poetic and philosophical dimensions of inquiry into the nature of being that are central to Heidegger’s work is correlative with Invisible Cities in the work’s poetic exploration of the experience of decision-making through the experience of spatial navigation. Invisible Cities represents an imaginative exploration of the interpretive processes involved in making choices in the navigational experience as well as in the perception and representation of the encounters arrived at on account of these choices. In its focus on poetic strategies in evoking the imaginative texture of experience, the book is in alignment with Heidegger’s deployment of linguistic strategies in phenomenological inquiry. In terms of its exploration of the philosophical significance of the choices made in the process of spatial navigation, it resonates with Heidegger’s analysis of the concrete specificities of human existence in his quest for the distinctive character of being. with Invisible Cities thereby demonstrates what Holt-Jensen describes as Heidegger’s focus on the human ability to participate in as well as reflect on the experience, a quality that, in Heidegger’s opinion, makes the human experience of being paradigmatic for being in general. In exploring the consequences of choices made in relation to movement in space, Invisible Cities may be aligned with Heidegger’s analysis of spatial frameworks. In exploring the interrelationships of space and time in relation to the metropolitan spaces the narrator visits, the book recalls Heidegger’s insistence on time, in relation to space, as a central conditioning factor in human existence.

The Ifa System of Knowledge and Divination A. Central Ideas The Ifa system of knowledge and divination is a system developed by the Yoruba of Southern Nigeria, through which clients, in collaboration with diviners, interpret the visual and verbal symbolism of the system as a means of gaining greater understanding of specific issues in their lives. The answers provided through the divinatory system may be seen as an attempt to gain insights into these issues in terms of their spatio-temporal framework. The insights demonstrate a temporal significance because they outline the roots of these issues in temporal connections from the past, describe the present state of the issues in question as well as their possibilities of development into the future. These divinatory perceptions embody a spatial dimension because they suggest or describe the zones of existence, physical and spiritual, to which these issues in question are related. Metaphorically speaking, they also depict the space of relationships constituted by the figures who feature in relation to the issues involved.

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B. Imagistic Representations I employ the visual and verbal symbolism of the Ifa system in giving concrete shape to my correlation of the agenda and strategy of Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics and the thematic orientations and artistic strategies of Invisible Cities. The Ifa imagery I employ consists in the system’s depiction of its hermeneutic activity as a technique of decision-making in terms of the imagery of spatial navigation. This imagery consists in the implicit correlation of the divinatory process with the imagery of movement along paths, which converge and diverge at a crossroads. The act of interpretation and its expression in specific choices represented by the decision to take one path as different from another is correlated with the interpretive and decision-making process constituted by the divinatory experience. The process involves unraveling the significance of the divinatory symbolism in relation to the specific situation at hand in the divinatory consultation. This interpretive process enables choices to be made between contrastive possibilities of explanation in relation to the issues in question. The image of the crossroads as representing the interpretive action involved in decision-making is amplified in Ifa through its correlation with the anthropomorphic symbolism of the deity Eshu. Eshu is described as the guide to the interpretation of the relationship of the divinatory symbolism to specific queries. He is depicted as dwelling at crossroads. His location at a crossroads symbolizes his role as a hermeneute who guides the interpretation of choices between alternatives of interpretation as represented by the image of divergence represented by the crossroads. In consisting in the convergence of paths which are defined in terms of a relationship of mutual exclusion, the crossroads also represent realities, which even though distinctive, also share a relationship of complementarity which they confer on each other, on account of the fact that they are defined not simply in terms of their distinctive or discrete significance as individual units, but as phenomena whose existential significance inheres in the differences they share. A similar concept is realized in the imagistic depiction of Eshu as wearing a cap that is black on one side and red on the other, thereby suggesting the same idea that emerges from the paradoxical but logical combination of ideas of divergence and convergence in the image of the crossroads. The image of the double colored cap illuminates the concept of the coexistence of exclusion and complementarity on account of the fact that the character of the cap as an integral phenomenon is best understood in terms of its combination of both contrastive colors, red and black. On account of his correlation with images and ideas that suggest the paradoxical but complementary coexistence of contraries, the hermeneutic significance of Eshu’s role in the Ifa system could be seen not only in terms of

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the discriminatory capacity that emerges in the interpretive act in decisionmaking, but in relation to the integrative skill which is demonstrated in the ability to perceive the complementary relationships between contrastive interpretive choices and their related consequences.4 C. Ideational and Imagistic Relationships between the Ifa System and Heidegger’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics The Ifa system could be seen as demonstrating, through its own distinctive idiom, the phenomenological and hermeneutic focus that characterizes Heideggers’ thought as well as the poetic exploration of the philosophical implications of choices made in relation to spatial navigation that emerges in Invisible Cities. Ifa’s relationship with the philosophical exploration of the lived actuality of human existence, which is central to Heidegger’s work, emerges from its character as a metaphysical system, the significance of which is actualized through its being brought to bear on the concrete particulars of human existence through a divinatory process. In developing a concrete relationship between the metaphysical postulates of the system and fundamental existential human concerns, it evokes Heidegger’s focus on the lived human experience as central to the philosophical quest. In developing a system that depicts its metaphysical conceptions both in discursive terms as well as in the imagistic and metaphorical language of verbal art, it is aligned with Heidegger’s insights on the validity of verbal art as a means of evoking intimations of the nature of being in human experience. The role of the figure of Eshu, as symbolizing the hermeneutic enterprise of the Ifa system, in terms of the faculty of discriminating between as well as of integrating contraries, may be correlated with Heidegger’s conviction of the essence of philosophy as consisting in the quest to discover the coinherence of all beings in Being, which may be understood as the manner in which individual expressions of being manifest the essential being they share in common. This unifying awareness could be related to the manner in which the Ifa system characterizes its integration of the totality of being within its symbolic forms through the integrative capacities represented by the figure of Eshu. His integration in his person of contrastive zones of being, suggests this effort to represent the totality of being in terms of existential categories. He is depicted as embodying in his being and scope of activity, the coexistence of contrastive aspects of existence. These contraries range from conceptions of justice to the elements, to biological formations in humans and animals, to spatial configurations and factors representing time and causation: Eshu turns right into wrong, wrong into right. When he is angry he hits a stone until it bleeds When he is angry, he sits on the skin of an ant. When he is angry, he weeps tears of blood.

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Eshu slept in the houseBut the house was too small for him: Eshu slept in the verandahBut the verandah was too small for him: Eshu slept in a nutAt last he could stretch himself! Eshu walked through the groundnut farm. The tuft of his hair was just visible: If it had not been for his huge size, He would not be visible at all. Lying down, his head hits the roof: Standing up, he cannot see into the cooking pot. He throws a stone and hits a bird yesterday!5

The paradoxical unification of discordant realms of being through the interpretive schemes evoked by the figure of Eshu demonstrate the conception, by the English poet and thinker Samuel Taylor Coleridge, of the poet’s imaginative powers as revealing itself: in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects...6

thereby actualizing what Heidegger described as the central goal of philosophical thought, the insight that “One is all,” which could be understood in the ontological sense, that, as he put it, “all being is in Being.” It could also be perceived in terms of Arendt’s observation that “Metaphors [are] the means by which the oneness of the world is poetically brought about,” thereby interpreting the conception of oneness in conceptual and imaginative rather than in ontological terms.7 D. Ideational and Imagistic Relationships between the Ifa System and Invisible Cities The imagistic and ideational relationship between the Ifa system and Invisible Cities consists in the fact that both the divinatory system and the prose poem, explore, through the imagery of spatial navigation, the philosophical implications that emerge from making choices within the patterns of possibility constituted by the spatio-temporal framework of human existence.

Imagery of Spatial Navigation as Constituting the Point of Intereferentiality Between the Discourses Under Study The imagery of spatial navigation and its philosophical derivatives could be seen, therefore, as constituting the mutuality of reference that constitutes our

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theoretical framework. Heidegger concretizes his exploration of the nature of being as manifest in the concrete particulars of human existence, in terms of the tracing of threads of understanding. He visualizes this process in the image of the metaphor of walking a path. Invisible Cities portrays traveling between cities as expressive of navigational choices as central shaping forms in human life. Ifa depicts its interpretation of the possibilities of existence in terms of navigation between spaces of cognitive potential, visualized as paths, which, in their contrastive character, suggest a hermeneutic discrimination among interpretive possibilities and, in converging at a crossroads, symbolize the integrative interpretation of relationships between contrastive interpretive possibilities. This image of spatial navigation, therefore, interpreted in a metaphorical sense, for the larger activity of negotiating meaning and interpretation, integrates these examples of diverse forms of discourse in a manner that enables them to operate in terms of mutual illumination.

Methodology Symbolism of Spatial Navigation in Ifa as Analytical and Organizational Center Having noted the points of correlation between the three discursive formations central to this study, Ifa, Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics and Invisible Cities, we proceed with our analysis by using the interaction between verbal and visual symbolism that constitutes the Ifa divinatory process as our structural framework. This enables us to demonstrate the ideational coherence of our underlying symbolism of spatial navigation as an expression of the interpretive processes that constitute decision-making activity understood as constituting the framework of human life. We therefore integrate our basic symbolic form both in terms of using it as an analytical prism and as a structural and organizing device. Conceptual Basis of Methodology Along these lines, we depict our analysis in terms of the manner in which the Ifa divinatory process constitutes an interactive procedure. This procedure involves interaction between a visual and a verbal framework. It is this interactive system that establishes its significance as an expression of the interpretive processes that constitute decision-making as a fundamental constituent of human life. I present my analysis in terms of the structure of a divinatory process in which we traverse metaphorically those lines that constitute the symbolic pathways which the Ifa diviner marks on the divination tray in initiating a divinatory session. In Ifa, these patterns represent the points of convergence between points of intersection between the world of spirit and that

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of form. They also indicate the pathways representing individual points of communication. In order to demonstrate the cognitive potential of the decision-making system represented by Ifa, I transpose the endogenous concepts of the system in a manner that demonstrates their significance beyond the framework of the belief system from which they emerge. I adapt Angulu Onwuejeogwus’s interpretation of the Igbo Afa, a divinatory system similar to Ifa. A focus of his analysis is the endogenous conception of the interpretive center of the divinatory process as focused in a point of intersection between spiritual and physical realms, at which the insight afforded by the superior cognitive scope of the former is brought to bear upon the latter. He describes this hermeneutic center as representing a system of symbolic transformation in which, through the symbolic language of Afa, possibilities of meaning latent in known phenomena are transformed in terms of the interpretive strategies of the system into a revelation of the unknown.8 Building on Onwuejeogwu’s insights, I interpret the Ifa system’s concept of a hermeneutic center in terms of an interpretive process in which particular phenomena are interpreted in terms of a broader framework of reference. I also interpret the conception, within the system, of the lines drawn upon the divining tray as representing individual lines of communication as symbolizing my earlier description in my theoretical framework, of a spatial field. The framework created through these lines is interpreted here as symbolizing the totality of the decision-making activity of the diviner’s client as they constitute the motivational force of their biographical itinerary up to the point of a particular divinatory session. As well as the interpretive processes that have constituted the client’s life up to a particular point, in relation to the decisions and consequences they have engendered, I interpret these patterns as representing the interpretive process undergone in a specific divinatory session by the client in collaboration with the diviner. In my analysis, I depict myself as navigating the realm of meaning and interpretation constituted by the geometric configurations of the divination tray into zones of hermeneutic interaction. Like Eshu at the metaphoric crossroads where meaning is generated through access to correlative realms of insight, I constitute my analysis in terms of points of insight which consist in the convergence of the correlative discourses I examine in terms of their unifying metaphors of spatial navigation. At the point of intersection between my theoretical framework and the conclusions constituted by my analysis I transform my reading of the discourses into symbiotic wholes through a process of relating their unifying symbolism. Method of Correlation of Conceptual Basis and Target Discourses I adapt the interpretive framework represented by the hermeneutic strategies embodied in Ifa imagery by the diviner’s division of the divination tray

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into hermeneutic zones by marking it with intersecting lines, designating the convergence of material and spiritual realms which generate the insight that emerges from the divinatory session. The specific manner in which I do this is to describe my interpretive framework in terms of an adaptation of Christopher Tilley’s interpretation of Roman Jakobson’s conception of the structure of linguistic expression in terms of the convergence of an axis of selection (the paradigmatic) and that of combination (the syntagmatic). The axis of selection represents the selection of specific units from the lexical range of the language while the axis of combination indicates the process of correlating the units selected with other units to create sequencesthat, normally, communicate coherent meaning.9 In my interpretive process in this essay, I transpose the diviner’s representation of the intersection of the axis of spirit and that of form, as it were, into a juxtaposition of an axis of selection, in which I select specific aspects of the discourses under study, beginning with Invisible Cities, and, in relation to a combinatory process, at the axis of combination, I analyze this discursive form in relation to the others, and to other realms of meaning I consider relevant to illuminating the thematic directions of this essay. Thus, using the critical concepts and language I bring to bear on this exercise, I interpret the realities represented by the discourses under study, already familiar in terms of their constituent idioms, in terms of a critical perspective that makes them intelligible in a new light.

Structure The essay deploys expository, analytic and comparative strategies in developing its argument. It grounds itself in the assertion that an inquiry into the philosophical significance of spatial navigation as a primary means through which human beings orient themselves in the world, and therefore representative of the continual exercise of interpretation of which human life consists, needs to begin from an understanding of the human construction and interpretation of space in terms of the sign and symbol systems through which space is described as an aid to its effective navigation. The two main systems discussed here are semiotics and phenomenology. The essay moves on to assert the validity of its focus on a phenomenological hermeneutic interpretation inspired by Heidegger by contrasting the underlying ideas and methods of such an interpretive strategy with that of semiotics. The analysis of the discourses we study is organized in four levels of exposition. We begin by laying the groundwork for our analysis of spatial navigation by presenting a contrastive semiotic and phenomenological analysis of the map of the London Underground system. We proceed to develop our analysis of the major discourses we study by focusing on Invisible Cities in relation to the other discourses, illuminated with references to other works which complement our analysis.

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Within this interpretation of Invisible Cities, I identify two major conceptions of spatial navigation. One of these is that of spatial navigation as constituting individual life worlds. This implies the idea that the act of spatial navigation contributes to the constitution of individual subjectivity and influences the patterns represented by individual biography. The second is represented by the conception of spatial navigation as capable of demonstrating transpersonal possibilities. This consists ofi the idea that human experience in relation to navigating space transcends the individual to integrate not only entire communities but also the human race. This involves ideas of spatial experience in relation to conceptions of change or mutation in phenomena across time and space, thereby demonstrating latent potential across a broad spectrum of possibilities. The transpersonal dimension of the interpretation of spatial navigation also includes conceptions of spatial forms as exemplifying patterns representative of relationships between inner and outer worlds constituted by the intersubjective life of communities, ideas of spatial forms as demonstrating archetypal patterns, geometric, celestial, and dynamic. Finally, I examine the interpretation of the experience of spatial navigation in terms of the evocation of questions of ultimate meaning. I conclude by asking what insights could emerge from this exploration of human possibility in terms of the correlative discourses of Heideggerean thought, Ifa and Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

Methods of Interpreting Space Through Sign and Symbol Systems Semiotics One of the aspirations of scholarship is that of developing a synoptic understanding of various aspects of existence, both in terms of their distinctive nature(s) and as interrelated aspects of a whole. One expression of this goal consists in the effort to develop methods interpreting sign systems in whatever framework they occur, as represented by semiotics. Semiotics could be described as “a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their functions in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises the three branches of syntactics, semantics and pragmatics.” Elaborating on these ideas in terms of the constituent disciplines of the superordinate discipline of semiotics, we note that each of these correlative disciplines focuses on a specific aspect of the study of signs in interrelationship with the others. Along these lines, we note that syntax involves the study of the formal properties of sign systems in terms of their ordering principles and in connection with syntactics which is a derivation from it, consists in the “formal relations between signs or expressions in abstraction from their significance and their interpreters.” Semantics, on the other hand, explores “the relations between signs and what they refer to” in other words, it develops a focus on signification, in

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contrast to syntactics which focuses only on the logical ordering of the signs in abstraction from what they signify. Pragmatics, on the other hand, focuses on the relationship between signs and their users. We may observe, in sum, that in the study of semiotics, we are exploring the manner in which the ordering of sign systems are interpreted by people in a manner that encapsulates the total meaning value of those signs for their interpreters in terms of “human behaviour in relation to signs, including unconscious attitudes, influences of social institutions, and epistemological and linguistic assumptions.”10 Phenomenology Phenomenology has been developed in various directions by different thinkers. It would appear, however, that its various formulations demonstrate a focus on the lived experience represented by the human encounter with the phenomena that constitute the concrete particulars of existence and the consequent interpretation of this existential encounter. The direction given this theory by Edmund Husserl, its originating influence in the twentieth century, posits the intimate correlation of consciousness and the object of its attention. This intimacy of subject and object requires that the phenomenological investigator of consciousness privilege the internal consistency of the act of consciousness under investigation, suspending all presuppositions as to its existential validity. Our focus in thus essay is on the phenomenological hermeneutics developed by Heidegger, in which the interpretation of the temporal framework that constitutes human existence is the locus of the quest for the essence of being.11 Strengths and Weaknesses of Semiotics and Phenomenology The strength of semiotics consists in its ability to demonstrate systemic interrelationships, particularly in terms of binary structure. Its weaknesses, with particular reference to structuralist semiotics, consists in its insensitivity to the existence of phenomena which may belong within systems but are not wholly describable within binary structures of mutual exclusion and the role of the structural center as a means of integration of structure emphasized by its formalistic orientation. The deconstructionist thesis of Jacques Derrida argues that binary oppositions could exist not only in terms of exclusion as emphasized by semiotics but also within a complementary framework. Along with his analysis of the nature/culture paradox in the work of Levi-Strauss as a demonstration of this “transgression” of semiotic’s formal logic, Derrida invokes even more provocative questions, evoked by Terry Eagleton in the following questions in a way that demonstrates the complementarity of binary opposition, “Is this question even possible? What if it were at once essential and impossible?”.12 Along with the tendency to deceptively homogenize the structure of phenomena as suggested by Derrida, Semiotics stops short of exploring the

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lived encounter of the human being with the phenomena symbolized by the signs and symbol systems it analyzes. In limiting itself to the formal structures of systems of signification it leaves open a blind spot to the fact that the encounter with referential systems completes its circle of interaction in human life only when the phenomena represented by these signifiers are encountered and engaged with by the human being, thereby integrating within themselves an individual experience of the reality represented by these significatory systems. Since semiotics is centered in the formal constituents of the sign systems themselves and human reactions to these, it does not have the tools to explore the lived experience or individual subjectivity of the human encounter with these phenomena, a role better fulfilled by phenomenology which explores the individuality demonstrated by human interaction with phenomena. Semiotics, on the other hand, provides a structural discipline that is useful as a means of integrating the findings developed by the phenomenological focus on subjectivity. We note, however, that the objectivity that semiotics tries to arrive at is a social one and, in that sense, therefore, demonstrates some overlap with phenomenology. While we note the tendency toward a lack of empiricism and existential concreteness in semiotics, we also observe that the focus of phenomenology on the internal integrity of consciousness, investigated within an attitude of suspended judgment as to the existential validity of consciousness under investigation, would represent, at one remove, an ideal that if successfully actualized, could lead to profound insights into the internal constituencies of human apprehension of phenomena. If inadequately applied, however, it could degenerate into overly solipsistic and incoherent discourse. The epistemic implications of its premises provoke certain fundamental challenges. One is led to ask whether it is possible to suspend all judgment in the process of analysis. After the discoveries of Sigmund Freud on the unconscious and of Immanuel Kant on the role of space and time as cognitive matrices, can we wholeheartedly assert that the wholesale suspension of judgment is possible? Perhaps the phenomenological strategy represents a cognitive ideal that one can aspire to, using it as a corrective and a balance, in relation to the mind’s instinctive integration of phenomena within its own categories, in its efforts to apprehend them as aspects of the reality within which it has situated itself. Contrastive Approaches to the Study of Spatial Frameworks in Semiotics and Phenomenology as Exemplified by a Study of the Map of the London Underground An analysis of the map of the London Underground would need to begin with semiotic tools because the map is primarily a network of signs, which is the province of semiotics. In order to develop a fuller understanding of the Underground as a human phenomenon in use by human beings who

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interpret it and apply that interpretive experience to the actual use of the Underground which the map is meant to facilitate, we will need to invoke the tools of phenomenology which investigate the lived experience of the human encounter with phenomena within and beyond the encounter with the symbols which represent these phenomena. A semiotic exploration of the map of the London Underground would demonstrate its superb correlation of interlocking structures in its depiction of the intersection of the various rail lines, represented by bright colors. It would also demonstrate the correlation of these interrelationships of the various rail lines with the various zones, ranging from Zone One to Zone 6 into which the city of London is divided. In Saussurean terms, the map demonstrates that the engineers of the Underground have imposed on the substance of space the grid represented by the rail network and the map makers have represented this shaping of substance by the form of the engineering network through color signs that indicate the various rail lines as well as numerical signs that indicate their relationships to the various zones of the city. At the level of combination, we observe that the various rail lines represented by colors, are depicted as existing in complementary relationship with the others, or in a syntagmatic relationship with the others in order to create the entire structure represented by the Underground. At another level, we also observe that the map depicts various rail lines as serving different routes throughout the city. In that sense, in which the various rail lines are portrayed as operating mutually exclusive routes, they could be said to be depicted as portrayed in terms of paradigmatic relations or relations of exclusion. These paradigmatic relations are reflected in the color codes used in depicting the various rail lines in which each line is represented by a different color. In exploring the underlying principles of representation represented by the map of the Underground, we observe that the creator of the prototype of the present map, Harry Beck, based his representation on the structural principles of electronic circuits.13 We note, therefore, that at the level of what Saussure described as langue or the underlying system of language, this map demonstrates the basic principles of systemic interrelations in force in various disciplines, including electronic design, on which the map is based. The present analysis of the map represents a focus on a synchronic interpretation of its form as distinct from a diachronic interpretation, which would emphasize its development from its prototype, through its subsequent modifications, to its present form.14 The Visceral Dimension of Spatial Navigation as Demonstrated by Phenomenology Having demonstrated briefly the structural forms at play in this map, and perhaps even suggested the sense of ordered or mathematical beauty evoked

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by its beautifully colored and precisely rendered interlocking forms, something remains in order for us to move closer to a comprehensive grasp of the significance of this map. That missing element has to do with the actual experience of using the map and the experiences that emerge from that. What happens, for example, to our perceptions, when using the map as a guide, we take the Northern Line represented by a black line, from High Barnet in Zone 5 at the last stop of the Northern Line at the end of North London into the City, possibly, changing to the Piccadilly Line, indicated by the blue line, at Kings Cross St. Pancras, and taking that all the way to the other end of the city in West London at the last stop of the line at Heathrow? What impressions would the experience create? Would these impressions differ in relation to the various routes one takes? Would the purposes of these journeys influence these impressions? If these journeys become a daily occurrence over a long period of time, would these impressions develop anything like an iconic significance for the experiencing subject? These questions about the subjective realm opened up by the experience of using the map cannot be adequately or even explored at all by semiotics but can be comprehensively explored by phenomenology. A phenomenological exploration of the significance of the navigation of physical space would demonstrate, for example, the manifestation of the English writer Charles Dickens’ familiarity with London as representing a fundamental aspect of the guiding consciousness of his novels or Paris for the poetry of French writer Charles Baudelaire.

Spatial Navigation in Individual and Interpersonal Contexts Spatial Navigation as the Constitution of Individual Life Worlds A. The Constitution of Subjectivities through the Navigation of Possibilities in the Public Sphere The sense of the evocative power of space is suggested by Invisible Cities. This work explores the metropolis as a metaphor for the multifarious possibilities of life, which are manipulated by our exercise of choice, in a similar manner to how different possibilities are opened up in relation to the routes commuters take in navigating physical space, such as in the use of the Underground: In Esmeralda, city of water, a network of canals and a network of streets span and intersect each other. To go from one place to another you have the choice between land and boat: and since the shortest distance between two points in Esmeralda is not a straight line but a zigzag that ramifies in tortuous optional routes, the ways that open to each passerby are never two but many, and they increase further for those who alternate a stretch by boat with one on dry land.

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And so Esmeralda’s inhabitants are spared the boredom of following the same streets every day... each inhabitant can enjoy every day the pleasure of a new itinerary to reach the same places. The most fixed and calm lives in Esmeralda are spent without any repetition. (p. 71)

The description of the city indicates, at the same time, the coexistence of a mental geography that is coterminous with the physical geography of cities. This emerges from the manner in which the associative values developed through the act of navigating similar spaces eventually generates a mental geography constitutive of both individual and intersubjective worlds as suggested in the picture of Raissa: In Raissa, life is not happy. People wring their hands as they walk the streets, curse the crying children, lean on the railings over the river and press their fists to their temples...And yet...in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence. (p. 116)

The constitution of subjectivity through choices made in the course of navigating in space suggests the Heideggerean idea that the “world is [both] a structure of meaningful relations in which the individual exists and which he or she partly creates.”15 The depiction of the constitution of intersubjectivity as an expression of the united subjective formations developed through the mental worlds of the inhabitants of Esmeralda and Raissa embodies the Heideggerean notion that human relationships represent a fundamental means of being in the world, and, therefore, in their interrelationships, constitute a relational space consisting in the shaping of human relationships by various spatial and temporal contexts. The need is suggested to find a means of mapping this correlation of physical or objective and subjective geographies, both grounded in the same physical space “A map of Esmeralda should include, marked in different coloured inks, all these routes, solid and liquid, evident and hidden” (p. 71) The subject of the impact of specific choices taken in navigating space, in relation to the consequent configuration of the subject’s emotional world, is central to Invisible Cities. The manner in which this is developed in the modification of routes as a means of preventing boredom practiced by the inhabitants of Esmeralda, and alluded to in the description of Raissa, is given concreteness by the Commuter Cupid column of the newspaper of the London Underground, Metro. Titled “Love on the Run” after a popular song marked by a refrain using that line, the title of the column suggests its content. The title evokes the experience of potentially romantic visual and physical contact between people

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within the framework provided by commuting on the Underground. The column prints letters from readers who recount their experiences with people, most of them strangers, on the commuter network, in the hope of establishing lasting contact with them through the column. The following example would seem to resonate most powerfully, in multiple ways, with our exploration of the existential significance of spatial navigation: Oxford Circus, Victoria Line. Among the vast amount of lines, stops, minutes, trains and carriages our paths crossed exactly and I couldn’t physically stop myself from smiling all day long. I fact, I was so gobsamcked to see you (and running late for work) that I didn’t even think to swap any contact details .Two months in the Big Smoke can be pretty lonely. So if you read this, Miss H’O’BA(hons)MMU, then get in touch! Mr. CA BA (hons)MMU16

This letter highlights the convergence of space, time, and choice in relation to a chance encounter. It evokes a dynamic pattern, created by the process of commuting within the structural complexity of the Underground network, within which the choices made by subjects of the experience have enabled the coming together of two people, even if only for a few memorable minutes. The busy train station with its “lines…trains and carriages” represents the element of space. The element of time is indicated by the “minutes” spent in moving between particular “stops” as well as by the “stops” themselves. Along with indicating the element of time, on account of the fact that they represent decisive points of termination and commencement in the flow of time represented by a journey, the “stops” also embody the factor of choice within which the element of chance operates. If the writer and the lady who made such an enchanting impression on him had not chosen to stop at Oxford Circus Tube station they would not have met. This convergence of the constituents represented by space, time, and chance in relation to unanticipated outcomes emerging from choices made by individuals as they commute, highlights the essence of the phenomenological significance of spatial navigation as depicted in Invisible Cities. It also suggests the exploration, within the divinatory framework of the Ifa system, of constantly shifting relationships between free will and chance, embodied in the paradoxical figure of Eshu, the embodiment of contraries. Examining human life as significantly constituted by unpredictable variables, and the course of human life as consisting in efforts to control and fix those variables, raises questions about meaning in relation to issues of stability and flux. Questions are evoked as to whether the meaning of life should be sought within, or at least in relation to the flux that characterizes existence, or in terms of realms of permanence which may be postulated or intuited, such as the notions of cosmic or human essence.

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Heidegger would argue that within the transmutations of existence, it is possible to identify aspects which may reveal elements of being which integrate and transcend the mutable framework of existence. He argues, however, that these insights are subtle and elusive. They cannot be crystallized like the conventional certainties of philosophical thought. The cognitive methods he advocates are closer to a contemplatively watchful sensitivity than to the development of unequivocal cognitive specificities. His dialogs in “Conversations on a Country Path,” the title again evoking that sense of encounter with philosophical questions within the concrete particulars of human life, suggests this idea of contemplative questioning. The exchange between the speakers, the Teacher, and the Scholar, suggest this, in describing the nature of thought, not in terms of a specific definition but of a phenomenon which emerges through contemplative attention: Teacher: Scholar:

Perhaps we are now close to being released into the nature of thinking … through waiting for its nature…17

The evocation of the phenomenological significance of spatial navigation depicted in Invisible Cities is amplified by what Adrian Ivhakhiv describes as a hermeneutic-phenomenological hypothesis of human response to the landscape. He refers particularly to the experience of pilgrims but his ideas demonstrate a relevance to spatial navigation in general: The actual embodied experience of [navigating a] landscape…. the movements and physical exertion needed to maneuver one’s way through its particular topography; the changing visual, auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic qualities[and encounters] at different stages of a …route; the temporal, or durational factor, as one prepares [to journey and the experiences one undergoes in the process of journeying and after arrival at the destination, the process of ] returning home; all these factors and qualities as they change over daily, seasonal, and annual cycles[provoke in the subject] experiential and interpretive data [that is collected] and … sedimented [within the interpretive framework of [ the individual].18

Edward Said elaborates on this conception of the significance of space as an interpretive template that constitutes human subjectivity in his summary of Gaston Bachelard’s evocatively titled The Poetics of Space. He states that human beings ground themselves in the concrete and temporal through the imaginative appropriation of spatial forms in relation to what they associate with these forms, on account of which: …Objective space…is far less important than what poetically it is endowed with, which is usually a quality with an imaginative or figurative value we can name or feel. So space acquires emotional and even rational sense by a kind of poetic

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process, whereby the vacant and anonymous reaches of distance are converted into meaning for us here.

He goes on to argue that “the same process occurs when we deal with time [and that the subjective reconfigurations and attributions people create in relation to] geography and history help the mind intensify its own sense of itself…”.19 B. Navigational Choices as Emblematic of Biographical Configurations In the following passage, choices made in the course of navigating space are depicted as constituting consequences that shape biographical configurations. Associations evoked by landscape through the agency of memory are mobilized to suggest the configurative power of choice in relation to patterns created by human life within the framework of spatial navigation: Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man’s place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else’s present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past; dead branches.

The evocation of the image of a tree’s branches as a metaphor for the possibilities of realization represented by the choices that emerge in the course of the journey of a human life encapsulates an aspect of the philosophical implications of spatial navigation as evoked in Invisible Cities. This consists of the idea of possibilities of experience depicted in terms of the branches of a tree, evoking the sense of dynamic life in association with the organicity represented by the tree image. The idea evoked, therefore, suggests the dynamism of choice available to the individual in navigating within the possibilities of his or her life as a free agent. This image suggests that these choices, even if partially determined by the structure of the subject’s existence prevalent at the point at which these choices are being made, at the very least could be seen as often exercising a degree of freedom within the scope of this given framework. This understanding would remain relevant even if, as suggested by the existentialist thought of Friedrich Nietszche and Jean Paul Satre, this freedom of choice consists only in the freedom of response to a situation that the subject can neither modify nor alter. This conception of will and inner response as the ultimate locus of human possibility is summed up in a statement attributed to Nietszche to the effect that a person can put up with almost any “how” if they have a “why.”

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The concept of a “how” indicates the material circumstances of a person’s existence while the idea represented by a “why” connotes the subjective attitude that the person adopts to those circumstances, the person’s rationalization of the significance of their situation within their own existential matrix. Viktor Frankl dramatizes this conception of human freedom in relation to experience of the restricted scope of response exemplified by in his account of his incarceration in Nazi concentration camps He sustained the will to live by drawing upon uplifting memories, such as the image of his wife whom he visualized so vividly she appeared to be speaking to him. He later learnt that she had been killed by then. He claims, however, that that fact was irrelevant to the power of profound emotional and metal powers, particularly love and strength of will, to transcend the constrictions of time and space represented by negative conditions and separation from the physical presence of what one values.20 The metaphor of the tree in Invisible Cities can, therefore, be understood as demonstrating an existential significance in which the dynamic possibilities of human life represented by the organic growth of the tree suggests the concrete possibilities opened up through the agency of human choice and the relationship of this to the significance of human life as a continuum constructed by the agents involved in fashioning it. The tree metaphor also evokes metaphysical associations through its resonance with cosmologies such as the Kabbalah and the Yoruba Ifa system, in which the image of the organic and systemic associations of trees are deployed in suggesting the dynamism inherent in the multifarious but ultimately unified possibilities manifest in human life, and by extension, in the universe as a whole. The interconnections among the branches of this metaphorically conceived image of the tree are understood as representing pathways, possibilities of being, as realized within the activity of human existence. The interrelationship between these metaphorically conceived organic forms and the conception of the significance of spatial navigation in Invisible Cities encapsulates fundamental concepts representative of philosophical interpretations of the experience of spatial navigation.21

Spatial Navigation as the Interpretation of Transpersonal Possibilities In the course of the narration of his journeys, Marco Polo, the central character of Invisible Cities, eventually moves beyond the concrete particulars of the sights, sounds, and encounters enroute, to an appreciation of the imaginative significance of the experience as an associative locus for his own experience alone. The associative significance of his experience begins to transcend his growing understanding of the patterns created through the spatial and temporal journey represented by the totality of his life, as a mutable and mortal being moving through space and time. He comes to perceive his individual

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experiences as an imaginative matrix within and through which structures of transpersonal human experience can be extrapolated. The invisible cities, therefore, constitute the memory of the cities he has journeyed through, understood in relation to their reconstruction in memory through which their personal and transpersonal significance can be imaginatively constructed. A. Mutations in Time and Space Invisible Cities goes beyond evoking the personal significance of metaphors of possibility for the individual subject. This emerges in the dramatization of an overarching perspective on the experience of physically navigating cities, which Marco Polo does, and imaginatively participating in these navigations through listening to the explorer’s narratives, as well as through the study of maps, as done by the Khan, the lone audience of Polo’s travel narratives. These activities, concrete or imaginative, lived or purely visual, are dramatized as means through which the existence and forms of cities yet unknown could be surmised and constructed in the mind by images representative of emergence and decay across time and space: The Great Khan owns an atlas in which are gathered the maps of all the cities: those whose walls rest on solid foundations, those which fell in ruins and were swallowed up by the sand, those that will exist one day and in whose place now only hare’s holes gape.

This visionary picture of actualized as well as of latent possibilities evokes the Heideggerean notion of human existence as constituted by spatial and temporal contexts within which the experience of being is manifest through the experience of becoming. a. Mutations in Terms of Recreative Possibilities The manner in which the exploration of a particular set of possibilities creates the possibility for the realization of another set of possibilities is also evoked in the transformations of cities from one form to another across time and space as understood through the associations they evoke with other cities that emerge at later points in the flow of time and at diverse points on the Earth: Marco Polo leafs through the pages; he recognizes Jericho, Ur, Carthage, he points to the landing at the mouth of the Scamander where the Achaean ships waited to take the besiegers [of Troy] back on board…But speaking of Troy he happened to give the city the form of Constantinople and foresee the siege which Mohammed would lay for long months…And from the mixture of these cities a third emerged, which might be called San Francisco…. The atlas has these qualities; it reveals the forms of cities that do not yet have a form or a name. There is the city in the shape of Amsterdam, a semicircle facing north, with concentric canals…there is the city in the shape of

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York…walled, bristling with towers; there is the city in the shape of New Amsterdam known also as New York, crammed with towers of glass and steel on an oblong island between two rivers…

These images inspire questions about the rise and fall of civilizations, as developed by Oswald Spengler, who argues for organic patterns in the development and decline of civilizations, in which they die, having fulfilled the possibilities contained within them, and by Arnold Toynbee, who tries to identify central points in the growth of civilization worldwide. The images also begin to assume a sense of cosmic process in suggesting a fecundity, which, in its inexhaustible character, recalls a primal creative matrix22 : The catalogue of forms is endless; until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins. In the last pages of the atlas, there is an outpouring of networks without beginning or end, cities in the shape of Los Angeles, in the shape of Kyoto-Osaka, without shape. (108–109)

The images of the Cabala come to mind here, in which the emergence of the phenomenal universe from the Unmanifest ground which it expresses is evoked in terms that align it with the endless permutations of cities out of the dynamic fecundity of the “catalogue of forms.” The source of manifestation is described in the Cabala as “void yet manifests vitality and being,” “uncreated yet cause of all creation,” “motionless, yet the source of [cosmic motion].”23 b. Mutations in Terms of the Coexistence and Successive Manifestations of Contrastive Possibilities Evoking Augustine of Hippo’s conception of the intertwining of the spiritual and material development of the human race in history in terms of the image of a city, within which, in his theological vision, the just and the unjust are inextricably conjoined, Invisible Cities depicts a symbiotic relationship between justice and injustice in human existence in terms of the coexistence of a just and an unjust city enclosed within each other24 : I should not tell you of Berenice, the unjust city…Instead I should tell you of the hidden Berenice, the city of the just…From these it is possible to deduce an image of the future Berenice, which will bring you closer to knowing the truth than any other information about the city as it is seen today. You must nevertheless bear in mind what I am about to say to you: in the seed of the city of the just, a malignant seed is hidden, in its turn…Having said this, I do not wish your eyes to catch a distorted image, so I must draw your attention to an intrinsic quality of this unjust city germinating secretly inside the secret just city: and this is the possible awakening-of a later love for justice not yet subjected to rules, capable of reassembling a city still more just than it was before it became the vessel of injustice. But if you peer deeper into this new germ of justice you can discern a tiny spot that is spreading like the mounting tendency to impose

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what is just through what is unjust, and perhaps this is the germ of an immense metropolis… From my words you will have reached the conclusion that the real Berenice is a temporal succession of different cities, alternately just and unjust. But what I wanted to warn you about is something else: all the future Berenices are already present in this instant, wrapped one within the other, confined, crammed, inextricable. (124–125)

In place of the conventional simplicities of description and evaluation, Invisible Cities problematizes the conventional so as to suggest its concealed possibilities. The forward thrust of time is juxtaposed with the unrealized possibilities that bisect it, as it were. Singularities of moral evaluation are replaced with complexities that suggest the mutual implication of contrastive moral universes. The novel would seem to be weaving mosaics in which are reflected those possibilities of existence which are normally beyond the cognition of the everyday gaze. Questions that go to the heart of relationships between metaphysical and ethical issues are evoked here. In relation to Heidegger’s focus on the dynamic particulars of existence, the question arises about the character of truth in the light of transformations of experience and values across time and space. Can universal concepts of justice be developed that would not imply the imposition of perspective relevant to a particular time or place being brought to bear upon another spatial or temporal context in which their relevance is questionable? Are justice and truth absolute and immutable or temporal, mutable qualities mediated by specific contexts? In the light of these ethical questions, can we speak of an ultimate reality or at best a provisional and contextual conception of reality? In evoking subtle and consequently concealed possibilities of existence as they emerge in relation to their more obvious correlations, is Invisible Cities not constructing a graph of probabilities, a pattern of possibilities, that embraces what is and what could be, thereby suggesting their interrelationships? In doing this, is the work not creating a reification of realms of being and of possibility? This would seem to bear some similarity to similar evocations in the forms of cosmological and divinatory systems, which often employ language, which, in its cryptic and poetic evocation of hidden depths of possibility, bears a relationship to the structural and linguistic form of Invisible Cities. The correlation between the evocation of possibilities of existence manifest in Invisible Cities, and similar concerns of cosmological and divinatory systems, in their exploration of the present in terms of its links with the past and the future, is particularly manifest in the points of confluence between the interpretive structures of the Ifa system of divination and the ideational directions and forms of Invisible Cities. These points of confluence, in turn, illuminate broader philosophical issues in relation to the objective and subjective dimensions of spatial navigation as manifest in the correlations developed so far

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between the navigation of the London Underground and the exploration of related themes in Invisible Cities. This confluence between Ifa divinatory forms, the London Underground as a means of navigating space and the exploration of the experience of spatial navigation in Invisible Cities can be evoked through images that crystallize this correlation. These images emerge in metaphorical relations that occur between the account of the commuter on the Tube with images from the divinatory form of the Ifa system. The commuter’s account states “Among the vast amount of lines, stops, minutes, trains and carriages our paths crossed exactly…”. This evocation of the spatial and experiential framework of an accidental meeting between two people suggests a complex transport network in which the fortuitous character of the chance encounter is emphasized by its unlikeness amidst the impersonal complexity of the network. In a similar manner, the Ifa divinatory system suggests the complexity of possibilities in human life in relation to the element of chance. It does this through mathematical and poetic forms that evoke the contradictory conception of the coexistence of probability and pattern. The multifarious possibilities of existence are evoked in Ifa through geomantic forms, depicted in the form of a mathematical grid, the basic form of which is represented by the image of a crossroads. The relationships between the various points on the grid suggest the complexities manifest in the possibilities of human experience as well as the unexpected connections that they reveal. The correlations between the Tube map, the physical form it represents, and the geomantic form of the Ifa system, could be seen to consist in the notion that they both represent means of navigation. The Underground is a means of navigating in physical space. The Ifa geomantic grid represents a means of navigating within the terrain of possibilities created through life’s opportunities. These two forms of navigation, the spatial and the non-spatial, could be seen as confluent in terms of the idea that the geographical map of the Underground and the system it represents, operate as points of departure for the exposure to a multiplicity of experiences as connoted by the map of possibilities represented by the Ifa grid. These correlations may be crystallized in the observation that the map of the Underground could be seen as a geographical map since it is directed at navigating in physical space while the Ifa grid could be understood as a probabilistic map, a map of probabilities, because it is a guide to navigating within the configurations created by life’s possibilities. The points of confluence between the Ifa system and Invisible Cities in terms of conceptions of the objective and subjective aspects of spatial navigation are further crystallized through a specific imagistic form. These points of confluence emerge in relationships between the element of choice and its unforeseeable consequences as depicted in Ifa imagery, the experience of spatial navigation as depicted in the Tube commuter’s letter and similar evocations in Invisible Cities.

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The element of chance as it emerges in terms of unforeseeable occurrences in relation to the effects of human choices is represented in Ifa by the figure of Eshu, who embodies not only the correlations between choices and unforeseeable outcomes that emerge from these choices, but also the capacity to interpret accurately the significance that emerges from these correlations between free will and the unforeseeable. Eshu is represented as fundamental to the interpretive exercise central to the divinatory process and this centrality is embodied in the imagery associated with him. He is depicted in Ifa imagery as a dweller at crossroads. These crossroads are traditionally understood in a physical and geographical sense, as witnessed by the sacrifices made to him at such locations. These crossroads have also been interpreted in the critical literature on Ifa as the “roads”… “pathways,” or “courses” that link the Odu, the organizational categories of the Ifa system.25 The correlation between points of confluence, understood in a physical sense, in terms of concrete roads, and in a textual sense, in terms of textual configurations, links Eshu with the figure of Hermes, who as the ancient Greek messenger of the Gods who had to be constantly mobile in order to fulfill his tasks, had a herm, a monument dedicated to him, erected at the borders of settlements. As the carrier of the verbal forms constituted by messages, he came to give his name to hermeneutics, the discipline centered in the interpretation of texts, the contents of which are often primarily verbal. In the various conceptions associated with the figure of Eshu, we may observe correlations, therefore, between the image of crossroads, understood in a concrete as well as in a metaphorical sense. The metaphorical constructions of this image relate to the interpretation of textual configurations as well as of contrastive opportunities and choices that emerge in the journey constituted by the experience of living. The correlation between textual and existential interpretation as manifest in the figure of Eshu is reinforced by Heidegger’s evocatively titled Being and Time, where he interprets hermeneutics in terms of the interpretation of the essence of being through the study of the self referentiality of human consciousness as it is developed within the framework of space and time. The effort to understand the abstraction represented by consciousness in terms of its development within the framework determined by time and space represents a link with the notion of concrete choices as fundamental to the development of the meaning generated by human life represented by the spatial and hermeneutic symbolism associated with the figure of Eshu.26 Aboshede Emmanuel, quoting the Yoruba expression “Exu Laalu Omokunrin Ode” which he translates as “Exu the nobleman who dwells at crossroads,” analyses this expression in terms that suggest the manner in which the figure of Eshu crystallizes fundamental ideas about spatial navigation in relation to its metaphorical relationship to navigation of the “maps” represented by the terrain of possibilities that emerge in the course of living:

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In actual and symbolic terms the crossroads represents the moment of choice between good fortune and ill-fortune. Most accidents occur at physical crossroads. Doubt, hesitation, indecision, occur at mental cross-roads. Exu therefore symbolizes that MOMENT OF CHOICE, that PROBABILITY FOR GOOD OR ILL FORTUNE, resulting from CHOICE. As a further extension of this logical analysis Exu becomes the neutral locus between Good and Evil as moral categories.27

Emmanuel’s interpretation of the Yoruba expression that characterizes Eshu in relation to crossroads depicts Eshu as representing a correlation between the phenomenological significance of spatial navigation and the hermeneutic imperative involved in making choices within the navigational experience. Henry Louis Gate’s analysis of the Eshu image validates this interpretation in his description of the crossroads dwelling of Eshu as “the crossroads of understanding and truth.” The ideas of interpretive agency associated with Eshu suggest, therefore, a range of meanings derivable from the experience of spatial navigation, from the objective to the metaphorical. At the level of metaphor, the concrete actuality of navigating in space becomes representative of the larger experience of maneuvering within the terrain represented by life’s possibilities. B. Spatial Forms Interpreted as Evoking Structures of Subjective and Intersubjective Apprehension The conception of the subjective dimension of spatial navigation as evoked in Invisible Cities goes beyond the experience of choices between alternatives as represented by divergent pathways, to include the sense of reflection on the experience of spatial navigation in terms of the deduction of patterns of experience, at both the personal and the transpersonal levels, from the experiences that emerge from these choices. The interpretive process represented by the hermeneutic associations related to Eshu in the context of spatial navigation is therefore extended to include developing a grasp of the abstract pattern realized by the experiences sedimented in the mind through the act of navigating in space. This pattern is realized by the co-inherence of probability and pattern, similar to the significance realized by the configuration expressed by the geomantic form of the Ifa Odu. a. Spatial Forms as Evoking Ideational and Emotive Unities of Apprehension This paradoxical correlation between pattern and probability is suggested by the following passage: Kublai Khan had noticed that Marco Polo’s cities resembled one another, as if the passage from one to another resembled not a journey but a change of elements. Now, from each city Marco described to him, the Great Khan’s mind

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set out on its own, and after dismantling the city piece by piece, he reconstructed it in other ways, substituting components, shifting them, inverting them. Marco, meanwhile, continued reporting his journeys, but the emperor was no longer listening… Kublai interrupted him: “From now I shall describe the cities and you will tell me if they exist and are as I have conceived them. I shall begin by asking you about a city of stairs…and some of the wonders it contains…a glass tank as a cathedral so people can follow the swimming and flying of the fish and draw auguries from them…a marble tablecloth, set with food and beverages also of marble.” “Sire, your mind wanders. This is precisely the city I was telling you about when you interrupted me.” “You know it? Where is it? What is its name?” “It has neither name nor place. I shall repeat the reason why I was describing it to you: from the number of imaginable cities we must exclude those whose elements are assembled without a connecting thread, an inner rule, a perspective, a discourse…everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire, or its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything concealed as something else …………………………………………………………… You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours” “Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx.” (36–37)

The conception of the experience of spatial navigation in relation to the exploration of cities as primarily relevant as a reflection of, or a catalyst to, the evocation of the inner world of the experiencing subject crystallizes the assertions made in this paper about the relationship between the objective and subjective dimensions of spatial navigation. The images of cityscapes sedimented in the traveler’s mind become matrices which the subject may manipulate in order to create his own worlds or conjure answers to his or her own questions. The city becomes an interactive phenomenon, through which the traveler is challenged as to questions that may not have emerged except in relation to the context created by that particular objective framework represented by that spatial form. The human propensity to create patterns in order to grasp the essential forms and structure of phenomena is provoked by the inspiration to arrive at the “connecting thread, inner rule perspective…discourse” constituted by that particular agglomeration of human and physical forms represented by the metropolitan complexity of the city.

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b. Spatial Forms as Configuring Intersubjectivities in Terms of Dynamic Geometric Form The conception of the city as representative of the quest for patterns is further evoked in the description of Eudoxia, the tortuous structure of which is reflected in a carpet that reproduces in an abstract form the underlying structure of the city: …if you pause and examine it carefully, you become convinced that each place in the carpet corresponds to a place in the city and all the things contained in the city are included in the design, arranged according to their true relationship, which escapes your eye distracted by the bustle, the throngs, the shoving. All of Eudoxia’s confusion, the mules braying, the lampblack stains, the fish smell is what is evident in the incomplete perspective you grasp; but the carpet proves that there is a point from which the city shows its true proportions, the geometrical scheme implicit in its every, tiniest detail. (76)

Reflecting the human propensity to develop frames of reference that guide action and illuminate the complexities of existence by relating them to an overarching explanatory framework, the pattern of the carpet proves to be a guide to the understanding of psychological centers in the individual as well as of the patterns manifest by the developments of their life “Every inhabitant of Eudoxia compares the carpet’s immobile order with his own image of the city, an anguish of his own, and each can find, concealed among the arabesques, an answer, the story of his life, the twists of fate” (76). The carpet, therefore, represents a crystallization both of objective space as represented by the city and of subjective space as realized in the individual worlds of the city’s inhabitants. The sense of archetypal patterning suggested by the carpet’s multiple roles in reflecting, even though obliquely, objective and subjective worlds are further developed in terms of correspondences between terrestrial and celestial worlds: An oracle was questioned about the mysterious bond between two objects so dissimilar as the carpet and the city. One of the two objects-the oracle repliedhas the form the gods gave the starry sky and the orbits in which the worlds revolve; the other is approximate reflection, like every human creation.(76)

The carpet and the town are understood as arabesques, which in Islamic symbolism represent the integration of the cosmos in terms of geometric form, indicating a unity in multiplicity as well as a multiplicity in unity but the transcendentalist Platonic echoes of this conception are problematized by the following elaboration28 : For some time the augurs had been sure that the carpet’s harmonious pattern was of divine origin. The oracle was interpreted in this sense, arousing no controversy. But you could, similarly, come to the opposite conclusion; that

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the true map of the universe is the city of Eudoxia, just as it is, a stain that spreads out shapelessly, with crooked streets, houses that crumble one upon the other amid clouds of dust, fires, screams in the darkness. (77)

The cosmos would seem, therefore, to resist categorization into neat geometric formations and abstractions. This final picture of Eudoxia would seem to suggest that the Heideggrean emphasis on the subtle and uncategorizable complexities of existence is central to an understanding of being.

Spatial Forms Interpreted as Archetypal Patterns a. Spatial Forms as Reflecting Celestial Archetypes “Cities and the Sky 3” evokes the conception of archetypal patterning again, in terms of celestial and terrestrial correspondences, but this time, not so much in terms of the effort to orient oneself according to a preexistent pattern, but to recreate such a pattern within the structure of a terrestrial landscape. This is depicted in the city of Thekla which is constantly under construction: Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the …scaffolding…the ladders…If you ask, ‘Why is the construction of Thekla taking such a long time?’ the inhabitants continue working as they answer, ‘So that its destruction cannot begin.’ And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffolding is removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they hastily add in a whisper, ‘Not only the city’. If dissatisfied with the answer, someone puts his eye to a crack in the fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffolding that embraces other scaffolding, beams that prop up other beams. ‘What meaning does your construction have?’ he asks. ‘What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?’ ‘We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now’, they answer. Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. ‘There is the blueprint’, they say. (101)

This picture of an effort to model humanly created space in terms of a celestial archetype recalls the idea of land zodiacs, in which humanly created formations are understood in terms of efforts to model the patterns of the celestial bodies. The monuments of Stonehenge, the stones of Avebury, as well as Zodiacal patterns purportedly constituted by the landscape of Glastonbury represent some sites interpreted along such lines. The subject of relationships between the phenomenal and the noumenal universe emerges again in these pictures of the human effort to create a sense of stability and permanence in a mutable cosmos by modeling his own creations after an order he

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understands as suggesting permanence amidst change, or in terms of the astrological configurations, to grasp what Invisible Cities describes as the thread of meaning in human life as it is manifest in the relationships between the stars and the patterns of human existence.29 b. Spatial Forms as Evocative of Dynamic Structural Forms The idea of underlying pattern is further developed in images that evoke, not the relatively static and permanent forms created by archetypal shapes in such spatial configurations as a carpet and the firmament, but in the shifting play of opposition and balance demonstrated by a game of chess: Marco Polo, mute informant, spread out on it the samples of the wares he had brought back from his journeys to the ends of the empire; a helmet, a seashell, a coconut, a fan. Arranging the objects in a certain order on the black and white tiles, and occasionally shifting them with studied moves, the Ambassador tried to depict for the monarch’s eyes the vicissitudes of his travels, the conditions of the empire, the prerogatives of the distant provincial seats. Kublai was a keen chess player; following Marco’s movements, he observed that certain pieces implied or excluded the vicinity of other pieces and were shifted along certain lines. Ignoring the object’s variety of form, he could grasp the system of arranging one with respect to the others on the …floor. He thought: ‘If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains.’ Contemplating these essential landscapes, Kublai reflected on the invisible order that sustains cities, on the rules that decreed how they rise, take shape and prosper, adapting themselves to the seasons, and then how they sadden and fall in ruins. At times he thought he was on the verge of discovering a coherent, harmonious system underlying the infinite deformities and discords, but no model could stand up to the comparison with the game of chess. Perhaps, instead of racking one’s brains to suggest with the ivory pieces scant help visions which were anyway destined to oblivion, it would suffice to play a game according to the rules, and to consider each successive state of the board as one of the countless forms that the system of forms assembles and destroys. Now Kublai no longer had to send Marco Polo on distant expeditions; he kept him playing endless games of chess. Knowledge of the empire was hidden in the pattern drawn by the angular shifts of the knight…by the inexorable ups and downs of every game. (96)

The Khan’s efforts to extrapolate dynamic qualities of spatial form from the development of the chess game recalls Titus Burckhardt’s description of the symbolic significance of chess in Hindu and Islamic contexts in which the game symbolizes navigation within possibilities at play in the universe, as manifested both in the life of the individual and in the development of the cosmos. For the individual, the possibilities of play available in the game suggest the relationship between intelligence and chance. In relation to the cosmos,

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the permutations represented by the development of the game suggest “the cyclical transformation of the cosmos” in terms of the permutations of mathematical patterns represented by the unfolding of the game.30 Again, we are in the realm of the human effort to explain the universe in terms of forms related to phenomenal experience, in a spirit that recalls, though, in another context, the imperatives of Heidegger’s thought. At the same time, however, Invisible Cities suggests the paradoxes and ambiguities foregrounded by these efforts, in alignment with the Eshu dimension of paradox, in which the sublime coexists with the bucolic.

Spatial Forms as Evocative of Questions of Ultimate Meaning Having arrived at this conclusion about the essential, underlying patterns manifest in the dynamism of his empire as manifest in the development of the chess game, the Khan is plagued by another provocation of thought that challenges thinking people. Along with the compulsion to discover patterns that will transform meaninglessness or chaos into a comprehensible order, the imperative emerges to create or search not only for order but for ultimate meaning: The Great Khan tried to concentrate on the game: but now it was the game’s purpose that eluded him. Each game ends in a gain or a loss: but of what? What were the true stakes? At checkmate, beneath the foot of the king, knocked aside by the winner’s hand, a black or a white square remains. By disembodying his conquests to reduce them to the essential, Kublai had arrived at the extreme operation: the definitive conquest, of which the empire’s multiform treasures were only illusory envelopes. It was reduced to a square of planed wood: nothingness…(97)

In the development of the idea of underlying patterns, two concepts are at play. One depicts this pattern as almost static and immutable, as exemplified by the images of the carpet and the starry sky. The second depicts this pattern as dynamic and mutable as exemplified by the image of the empire as resembling the fluctuations of play in a game of chess. The static and immutable pattern relates to the Platonic and the Judeo-Christian worldviews, in which perfection is perceived in terms of luminous stasis, and immutability is depicted as a representation of the perfection of eternity. The second is closer to Hindu cosmology, which depicts perfection in relation to change and development, and integrates the process of destruction and recreation within the patterns constituted by the transformation of the individual and the cosmos.31 In depicting activity within time and space in terms of a confluence of lines which creates patterns that can be seen in terms of intersecting networks, Calvino enters into alignment with Jorge Louis Borges, who depicts the chance encounters of human life in terms of webs of meaning which conceal and embody the essences of being. In the focus on consciousness as it grows in

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response to the encounters within objective space, that then reveal a subjective space within which existence is perceived in its totality, Calvino’s correlation with Borges dramatizes ideas developed by the US philosopher Ralph Lewis, in his neo-Hegelian focus on the development of the human capacity for self knowledge as representing the nucleus for the universe’s own self knowledge.32 An example of the manner in which chance encounters emerge as fortuitous in initiating understanding of the networks of meaning embodied by experience is dramatized in Borges’s “Inferno, 1, 32.” God reveals to a leopard and to Dante Alighieri, the writer of the cosmological epic The Divine Comedy, the manner in which, through what seem to be chance encounters, he has intertwined their lives within the tapestry of the cosmos. God explains to the tiger the rationale for his frustrating captivity in a zoo’s cage: You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity but you will have given a word to the poem.33

The story alludes to the tiger that represents the first obstacle to Dante’s efforts to find his way out of the forest in the Inferno, the symbolic significance of which is suggested, in another context, by Ezra Pound’s description of his Cantos, which are inspired by Dante. He describes his Cantos as consisting of a journey from the forest of human error to “the company of those who know.”34 Dante’s forest, as adapted by Pound and as interpreted by Dorothy Sayers, in her commentary on The Divine Comedy, represents, in another context, an aspect of what Abiola Irele describes as the symbolic conception of the forest in relation to “the existential condition of man in Yoruba thinking” in which “the forest stands for the universe, inhabited by obscure forces to which man stands in a dynamic moral and spiritual relationship and with which his destiny is involved.”35 The relationship between conceptions of organic development in relation to networks of human experience is again reinforced by correlations that emerge between ideas developed by Calvino, Borges, and other streams of knowledge. Elaborating upon the traditional Yoruba conception of nature evident in Irele’s depiction of the symbolism of the forest, Soyinka describes the poetry of Yoruba hunters as celebrating “…animal and plant life [seeking] to capture the essence and relationships of growing things and the insights of man into the secrets of the universe.”36 These images, representative of systemic relationships realized in terms of organic forms, resonate with Calvino’s depiction of points of intersection represented by crossroads of choice in Invisible Cities, which are visualized in terms of systemic connections between the branches of trees. This image also occurs in the Ifa system, and, in harmony with Calvino’s work, may be seen as connoting the confluence of related but contrastive possibilities of experience.

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These imagistic networks would seem to suggest the possibility of developing an understanding of the structure of the cosmos through extrapolative interpretations of the processes and consequences that emerge from the human effort to negotiate meaning and movement in relation to space and time.

Conclusion: Space of Expansive Possibilities or Space of Constricted Potential? Having traveled the paths of inquiry with Heidegger, Calvino, and the Ifa system, what could we be said to have discovered at the point when we emerge into the clearing in the forest, the point of awareness described by Heidegger? Have we arrived at a definite understanding of the relationships between the patterns created by the exercise of choice in the act of navigating within networks of possibility? Perhaps our understanding of the landscape of possibility realized through the exercise of choice hardly transcends the puzzled understanding arrived at by the Khan in his contemplation of his empire in the light of the game of chess. Possibly, as Heidegger suggests, we might have made progress, if, even if we do not possess definitive answers, we at least can identify with greater clarity the contours of the questions that haunt us. Our question, therefore, could be reframed in the following manner. What is the purpose of the constantly shifting web of existence within which human beings are enmeshed and within which they struggle to exercise the limited choice available to them? Are they much better than Borges’s tiger, who, perhaps having been born in captivity, is not aware that any other kind of life is possible and regards the confines of his cage as representing a realm of possibility?

Notes 1. This chapter could be seen, therefore, as an exercise in spatial criticism as described by Philip Wegner, in “Spatial Criticism: Critical Geography, Space, Place and Textuality” in Julian Wolfreys, ed., Introducing Criticism in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2002) pp. 179–201. This work, however, owes less to the works and scholars, such as Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, tr. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) which he discusses as central to this kind of criticism and more to my experience in the Nigerian city of Benin where sacred space is an integral part of public space and my fascination with the London Underground and the filtering of these influences through the study of phenomenology and hermeneutics, as well as the inspiration of the phenomenological hermeneutic archeology of Christopher Tilley and his collaborators, of which his Christopher Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments (Oxford: Berg, 1994) is representative. My interpretation of space also bears some relationship to Bourdieu’s concept of field, habitus, position and position taking which represents possibilities of role paying within social systems as described

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2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

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in “Intellectual Field and Creative Project” in Michael. F. D. Young, ed., Knowledge and Control (London: Macmillan, 1971) pp. 161–188. Arild Holt-Jensen, Geography: History and Concepts (Lonson: Sage, 1999) p. 150. These imagistic representations are developed in Martin Heidegger, What Is Philosophy?, tr. W. Kluback and J. T. Wilde (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc, 1958) and expounded upon incisively by George Steiner, Heidegger (London: Fontana, 1978). This analysis has gained significantly from the exposition on the hermeneutic significance of Eshu in Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998). Wande Abimbola, Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa (Paris: UNESCO, 1975) anthologized in Jack Mapanje and Landeg White, ed., Oral Poetry from Africa (Essex: Longman, 1984) p. 110. Samuel Taylor Coleridege, “Biographia Literaria” in S. Potter, ed. Coleridge: Selected Poetry and Prose (London: Nonsuch Press, 1971). Quoted in Christopher Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) p. 7. Hannah Arendt, “Introduction” in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, tr. Harry Zohn (London :Fontana, 1992) pp. 7–55. M. Angulu Onwuejeogwu, Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action (Benin: Ethiope, 1977). Christopher Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) p. 22. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961). Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (London: Routledge, 2000). Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in David Richter, ed., The Critical Tradition (Boston: Bedford Books, 1989) pp. 959–971. Terry Eagleton, “Jacques Derrida” New Statesman, 14th July 2003, pp. 31–32, p. 32. Information obtained from a commemorative billboard at Finchley Central tube station. These concepts are presented in Ferdinand de Saussaure, Cours de Linguistique Generale (Payot: Paris, 1916). Arild Holt-Jensen, Geography: History and Concepts (Lonson: Sage, 1999) p. 150. Fiona Macdonald, ed. “Love on the Run” in Metro, Monday, February 9, 2004, p. 17. From Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, tr. John Anderson and Hans Freund (New York: Harper and Row, 1966) quoted in Timothy Clark, Martin Heidegger (London: Routledge, 2002) p. 90. Adrian Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001) p. 20. Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin, 1995) p. 55. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (London: Faber and Faber, 1959).

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21. A classic scholarly introduction to Jewish mysticism to which the Cabala belongs is Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1995). 22. Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West and Anbold Toynbee’s A Study of History as described in Justin White, ed Makers of Modern Culture (London: Routledge, 1981) p. 491; 522.). 23. Anon. The Office of the Holy Tree of Life, p. 34. 24. Augustine’s analysis can be found in St. Augustine, The City of God, tr. Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). 25. Henry Luis Gates Jr, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998) p. 24. 26. This conception of hermeneutics is first introduced in the second part of the introduction to Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper-Collins, 1962) pp. 61–62, where it is also correlated with phenomenology. Heidegger also expounds on the symbolic and etymological relationship between Hermes and hermeneutics in Unterwegs zur Sprache as described in Richard Palmer’s Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1969) p. 13. In relation to Heidegger’s analysis of Hermes’s role as a messenger who makes knowledge available, thereby laying it open to interpretation, we note that Eshu is also a messenger, the messenger of Orunmila, the patron deity of Ifa. 27. Abosede Emmanuel, Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival (Lagos: West African Book Publishers, 2000) p. 177. 28. Titus Burckhardt, Art of Islam: Language and Meaning, tr. Peter Hobson (Kent: World of Islam, 1976) p. 63. 29. Adrian, Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001) examines this phenomenon in detail from a phenomenological and hermeneutic perspective. 30. Titus Burckhardt, Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional and Sacred Art, tr. William Stoddart (New York: State University of New York Press, 1987) pp. 144–148. 31. There is a beautiful exposition of the Hindu conception in the description of the image of the God Shiva dancing the dance that represents the creation, development dissolution and regeneration of the cosmos in Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (NewYork, 1988). The classic exposition of the Platonic perspective is the description of the Forms of the Good in Plato, The Republic, tr. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 2003). The JudaeoChristian perspective is eloquently conveyed by the prophetic books in the Bible as well as by the Psalms in which such expressions as “I am the Lord, I changeth not” represent, for the believer, the ultimate guarantee of human faith in the one immutable reality in a transient cosmos. 32. Ralph Lewis, The Rosicruician Digest, May 1991. 33. Jorge Luis Borges, “Inferno, 1, 32,”The Aleph (London: Penguin, 1998) p. 176. 34. Pound is quoted in Elizabeth Wilkinson, “Pound, Ezra,” Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1971. vol. 8. p. 90. The Dante exposition is in The Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Cantica 1: Hell, tr. Dorothy Sayers (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949).

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35. Abiola Irele, “Tradition and the Yoruba Writer: D.O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola and Wole Soyinka,” The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (London: Heinemann, 1981) pp. 174–197, p. 180. 36. Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990) p. 28.

References Abimbola, Wande, Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa (Paris: UNESCO, 1975). Abimbola, Wande, An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus (Ibadan: Oxford UP, 1976). Abrams, M.H., A Glossary of Literary Terms (London: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1988). Anon, The Office of the Holy Tree of Life. Arendt, Hannah, “Introduction” in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations. Tr. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana, 1992) pp. 7–55. St. Augustine, The City of God. Tr. Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). Bourdieu, Pierre “Intellectual Field and Creative Project” in Michael F. D. Young, ed. Knowledge and Control (London; Macmillan, 1971) pp. 161–188. Burckhardt, Titus, Art of Islam: Language and Meaning. Tr. Peter Hobson (Kent: World of Islam, 1976). Burckhardt, Titus, Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional and Sacred Art. Tr. William Stoddart (New York: State University of New York Press, 1987). Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities (London: Pan, 1974). Campbell, Jospeh, with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (NewYork, 1988). Clark, Timothy, Martin Heidegger (London: Routledge, 2002). Coleridege, Samuel Taylor, “Biographia Litteraria” in S. Potter, ed., Coleridge: Selected Poetry and Prose (London: Nonsuch Press, 1971). Daiches, David, Critical Approaches to Literature (London: Longman, 1974). Dante, Alighieri, The Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Cantica 1:Hell. Tr. Dorothy Sayers (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949). Derrida, Jacques, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in David Richter, ed. The Critical Tradition (Boston: Bedford Books, 1989) pp. 959–971. Drewal, Henry John and John Mason in Beads Body and Soul: Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Natural History, 1998). Eagleton, Terry, “Jacques Derrida in ” New Statesman, 14th July 2003. pp. 31–32. Eliot, T.S., Collected Poems: 1909–1962 (London: Faber and Faber, 1963). Emmanuel, Abosede, Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival (Lagos: West African Book Publishers, 2000). Frankl, Viktor Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (London: Faber and Faber, 1959). Gates Jr., Henry Luis, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998). Heidegger, Martin, What Is Philosophy? Tr. W. Kluback and J.T. Wilde (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc, 1958). Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time. Tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).

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Heidegger, Martin, Discourse on Thinking. Tr. John Anderson and Hans Freund (New York: Harper and Row, 1966). Holt-Jensen, Arild Geography: History and Concepts (London: Sage, 1999). Irele, Abiola, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (London: Heinemann, 1981). Ivakhiv, Adrian, Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001) p. 20. La Gamma, Alisa, Art and Oracle: African Art and Rituals of Divination (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000). Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space. Tr. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Lewis, Ralph, The Rosicrucian Digest. May 1991 [Other details unverified]. Mapanje, Jack, and Landeg White, eds. Oral Poetry from Africa (Essex: Longman, 1984). Moran, Dermot, Introduction to Phenomenology (London: Routledge, 2000). Onwuejeogwu, M. Angulu, Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action (Benin: Ethiopia, 1977). Palmer, Richard, Hermeneutics (Evanston: NorthWestern UP, 1969). Plato, The Republic. Tr. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 2003). Said, Edward, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin, 1995) p. 55. Saussaure, Ferdinand de, Cours de Linguistique Generale (Payot: Paris, 1916). Scholem, Gershom, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1995). Soyinka, Wole, Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990). Steiner, George, Heidegger (London: Fontana, 1978). Tilley, Christopher, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments (Oxford: Berg, 1994). Tilley, Christopher, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999). Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961). Wegner, Philip, “Spatial Criticism: Critical Geography, Space, Place and Textuality” in Julian Wolfreys, ed. Introducing Criticism in the 20th Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2002) pp. 179–201. White, Justin, ed. Makers of Modern Culture (London: Routledge, 1981). Wilkinson, Elizabeth, “Pound, Ezra”, Encyclopedia Brittanica. 1971. vol. 8. p. 90.

CHAPTER 50

Opium or Elixir? How Adherence to Major World Religions Influence Africans’ Health-Related Behavior During a Pandemic: A Case Study of Nigeria Onah P. Thompson, Lilian O. Ademu, and Lawrence A. Ademu Introduction In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic from a novel coronavirus (WHO 2020). The pandemic has created substantial health and socio-economic challenges globally, and to address this challenge, different governments have had to take several drastic measures. One of such measures required very restricted movements and interactions among peoples. Policies such as these are primarily difficult to enforce anywhere in the world and especially where there is a comparatively high perception of distrust between the government and its citizens. It is fair to state that in Africa, citizens’ overall trust in their government and political institutions is low (Bratton and Gyima-Boadi 2016). In an age where global interaction is growing exponentially, even with the best health care systems, no part of the world is truly immune from the attack of a lethal pathogen unless everywhere else is relatively free from it. To curb the disease’s scourge, the international community, and all governments must require certain behavioral changes from their citizenry. It suffices to state that a pandemic such as the COVID-19 cannot be managed by medical expertise O. P. Thompson (B) · L. O. Ademu University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. A. Ademu Department of Animal Production and Health, Federal University Wukari, Wukari, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_50

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alone, but also by bringing to bear the full weight of various socio-political establishments. However, the impact of these institutions on the desired health outcome is directly related to the citizens’ trust in them (Obadare 2005). In most of Africa, the low trust in government appears to have had adverse effects on governments’ ability to manage health crises (Chukwuma et al. 2019; Ghinai et al. 2013). This is because “[t]rust in national institutions, science and healthcare are linked and cannot be viewed in isolation. When confidence in one is lost, confidence in the others tends to suffer as well” (Farrar 2019). Studies are rife with how citizens’ trust in their sociocultural and political institutions may impact health outcomes. While studies have examined the general notion of trust, to the best of our knowledge, no study has attempted to compare citizens’ relative trust in these institutions when making health decisions, especially during a pandemic. Some studies argue that citizens who perceive that their ethnocultural groups are not adequately represented in the government are less likely to trust the government’s health advice than groups with members of their ethnicity at the helm of government (Arriola and Grossman in press). Others argue that the issue is broader than ethnicity. Levi et al. (2009) found that government enforcement of basic health practices is often a huge challenge when citizens generally have a low legitimacy ranking of their government. Overall, the acceptance of public health interventions and their penetration over time has been influenced by target communities’ trust in the channels used to transmit health information. This trust has also been influenced by citizens’ religious predispositions (Idler 2014). Across the African continent, instances, where this phenomenon has affected people’s preventive and reactive healthcare decisions have been observed. As far back as colonial public health interventions for the treatment and prevention of diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and yaws, to more recent events like Ebola, religion, and trust have been at the intersection of health decisions people make (Schmid et al. 2008; Ridde and De Sardan 2017). In Nigeria, for instance, adherence to foreign religions has impacted public health behaviors in many ways. In the global fight against poliomyelitis, Nigeria remained a major challenge for decades, consistently remaining endemic for wild poliovirus until August 2019 when it was declared poliofree by the WHO (Nasir et al. 2016; GPEI 2019). The worldwide attention Nigeria gained from this was not so much for its death toll as for reports of violent resistance to prevention and containment protocols based on religious presuppositions (Chen 2004; Osazuwa-Peters 2011). Across the continent, especially in countries that have experienced coercive colonial and post-colonial state structures that promote ethnicity and political discrimination, there are ethnoreligious patterns in the use of health information. The tendency to trust a piece of health information promoted by ethnic and religious leaders over government has been evident in cholera and HIV/AIDS containment measures in South Africa (Parkhurst and Lush 2004; Echenberg 2011), the Onchocerciasis control programs in East and Central

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Africa (Cupp et al. 2011) and the polio eradication and HIV/AIDS control programs in Nigeria (Obadare 2005; Grossman et al. 2018). The faith-based response to public health inadvertently impacts how Africans relate with the rest of the world. Today, global religions have not only influenced Africans behavioral response to health challenges, but with the aid of new media, religious leaders in Africa, are influencing health-related behaviors of people both within and beyond the shores of the continent. As the world seeks to develop a more robust health intervention policy framework, there is an urgent need to explore how religion in relation to other factors impacts Africans’ overall health decision-making. In this paper, we use data from a survey-based field experiment in the West African country of Nigeria to explain compliance with public health advisories using religion as a social identity that conditions how individuals perceive healthcare information from government and non-governmental sources. Nigeria, which is strategically positioned as the most populous nation in Africa, possesses diverse sociocultural-demographics similar to many other African countries. This makes the country adequately suited a case study to understand the nuances of religious influence at the intersection of individuals’ trust and compliance with public health interventions in Africa.

The Intersection of Public Health, Religion and Social Attitudes in Nigeria In post-colonial Africa, activities related to governance are viewed by citizens through the lens of ethnicity or religion. The colonization process resulted in the emergence of societies defined by both religion and ethnicity (Spickard 2019). In Nigeria, the salience of faith in the development of social trust in citizens is a truism that cannot be overlooked, owing to its role in many sociopolitical outcomes in the country. Religion and ethnicity are at the intersection of most political phenomena and have also played a significant role in influencing people’s health decisions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the success or failure of many public health interventions in Nigeria has been linked to citizens choosing to trust their religious leaders more than the government or other similar institutions. Deeply rooted in the country’s colonial history is the role religion has played in health decisions that communities make. Though not considered a public health intervention in its time, the ending of twin infanticide by the Efik tribe in the southeastern part of Nigeria is largely attributed to the religious cleric, Mary Slessor, whom the locals had come to trust (Imbua 2013). In much of post-colonial history to more recent times, public health programs have been influenced by citizens’ religious adherence. Many studies have associated religious affiliations with non-compliance to full childhood immunizations across communities and how these communities continue to threaten the control of these diseases nationally and globally (Antai 2009; Babalola 2011). A qualitative study by Oku et al. (2017) highlights the importance of health

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communication channels in vaccination programs, emphasizing traditional and religious institutions’ engagement in governmental and non-governmental interventions. These communication interventions particularly impacted the polio eradication programs in Nigeria. When many trado-religious organizations, albeit anti-polio vaccine campaigners, propagated negative rumors about the polio vaccine (Jegede 2007; Kraxberger 2009; Nasir et al. 2016). Overall, more success was achieved after vaccination programs adopted a horizontal approach that involved giving roles to local religious and traditional leaders in their implementation (Jegede 2007; Kraxberger 2009; Nasir et al. 2016). Citizens’ traditional and religious adherence has also influenced health interventions for Malaria, Hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Neglected Tropical Diseases, and Lassa fever. To date, malaria is still the most important parasitic disease of global public health significance. In north-western Nigeria, religion has played a vital role in household behavior toward malaria control measures taken by both government and non-governmental organizations (Maigemu and Hassan 2015). Programs targeted at dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Nigeria have also been challenged by citizens’ traditional and religious beliefs, especially in the regions where the disease is most endemic. This situation is particularly true for the north-central part of the country with an HIV/AIDS prevalence (3.4%), higher than the national average of 3.0%. (NACA 2014). Research indicates that the rejection of some of these interventions was not so much for stigmatization as for traditional and religious predispositions, which influenced citizens’ decisions to use the interventions or treatments for the virus (Saleh and Adamu 2015). In Africa, Nigeria has the highest number of people infected with Neglected Tropical diseases (Hotez et al. 2012). Today, one of the challenges facing NGOs and the government as they deal with Neglected Tropical diseases (NTDs) is a clear example of how religious adherence frequently interferes with public health goals. Krental et al. (2013) indicate that citizens’ religious practices influenced mass drug administration (MDA) coverage rates and acceptability. Interestingly, the Nigerian master plan for NTDs (2013–2017) highlights the necessity of considering both religious and cultural activities in implementing NTD programs to ensure that they do not conflict with them. The management of zoonotic infections like the hemorrhagic Lassa fever has intersected with religious or traditional adherence for many years. This type of influence has remained a significant challenge for public health officials in many parts of Nigeria and Africa (Usuwa et al. 2020). The demand for various types of animal products and how they are prepared at particular times is influenced by culture, society, and religion (Shanklin 1985). This zoonotic disease, which has been a public health issue in Nigeria since it was first reported in 1969 in Lassa, Borno state (Adewuyi et al. 2009) continues to pose a massive problem to communities’ epidemic management alongside the global coronavirus pandemic in the country.

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Experiences from past public health interventions in the country have illuminated prevailing patterns of how citizens’ religious adherence interfered with both global and national health goals. Despite these illuminating studies, there still exist gaps in our current understanding of the magnitude of influence these institutions would have on citizens’ health behavior in the light of a pandemic. Furthermore, prior studies typically couple together the role of religion and culture in determining health outcomes, and have not attempted to parse their separate influences. More importantly, unlike other situations where the health-related challenges are localized or where fairly sufficient knowledge of the ailment may be known, the COVID-19 pandemic is not localized. The understanding of its behavior is still unfolding, and the goal of achieving herd immunity through vaccination is yet to be achieved. Studies show that catastrophic or uncertain situations have pronounced psychological ramifications for people, including how they process information (Atkeson and Maestas 2012; Taha et al. 2013). The COVID-19 situation is a classic example of such uncertain times. Thus, pandemics such as COVID-19 presents a situation where opinion formation relating to health advice may be different from other types of situations. In this study, we ask, “Government or religion, who has a stronger influence over citizens’ health-related behaviors in an extreme national health crisis? Is the influence of one institution the same across the board, or is it differential across different groups of people? What group will be more influenced by one institution, and what group will be more influenced by the other?” These questions are incredibly relevant in the light of potential contradictory advisory information from different sources. Knowing which source of information will likely be more subservient to everyone or a group of people will help policymakers seeking to ensure maximum compliance with health advice during a pandemic. To attempt to answer these questions, we anchored our work on widely used health behavioral theories.

Theoretical Foundation of Study Two theoretical frames guide this inquiry—the Health Belief Model (HBM) and the Social-Ecological Model (SEM) (McLeroy et al. 1988). The HBM draws from both psychological and behavioral theories and posits that people’s health behavior is anchored on the premise that people desire to avoid illness and believe that a specific action will result in prevention or cure of disease (Rosenstock 1974; Champion and Skinner 2008). The primary focus of this theory is the decision-making mechanism of the individual. The HBM dictates that people will act in a manner they believe will either prevent or cure their illness. This includes taking seriously the advice of anyone they believe is competent in health-related matters. On the other hand, the SEM is rooted in the rich conceptual tradition of the behavioral sciences (Oldenburg et al. 2002; Salis et al. 2015) and maintains that human development, including health promotion, is derived from a

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dynamic relationship between the individual, a group, and other higher institutional structures (Golden et al. 2015). According to the SEM, among the different factors that influence a person’s health behavior and health outcomes, two are institutions and public policy. It is in these domains that the purview of both religious and government institutions rests. Unlike the HBM that focuses on the individual, the main focus of SEM is the environmental settings that the individual is embedded in. We expect that with Nigeria’s history of good management of previous serious health challenges like Ebola, advice from government institutions should have a significant impact on a person’s health behavior. We also expect individuals with more faith in religious institutions to take a cleric’s advice more seriously. In summary, while we anticipate that the average African is more likely to accept government health officials’ advice, we also expect that for those subcategories of Africans who are highly religious, health-related advice from clerics will have a superseding effect.

Methodology To investigate how the source of health information may influence people’s health behaviors or decisions, we conducted an online survey experiment in Nigeria. An experiment is a gold standard for estimating causal relationships between two variables. The survey was done at the onset of the pandemic and ran for a month, from April 7, 2020, to May 6, 2020, during the mandatory lockdown across states in Nigeria. In sum, we contacted 19 different groups/organizations in various states of the country. These groups included Academic Staff Unions of Universities, Bankers Associations, Religious groups, Trades/Market Unions, and High School Alumni groups. For a complete list of these groups, see Appendix 2. In all, we sent out survey requests to about 2770 people. At the end of the survey, we received about 1498 responses. That is about a 53% response rate. A descriptive statistic of the respondents shows that the sample is very diverse and reflects a fair mix of Nigerian urban society. Like most African countries, internet or online access to information is mainly enjoyed by those in urban areas. However, some indicators appear a bit more overly sampled. For example, Christians made up 77% of the sample, while Muslims were 22%, even though the national population composition estimate is 50% Muslim and 48% Christian (Diamant, April 1, 2019). To account for the excessive sampling of some sectors in the analysis, we employed weighted techniques. However, there is a fair balance of respondents that identify with being from any of the three major ethnic groups in the country. For more information, see Table 50.1.

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Experimental Design Four experimental groups were used, and we broke down each group into two sub-groups. For this book chapter, we only report two groups’ findings: treatment of government and religious institutions. We explored the influence of religion on Nigerians’ public health behavior when compared to government health officials. The sub-groups were created to account for situations where not only the source of health information may affect the outcome behavior, but also the type of advice given. That is, each group was made up of two sub-groups, depending on whether the advice was a positive or negative affirmation. For the actual experiment, respondents were presented with a vignette asking them to consider a hypothetical scenario where there was a global health crisis with a substantial impact on the country. In the vignette, an authority figure advises about how to manage the situation. The experiment has two treatment conditions that vary the identity of the source of public health advice; a minister of Health in the Federal government of Nigeria or a respected religious leader. In both scenarios, the content of the public health advisory remained the same. The probability of being assigned to any treatment group was the same for all respondents as Qualtrics, the survey platform used for this study randomly assigns treatment (Table 50.2).

Dependent Variable: Actionable Response to a Public Health Advisory The hypothetical vignette presented to respondents was: “Imagine there is a global health pandemic that affects every country in the world, including yours. Now imagine a debate in the public domain about the efficacy of a medication/treatment. Some people think it may cure the disease, while on the contrary, others believe it may cause more harm. Now suppose that [the Minister of Health/a popular religious leader] advised that people [should/should not ] take the particular medication/treatment as a remedy against the disease.” After the vignette was presented, the respondents were asked about the likelihood of taking the public health advice from the randomly assigned authority seriously. The outcome of how seriously a respondent will take the advice is scored on a 1–7 scale, ranging from extremely likely to extremely unlikely. It reads: “How likely do you think that someone like you will take the advice seriously.” If the HBM is anything to go by, the more likely people believe or trust that information is critical to their health outcome, the more likely they will act on that information. Studies have shown that specific entities do not only become central to health information dissemination (Odeny et al. 2017) but also that these entities are critical factors that determine the level of actionable response to the expected health-related behavior (Flodgren et al. 2019).

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Expectations Because our respondents were living through a pandemic when they took the survey, the degree of their revealed or “true” preferences about their choices is expected to be very high. It is noted that during the survey, the dominant topic in public discussion was the virus, with different groups questioning the veracity of some claims about the virus. The Socio-Ecological theory argues that when people feel more connected to government institutions at a social level, they will trust the government to look out for their interests. In northern Nigeria, where a widespread resistance to the government’s protocols to manage this health crisis was evident, there is speculation that sociocultural and traditional influence is the reason for the opposition; others opined that religious affiliation is the driver of the resistance (Hoechner and Salisu 2020). Hence, if there are observed objections to the government’s advice, how much of that resistance is attributable to religious factors, and how much may be due to other factors like ethnicity (Fig. 50.1). We expect that an experimental study like this will help us parse out the relative strengths of these factors. More so, the intertwining of religious and temporal leadership in the traditional institutions in northern Nigeria makes a case for religious influence more complex. It is also pertinent to note that ethnic and religious affiliations have a strong association in two of the three major ethnicities in Nigeria (Most Hausa/Fulani are Muslims and Most Igbos are Christians). Hence, without an experimental study, we may be unsure if the historical disruptions of certain public health positions we see in the north are due to the religious or ethnic appeal of its traditional authority; or if the assumed appearance of better health compliance of residents in the South is connected to adherence of a different religion.

Statistical Analysis We use the intention-to-treat approach to assess the extent to which the source of health advice during a pandemic will influence compliance with public health advisory. To estimate the causal effect of the treatments, we use ordinary least squared (OLS) regression. Because the treatments are randomly assigned, we expect that the coefficients for the treatment conditions will correspond to the causal effect among the study population. Noting that ethnicity and religious affiliations may influence respondents’ behavior, we included them as controls in the regressions. Literature also reveals that certain demographics like socio-economic status (Harris et al. 2011), education (Bado and Susuman 2016), gender (Adijawanou and LeGrand 2014; Bado and Susuman 2016), and age (Waweru et al. 2003) affects behavioral health responses. We include these controls in the specifications of the multivariate regression models. Before running the regressions, we reverse coded the outcome variable so that the 7-point scale ranges from “extremely unlikely” to “extremely likely.” This is so that we can have an increasing progression of the likelihood of trust

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in the source of information. The results of our robustness tests and model diagnostics can be found in Appendix 3. In the first model, we ran a bivariate regression to estimate the influence of information on respondents’ health-decision without controlling for demographic factors. In the multivariate regression, we evaluated the effects of the source of information while controlling for ethnicity, household income, education, gender, and age. We also wanted to find out if people’s response to health advice varies by their ethnicity. Hence, in the second multivariate regression, we interacted the source of health information with a respondent’s ethnicity. Lastly, we are interested in the potential effect of religion on people’s ability to take health advice from either government or religious leaders seriously. To estimate this effect, we interacted the source of health information with a respondent’s religious affiliations.

Results In this section, we present the results of actionable response outcomes. The results show that generally, the source of public health advisory is a critical predictor of people’s response during a pandemic. Table 50.3 (Appendix 1) shows four models where we carried out a bivariate regression and three other multivariate regressions. While respondents will likely take seriously the health advice from either the government health official or a religious leader, the likelihood of taking the advice seriously (i.e. actionable response) is stronger when the advice comes from a religious leader compared to the government official, ceteris paribus. Even when other demographic controls are included in the model, the results remain robust. In the bivariate model (Model 1), we see that for every unit increase in the likelihood that a respondent will respond positively when the information is from a religious leader, there is a 1.75 lesser likelihood for an actionable response when the source of information is from the government. In other words, those who are advised by the government are 25% less likely to act on the advice compared to those who are advised by a religious leader. However, we see a more potent effect in models 3 and 4, where we included interactions of ethnicity and religious affiliation. For example, in Model 3, we see that for every unit increase in the likelihood that a respondent will take an actionable response when the information is from a religious leader, there is a 2.48-unit reduction in the possibility for an actionable response when the source of information is from the government. That is to say, those who are advised by the government are about 35% less likely to act on the advice compared to those who are advised by a religious leader. The four models show a range of 20–35% less likelihood of actionable response if the health advisory is from the government compared to a religious leader. The R-squared in these models also indicate that our models account for about 16–22% of the variations in the outcome variables.

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Also, Model 4 shows that even though religious leaders have a stronger influence on respondents’ behavior, the impact is not equal but differentiated across religious lines. Muslims are more likely to trust the health advice of religious leaders compared to Christians. Figure 50.2 shows the average marginal effects of the interactions in the regression table. To get a fair idea of Nigerians’ baseline view about their government and other institutions, we asked about the degree of trust respondents have with regards to specific institutions (Public Schools, Traditional Institution, National Assembly, Religious Institution, Presidency, and United Nations). These institutions represent the breadth of institutions that are local, national, and international. A graphical representation of this is in Fig. 50.3. It shows that respondents place a substantial degree of confidence in both religious institutions and the United Nations.

Discussion and Conclusion Religion has been a potent instrument for the colonization of Africa. For example, it remains a potent instrument in the changing order of global governances as western societies and the Middle East redefine their engagements in terms of religious terrorism. During a worldwide pandemic, religion appears to be playing an influential role in global health security as well. This study is situated within the broader framework of inquiries that have attempted to answer why some citizens are more likely than others to comply with public health advisory from state authorities. While many studies have focused on the role of ethnicity and religious identity in influencing people’s decisions in various forms of health emergencies, this is the first quantitative study that investigates how the social identity of religion may impact the government’s influence during a pandemic. Knowing the behavioral patterns we observe from extreme health emergencies like a pandemic will be very critical to understanding the most likely behavioral response that citizens will display in times of uncertainty. This knowledge will help governments across the continent identify ways to build or improve trust relationships with the citizens. Apart from the expected benefits of a better public health outcome, improving the relationship between government and other institutions within local settings should reduce the potential incidences of violent conflicts. In some communities blessed with natural resources in Nigeria and South Africa, there were peaceful demands and violent confrontations for environmental justice, which, by extension, mean environmental health with the government (Thompson 2017). The violent demands are premised on the people’s distrust of the government. The government’s strategic partnership with legitimate local religious leaders can help the government instigate the locals’ right behavioral response to the government’s advice during a pandemic. Previous studies have associated public suspicion of government to underutilization of health services or poorer health outcomes (Heymann et al.

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2015; Mesch and Schwirian 2015). Many factors influence the trust-distrust continuum of citizens in a country, and social identity like these global religions is a significant factor in this regard. Hence, the health management arm of governments across Africa should be encouraged to intentionally forge stronger ties with legitimate religious institutions to restore or improve citizens’ trust in their government. If citizens trust their religious leaders and see a cordial relationship between their religious authority and the government, citizens’ feelings of distrust of the government should reduce significantly. Furthermore, a government’s strategic partnership with legitimate local religious leaders can help reduce citizens’ distrust of their government and instigate appropriate behavioral responses during a pandemic. Governments should also conduct periodic surveys to inform them of the varying trust levels across individuals, groups, or institutions. Knowing the different institutions that different parts of the community will trust/distrust prior to a challenging health crisis will improve the government’s health communication efficiency, which is critical to mitigating any health-related crisis. Furthermore, data gathered can be funneled through socio-ecological models to understand and identify targets for health behavior interventions as well as developing efficient policies that would increase citizens’ trust in targeted government institutions. This is important for a more holistic approach to implementing and monitoring health programs, especially in Africa, where too many programs divorced from contextual and institutional considerations have been implemented, resulting in underachievement of program goals. Second, in extreme situations or uncertain situations like a pandemic, there is a greater need for governments to develop communication in ways that maximize positive behavioral responses from citizens. In formulating a messaging strategy, the government needs to integrate traditional and religious leadership into its communication protocols. During the 2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, besides the lack of robust surveillance systems and public health infrastructure, a major setback was the communication models employed to curt the spread of infections (Thiam et al. 2015). These interventions failed to use grass-root approaches to public health education and excluded both traditional and religious institutions leading to catastrophic outcomes, especially among the most vulnerable populations. Because pandemics leave no time for chance or adjustment for the failure of health interventions without devastating effects, the employment of more holistic tools for addressing health interventions from the onset should have been the first line of defense. Third, while some studies show that the president’s ethnicity is an important predictor of who may trust the government’s advice, this study did not see any clear evidence of the same. During this study, the President of Nigeria is of the Hausa/Fulani ethnic extraction, yet people from this ethnicity appear to be the least likely to trust the government. Over 95% of our respondents are adherents to either Christianity or Islam, and more than 75% of them said that

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their religion is vital to them. This means that religion, apart from its influence in shaping their lives’ spiritual and moral fibers, is also a critical lens by which most people interpret the world around them. This heuristic tendency to anchor decisions on deeply etched beliefs is what many behavioral scientists have emphasized as an essential factor to consider in designing policies or interventions (Thaler and Sunstein 2008). Fourth, people of a particular ethnicity are more likely to have the same religious affiliation (e.g., Igbos are more likely to be Christians, and Hausas are more likely to be Muslims). This may mean that ethnicity, which has been historically identified as the potent mechanism for group identity and socialization in many African communities, may be gradually losing its potency to these foreign religions; suggesting that they are the new instruments that may be progressively replacing the role of ethnic identity. Typically, social trust is stronger for in-groups like ethnic, religious, or racial groups, and when governments’ health advice is echoed by the respected leadership of these different strata of social groupings, the potential effects of positive health behavior will be amplified. Therefore, public health leaders across Africa must integrate into their public health communication strategy, a mechanism that ensures that both religious and ethnic leaders echo their advice. Finally, our results indicate that Muslims are more likely to trust religious leaders’ health advice than Christians. This finding is not different from historical antecedents with past health programs in the country and underscores the necessity of developing health-related policies and environments within nested contexts (Golden et al. 2015). For countries like Rwanda that have faster than expected progress in the quality of their healthcare delivery, experts believe that such development was mainly possible because of the trust that exists between the government and its citizens (Binagwaho and Frisch n.d). By developing social policies to provide highly subsidized medical care through organized religious groups, governments would be able to offer nested public health awareness campaigns to community members while building trust and confidence in government institutions and interventions. As Africa integrates even more into the global trade and socio-economic system, this faith- dependent approach to health would impact its relationship with other international players. The effects of social identity via religious adherences would continue to play a role in how Africans interact in terms of global best practices and especially concerning global health policies. It is yet to be seen how the full spectrum of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the recently approved vaccines for the disease would be received on the continent. However, it is imperative that African governments design policies that ensure the engagement of religious and traditional institutions in the potential roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations. Therefore, it is worthy of note that while actions born out of religious affiliations may exacerbate a pandemic, people’s trust in their religious leaders can also be exploited to instigate the right behavioral response when pandemics strike.

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Appendix 1 See Tables 50.1, 50.2, 50.3 and Figs. 50.1, 50.2, 50.1. Table 50.1 Summary statistics

Religious leader Age Gender Ethnicity Religion Education HH income Minister of health Age Gender Ethnicity Religion Education HH income

Table 50.2 Health Advisory Source

N

Mean

sd

Min

Max

238.00 238.00 238.00 236.00 236.00 238.00

35.57 1.59 2.95 1.25 9.02 2.61

9.09 0.49 1.20 0.43 1.09 0.94

19.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 4.00 1.00

67.00 2.00 4.00 2.00 10.00 5.00

265.00 265.00 265.00 264.00 264.00 265.00

35.13 1.55 3.05 1.20 9.10 2.53

8.85 0.50 1.14 0.40 1.14 0.94

18.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 3.00 1.00

70.00 2.00 4.00 2.00 10.00 5.00

Health advisory source Group

Sub-group A

Sub-group B

Minister of health

Support the use of medication

Religious leader

Support the use of medication

Do not support the use of medication Do not support the use of medication

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Table 50.3 Regression results

Treatments (Baseline = Religion) Government Ethnicity (Baseline= Hausa/Fulani) Igbo Yoruba Others Religion (Baseline = Christianity) Islam

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Trust advice

Trust advice

Trust advice

Trust advice

−1.75*** (0.19)

−1.74*** (0.19)

−2.48*** (0.4)

−1.39*** (0.23)

−0.12 (0.4) −0.27 (0.31) −0.11 (0.29)

−0.38 (0.53) −0.62 (0.43) −0.72* (0.38)

−0.1 (0.39) −0.29 (0.31) −0.09 (0.29)

−0.4* (0.24)

−0.41* (0.24) 0.48 (0.68) 0.69 (0.58) 1.16** (0.48)

0.1 (0.31)

Government*Igbo Government*Yoruba Government*Others

−0.93** (0.38)

Government*Islam HH_income (Baseline ≤ N40,000) N40,001–N150,000 N150,001–N500,000 N500,001–N1,500,000 > N1,500,000 Education Gender (Baseline = Female) Male Age Government*Igbo

−0.96*** (0.33) −0.34 (0.35) −0.98** (0.43) 0.16 (0.62) −0.1 (0.09)

−0.99*** (0.33) −0.38 (0.35) −1** (0.43) 0.12 (0.62) −0.1 (0.09)

−0.93*** (0.33) −0.3 (0.35) −0.97** (0.42) 0.2 (0.61) −0.11 (0.09)

0.27 (0.19) −0.01 (0.01)

0.28 (0.19) −0.01 (0.01) 0.48 (0.68)

0.25 (0.19) −0.01 (0.01)

(continued)

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Table 50.3 (continued) (1)

(2)

Government*Yoruba

(3) 0.69 (0.58) 1.16** (0.48)

Government*Others Government*Islam _cons Observations R-squared

(4)

4.99*** (0.14) 455 0.16

7*** (0.84) 455 0.21

7.43*** (0.88) 455 0.22

Standard errors are in parentheses *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05,* p < 0.1

Fig. 50.1 Graphs of response to health information by ethnicity

−0.93** (0.38) 6.91*** (0.83) 455 0.22

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Fig. 50.2

Average marginal effects of the source of health advisory

Fig. 50.3

Confidence levels in various institutions/system

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Appendix 2 List of groups and organizations that participate in the study S/No

Group name

Group size

1

Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI) First Bank of Nigeria Chapter Nigerian Military School Ex-Boys Association Command Old Students Association (COMMANDOSA) University Campus Choir, ABU chapter Demonstration Secondary School Old Boys Association PTA, Queensfield Schools, Kaduna PTA, Chrisland Schools Limited, Ikeja, Lagos PTA, Little Lambs School, Kaduna ASUU- Federal University Wukari, Taraba State Department of Quantity Survey, Kaduna State University, Kafanchan, Kaduna ASUU- University of Calabar, Calabar Kaduna State Market and Development Company (KSMDC) National Space and Research Development Agency, Abuja Chevron Nigeria Ltd, Agbami Redeemed Christian Church of God- Revelation Sanctuary Ansar Ud Deen Mosque, Abuja Christian Women Organization- Sacred Heart Parish, Narayi Kaduna Almanar Mosque, U/Rimi Kaduna Catholic Charismatic Renewal Fellowship-Rijau deanery leaders, Kaduna Nigerian Breweries Plc-Sales Department, Lagos Sight Savers NGO, Birnin Kebbi—Kebbi State Total

80

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

150 200 300 200 200 150 150 180 100 150 150 100 80 50 80 100 120 100 50 80 40 2810

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Appendix3 Box graph of information effect by religion.

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Part VII

Africa and Global Leadership

CHAPTER 51

Diplomacy and Politics Toyin Falola

Introduction Diplomacy, as a means of negotiating through the intricate web of interests involved in the trade of scarce global resources, without stirring hostility, constitutes an essential aspect of both internal and external socio-political relations. The ever-increasing realization of the importance of peace to world order (as a prerequisite for security and economic prosperity), especially in an era of greater global interconnectedness and growing threats from atmospheric instability, has distinguished diplomacy as a vital component of world politics, without which the world would collapse into chaos and destruction. This identification of diplomacy as a less costly and arguably more efficient means to achieving political and economic ends has facilitated some level of world cohesion, averted some regional calamities, and prevented greater human suffering. In Africa, the function of diplomacy as a political instrument has farreaching roots. Crucial to understanding this African politics of diplomacy—its origins, nature, aspirations—are key players’ contributions; after all, key players’ contributions are a historical viewpoint. From a historical perspective, insight into the formation of the principles (equality, solidarity, justice, peace, and development) that have guided African diplomatic actions, especially in

T. Falola (B) Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_51

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recent times, can be gained. In the words of Daniel Don Nanjira: “The diplomacy and foreign policy of African countries cannot be studied or pursued in a vacuum, but they must be appreciated in the context of a comprehensive understanding of African international relations from the remotest antiquity to the present.”1 African diplomacy has been largely viewed as originating from the negative experiences that characterize most of the post-colonial period of its development—particularly, experiences that present African diplomacy as originating from marginalization and a position of vulnerability. Notwithstanding these negative experiences that have colored the expression of African diplomacy in contemporary times, Africa has stood firm and braved monumental odds, mostly not in her favor. Moreover, at its core, African diplomacy is infused with traditional African values, which have been deployed at global stages with varying successes by illustrious African sons who have served in various capacities at different global diplomatic institutions. Traditionally, African society has been known for upholding the value of inclusiveness, fostered through wide consultation during decision-making processes. In its prioritization of the community’s needs over the individual, it promotes cohesion and unity of action to achieve societal goals that would cater to the needs of the whole. This is symbolic in traditional African ideals and value systems expressed in concepts such as Ubuntu (Nguni for “humanity to others”), Harambee (Swahili for “pulling together”), Omoluwabi (Yoruba for “hard work and integrity”), and Amana (Hausa for “trust, faith, and honesty”). These constituted the essential elements of African socioeconomic interactions that were also considered morally and spiritually binding to all society members. From this traditional insistence on the ideal ethics of social interactions and conduct, in the face of prevailing socioeconomic realities, African diplomacy draws its motivation, practice, and ultimate goals. Hence, African diplomacy, though operating under modern and dynamic circumstances, has striven not only to defend Africa’s survival and uphold its way of being, but also to bring these values to bear in its global contributions to world peace, as exemplified in the title of the South African foreign policy document (2011) titled: “Building a Better World: The Diplomacy of Ubuntu.”2 This chapter attempts to draw attention to the tangibility, efficacity, and contributions of African diplomacy to global politics, peace, and security. This will be achieved through a historical evaluation of the role Africans have played in ensuring global stability as heads of government and global diplomatic institutions’ leaders.

Pre-colonial African Diplomacy Historically, African international relations have been divided into three periods: antiquity, colonial, and post-colonial. In antiquity, Africa, described as the “cradle of humanity,” was the earliest human settlements’ theater. Hence,

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it was home to group interactions’ earliest expressions (trade, negotiations, and other forms of cultural exchange). The earliest records of diplomatic activity on the continent are inscribed on clay tablets that date back to antiquity. There are such (clay) records of Egyptian interaction with their neighbors, especially one of a treaty between the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II and a Hittite King, dated c.1110 BCE, representing “the first-ever codified peace agreement in human history.”3 Thus, Africa is arguably the birthplace of diplomacy. More so, diplomatic norms and conventions, as shared between early state-like entities such as Egypt and Aksum (northern Ethiopia), in this period of antiquity, have continued to characterize intergroup relations around the globe. These diplomatic etiquettes, which include “the use of intermediaries, observance of ceremonial protocol, the presentation of credentials, and respect of customary legal norms such as the sanctity of treaties and the inviolability of envoys,”4 can be traced to diplomatic conduct in Africa during antiquity. Other instances of pre-colonial African diplomatic activities include those of the early proto-states on the continent. In West Africa, entities such as the Asante (Ashanti) Empire (eighteen to the twentieth century), Mali and Songhai Empires (fifteenth to the sixteenth century), and the great Oyo Empire (fifteenth to the nineteenth century) were prominent. In southern Africa, kingdoms like Mapungubwe (eleventh to the thirteenth century), Zimbabwe (twelfth to the fifteenth century), and the Zulu monarchy in the nineteenth century existed there. These state-like entities grew to wield immense political and economic influence either as a result of their possession of coveted natural resources such as gold, their locations on particular trade routes, or as an outcome of their military capabilities. Therefore, whereas Ashanti and the southern African Kingdoms grew rich and powerful from their gold deposits, Mali and Songhai benefited from their positions on the trans-Saharan trade route, and the Oyo Empire successfully enforced tributary relations on neighboring kingdoms, including Dahomey in the present-day Benin Republic. Thus, contrary to colonialist historiography, pre-colonial Africa was the theater of teeming trade and sophisticated political organizations. The interaction between these state-like entities produced a thick web of diplomatic ties fostered through marriage alliances, peace pacts, and economic treaties, which facilitated abundant trade, cultural exchange, and also forged lasting ties between the region, Europe, and the Islamic world. Kingship states existed in many parts of West, East and Southern Africa, and some sent ambassadors to Europe to plead with rulers and the Vatican for a cessation of invasion and slaughter. The Ashante Kingdom in what is now Ghana even traded independently on the futures and commodities markets in London, before that capacity was seized by British colonialism. The palm wine exports to

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international markets were taken over from the Ashante by British commercial concerns.5

It was such a vibrant economic and political atmosphere that greeted the arrival of explorers, missionaries, and traders from Europe and elsewhere.

Contemporary African Diplomacy and Politics (from 1960) The colonial era (1885–1950) had no independent African states, save for Ethiopia that was not colonized; every other part of Africa had undergone one form of colonialism or another. Thus, this period witnessed very little African diplomatic activity. What can be considered an “unofficial” diplomatic exchange was negotiations of Pan-Africanist and African nationalist agitators. The closest to a diplomatic action in these independence negotiations was the address given by his Highness, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, to the League of Nations, demanding the independence of African territories “as soon as possible.”6 This left the actual resurgence of African diplomacy until after African countries started regaining their independence. Africa from the second half of the twentieth century has grappled with upheavals that mostly had their origins in the outcome of the previous 80 years (1885–1960)7 of foreign (colonial) rule. Both in its bid to create an efficient system of exploitation and in the reluctance of some colonialists to relinquish their colonial possessions, colonialism created a fertile environment for discord. The resultant conflicts took such forms as an extended armed struggle for independence, especially in southern Africa, civil clashes for political dominance and resource control among multi-ethnic/cultural nation-states, and other schisms that came with the adoption and implementation of foreign socio-political systems such as democracy and its condition of majority rule that stirred up accusations of marginalization. Thus, not long after 1960, Africa increasingly became a region of concern and extensive diplomatic interventions by the Commonwealth of Nations (CWN) and the United Nations (UN). Thus, the first point of call for African diplomacy after independence (1960) was to ensure that every continent’s region/state was independent and free. Therefore, after independence, diplomatic attention immediately shifted to southern Africa, where Northern Rhodesia eventually clinched independence as Zambia did in 1964, and Southern Rhodesia was expected to follow suit. However, just like the Apartheid regime under Charles Robert Swart ignored the warning of (British) Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, delivered in a speech to the South African Parliament in 1960, Southern Rhodesia under the white minority government of Ian Smith infamously declared “not in a thousand years” to black majority rule.8 South Africa responded with more repressive measures. An action organized by the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) on March 21, 1960,9 in protest of the

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segregation laws that required Africans to carry a pass, led to the murder of 69 unarmed civilians at Sharpeville, Transvaal Province, in what is now known as the Sharpeville massacre. This incident, which “for the first time exposed the atrocities of apartheid policy to the outside world,”10 was met with swift condemnation from the international community. In Africa, it had the effect of rousing African consciousness. In Nigeria especially, a vigorous diplomatic campaign against apartheid began, symbolized by a public statement from its Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa that reads: “On the question of colonialism and racial discrimination, I am afraid that we in Nigeria will never compromise.”11 The Sharpeville incident was followed by a ban on all channels for peaceful protests by the apartheid regime, which forced the liberation movements to go underground and assume violent forms. Subsequently, the regime rounded up and jailed some members and leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) and PAC, including Nelson Mandela. However, this and other brutal attempts to crush political protests were unable to stop the violent guerrilla warfare deployed against the apartheid regime from 1960. In Southern Rhodesia, the “not in a thousand years” declaration, followed by a Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white minority regime, generated intense diplomatic din, earning the regime an “unrecognized” and “illegal” status. The inability/failure of both international parties (Britain) to take active intervention measures owing to their diminished economic fortunes and other problems posed by the strategic location of South Africa and its apartheid regime, an armed rebellion broke out led by two “liberation” fronts. For countries like Zambia (Northern Rhodesia), whose economic survival was threatened by the south’s situation, the die was cast for some intricate and “dangerous” diplomatic maneuvers which eventually launched the era of Africa’s non-career diplomats.

Africa’s Non-career Diplomats A good majority of the personalities at the forefront of African diplomacy during its early forays into the world of official (independent) diplomacy were mainly heads of government. This is not suggesting that Africa lacked a functioning bureaucracy; suffice it to say that this time, African bureaucracy was not very developed. Moreover, except in a few exceptional cases where a career diplomat’s outstanding performance shoots him/her to the limelight, it is the head of government who doubles as a national figure that takes credit. This is also not taking away from the intellectual capabilities of the typical African leader of the time, as some of those who make the list of Africa’s historic non-career diplomats have led their nations to remarkable diplomatic feats. As hinted earlier, the occasion of the Southern African diplomatic imbroglio of early independent Africa provided the avenue for some of Africa’s leaders to demonstrate their diplomatic dexterities. Among these were Presidents Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Samora Machel of Mozambique, and Julius

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Nyerere of Tanzania. This list expanded later on to include Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria; Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, both from South Africa; and Muammar Gaddafi from Libya. These heads of government/Presidents intervened in the crises that developed around Africa’s regions, sometimes in direct response to the threat these crises posed to the socioeconomic well-being of their domains and in other instances to achieve Pan-African goals and as prominent figures serving as external mediators. Their contributions can be viewed under two identified intervention periods: 1960–1979 and 1979–1999. In the first period (1960–1979), the diplomatic footprints of Kenneth Kaunda, Samora Machel, and Julius Nyerere were visible in the Southern Africa affair. Of key note were Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and his risky diplomatic maneuver. To secure his country’s economic fortunes, which were tied to the export and import routes that ran south through South Rhodesia, he hosted exiled members of the ANC, the South West African Peoples Organisation (SWAPO), fighting for Namibian independence from South African occupation, and one of the two factions of the Rhodesian liberation fighters, while at the same time allowing aerial access to both Rhodesian and South African armies, in a dangerous “balancing act.”12 While these were going on, he also worked extensively with the Common Wealth, hosting the 1979 Lusaka Common Wealth summit. And jointly with the “behind the scene” pressure mounted by Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) and Samora Machel (Mozambique) on both the British and the liberation parties, an election was held that saw Robert Mugabe emerge as the leader of a black majority government. The second period (1979–1999) saw the introduction of Olusegun Obasanjo, Muammar Gaddafi, Nelson Mandela (after 1994), and Thabo Mbeki (after 1994) into the fold. Having successfully canvassed for the removal of the apartheid regime in South Africa, their energies were redirected toward reviving the Pan-African plan, which saw to the reorganization of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) as the African Union (AU), citing the inability of the former to intervene effectively in Katanga, Biafra, Somalia, and the 1994 Rwanda genocide. This venture was bankrolled majorly by Libya’s Gaddafi, who was well known as a staunch believer in the United Africa project. After his retirement as President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela served as a mediator in several local and international diplomatic impasses, spreading his symbolic message of peace and reconciliation. He was in Indonesia and Northern Ireland in 1997. He intervened between Libya and Britain on the Pan-Am judicial matter in 1999. He was also in Palestine and Israel in the same year, advocating for peace and reconciliation. At home in Africa, he also took over the mediatory role in the Burundi civil war after Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere’s demise.

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Africa’s Diplomats and the Quest for Global Stability In the interest and pursuance of world peace and security, Africa has had the privilege of contributing substantially through individuals who, through their achievements in their various diplomatic posts, attained global acclaim and brought honor to both the institutions where they served and to their heritage. Among these distinguished African career diplomats are Mark Chona (Zambia), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt), Emeka Anyaoku (Nigeria), and Kofi Annan (Ghana). The duo of Emeka Anyaoku of the Commonwealth and Kofi Annan of the United Nations is the focus of this paper.

Emeka Anyaoku and the Commonwealth Born in 1933 in Nigeria, Emeka Anyaoku is a career diplomat. He served two tenures as the third Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations between 1990 and 2000 (the first African to occupy the office).13 Anyaoku is a graduate in Classics of the University College Ibadan. He joined the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) in Lagos in 1959, from whence he was transferred to the headquarters in London as an Executive Trainee. After a year’s course at the Royal Institute of Public Administration in London, he was posted back to the Lagos regional office months after Nigeria’s independence in December of 1960.14 In 1962, he left the CDC and joined the (newly setup) Nigeria Diplomatic Service, where he served in the capacity of the Personal Assistant to the Minister of External Affairs and was a part of the Nigerian Mission to the UN between 1963 and 1966.15 Emeka Anyaoku joined the Commonwealth Secretariat in 1966 as Assistant Director of International Affairs not long after it was established in 1965, leaving briefly in 1983 to serve as Nigeria’s Foreign Minister. Working and making his way through the ranks, he served as Director of Internal Affairs in 1971, Assistant Secretary-General in 1975, and as Deputy Secretary-General in 1978, before the Commonwealth Heads of Government appointed him to the post of Secretary-General in 1990.16 Emeka Anyaoku’s career at the Commonwealth (1966–2010) witnessed its intervention in both Rhodesia and South Africa’s crises and in the politics of much of the Cold War era. The modern Commonwealth was formally constituted by the 1949 London Declaration, a product of several reorganizations. It has grown into a political association of 54 member nations, almost all formerly British Empire territories. While it is neither a military alliance nor a treaty organization, it has, through its member states’ leaders, including the Secretary-General and his staff, developed institutional functions, structures, and norms. Its configuration between 1949 and 1990 (49 member-states, with developmental needs states making the majority) meant that the era’s ideological struggle was not the defining aspect of this international system. Therefore, it strove to maintain a ‘neutral’ position on the ideological preoccupations of the period, especially given its multiple identity composition. Once envisaged

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as being “a magnet for newly independent African states to resist the siren call of Soviet-led socialism, as well as to underpin Britain’s Great Power standing in the international community,”17 the involvement of newly independent states has seen the focus of its leadership increasingly reflect the realities and challenges in the Global South. Hence, the central themes in its diplomacy—mediation, “bilateral and collaborative pressure for racial injustice[,] democratization[,] election monitoring[,] and nuclear non-proliferation.”18 At the time of Emeka Anyaoku’s induction into the Commonwealth, it was undergoing some structural adjustments. Some stood against establishing an independent international Secretariat and, at best, preferring a nominal Secretary-General, a mere “minute taker.”19 For them, a continuous British reign was the way to go. However, countries that had just come out of struggles (some bloody) to assert their independence were not in the slightest ready to jeopardize their sovereignty by belonging to a global organization where some people were more equal than others. Therefore, the creation of the Secretariat in London—which was originally conceived as a means of bureaucratic support—to provide “conference support for the regular heads-of-government meetings which had previously been provided by the British Civil service”20 was soon to take a different dimension. With the determination of the majority—the recently independent countries—the Commonwealth Secretariat was transformed into an institution campaigning for freedom/independence, democracy, and human rights—one with an “activist Secretary-General able to communicate directly with Heads of Governments.”21 In a speech delivered in London at the centenary celebration of the Round Table, the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and the Royal Overseas League on 5 July 2010,22 Anyaoku talked about how allegations of double standards levied against the Commonwealth in the 1970s and 1980s— for invoking ideals of democracy and human rights in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and South Africa, while failings and abuses characterized its ranks—strengthened his resolve on assuming office “to see that the Commonwealth did more to ‘walk its talk’ on democracy and human rights.”23 This was especially true because, as he recounted, at the first summit with him as Secretary-General, 10 to 20% of the 50 members were one-party states or military regimes. This was to set the tone for most of his activities at the Commonwealth, especially as Secretary-General. The contributions of Emeka Anyaoku at the Commonwealth make a pretty substantial list. These achievements can be viewed in two broad but complementary categories: upholding the Commonwealth’s principles and equipping and strengthening it to live up to its mandate.

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Emeka Anyaoku’s Contributions to the Commonwealth In this respect, Secretary-General Anyaoku, pursuance of the principle of racial justice and service to the world, was actively involved (even before his time as Secretary-General) in the campaign for democracy and human rights. He participated actively in applying diplomatic pressures on the white minority rule in Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and on the apartheid system in South Africa and was instrumental in the implementation of the commitment to democracy made by some member states at the Harare Declaration. In this respect, he was personally involved in the change from the one-party-rule—in Kenya, Zambia, and Seychelles—to multi-party democracy. This was achieved by providing practical programs like election observer missions, voter registration technical assistance, strengthening the rule-of-law, gender equality, women empowerment, and the establishment of parliamentary systems of governance that can help build democracy.24 Working closely with the heads of Commonwealth Observer Groups (COG), Anyaoku was in some instances able to use his good offices to persuade a prime minister or president to accept plausibly fair election results and hand over power, and in other instances to encourage some in their moments of victory to act in magnanimity. In all of his 10 years as SecretaryGeneral, he commissioned 29 of such election observer groups around the Commonwealth. The Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme is another mechanism by Anyaoku to check importunate and brazen violations of Commonwealth principles by member states. It spelled out the procedures for dealing with leaders who got to power through illegalities, procedures that lead to ostracism from Commonwealth councils, taking the Commonwealth a step closer to being indisputable “community democracies.”25 Anyaoku’s interventions were not limited to Africa alone. He was instrumental in resolving the power tussle between Bangladesh’s Begum Zia and Sheik Hasina. Leaders of the ruling and opposition parties, the latter, contested the former’s right to rule, setting off a disagreement that threatened Bangladesh’s stability. Anyaoku, through a special representative, in the person of former Australian Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen, was able to broker a peace agreement between the belligerent parties, an agreement that would accommodate both in a democratic setting. His interventions were also extended to Pakistan, settling a threatening disagreement between the country’s then president, Farooq Leghari, and its prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.26 Back home, Secretary-General Anyaoku faced tough scenarios beginning with Biafra in ‘67 and subsequently the annulment of Nigeria’s June 12, 1993 general elections that saw Chief Moshood Abiola emerge the apparent winner. This was especially a setback because it had taken eight years of General Ibrahim Babangida’s military rule to get to that point—eight years of diplomatic commitment and pressures. This elicited a harsh statement from

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Anyaoku, who went on to describe it as a “bitter disappointment” to all who looked forward to a democratically elected government in Nigeria, especially “at a time when all Commonwealth governments have pledged themselves to promote democratic rule in their countries.”27 Unfortunately, this episode was greeted with an even direr one with the coup of November 1993 that brought General Sani Abacha to power. With Sani Abacha, it was a drastic affair, what with the arrest and murder of the infamous “Ogoni eight,” General Shehu Musa Yaradua, and the imprisonment of Moshood Abiola and General Olusegun Obasanjo. However, after several failed attempts to agree with Abacha, Abacha’s unexpected death in June 1998 paved the way for the Commonwealth to contribute to a democratically elected government in Nigeria on 29 May, 1999.

Kofi Annan and the United Nations (UN) In my four decades of service to the United Nations, I was privileged to work with an extraordinarily committed and talented group of diplomats, development experts, and humanitarians ... As often as we succeeded in alleviating suffering or halting a conflict, we found ourselves powerless to do so before far too great a toll had already been taken. As the first secretary-general elected from the ranks of the organization, I came into office with a hard-won appreciation for the limits of our powers, but equally determined that we would not simply give up in the face of setbacks – that we could do better, and would do so in the name of the peoples for whom the Charter of the United Nations was written.28

Born Kofi Atta Annan in the former Gold Coast (now Ghana) on 8 April 1938, Kofi Annan attended schools in Ghana, the United States of America, and Switzerland between 1954 and 1972. He holds a college degree in Economics from Malcaster College, Minnesota, United States (1961), a diplôme d’études approfondies degree in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International and Developmental Studies in Geneva, Switzerland (1961–1962), and a master’s degree in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts, United States (1971–1972).29 Kofi Annan kicked off his career working for the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations (UN), in 1962, as a budget officer. After a brief time away from working for the Ghanaian Ministry of Tourism in 1974, he returned to the UN and was head of personnel for the United Nations Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva in 1980. Between 1983 and 1990, he served as Director of Administrative Management Services, UN Secretariat New York (1983), Assistant Secretary-General, Human Resources Management and Security Coordination (1987), and Assistant Secretary-General Program Planning, Budget, and Finance Control (1990).30 At his appointment as UN Secretary-General on

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17 December 1996, Annan had also served as Deputy and Under SecretaryGeneral of the Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) in 1992 and 199331 and as Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Yugoslavia between November 1995 and March 1996.32 Upon resumption of office, Secretary-General Kofi Annan embarked on management reforms to enhance its operations and performance. He submitted two reports titled: Management and Organizational Measures (A/51/829) on March 17, 1997, and Renewing the United Nations: A Program for Reforms (A/51/829) on July 14, 1997. These reports contained proposals for establishing a cabinet-styled body tasked with organizing UN activities in tune with its core missions, strengthening the unity of purpose, reducing administrative costs, consolidating the UN at the country level, and partnering with civil society and the private sector. Other proposals and recommendations included those for updating the work plan of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the UN Secretariat entitled Mandating and Delivering: Analysis and Recommendations to Facilitate the Review of Mandates, March 2006, the recommendations of the Brahimi Report (2000) which accounted for the shortcomings of the UN, and last but not the least is the Millennium Development Goals (2000) where Annan presented a report entitled “We the peoples: the role of the United Nations in the Twenty-First Century”33 that called for member states to put people first in their decisions. Annan’s time as the Secretary-General of UN (1997–2006) coincided with a period where the world was undergoing a series of challenges covering brutal dictatorships and problematic political transitions, ethnic rivalries, and agitations for autonomy and nuclear proliferation, and the growth of global terrorism. These issues produced instances of great human suffering epitomized in the conflicts that engineered massacres, genocides, and huge refugee crises that further threatened a world bedeviled by poverty and disease. In the years leading to his appointment, during his time as Under Secretary, conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia—which all had UN peacekeeping presence—had turned out to be disasters that revealed the United Nation’s shortfall as an international intervention agency.34 These and other developing issues informed Annan’s plan to better equip the UN, especially in the face of unanticipated global trends, to serve the purpose spelled out in the founding Charter: “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, the dignity and worth of the human person.”35 Hence, the focus would be placed here on Annan’s interventions, the Brahimi Report and the Millennium Development Goals, representing two broad areas of his contributions as Secretary-General: improving UN conflict intervention capabilities and upholding the quality and sanctity of human life.

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The Brahimi Report The Brahimi Report, named after Lakhdar Brahimi, a diplomat, a one-time Algerian foreign minister, and vital aid to Annan, especially on Arab/Middle Eastern matters, was the outcome of Annan’s attempt to strengthen the UN’s capacity to intervene more effectively in global humanitarian crises and conflict situations. In acknowledging the UN’s “recent history of failure fully and honestly,”36 Annan commissioned two reports—one to investigate the UN’s failure in the build-up to the Bosnian massacre, and a second, to investigate the origins of the UN’s failure in its response to the Rwandan genocide. Critical of the different parties, the reports especially faulted the commitment of member states and their political leaders, as well as the reactions of the UN’s Secretariat and its Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) led by then Under-Secretary Kofi Annan. Attempts to use the findings of both reports to improve the future UN response to global humanitarian issues saw the setting up of the Lakhdar Brahimi Commission, which also led to a “high-level panel of experts to investigate what was required to reform peacekeeping in the post-Cold War world.”37 The report recognized that gaining the sanction for the intervention of the belligerent parties, reserving the use of force for self defense purposes and impartiality in peacekeeping activities, remains vital to such operations’ success. It emphasized the need for cohesion in the relationship between the UN Secretariat, the Security Council, and troop-contributing governments, and the integration of peacekeeping with peace-building activities. Moreover, the report covered additional challenges concerning the strategies, doctrines, and decision-making in peacekeeping, calling for: ● a renewed commitment from member states; ● major institutional changes; ● and increased financial support. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a by-product of the Millennium Declaration, which itself was a culmination of years and series of diplomatic planning and strategizing that stemmed from Annan’s commitment to poverty eradication and international development cooperation. Beginning with a request from the UN Security Council’s (UNSC) request in 1998 for a report on African issues, especially how the international community could address the outcome and causes of conflict in Africa, Annan launched a UN inquiry led by African scholars. The first report was ignored for what was considered its overemphasis on colonialism as the cause of Africa’s developmental and humanitarian woes. However, a subsequent report noted the role of colonialism’s impact, but indicted mostly Africans and the African leadership, and then the international community—including the UN—for its failure

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to come to the aid of Africa in ensuring peace and creating conditions suitable for sustainable development.38 The findings led to convening a Special Security Council meeting of foreign ministers where practical solutions recommended by the UN Secretariat were approved. The General Assembly soon followed suit, contributing encouraging resolutions alongside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which also formulated new international solutions in a joint venture with local African efforts. This extended the attention and coverage to impoverished countries, creating some of the conditions for establishing MDG’s in September of 2000. Annan proceeded with a sensitization campaign, presenting his case at the Paris Summit of 1998 and before predominantly military African heads of state at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) meeting in Harare,39 emphasizing the place of democracy as a vital element in the continent’s development. Eventually, in 1999 and 2000, the OAU agreed on the rejection of non-constitutional government change. This resolution was part of the constitution of the African Union (AU) unveiled in 2002, thereby officially outlawing military rule in Africa. The failure of the “development decade” and the UN and International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies to stimulate economic development in Africa created economic difficulties that have been identified as a source of crisis in Africa. However, the violence that followed attempts to change the systems of governments shifted the attention of the international community from the poverty and HIV pandemic that was destroying even more lives. Annan, appreciating that Africa lacked the resources to tackle these challenges, strove to bring the matter to global attention and stir debate. He connected with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), organizing conferences like the Rio Environment and Development Conference in 1992 and the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995,40 raising awareness and expanding global partnerships for development. In his words: My belief was that, with the right set of partnerships, underpinned by the cultivation of shared commitment, we could start turning the vast resources and dynamism of business more decisively toward the common good of global development and poverty eradication.41

Annan established the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) in 1997 to bring all the parts together for a coherent, efficient, and effective system that can deliver necessary support to developing countries. The year 2000 was chosen as a symbolic one to launch the development agenda. The process began with the famous “We the People” report of March 2000. This paved the way for the Millennium Declaration at the Millennium Summit, which had in attendance 147 heads of states and was signed by all 189 UN member states. From that declaration, eight Millennium Development Goals were developed; these include:

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Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger Achieving universal primary education Promoting gender equality and empowering women Reducing child mortality Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases Improving mental health Ensuring environment sustainability Developing a global partnership for development

Even if implementation was a different ball game, the UN under Kofi Annan could draw commitment from both local and international parties to set agendas that could alleviate much of the world’s suffering and maintain its fragile peace. Kofi Annan’s successes as Secretary-General of the UN were perhaps most evident in the recognition his name came to command in the world of diplomacy. From Nigeria to Syria, Iraq to Burundi, East Timor (Indonesia), and Mauritania, among others, were occasions where Annan’s involvement made a noticeable difference. However, fallouts with the United States (especially over Iraq), some poor UN peacekeeping outings, and allegations of complicity in corruption in the “Oil-for-Food” program involving his son Kojo threatened to cast dust on his image and contributions. This, notwithstanding, Kofi Annan goes down as one of the most remarkable symbols of human achievement in our time, which is only solidified due to him being awarded a Nobel Prize as a recognition of his contributions.

Conclusion Diplomacy in Africa is woven into the fabric of society. It was the basis upon which decision-making in traditional communal Africa was founded. Over the periods of Africa’s historical evolution, from antiquity to modern times, diplomacy has been the grease in the wheel of socio-political interactions, whether within communities as an instrument of law and cohesion or between communities as a means of interaction, that forges a peaceful and beneficial coexistence and reduces the risk of conflict. Hence, it is plausible to believe that the duo of Emeka Anyaoku and Kofi Annan, brought up in such a diplomatic environment, would possess such innate dispositions in their character. To some extent, they were products of the society that formed their earliest perceptions. Whether or not this can be considered an added advantage that counted for their remarkable performances at their respective diplomatic outposts is a question they should themselves answer—which they have. However, there is no gainsaying that their occupying such influential offices when they did was fortunate, both for Africa and the world. Not only did they (time and time again) prevent bad situations from getting worse, but they also left the institutions where they served in better stead than when they entered them. And for this, there were

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many accolades in recognition and appreciation of their contributions to the world order.

Notes 1. Daniel Don Nanjira, African Foreign Policy and Diplomacy: From Antiquity to the 21st Century, vol. 1 (New York: Praeger, 2010), 5. 2. Yolanda K. Spies, “Africa Diplomacy,” in Encyclopedia of Diplomacy (2018), 1, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323424628. 3. Spies, “Africa Diplomacy.” 4. Spies, “Africa Diplomacy,” 2. 5. Stephen Chan, “African Diplomacy and the Development of Self-Awareness,” E-International Relations, November 8, 2017, 1, https://www.e-ir.info/ 2017/11/08/african-diplomacy-and-the-development-of-self-awareness/. 6. Nanjira, African Foreign Policy, 237. 7. The year 1960, referred to as Annus Mirabilis or the “miracle year of Africa’s independence achievement,” is chosen here for its symbolism. Other African states endured colonialism and colonialist oppression for much longer, especially South Africa which only achieved freedom (majority rule) in 1994. 8. Chan, “African Diplomacy,” 2. 9. Olayiwola Abegunrin, Africa in Global Politics in the Twenty-First Century: A Pan-African Perspective (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 12. 10. Abegunrin, Africa in Global Politics. 11. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Mr. Prime Minister: A Selection of Speeches Made by the Right Honourable, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Lagos: National Press Limited, 1964), 97. 12. Chan, “African Diplomacy,” 2. 13. A. H. M. Kirk-Green, “The Missing Headlines: Selected Speeches by Emeka Anyaoku,” African Affairs 97, no. 338 (1998). 14. Emeka Anyaoku, Eye of Fire (Ibadan: Spectrum, 2000), 203. 15. Kirk-Green, “The Missing Headlines,” 413. 16. Kirk-Green, “The Missing Headlines.” 17. Sue Onslow, “The Commonwealth and the Cold War: Neutralism and NonAlignment,” The International History Review 37, no. 5 (2015): 5. 18. Onslow, “The Commonwealth and the Cold War,” 19. 19. Emeka Anyaoku, “The Modern Commonwealth, The Round Table,” The Commonwealth Journal of Internal Affairs (2011): 501. 20. Anyaoku, “The Modern Commonwealth.” 21. Anyaoku, “The Modern Commonwealth,” 501. 22. Anyaoku, “The Modern Commonwealth,” 1. 23. Anyaoku, “The Modern Commonwealth,” 501. 24. Anyaoku, “The Modern Commonwealth,” 502. 25. Anyaoku, “The Modern Commonwealth,” 502. 26. Emeka Anyaoku, The Inside Story of the Modern Commonwealth (Ibadan: Evans Brothers Limited, 2004), 197. 27. Anyaoku, Eye of Fire, 253.

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28. Kofi Annan, with Nader Mousavizadeh, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace (New York: The Penguin Press, 2012), 7–8. 29. Annan, Interventions, 29–32. 30. Issaka K. Souare, Africa in the United Nations System 1945–2005 (London: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd., 2006), 175. 31. Annan, Interventions, 46. 32. James Traub, The Best Intentions (New York: Straus and Giroux, 2006), 66– 67. See also, CNN Editorial Research, “Kofi Annan, Fast Facts,” CNN , August 18, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/27/world/africa/kofiannan-fast-facts/index.html. 33. Annan, Interventions, 199. 34. Stanley Meisler, Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007), 70. 35. Annan, Interventions, 109. 36. Annan, Interventions, 74. 37. Annan, Interventions, 75. 38. Annan, Interventions, 158–161. 39. Annan, Interventions, 163. 40. Annan, Interventions, 193. 41. Annan, Interventions, 195.

CHAPTER 52

The World of Literary Writers Toyin Falola

Literary writing presents the totality of human experience using linguistic properties that carry its expression in vivid form. The literary writers embrace the social and cultural responsibility to function as the conscience of the society through their literary artistry deployed to continuously reiterate the collective values and virtues of society so that ideas that birthed them would cease to run into disastrous extinction. When we also come across any literary production that addresses the growing challenges of economic or political crises, galloping insecurities amidst others, that right there is the acceptance of the social duty to speak on behalf of the subaltern whose voice has been reduced to humming by the intimidation of the political infrastructure. Although usually underrated, the contributions of literary writers to the shaping of collective values, keeping the communal spirit, and maintaining the balance of the collective psychology, appear immense. This explains why the absence of literary scholars in an environment can be a signal to understanding what ideology such societies operate on. Never are writers disregarded without there being negative consequences on a society’s conditions because literary writers provide the required intellectual energy needed to catapult human society higher. African literary writers have a profound literary culture that they use at different times as a necessary instrument to forge an outstanding identity. There are times when literary works are used to preserve African culture, T. Falola (B) Department of History, University of Texas At Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_52

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and there are times when they are used to recreate history. Literary works are often used to evaluate cultures and literary writers mostly use the texts to inspire revolutionary changes in the immediate society. This, therefore, foregrounds the difference between the African literary culture and other literary cultures because while others may sometimes serve only esthetic or entertainment purposes, African literary cultures have the utilitarian sanction. Interestingly, African literary artists have made important contributions to the global literary culture and have made their trade a center of attraction where different scholars of dissimilar cultural backgrounds come to market their ideas, bond with the culture, and sometimes immerse themselves in African writing so that it may be recreated in their different countries. African literary writers depend largely on the continent’s oral traditions as these remain the source of their literary engagement. Here, we shall consider a number of these African literary writers who have made significant contributions to global literary traditions. We will also examine how their works have been of global importance and, where needed, give an informed judgment on their artistic orderliness.

Wole Soyinka Wole Soyinka is one of the important voices of literary writing in Africa with imposing intellectual stature globally. Born in 1934 to Yoruba parents from Abeokuta,1 Soyinka is a prolific Nigerian writer whose literary versatility is felt in poetry, drama, and prose. His literary productions have earned him much international recognition—so much so that he bagged the muchcoveted Nobel Laureate prize in 1986. Wole Soyinka is a product of modern Nigeria that came into being by the history of colonization. This experience implies that the British language’s imposition had mandated him to fashion out a literary identity with a tenor of hybridity. This is principally because the existing literary practices of the people, most especially Africans, are built around an oral tradition that has a dissimilar component of its own. Therefore, the new European languages provide the platform for the exhibition of a literary culture whose content and form are exclusively drawn from the existing African practices. This is logical. The association of these people with their colonizers’ cultural traditions does not automatically grant them the native and indigenous competence to navigate the culture in their bid to produce works of literature. This, therefore, means that the African oral traditions will pass through a transitional process where it will be kneaded and sifted to accommodate the demands of the new culture, the European one. It thus creates an impression that the relationship between the oral literature, coined “orature” by Pio Zirimu,2 and the written tradition is a complex one. The beauty of their craft—that is, the African literary writers—is that orality crawls easily into what they write, and readers familiar with the oral culture have no problem spotting cases of these transpositions. The works of Wole Soyinka are very symbolic in this area. They rely heavily on oral culture and

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even draw most of their metaphoric persuasions from it. Like other literary works, African works tell a story, and the act of storytelling involves the demonstration of artistic competence, as this is used as the vehicle to transport the storyteller’s message into the subconscious of the audience where it finds maturation. When the storyteller begins the process of information sharing, they mostly collapse the time and space together, drawing the audience’s attention and presence into a familiar history. Because of the mutual knowledge and understanding of the historical event which is the subject of their oral, artistic performance (now literary writing in the text), the custodian of history telling the story links the past with the present by employing very explosive images that make the story relevant to the present time. Therefore, the teller (here, the writer) does not recount this experience in isolation; he is part of the story, as are the African readers, but with a different assignment to play in the process. History, which is becoming inaccessible to the people, is recreated with artistic dexterity, and the process is therefore garnished with the necessary necessities that give the story a wider acceptance. Therefore, when one reads important works such as Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman,3 one is not immediately unraveling the work’s postcolonial temper, especially when one is from the cultural stream that produces the work. An African takes the work and immediately sees the images and metaphor spiced up to give it a beautiful outlook. Various cultural activities such as the position of Eleshin Oba in the play would evoke the sense of the history of a culture that properly designates roles and positions to individuals in both the physical world and the spiritual domain. The reader is dragged to identify with the market women who are culturally responsible for the enablement of Eleshin’s psychological well-being, as this is principally useful for the satisfaction of the impending cultural duty which he, Eleshin Oba, must perform. Like Olunde, Eleshin’s son, the reader views him with emotional sensitivity, pleading unconsciously to the innocent man to take the position of his greed-infested father to rid the society of impending doom hanging on loosely, waiting to be activated. Wole Soyinka, therefore, does not occupy the position of a mere storyteller. Like the audience, he is seen as the conscience of the culture, bringing into history the relationship between the past and the present. In what would be carried out shortly, we would consider the intellectual activities to be what make him a global attraction. First, Wole Soyinka is a committed socialist-realist African writer whose writing import centers on social regeneration. His works do not only identify the social ills and the eventual consequences in the society; Soyinka’s writings always carry the hint of a probable solution to the ravaging challenges. As has been implied, literary writers perform important duties in their work based on their various levels of conviction and dedication to their ideological leaning. Some writers write to reveal the available sociocultural downsides without obviously giving notable solutions to the mentioned challenges. These writers are usually regarded as realist writers. However, some do not only deploy their arts to point to the ills of the society but are also providing likely

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solutions through their works. These are the ones known as socialist-realist writers, and Soyinka falls into this category. His work, which has been referred to above, DATKH , showcases the current problem facing society because of the infiltration of the African sociopolitical or sociocultural space by the European expansionists. One of such problems is cultural clash. Africans are at the receiving end of power because there is a European man at the other end who considers himself the natural benchmark for cultural correctness. In other words, whatever was the culture of the dwellers of his colonies before his emergence, it is not worthy of preservation and must be crushed. Whereas technological advancement does not automatically presuppose cultural superiority, its beauty is that it is meant to be diverse as much as people’s diversity. This is usually because people are naturally disposed to seeing ideas and events of the world differently, and their perception about life is meant to be shaped by the cultural traditions to which they are duly exposed. However, the Europeans do not consider this sensible, and as represented in the character of Simon Pilkings in the text under review, the idea that Eleshin Oba must accompany the King in the hereafter journey reeks of intellectual infanticide or an infantile cultural idea generally because it does not appeal to how the demise of an individual would bring about the community balance, as claimed by the custodians of the culture. Having political power, therefore, became another reason for a clash in the work. The Europeans, mustering the political wherewithal at their disposition, debarred Eleshin (the continent’s cultural icon) from performing his social and spiritual duty. This, therefore, comes at a very costly price for the people entirely. From their internal political structure to their economic infrastructure, everything immediately began to topple downside because of the man’s failure to perform his cultural duty. Here, the author suggests something significant: the idea that the intervention of the European power on African culture is regrettable. The play ends with an important denouement as Eleshin’s son, who is already exposed to Western culture and practices, took upon himself the social responsibility and performed the social ritual expected of his household. Because he carries the gene of Eleshin, however, the sacrifice is seen as the tenable and social balance is immediately restored. Now, this is where the intellectual artistry of Soyinka is generally seen. Knowing that the son has submitted himself to society’s will, Eleshin could not stomach the corresponding psychological trauma from such a sacrificial act. For one, he appears to have underperformed as a father as he could not muster the necessary courage to protect the stability of the community and safeguard the good name of his family, and also he has betrayed the confidence reposed in him as the potential savior of the people. Once again, the African reader of the work would immediately understand and equally appreciate the people’s communal ideology, seeing how everyone rallies around Eleshin Oba immediately. He was designated as the potential escort of the King to the spiritual realm. In joyous celebration and merriment, everyone accorded him the substantial regard required to make him feel loved and appreciated. There is a sharp

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contrast which Soyinka wishes to be explored by the audience themselves. The British who negated the idea of Eleshin submitting himself to save the people are the ones who brought with them a crusade of Christianity whose principal ideology is an entrenched sacrifice. They say that he put his life down for the people in order to save them. Though this is generally valorized and recognized as a courageous and selfless action, they refuse to see apparent connections between Eleshin and Jesus. Wole Soyinka is a postcolonial literary writer whose works involve a critical engagement of Africans’ experiences during colonialism and have invariably extended their consequences on the postcolonial identity of the people both at the local and at the international level. Postcolonial literatures are very instrumental in understanding how colonialism facilitated the immediate reshuffling of African cultural praxis, as well as the African economic system. Going by Marxists’ orientation and principles about money, the nucleus of every production, we understand that culture is immediately set on the trajectory of reconfiguration when the economic systems have been redefined through power change, or whatever force is responsible for it. Culture, therefore, is seen as an innocent prey that subsists on the goodwill of economic benevolence. The relationship between this and the African culture is that Europeans’ intrusion on the African continent to aid both their political and economic expansion has inevitably redefined the ways Africans perceive themselves. As cultural icons and the conscience of the society, writers try to relay these events to us and to inform us of how these events have overbearing consequences on our general life. We see Soyinka as that shining postcolonial literary icon whose works are very significant to examine the pre-colonial African life compared to the postcolonial time. Here, we are looking at another of his plays, titled The Lion and the Jewel.4 TLATJ presents events that happen in an imagined Ilujinle, where the characters who have been exposed to both Western ideas and African cultural traditions begin to demonstrate contradictions that will readily activate the readers’ worry. Baroka, the king of Ilujinle, seeks to add to his harem of beautiful wives, and Sidi, a promising young belle, has caught his attention. However, Lakunle, an extremely westernized fellow, takes a similar interest in Sidi but appears to detest the African tradition that stipulates dowry payment as the clause to satisfy before being endowed with the would-be wife. Other characters take equally important roles. However, the obstinate refusal of Lakunle to satisfy this condition creates the problem which the writer seeks to share. While it is true that Lakunle loves Sidi and the feeling is mutual, the act of professing love between two adolescent adults does not automatically guarantee marital union. This happens because Africans conceive marriage differently from the West. Dowry payment is seen as an act or ritual to fulfill as a marker of genuine interest, for one does not invest in what one despises. But this is seen differently by Lakunle, the western doppelganger. He hurls different abusive words at the lady in a Western fashion, just for refusing his proposal on that ground.

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Chinua Achebe Arguably the most popular African prose writer, Chinua Achebe, was born in 19305 into the Igbo ethnic extraction in Nigeria and had his education in the country. He was raised at the time when the evolution of Nigeria’s independence struggle was past its incubation stage, making him well-nurtured in both the Igbo African culture and the Western traditions under which his education grew. After having spectacular experiences in his formative years, he proceeded into the tertiary education stage, where he acquired much more knowledge about writing and story development. Again, the art of storytelling is not difficult to spot in his literary engagement as his works have oral tradition sanctions. The oral tradition is impeccable because it helps Africans to draw from their knowledge database, regurgitating historical information to salvage the past from going into oblivion. Running to this cultural archive is important because it inheres their identity and souls. On this basis, the different realizations of oral traditions either in songs, praises, chants, and others are expeditions into soul-searching where the writers and the audience find something that enlivens their souls. In a case where the people’s current experience appears in negative ways, these items of culture become revitalization instruments, motivating and then energizing them through the recollection of past accomplishments. In some situations, however, especially when the current experience shows sufficient splendor, oral practices such as chants or praises serve to remind the people of the greatness of their forebears, which they have complemented with their redoubtable activities. Therefore, telling a story creates a sensory union of images and ideas where the storyteller—in this case, the writer—evokes the substance of their history and the cultural experience. In oral rendition, the performer has the opportunity to rupture the feelings of the audience by striking objects of history familiar to the two parties and therefore enable the corresponding reactions part and process of the art. This is principally impossible in the writing medium, but the African literary writer has perfected a way to generate this reaction—although not in the immediate sense as it was in the oral system. On this basis, oral traditions involve a complex relationship and conscious unity between the various genres found in the Western literary tradition so that many scholars reject the hegemonic assertion that performance is alien to African traditions. While performance is realized differently in the Western literary culture, it is embodied in every African oral tradition. Therefore, the duty of the modern African literary expert is to penetrate the subconscious of the audience in order to relive their past through performance in their present. Generally, Chinua Achebe is widely known for his mastery of the African system of storytelling, which is not difficult to spot in his works. Achebe remains very competent because he employs the totemistic method of African storytelling where the totem, maybe the tortoise or the spider in the Nigerian and Ashanti traditions, is used as an object in the performance. When

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one looks into Achebe’s works, one would understand that his storytelling method is fashioned around this traditional system, and that has always helped in driving home his points and messages in his works. Therefore, this projects the writer’s image in the ways we are going to prove further in what follows. Achebe is seen as a cultural activist whose primary impulse in writing is to challenge the West’s cultural domination by providing an outstanding alternative perspective that African cultures promise. To Africans, stories are not frozen; they are always alive, responding to the summon of the storyteller to dissect contemporary realities. The adoption of animals such as tortoises is because of the need to connect all lives, irrespective of their seeming contradictions on the surface. Africans conceive immobile and immovable lives not as distant from the movable ones, like humans, but as part of the circumference of life that enables the world to rotate in its cyclical structure. When the tortoise is depicted to suffer from making some choices, for example, it is a clever way to remind individuals who deliberately or otherwise stand at variance with collectively celebrated ideas. Therefore, we see Chinua Achebe’s intelligence in this regard in his ability to recreate the history of the African past in his writings, dragging his audience to take a journey into the past. Here, we would consider his masterpiece, Things Fall Apart, which he debuted in 1958.6 Although TFA tells the story of an overbearing individual with ambition and how his inability to herald the collective moral ideology brings about his damnation, there seems to be another interesting perspective provided here. Contrary to the popular reading of TFA, which usually animates the clash of African and Western culture, this section reveals how the work is a modern depiction of African moral culture notable in its totemic oral traditions. Okonkwo, the always energetic cultural referent, is very ambitious, and he turns his ambition into significant history through his power of negotiation and dedication. He had gone to seek help from an elderly man in the society with a track record of economic growth (the then-economy was heavily determined by agricultural engagement). The strength of Okonkwo, regardless of his poverty, was measured by his inability to afford yam seeds, which he would have capitalized on physic strength to ensure it yields results. Since his father, Unoka, is a serial debtor who lacked the mental and physical resources to establish himself in the society, Umuofia, Okonkwo then, in his bid to change his fortune, approached Nwakibie, a village elder who borrowed him some 800 seeds of yam. As it was the habit of the general society, the spirit of communalism made the man give such numbers of seeds to Okonkwo, not minding the insolvent gene that runs in his ancestry. This, right here, is the story of Okonkwo’s ascension into political and economic stardom in his community. He was the proverbial communal property whose greatness was activated through the goodwill of his people. Okonkwo, however, like the tortoise, appears to have a short memory. He allowed his class position to get into his head, and he begins to show some signs of acute forgetfulness. Although he was trying to create an impression to the indifferent society about how his financial history or ancestral records are

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not enough to stand in his way of progress, he would never even allow them. Times without number, he continued to demonstrate acts that made people close to him question his sanity. Okonkwo is physically endowed, but in no way was his physical posture reflective of his emotional intelligence. He flares up where it was strictly unnecessary. He takes laws into his hands where diplomacy is required. However, while he was constantly reminded of his humble background by his caring friend, Obierika, no decibel of advice would make Okonkwo tune down his growing ego. He defies the social order to beat his wife Ekwefi at the most unexpected time, the week of peace where tranquility is crucial to the collective profession. Although he was sanctioned for this eventually, he again takes a leading role in the beheading of a sacrificial lamb, Ikemefuna, a village boy from Mbaino, with whom he shares a familial bond. In a very careful way, the writer can link the fate of Okonkwo to that of the tortoise when at the end of the text, Okonkwo overestimates his social relevance by challenging the invaders of their clan and traditions. Although the personal ambition of this character is to send messages of resistance to the invading civilization about their capacity to contain aggressions irrespective of where they are coming from, his inability to read the attitude of his clan members pushed him to take laws into his hands to act on behalf of the society, which in many ways would have been uncomfortable with his spiral ascension into a higher rank. Perhaps the character’s tendency to fall victim to this plot would have been expressly reduced, provided that he does not excessively indulge his social clout. In the end, he becomes the victim of his overindulgence, he causes the end of his career. Therefore, the journey to this self-destruction is emblematic of the totem used by the African people in telling their stories. Another way to interpret the character of Okonkwo is to consider it from the angle of African oral stories shared for didactic purposes. Another important work of Achebe that attracts our attention is Civil Peace,7 which he penned after the Civil War of 1966–1970. The war that took approximately 30 months comes with disheartening consequences, and it is not difficult to understand that it is a postcolonial life reality that is difficult to avoid. Jonathan Iwegbu, the protagonist of the story, is molded with enormous optimism that he displays even in consuming challenges. Despite being confronted with disastrous experiences ranging from the war that took much of his mental and economic possessions to an encounter with robbers, Jonathan is consistent with his usual phrase, “Nothing puzzles God.” The fact that he was introduced in the early part of the work has a stylistic impetus to his development as a postcolonial character. The war came and took nearly all the important possessions, but he was able to secure his bicycle, and with this, he lightens up his spirit in ways that appear like he was never devastated by the traumatic experience at all. Because the war has claimed substantial values and led the people to financial drawbacks, he converted his bicycle to a source of income as he made it a taxi with which he generates funds. After another devastating experience with burglars, Jonathan remains loyal to his metaphoric expression “nothing puzzles God” as he has somewhat seen

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the better way to manage the reality of the current world he lives in. As it would be seen, this repetition is enough to attract people with any flair for literary excellence. The story of Jonathan here is about the realities of the postcolonial experience. The allusion to war, and subsequently the burglar experience, confirm something significant about the after-effects of colonization. The secessionist violence in the first place arose from the determination for self-rule that the ex-colonies consider primary because they are at variance with the colonial identity handed down to them. Resistance is an action that usually attracts opposite reactions, especially from characters and figures under which freedom is sought. Even when people broke into war because of their ambition, the post-war consequences are increased crimes, depletion of economic structure, political upheavals, and famines. So when Jonathan was robbed and denied a good or quality life, his resolution to acclimatize with the realities exemplifies how the people had to comport themselves to the consequences of colonialism. He won the heart of many for this.

Ng˜ug˜ i wa Thiong’o Ng˜ ug˜ı wa Thiong’o is a Kenyan literary writer born in 1938,8 when colonization was at the rooftop of its expansionist experiment in Africa. One thing that defines wa Thiong’o’s literary scholarship is his commitment to a resistance literary culture. His works are remarkable for wrestling with cultural affiliation. One important way to understand why his artistic productions follow this trajectory is to have an awareness of Kenyans’ political experience under the colonial structure, which propelled uprisings from individuals forming different associations as a means of combating the prevalent subordination of their political sovereignty and economy. The Kenyan affliction under this predatory pressure was key in constructing his literary ideology, which influences his dedication to independence struggles in all conceivable ways. Wa Thiong’o began to understand colonialism’s devastating consequences when it transformed into postcolonial totalitarianism under the neocolonial African leaders. He has dedicated his art to liberate Kenya from its bourgeois-like theatrical infrastructure by confidently encouraging mass participation in the process. The project, which became a phenomenal success, generated opposite reactions by the bourgeois, and he was targeted for state punishment. Somehow, he escaped this and decided to chase his dream in another clime. Wa Thiong’o’s indigenous language is Gikuyu, but the happenstance of colonialism dictates that he was raised in the European language. This experience, therefore, defined his literary behavior and content at some point in his career. He is one of the prominent proponents of linguistic independence, especially which should be used as the instrument of literary engagement. He became somehow Anglophobic by renouncing his Anglophilic infrastructure, as he changed from using the colonizers’ language to using his native language as the instrument of communication in his literary engagement. Wa Thiong’o

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is that African literary writer who has veered from Achebean realism to Fanonian philosophy and, in the end, has become a radical linguistic perspectivist challenging the superstructure in ways he considered best suitable for the African revolution. Embroiled in all these transformations within his period of literary participation, wa Thiong’o’s ideology and personality became that complex interaction of identity and soul-searching. At the Makerere Conference held in 1963, he, alongside other Africans with sympathy for the African language such as Obi Wali, campaigned that African literary icons begin to adopt their indigenous African languages as vehicles of communication in their literary engagement.9 This served as a bid to shut out the influence of European culture in literary works. This gathering, however, registered the presence of many scholars with divergent views. However, wa Thiong’o is that man who puts his money where his mouth is. He immediately displays his Anglophobic disposition by writing his following work in the Gikuyu language, steering profound arguments from scholars who initially doubted the possibility of such a development. In addition to this, he makes his works a site of critical engagement where the thematic focus always centers on the toppling of the political class responsible for the gnawing experience of people. His literary debut, Weep Not, Child 10 was published in 1964, and he immediately produced another one in 1965, The River Between.11 Both of these works animate the economic exploitation of Kenya and the clash of culture that happened because of the combination of non-African religion and African religions during the coming of the West, respectively. Wa Thiong’o has also authored several inspiring pieces of literature, including but not limited to A Grain of Wheat, Devil on the Cross, Petals of Blood, The Black Hermit, and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, among many others. Instructively, there has been a shift from wa Thiong’o’s linguistic orientation of Afrocentricism to Anglo-Saxonism in later years due to a horrible political experience that demanded a compelling urgency for a change. Having been taken prisoner and having escaped to the Western side, the reality that his audience has changed demanded that he switched his orientation for immediate literary survival. Even though many critics consider this a betrayal of ideology, the eventual switch from Gikuyu to English has been occasioned by necessity rather than a change in personal philosophy and ideology. We shall consider one of his works to understand its sociopolitical tempers. No other way can the works of wa Thiong’o be defined than by his portraiture of cultural insubordination, as well as the political and economic dehumanization of Africans, which clearly show the determination for a PanAfricanist development, achievable through planned resistance struggles. We should desist from imagining that wa Thiong’o has a notoriety for chaos and strife. What defined his resistance are diplomacy and the embracing of African sociocultural values as the bedrock of every emancipation crusade. It is not a coincidence that his works are used as instruments and tools for forging a common identity and for preparing the audience’s mind for the probable danger that lies in the inability for unity. There is no escaping the reality that

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wa Thiong’o was a colonial product who experiences the crudity of colonization first-hand, and as such, understands that the most effective way to face the structure is to vociferously reject the structure of colonialism at every given opportunity. The fact that such a platform may be elusive given the way colonization was controlling and imposing compelled him to adopt the literary medium to air his struggles. Weep Not; Child 12 talks about the excessive use of power by the colonialists and their apologists/accomplices who forced economic power out of grabbing the natural owners and subjecting them to confounding pressures. Njoroge, a young boy around whom the work revolves, is urged to attend school by his mother, who believes that economic emancipation under the colonial structure requires a certificate in education. From a wretched background, his family makes do with crumbs and shafts in the place they are condemned to—Jacobo’s land—whereas Jacobo is a colonial accomplice who supports the predatory campaigns of the Europeans in order to win a place for himself in the economic domain. The people are subjected to all forms of dehumanizing experiences that shatter them and degenerate their family identity all the more. Kamau, Njoroge’s brother, was forced to get involved in World War II, which exposed him to the slaughter of many people from his hometown. Mr. Howlands, in collaboration with his accomplices, continued to feast on people’s economy and make them suffer. This inspired a war from the people, the Mau uprising, and the clash led to the loss of life and trust, both of which happened to the place’s defenseless majority. Since Mr. Howlands is one of the primary beneficiaries of the land’s economic inequity, he comes down heavily on those whom he calls his enemies, even when they are imagined or real. Njoroge suffered extensively and became impoverished by the European expansionist agenda. Therefore, the work puts wa Thiong’o on the map of African literary tradition, as he was able to document the experiences of Africans under the leadership of colonialists. He has more works to his credit with similar fecundity.

Nuruddin Farah Nuruddin Farah is a Somali novelist, born in 1945.13 Many scholars are of the opinion that Farah belongs to the class of contemporary postcolonial literary artists who use the cultural experience of the people in the postcolonial world as the basis of their artistic engagement. Arguably, culture remains one of the most mobile possessions that thrive on its ability to accommodate new ideas and update its perception. Without constantly advancing its boundaries to break the walls of the other cultural traditions in order to attract some practices and discard others, the sustainability of a culture would be in serious contention. Importantly, this has been the most reliable way of constructing identity and keeping one because the activities that emerge after two cultures collapse are ones that provoke rejuvenation, revitalization, and cleansing. In other words, there is no culture that remains the same after colliding with

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others, as the process itself has mandated such a culture to take a different trajectory from its initial standpoint. Like languages, cultures are always prone to go extinct if they remain intransigently committed to their ideas solely. Perhaps as a response to nature’s forces, cultures find it inevitable to grow beyond their natural boundaries, making them ready to absorb other ideas and cultures that see life differently. While this remains basic, the Somalis are not amenable to changes in their cultural life, which forms the background of Farah’s writing. We shall examine one of the works of Nuruddin Farah, titled A Naked Needle,14 which borders on cultural infringements that arise because of the choice of an individual to choose their bride from a different cultural setting. The book describes the perception of Somalis about cultural evolution and their reactions to situations of change. The people are embroiled in the existing cultural system’s permutations, which they dedicate their energy to defend and, perhaps, destroy. Farah creates an impression that individuals are reflections of their cultures and that moving away from the calibration or configurations of these cultural economies remains difficult and sometimes improbable. In essence, human culture is an omnipresent force that continuously influences individuals’ decisions, either consciously or otherwise. They are predominantly forced to follow certain lines of thought, and also the majority of their decisions are the product of their cultural assessment. Ideas are perceived through it, and values are evaluated from that lens. The challenge inherent in changing one’s cultural framework remains constant, more importantly, if the custodians have not bonded with a different cultural setting. The problem is usually immediate. Culture shock and class suicide are two of the predominant results of meeting with another culture, as perceptions are usually affected by that meeting point. ANN is the story of a young man named Koshin Qowdhan who teaches English and comes from Somaliland. The narrative is developed around him and his potential better-half, an English lady named Nancy. Whereas there is a general perception about marriage in Somaliland, spouses are examined through their tribal affiliation. The relationship is touted and ridiculed by either the male or the female gender, especially when either party is a nonSomali, non-Muslim, among others. This usually happens among the educated elites who are exposed to a European education system. However, they are constantly under pressure because society would always perceive them as outlaws who defy popular values to satisfy their agenda. Hence, the relationship between Barre and Mildred, Mohamed and Barbara, and Koshin and Nancy receive somewhat similar reactions because the people consider the union as against their culture. Mohamed and Barbara’s relationship comes as the first point of focus as the man wins the contempt of the people who now see him as an outcast. Farah foregrounds this criticism when he says, “Mohamed took the title of being the first Somali ever to marry a foreigner in Mogadishu.”15 Muhammad, a Somali, and Barbara, an American, create a union that negates Somali society’s cultural configurations, which earned

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him malicious and offensive comments. Somalis’ sensitivity to this update constitutes the foundation of his literary ideology in work, for example. Somalis see their culture as sacred and sacrosanct, attaching to it a beautiful sense of pride. The realization that Mohammed goes outside of their cultural geography to pick his wife comes as a great shock which they find difficult to absorb, pushing them to activate their critical assessment of the issue and eventually condemn such embarkation. Already there is an unsaid discontent of the people against the current development of the place as the educated Somalis are breaking the walls of their culture without disregarding it. Therefore, they perceive Mohammed’s action in marrying outside their culture as a flagrant disregard for their culture, which is becoming the trend among the elite class. On behalf of their culture, Somalis feel highly disappointed that Mohammed had transgressed on their established norms and traditions, and again showcased a spirit of individualism which is inherent in the habit of self-satisfaction at the expense of the collective philosophy. Marrying Barbara is interpreted as this because they view Mohammed as unwilling to let go of his ambition and love for Barbara even at the expense of their cultural and religious values. The condescension is apparent in Barbara’s remarks after their marriage when she says, “And then we married despite everything. And I dreamt for him, and he dreamt for me, for the country, for the possibilities of partaking in the development of something tangible.”16 In this literary work, Farah foregrounds something worth considering. He states the effects of colonialism, although taking the position that colonization has happened, and there should be the need to prepare for the post-colonization effects. Part of what it necessitates is that people can mingle with other cultures, which is seen in the behavior of the Somali elite who acquire education because of their relationship with the English. This leads to sharing their culture and invariably forcing them to intermarry. All of these are, therefore, inevitable in the postcolonial environment. Cultural traditions are not frozen, as they are amenable to changes, especially when the situation calls for them. Colonialism warrants such change, and the failure to align oneself with that reality would always produce similar results where individuals go headlong because of their choices that contradict cultural constructions. Somalis conceive the West as the other from whom they must distance in philosophical matters. They understand that when their culture becomes so receptive to Western values, their identity is then questioned and may undergo radical changes, undesirable and unimaginable as they may be. In essence, whatever does not carry their Somali identity culturally, religiously, or racially would be rejected and clinically avoided. This mystery of creativity, therefore, sets Farah out of others.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Chimamanda Adichie is another shining African writer whose works in the global community are well-received. Born in Nigeria in 1977,17 Adichie’s literature is defined by a unique literary identity that has profound stature in the contemporary African literary tradition. Something very important about Adichie is that her migration from the Nigerian space into the United States is essential in her literary development. As a black woman in America, she begins to understand the weight of her color in global politics because her stay while in Nigeria gave her no reason to feel different and isolated. Everyone receives her as she does everybody. However, the situation would be challenged by the changes that come with switching cultural and geographical settings. Meanwhile, Adichie has developed her literary skills while in Nigeria, having familiarized herself with prominent Nigerian authors’ works, especially Chinua Achebe’s. This sage’s literary tradition has a special identity that is popularly celebrated, and this would, in the long run, affect Adichie’s perspective and works. She has authored some literary works and been awarded several honors to recognize her outstanding contributions to the African literary tradition. There is no arguing that the presence of Adichie in African literary engagement has influenced more international audiences to take an interest in African works. Adichie is a touch of post-colonialism and feminism, as her works usually reflect the postcolonial African realities. In one of the prominent works she authored, Purple Hibiscus,18 Adichie discusses a young boy and her brother, Jaja, who are both tortured by their extremely disciplinarian father, Eugene. The man appears to be a no-nonsense individual and spares none of the children at every opportunity to beat them. Eugene, a religious zealot, is notorious for molesting his household, which means that he spares no one when exerting authority regardless of their posting. His wife, Beatrice, has been subjected to all forms of abuse and has always been molested by Eugene. This is the reality of Kambili, who thinks her father’s methods were the acceptable way of running a household. She is transitioning into maturity, and her domestic experience has therefore continued to create wrong impressions in her mind. She believes herself to be a victim of poor family identity, as her ideas and perception are not even considered in the scheme of things. While she undergoes this very turbulent process into her adulthood, her brother Jaja has a similar experience, and they also serve as witnesses to the travails of their innocent mother. The experience continues nonstop while they struggle and endure the pains that come with having a totalitarian parent. However, Kambili and her brother visit a family member, and it changes their understanding. At the house of their father’s sister, the two characters experience something entirely different. Ifeoma, their father’s sister, enjoys a peaceful marriage and experiences love in its best form. Over there, the two are not exposed to bullying or intimidation, which was a common experience in their own

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father’s house. In fact, their voices are important during family meetings, and they have the freedom to ask questions on issues clouding their minds. This creates a mental spark in them, and they immediately understand that they have been in the wrong hands from time immemorial. In the end, they returned home, and it was still a similar experience of beating and intimidation with their father. These characters grew impatient and, in connivance with their mom, sent their father to an untimely death. This work reveals the continent’s postcolonial situations and how Africans, especially the ones professing new fate, are perfect ironies to what they ideologically stand for. Generally, postcolonial Nigerians are disposed to misusing power, and this is what the character Eugene represents. Beating one’s wife, among other things, signposts frustration and the psychological consequences it brings. At the same point, the work talks about the subjugation of the woman character, which again is the byproduct of post-colonialism in Africa. The colonial Europeans were not pretentious about their preference for men while they were around, and they consciously fixed them into economic positions. This creates a false sense of superiority, as economic power is synonymous with class. Economic power is central in facilitating a class-conscious society where the political and social infrastructure determines society’s direction. Therefore, the lack of equitable distribution of it portends danger for those denied the opportunity to accrue these benefits for personal advantage. The society’s configuration along the male–female dichotomy creates a severely wider disparity that therefore places the woman at the base of the power pyramid. Carefully, this installed a structure that undermines the female gender at the expense of their male counterpart, who dispassionately subjects them to all kinds of dehumanizing experiences. It is a perfect depiction of the postcolonial Nigerian life that showcased a vacuum of power, allowing anyone to ascend and misuse power. While the book comfortably registers this impression, there is a general understanding that it does not fail to portray the Nigerian religious people in the actual image. While they commonly lay claim to moral superiority because of their religious beliefs, they are not different from nonbelievers in their ideological convictions. Even though Eugene remains a Catholic figure, this does not inhibit him from subjecting his wife, his right hand, to all forms of maltreatment. The fact that domestic violence is a common experience in the household of believers is perplexing and worrying. Just because Adichie sometimes appears like the archetype of Chinua Achebe, her literary model, some works of literature and critical engagement have been produced to put the speculation in the right perspective. While Achebe appears to use the literary platform to expose the literary tradition of Africans to the world, Adichie is at the forefront of the contemporary struggles. Their comparisons are stretched from the biographical connections to their stylistic similarities that add color to Adichie’s qualities that make her unique and respected. The manifestation of these two lies in their use of metaphorical expressions to deliver their literary messages, and while Achebe has the image of a pioneer, Adichie shares similar respect among the new

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generations of African writers. The fact that she has won many accolades and written many literary books puts her on the global map of African literary icons in the present era. She writes Americanah, a book that documents her experience while in the United States, and has been known globally to take on gender issues. Apparently, this author has brought closer attention to the primary essence of the African literary tradition in the global intellectual discursive space. One thing that makes her significant: she does not allow the pressure of superstructure to dictate the anatomy and organs of African literary tradition.

Notes 1. Tyler Wasson and Gert Brieger, Nobel Prize Winners: An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, vol. 1. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1987), 993. 2. Joseph George, “African Literature,” in Understanding Contemporary Africa (Norwood: Gordon and Gordon, 1966), 303. 3. Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (London: Eyre Methuen, 1975). 4. Wole Soyinka, The Lion and the Jewel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963). 5. John Hawley, Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001). 6. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London: William Heinemann, 1958). 7. Chinua Achebe, Civil Peace (London: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1971). 8. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “Profile of a Literary and Social Activist,” Ngugi wa Thiong’o, May 20, 2018, https://ngugiwathiongo.com/about/. 9. Obi Wali, “The Dead End of African Literature,” Transition 10 (1963): 13–16. 10. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Weep Not, Child (London: Heinemann, 1964). 11. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The River Between (London: Heinemann, 1965). 12. Wa Thiong’o, Weep Not, Child. 13. Breitinger Eckhard, “Nuruddin Farah Biography,” Jrank, July 17, 2018. https://biography.jrank.org/pages/4305/Farah-Nuruddin.html. 14. Nuruddin Farah, A Naked Needle (London: Heinemann, 1976). 15. Farah, A Naked Needle, 72. 16. Farah, A Naked Needle, 63. 17. GradeSaver, “Biography of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,” GradeSaver, August 23, 2020, https://www.gradesaver.com/author/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie. 18. Chimamanda Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).

Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. London: William Heinemann, 1958. ———. Civil Peace. London: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1971. Adichie, Chimamanda, Purple Hibiscus. New York: Anchor Books, 2004. Eckhard, Breitinger. “Nuruddin Farah Biography.” Jrank, July 17, 2018. https://bio graphy.jrank.org/pages/4305/Farah-Nuruddin.html. Farah Nuruddin, A Naked Needle. London: Heinemann, 1976.

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George, Joseph. “African Literature.” In Understanding Contemporary Africa. Norwood: Gordon and Gordon, 1966. GradeSaver. “Biography of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” GradeSaver, August 23, 2020. https://www.gradesaver.com/author/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie. Hawley, John. Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. “Profile of a Literary and Social Activist.” Ngugi wa Thiong’o, May 20, 2018. https://ngugiwathiongo.com/about/. Soyinka, Wole. The Lion and the Jewel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963. ———. Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001. Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. Weep Not, Child. London: Heinemann, 1964. ———. The River Between. London: Heinemann, 1965. Wali, Obi. “The Dead End of African Literature.” Transition 10 (1963): 13–16. Wasson, Tyler, and Brieger Gert. An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1. of Nobel Prize Winners. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1987.

CHAPTER 53

African Academic Leaders and Public Intellectuals Toyin Falola

Introduction Society is a composition of different elements in which the intellectuals have always served as the “artists.” This they do mostly through their preoccupation—and sometimes, obsession—with studying, understanding, describing, representing, analyzing, and interpreting events, people, and their environment, with the hope of molding society.1 In this pursuit, they are primarily concerned about knowledge systems and products that define civilization and their constituency. To borrow from the Gramscian’s logic as interpreted by Mkandawire, intellectuals are “people who, broadly speaking, create for a class of people … a coherent and reasoned account of the world[;] intellectuals are crucial to the emergence of a new culture, representing the world-view of an emerging class or people.”2 This is not time- or space-bound, even though these two things could determine the very form and mechanisms through which these intellectuals engage in knowledge production to consume the people and societal (re)formation.3 Therefore, regardless of space and time, every human civilization uses these elements at the forefront of their advancement and the image they reflect to the outside world.4 Invariably, they are products of their environment and encounters with this environment. Consequently, they serve a political purpose to every extent, whether they admit it or not.5 This is more so in the reality of the ageless and historic T. Falola (B) Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_53

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rivalry and the struggle for supremacy and domination among several cultural groups. At no time was this more evident than during the so-called modern era when western imperial powers set out to justify slavery by inventing racial typologies and hierarchies and then placing them into the larger narrative of human experience. Grand as it was, this scheme came rather as a ballooning of the narrative that had existed at the ethnic and primordial group level across cultures for ages.6 Fundamentally, where the intellectuals belong in this divide determines how they see the world and interpret their environment. Be that as it may, the post-modern era’s grand-narrative on racial hierarchies has been the major force driving intellectual productions worldwide to date, not less in Africa and the west—the two civilizations at the fore of this characterization. Today, the intellectual world is divided into two: those who seek to pursue the shadows of racial typologies and hierarchies, and those who are not necessarily opposed to the typologies, but their rejection of the hierarchies characterizes the ideas that informed them. While this dichotomy exists at the top-pyramid level as a general convergence, at the lower part of the pyramid are a plethora of differences among these intellectuals informed by different consciousness, ideology, experience, idiosyncrasy, political agenda, institutional affiliation, and many more.7 Each of this could again be broken down into layers of peculiarities so much so that in the end, one realizes that the intelligence community, especially as it is known today, is a layer of intricate relationships that can hardly be fully explored in a given typology because of the complex web of realities intellectual productions often navigate. This is even more so in the face of western hegemony that has been holding and shaping this space since modern times, through the colonial period and concretized by the emergence of what Marshall McLuhan called a “global village.” This way, western epistemic and ontological values and systems override whatever remains of indigenous knowledge systems across the world because of the globalization mechanism. Whereas in traditional African society, this community (the intellectual community) is composed of the priests, chiefs, and elders who conceive and produce their knowledge through the process of observation and other informal systems of knowledge production where the formal structure is very limited,8 the modern composition consists of well-trained academics and public intellectuals who have gone through several stages of the westerninformed formal educational structure and have pursued their mandate of knowledge production through the western structure (institutions, ethics, journals, publishing press, and all). These structures are the embodiments of the academic voice, measure, and standard, as they serve as the loop toward reaching the target audience.9 Until more recent times, these institutions have been the chalkboard of Eurocentric sentiments and bastion of universalism— the post-civil rights America and Africa’s political decolonization. These two events that began from the second half of the twentieth century liberalized

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the American knowledge system and structure, in the term’s relative connotation. This period coincided with the time many young Africans were already traveling abroad to further their education, initially at the historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and much later at the historically white universities (HWUs) in the United States, due largely to the shortage of higher schools of learning in colonial Africa. With adequate funding, government attention, and soft-power play, the interest of the HWUs in “liberalizing” its faculties, and introducing area studies that accommodate African studies, overshadowed the mandate of the HBCUs in the United States. More and more African-born migrants began to find themselves studying, teaching, publishing. and having a complex range of relationships with these streams of global knowledge systems, headquartered in the United States since the post-second world war. They serve as the global voices and personalities representing Africa in the planetary flow of knowledge production in Africa, in their various capacities. Among these leading figures are Ali Mazrui, Adu Boahen, B. A. Ogot, J. F. Ade Ajayi, Kenneth Dike, Mahmood Mamdani, Samir Amin, Paul Zeleza, Archie Mafeje, Cheik Anta Diop, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and countless others—with all of their ideological, personal, cultural, and social similarities and differences. Regardless, they are all preoccupied with one purpose: representing and shaping Africa in the discursive paradigm of world politics. How they do this, however, is another question entirely. Zeleza in his work on the subject felt compelled, as anyone would, to acknowledge Njubi’s classification of their intellectual inclinations at three dimensions: the comprador intelligentsia, the postcolonial critic, and the progressive exile.10 As both scholars concluded, this classification only represents one part of the many differences that shape their contributions to the African discourse. While this chapter is not about to detail all of these, it focuses on those attributes that establish these scholars in the increasing space of African academe in the global production of knowledge. Many of the ideas that frame the following discussion have been adumbrated variously in the foregoing. These ideas will, however, be strengthened by putting them in their proper contexts. These contexts have been provided by Zeleza, himself one of those to be examined here, in his work quoted above. The contexts included here are of the institutional, intellectual, ideological, and individual kinds. Meanwhile, in the realization that the individual context factor can hardly be discussed in isolation of the works’ ideological context, as the two are weaved together within the same entity, they will be explored together. And for the fact that the intellectual context of their practices can never operate or be known and accessed outside of the institutions, these two discussions will also be merged. These will be examined here through the lens of three great African intellectual leaders of global reputation from the eastern part of Africa: Ali Mazrui, Paul Zeleza, and Mahmood Mamdani.

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Individual and Ideological Context As shown in the above, the trajectory of structured African studies and knowledge production in Africa is still very young. Although HBCUs in the United States have been in place since the early nineteenth century, something deterred them from producing Africanists and African academic leaders of the Mazruian type: the condition of blacks in America at the time was enough of a “headache” for Americans of African descent who populated the emerging black school community and for whom these institutions were established. This way, colonial Africa was only an extension of discourse, with Africa as a symbolic space. On the other hand, the first set of African-born young migrants who studied in various fields in these universities only returned to their countries to pick up several administrative positions in the colonial services. Some of them would later become the so-called nationalists and led their states’ political independence in their different colors. The notion of Pan-Africanism encapsulates the ideals guiding this time’s scholarship till the African decade of independence (the 1960s).11 As we know, this school was led by the likes of Edward Blyden, W. E. B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, and others who transcended America to the Caribbean. Although this generation of African academic leaders shared the same modus operandi of black emancipation with the latter ones, their ideology, methodology, and personal aspirations were different. The generation of African academic leaders as known today emerged during the same period as the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Obafemi Awolowo who had returned from their studies abroad and were jostling for political positions in the emerging modern states. Ali Mazrui was born in 1933, Mahmood Mamdani in 1946, and Paul Zeleza in 1955. This generation still holds the academic leadership in Africa today due largely to the call of the time. They all benefitted from what one might call the benevolent gesture of western imperial powers caught within the web of cold war with the Soviet Union. This implies that, while extending scholarship opportunities to these young Africans was a benevolent act that enhanced African presence in the emerging world, the Western world’s epistemic gains, now under the American influence, cannot be overemphasized. Firstly, scholarships were awarded to prepare the emerging modern African states for independence and modern governance. In the early days of independence, this was extended to include African states organizing scholarship programs for their promising students to feed the modern state structure and bureaucracy. Therefore, having distinguished themselves at various levels of academic performance, these academic leaders reached the point of no diminishing return in their intricate relationships with western institutions and their system of knowledge production as students, teachers, researchers, and above all, the voice of Africa. They turned out to be the earliest set of Africanists and African intellectuals to explore, interpret, analyze, and comment on the developing African

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states’ postcolonial condition. As their works will later show, it is hard to tell where they came from in Africa as they exhibit an embodiment of what Mazrui described as Intellectual Pan-Africanism.12 But this proclivity did not just emerge at the time of their writings. For instance, Mamdani was born in India, but he lived and was schooled in Uganda, Tanzania, and the United States. It is where he was schooled that his consciousness was sharpened and shaped. He had parents who shared the Muslim Indian-Tanzanian heritage and a wife of Indian-American ancestry. His world is diverse, and so are his intellectual engagements, especially in scope and content. Tellingly, education as a perpetual process of acquiring knowledge and accumulation of thought and experience is beyond the fascinating walls of schools and the aroma of a library.13 It rather transcends individual experience and consciousness over the years. Like others, Mamdani saw the imbalances in the so-called global world system—for instance, the involuntary marginal role that his ancestry and background played, and how difficult it is to remedy this fault. The vigor through which this remedy is pursued is exhibited all over him and others. In this light, these individuals’ intellectual productions are framed within the decolonization discourse in Africa, while at the same time framing this discourse. Unarguably, more than any of these reputable scholars and others in their generation to date, Ali Mazrui was an epitome of controversy and complexity. He was simply a personification for controversy in the global intellectual community where it cannot be out of place to summarize and study this as a Mazruian phenomenon: the progression of confident research that deploys fundamental methodological breaks to reach conclusions that generate or are capable of generating an unending productive debate among intellectuals, governments, and institutions on the African past, present, and the future. Well before his 1986 The Africans: A Triple Heritage history documentary series aired on BBC,14 Mazrui, in his deep reflection on Africa and the challenges of nation-building, had conceptualized an Africa where the so-called four big brothers he identified as Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, and Ethiopia could engage in some benign colonization of their “smaller” neighbors in what he called Pax-Africana.15 Although his idea of Pax-Africana resonates well with the spirit of Pan-Africanism which was already waning at the time, and the fears that gave rise to its notion were as historically grounded as they were rooted in the current capitalist global system, with the potential of leading to stronger African states, the postulation came at a time when these neighbors were already growing skeptical of one another—so much so that they couldn’t agree on a strong regional body and a weaker states model of a united African states. While his Pax-Africana notion would not generate controversy pronto, it became the topical debate about three decades after, following one of his articles in the Herald news in 1994. This was later documented and presented to the public in honor of the demise of Archie Mafeje by the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in a bulletin

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published in 2008.16 Meanwhile, in the progression of his thought on PaxAfricana, he had also made conclusions about the need for these African states to acquire nuclear weapons as a form of deterrence against western aggression and as a bargaining chip against western imperialism—a submission that earned him knocks in Africa and abroad and cost him the support of his biggest sponsor, the National Endowment for the Humanities. As an academic giant, Mazrui’s case is particularly interesting because this was about the only African academic leader whose bold submissions that constantly defied political correctness found atomic responses among those he was supposedly speaking for, as well as bombastic knocks from those he was supposedly speaking up against. In other words, while the likes of Mafeje were accusing him of being a western puppet—a comprador intelligentsia, if you like—his supposed puppeteers were not so much happy with him.17 But all of these went through the foremost western and African press. In a way, this is a typical case of a situation when personal context and ideology in knowledge production shape scholarship. Whereas Mamdani had leveraged on these (together with his institutional access, through the mechanism of the intellectual fecundity they have accorded him, in order to provide an incisive perspective on the raging issue of violence and terrorism that was battering the global image of Islam at the time in his Bad Muslim, Good Muslim),18 Mazrui’s triple heritage documentary was fundamentally coined from a reflection on his self-archive leading to what one could confidently relate to the first known academic use of the autoethnographic methodology in historical research to reach valid conclusions about the present and viable summations of the future. These intellectuals’ works’ originality and the fecundity of their intellectual productions are a measure of how they lived through their research. This way, it is not only hard to limit them to a particular state in Africa—a Malawian scholar, as in the case of Zeleza; a Kenyan academic, as in the case of Mazrui; or a Ugandan intellectual, as in the instance of Mazrui—because of the elasticity of their scope. It is even harder to readily classify their works within a given field of societal study, as they dive from sociology to history, and from political science to ethnography in their topics and analyses. When all of this is put, one can say: they express dynamism and consistency, and they are highly opinionated. Because of this, they were at various times serving as academic refugees in distant lands away from their homelands for various reasons. This is particularly so for Mazrui and Mamdani. As public intellectuals, they have contributed to public debates that cost them their country’s jobs and citizenship, even by the government they helped bring to power. These struggles kept them on the public radar, and through the mechanism of appropriate institutions, they were able to sustain this public access. Unlike Mazrui and Mamdani, however, Zeleza is less entangled with the political scene and struggle in Africa. Even so, he proved to be a force to be reckoned with in the global intellectual community, particularly in the social sciences

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and humanities, through his insightful publications that touch on the development of ideas, institutions, and states in and on Africa, and the Trans-Atlantic African population (the diaspora population).19 Family must have also played a key role in establishing these scholars from this very context. The serenity of mind and enthusiasm of scholarship fades in the face of protracted crisis within the home. Hence, acknowledging this support has always been a recurrence in their acknowledgment pages. It needs no telling how this further affects the individual context of knowledge production.

Intellectual and Institutional Context The popularity of Mazrui’s Pax-Africana and triple heritage notions through the Herald news, as well as his BBC series partly sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities with a $600,000 contribution, gives a good reflection of the institutional leverage that pedaled Mazrui and other global intellectual leaders into prominence. This is where the voice and the messenger meet to give the messenger a voice. Zeleza, Mazrui, Mamdani, Mbebe, Ogot, and others are scholars loaded with messages that only came to life through high-network institutions’ voices given to them. Blurring some of the excessive generalizations,20 Biagioli made some valid submissions in his recent critique of academic conducts and practices that are important in understanding the measure that weighs these scholars as global leaders in the intellectual community. Indeed, the question of excellence, as this chapter seeks to illuminate, “is devoid of a referent that can be either empirically or conceptually defined – its meaning effectively boiling down to ‘being great at whatever one may be doing…’”21 Although his exposition on the mechanisms through which these could be conjured is within the context of the institution, they readily reflect that of the intellectual. This cannot be surprising because the relationship between the intellectual and the institution is next to that of the chicken and the egg. As such, “quantitative indicators,” Biagioli explained further, “of more or less related proxies such as … productivity …, publications’ impact, students’ admission rates [this is here substituted for mentorship at all levels, including the supervision of students] grant funding secured …,” and the real value of that impact, which he called the “impact of the impact,” represent the mirror through which this could be viewed.22 Institutions are essential to the academic progress and intellectual growth of a scholar. Truly, a high-impact publication, in real terms, goes beyond publishing in a high-impact journal; a record in the high-impact media (among which is the journal) gives a larger audience and appropriate attention to the publication. If anything, it increases the chances of a reading audience, the caliber of people that read and pass-it-on, and the impact factor, owing to two things: the quality of the work and the media’s trajectory. These two things distinguish a scholar. It is one thing to be excellent at what one does and another to fake it. Performance could be faked, but not excellence. A faked

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performance cannot make excellence because there is a consistent pattern to excellence beyond the reach of a performer. One could be inclined to read and access knowledge from a reputable medium than one could ever be toward a lesser medium when given the option by any circumstance. This is usually considered from the trajectory of the author and/or the publisher. Again, two things exhibit a scholar’s trajectory: their relationship with high-impact media (institutions) and their publications’ quality. These two work hand-in-glove. However, the latter informs the former. Overall, the audience the contemporary author gets is either because of the known record of rigor and insight that the media of publication is known for, or because of the rigor and insight of the author themselves. The scholarship is about conscience and consciousness. These two we refer to as integrity. Even though this integrity is compromised from some quarters, as Biagioli rightly observed, it cannot be a measure for downplaying these gatekeepers’ role. Owing to post-independence Africa’s socioeconomic and political landscape, such gatekeepers are very few in Africa, but many in Africa are mostly concentrated in the developed countries.23 Aina puts the condition of these institutions succinctly thus in the context of higher education practices: … in spite of over a half-century of interventions and waves of “reforms” (we can count at least three waves related to specific historical periods), the terrain of African higher education continues to resemble a thick forest of institutions, systems, and practices lacking clear and distinct tracks, values, and goals, or a mission and vision that connect the institutions and systems sufficiently to the major challenges of their contexts (whether global or local).24

The distinction that carves African academic leaders’ excellence is thus not one engineered from within, from the institutions in Africa, but rather from the various offices and headquarters in the developed countries where the pattern of global knowledge production is designed. To this extent, the internationalization of knowledge production in a global world and a scholar’s place in this loop gives extra visibility, citation, and importance to the work, as the scholar shares in the institution’s reputational value (institutional branding) and vice versa. Mazrui and others displayed exceptionality in their intellectuality, and this was consistently recognized by the appropriate media who have partnered with them in the production and growth of their intellectual outputs at various times. These institutions’ importance, and also noting that viable institutions are so few in Africa, highlights how research is an expensive task. Conducting good research consumes resources which only a few institutions can afford or are willing to foot. Space is limited by many intricacies (part of the institutions’ interest), but the competition is limitless due to the number of quality works and talented scholars. Yet, these academic leaders have been able to annex various grants, awards, sponsorships, publications, and tenure-track positions from these institutions. It goes without saying that all of these things are equal to medals in sports

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because they are designed to recognize the efforts, talents, and contributions of exceptional people in their respective fields. In light of this, one could look briefly at Mamdani’s intellectual production trajectory (since the publication of his insightful Ph.D. thesis on class formation and identity in Uganda,25 which established him as a scholar) as an instance where intellectual sagacity meets with an institutional factor. His analysis of Ugandan politics goes beyond the surface level interpretation of a political scientist to the rigor that one expects from the cohabitation of a political scientist, historian, and philosopher. Like other reputable scholars, Mamdani consistently defiled the pseudo-orthodox barriers often set by the structured academic template of the west, viz: discipline and methodology, area studies and expertise, as well as theorization and classification. By tracing the post-independent Ugandan state’s trajectory to the pre-colonial era through the colonial era, down to its Postcolonial implications, Mamdani shook the world of the neo-liberal and other unilinear theories of explaining the development of society, as well as the Rostow’s-like submissions on Africa. Although the structural-functionalists, Marxists, dependency theorists, modernists, postmodernists, and other development theorists all speak to the African condition, their limitations lie in their parochial views that often ignore the larger picture from the cultural context of their subject. Thus, Africa is deprived of perspective interpretation of its condition once Africanist scholars latch on to these theories to explain Africans’ complex reality in the current age. This submission he later went on to note expressly in another publication this way: “The impasse in Africa is not only at the level of practical politics. It is also a paralysis of perspective.”26 To avoid this prisoned interpretation occasioned by the not-so-dynamic trend of belonging to any of these schools of thought, Mamdani explored class formation in Uganda by adopting and critiquing parts of these development theories. In this endeavor, he coined the term “bureaucratic bourgeoisie” as members of the petite bourgeoisie and gave distinctions between this class and the commercial bourgeoisie, with comparative instances of how this works elsewhere, particularly in the Indian social environment and how these modern states shaped this experience. By the time the thesis was published, it had become a new model breaking away from those paradigms of interpretation that had been known, thereby communicating to the world his readiness to bring fresh ideas into the African discourse, to pursue an academic fit based on originality, and to contribute meaningfully to the growth of global knowledge production. Among other things, his submissions in this publication sparked new debates about the nature of the state, as he described the state as a class category that facilitates and regulates not only the productions and the relations of production but, more importantly, the appropriation of surplus labor. This process, he maintained, “is thus in the objective interest of those who appropriate surplus labor and against the objective interest of those whose labor is appropriated …,” because those who control the state are members of the ruling class (the appropriators) and the state is an expression of the

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unity of this class.27 Instructively, he posited that “the state institutionalizes politics, not just uniting the ruling class but seeking to contain the contradictions of class society and thereby maintain its unity.”28 This interpretation template Mamdani carved out of the trajectory of the Ugandan society and the geopolitical development of that area and beyond. Given the originality of his thoughts and this publication, he found appeal among Marxist scholars and others whose attention was drawn to the wealth of knowledge embedded in understanding the social relations among production forces and within each class formation, and how these relations define the state. As he used all of these to understand the nature of independence and groups that engineered Uganda’s independence, Mamdani deconstructed the idea of nationalism, class struggle, class identity, state, tribe, ethnicity, and development theories. But while any dedicated and enthusiastic student of Mamdani’s repute could conduct this instructive research, the role of the institutions that supported his career in bringing this to light and igniting its importance cannot be overemphasized. Conferences, public presentations, continuous insightful publications, teaching, supervision, and other administrative and intellectual engagements (many, if not all, of which are performed in and around what one might call the High-impact circle) set the fire of Mamdani’s scholarship, like others, blazing. Few years after his groundwork on Ugandan politics and subsequent towering sojourn in the intellectual world, his background and the general feature of his context inclined to the ideology of decolonization. Then, political struggles met with an institutional opportunity when the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) appointed him and another scholar to study citizenship question in Congo, especially among the Banyamulenge population that was part of the Tutsi under persecution both in Rwanda and Congo. This was after he was invited to write and present a paper on the Rwandan challenge, which was becoming a major issue in Africa, in a continental-wide conference organized by CODESRIA in Tanzania in 1994. He also continued a commitment to studying the development in Rwanda after the conference. The offer was an opportunity to broaden his knowledge and fillip his interest in the Rwandan crisis. At this point, Mamdani saw the need to study French to conduct proper research among this population, which is central to his research. It should be noted that this was no longer a Ph.D. thesis, where academicians in most parts of Africa often perform their best and go on intellectual stagnation—or in some cases, recession. Mamdani’s Ph.D. dissertation and experience became his spring-ball that portrays sort of “a means to an end” scenario in lieu of an end that is often portrayed in some quarters. With a vivid knowledge of the geopolitical experience of East African countries, all weaved together in the institutional, personal, ideological, and intellectual paradigms of his existence, Mamdani’s publication on the Rwandan crisis became another signature that tells us much about his scholarship. No one invests in a non-viable endeavor and on mediocrity. In light of this, he wrote:

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In writing this book, I have incurred several intellectual debts. The funding that made it possible for me to put together the research base of this book came from the South-South Exchange Program for Research on the History of Development (SEPHIS), a government-funded body in Holland dedicated to promoting research-related activities in resource-constrained "third world" contexts. For the generous three-year grant from SEPHIS, I am indeed grateful. A grant from the MacArthur Foundation funded the preliminary effort that preceded this book-length project. My early research in Rwandan politics and history was carried out at the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala. I continued the endeavor at the University of Cape Town, where I was A. C. Jordan Professor of African Studies from 1996 to 1999, and completed writing at the Department of Anthropology in Columbia University, which I joined later in 1999.29

Tellingly, all these institutions have developed an interest in his work and academic record. Aside from the fact that this could be suggested as an impact factor on its own, these institutions are now committed to seeing that this project impacts a variety of issues that boil down to the nature of modern states and violence from the African lens. In the same South Africa, where he worked briefly, Mamdani’s intellectual enthusiasm brought him into extending his debates on the citizenship question and the state in East to Southern Africa. The evolution of his thought and the sophistication of his arguments on precolonial African condition, colonization, social formations, modern African states, violence, and politics became a palpable form that concretized his academic leadership and intellectual prowess.30 Zeleza, Mazrui, and other global academic and intellectual leaders also enjoyed this living trajectory through research and intellectual production in abundance. This implies that their lived experiences and coordinates “cartographed” their intellectual productions and contributions to knowledge so much that this could only be captured accurately in Fela’s submission on the essence of discovering oneself.31 From CODESRIA (which they’ve all, at one point or another, had a wide range of relationships with); to the top level; the Ford Foundation; the United Nations (UN); the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the African Union (AU); and various other institutions of global repute with a research interest, these academic leaders have led and inspired many in the world of intellectual production on Africa. They’ve shaped the discourse on Africa’s postcolonial condition, the reconstruction of Africa’s past, and African studies’ institutionalization. In this discourse, they rejected the static and primitive African narrative of Eurocentric writers32 and maintained a sense of decorum on the subject of racism—at least to how they were not as bombastic about this as Fanon, Mafeje, Amin, and the rest. Mamdani provides a context for this posture in one of his publications where he relates it to the need for African intellectuals to be less emotional, sentimental, and parochial in their view of Africa. If Fanon and others have discussed the issue of racism and Eurocentrism extensively in their works, others must look at other areas where African

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relationships with the wider world, the west, in particular, have been affecting her current predicaments. Here, like Mazrui and Zeleza, Mamdani chose institutions and the relations of these structures. Institutional reform, national building, and development in Africa and of African studies then became their preoccupation. Their power of insights and language use also contributed to their leadership role in the academic world. If anything, it will be hard for Africanists to argue against the submission that the colonization of North Africa was largely a product of Finance imperialism; West Africa; trade imperialism; and Central, South, and East Africa—speculative capital.33 Neither can his reviews and studies on the globalization of African knowledge systems and productions be waved aside or read through without adequate attention to each line. To some extent, Zeleza’s style is different from that of Mazrui and Mamdani in an ironic way. Unlike both scholars, whose application of history in their works suggests their interdisciplinary approach to academic inquiry, Zeleza hardly comes across as an historian, as he adopts both quantitative and qualitative approaches to his research. All of this speaks to the fact that they all adopt different academic research styles that suit their context, experience, the ideology of a society they subscribe to, and the pattern of intellectual discourse—either as a political scientist or a historian. The forgoing could be added to the extent to which dynamism could be used to describe their intellectuality. On the postcolonial state, these great scholars seem to subscribe to the school of thought that believes that the evolving social contract of class domination and distance between the led and the leaders in precolonial Africa, and the concretization of this by the colonial plunder, are central to the condition of the postcolonial state. Whether Triple Heritage discourse is dubbed the “Mazrui’s affair,” as a commentator had suggested, or Mamdani’s demystification of deconstruction of the variance of theories and schools of thoughts that seek to explain the post-independence African condition is deemed cynical, one thing is constant: these men facilitate further discourse in new dimensions on Africa. And through these constant debates, the Africanity of African studies evolves, breaking loose, albeit slowly, from western epistemic domination.

Conclusion It could be deduced from the above that academic leaders, like leaders of any industry, organization, or establishment, are individuals with a track record of excellence, which goes into their ability to cast a revered space for themselves in their enterprise through commitment and consistency. The experience and competence built up over the years are fashioned into their scholarship, with analyses rooted beyond the surface and career engagements that soar high beyond the plains. As seen in the case of Mamdani, which is, of course, a sign-post to others, the timing of these men’s research is important in understanding their prominence. Their research endeavors feed into the extant and

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burning issues of Africans’ lived experiences and, at the same time, measure the progression of African studies at their material times. This they relate with their research interest, proclivity, trajectory, and ideology, to communicate their thoughts through institutions. Simply put, their works’ personal and ideological context, aided by institutional access and intellectual strength, all embody the conduct of groundbreaking intellectual outputs, which makes these distinguished scholars known and revered in the academic world. At the peak of the career, these men were ranked among the top public intellectuals in the world by the likes of Foreign Policy and the Prospect magazines. This continued to the extent that when one of these great men passed on, the New York Times could not describe him as an African scholar but a “Scholar of Africa.”34

Notes 1. Thandika Mkandawire, “Introduction,” in African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development, ed. Thandika Mkandawire (Dakar and London: CODESRIA Books and Zed Books, 2005). 2. Mkandawire, “Introduction,” 4. 3. Toyin Falola, Yoruba Gurus: Indigenous Production of Knowledge in Africa (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1999). 4. This is what I referred to elsewhere as ritual archives. See Toyin Falola, “Ritual Archives,” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, eds. Adesina Afolayan and Toyin Falola (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 703–728. 5. To be sure, “there is a powerful and persistent relationship between knowledge producers and the motives of the societies that they inhabit. Dominant groups produce subjective knowledge to instantiate and reinstantiate socioeconomic and political perspectives. Editor’s Introduction, “Decolonizing African Studies,” African Studies Review 61, no. 3 (2018): 2. 6. Henri Tajfel, “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations,” Annual Review of Psychology 33 (1982): 1–39. 7. Hence, Diouf wrote that “various location and intellectual environments, both professional and personal, have played a critical role in shaping both my theory and practice as an African historian/an Africanist/a student of Africa/an African.” See Mamadou Diouf, “Africa in the World,” Africa Today 63, no. 2 (2016): 57. 8. Dama Mosweunyane, “The African Educational Evolution: From Traditional Training to Formal Education,” Higher Education Studies 3, no. 4 (2013): 50–53. 9. Daniel J. Cohen et al., “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History,” The Journal of American History 95, no. 2 (2008): 452–491. 10. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, “African Diasporas and Academics: The Struggles for a Global Epistemic Presence,” in The Study of Africa, vol. 2, Global and Transnational Engagements, ed. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (Oxford: African Books Collective, 2007), 101. 11. This can be significantly measured by debates, fears, and concerns that led to the composition of the then-Organization of African Union (OAU), now

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13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24. 25.

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African Union (AU) in 1963. See Thandika Mkandawire, “Shifting Commitments and National Cohesion in African Countries,” in Common Security and Civil Society in Africa, eds. Lennart Wohlgemuth et al. (Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999), 35. This is one of the many typologies he developed for the classification of Pan-Africanism in post-independence Africa in order to capture the diversity of a Pan-African structure, methodology, and consciousness, determined by geographic and personal factors. See Ali A. Mazrui, “Pan-Africanism and the Intellectuals: Rise, Decline and Revival,” in African Intellectuals, 56–77. Toyin Falola, “Technology, Culture and Society” (1st Distinguished Annual Lecture, First Technical University, Ibadan, Nigeria, July 4, 2019). Ali A. Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage (A Commentary) (Washington, DC: WETA, 1986). Ali Mazrui, Towards Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967). Pax-Africana, he went on to suggest, implies self-colonization, re-colonization, and other terms that all boils down to the emergence of strong imperial-like state in Africa. Among other things, this also goes into the thought that the fewer the decision-makers (the big-brothers), the better the chance for a consensus Africa. See Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “‘My Life is One Long Debate’: Ali A Mazrui on the Invention of Africa and Postcolonial Predicaments” (lecture, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, October 30, 2014), 2. CODESRIA Bulletin, no. 3–4 (2008). Douglas Martin, “Ali Mazrui, Scholar of Africa Who Divided U.S. Audiences, Dies at 81,” New York Times, October 20, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/ 2014/10/22/us/ali-mazrui-scholar-of-africa-who-divided-us-audiences-diesat-81.html. Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslims and Bad Muslims: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror (New York: Three Leaves, 2003). See, for instance, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, A Modern Economic History of Africa, vol. 1, The Nineteenth Century (Dakar: CODESRIA Book Series, 1993). For instance, in as much as the message on metrics is clear and concrete to the extent at which an agreement is reached on the measure of the “impact of impact,” it should also be added that, if one can refer a book by another author to a third party, it can never be unethical to do the same for one’s work on the ground of “suggestion.” Mario Biagioli, “Fraud by Numbers: Metrics and the New Academic Misconduct,” LARB, September 7, 2020, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fraudby-numbers-metrics-and-the-new-academic-misconduct/. Biagioli, “Fraud by Numbers.” On the whole, these conditions have led to the astronomical rise in the numbers of Africans residing in the United States, especially from the 1980s, among which are African academics and intellectuals. See: Adebayo Oyebade and Toyin Falola, “Introduction,” in The New African Diaspora in the United States, eds. Toyin Falola and Adebayo Oyebade (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 1–8. Tade Akin Aina, “Beyond Reforms: The Politics of Higher Education Transformation in Africa,” African Studies Review 53, no. 1 (2010): 23. Mahmood Mandani, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1976).

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26. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 3. 27. Mandani, Politics and Class, 13. 28. Mandani, Politics and Class, 13. 29. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativity, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), xv. 30. See Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. 31. John Collins, Fela: Kalakuta Notes (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2015), 207. 32. Hannington Ochwada, “Review Work: A Modern Economic History of Africa Volume I: The Nineteenth Century,” Transafrican Journal of History 24 (1995): 227–229. 33. Ochwada, “Review Work.” 34. Douglas Martin, “Ali Mazrui.”

CHAPTER 54

Global African Business Leaders Toyin Falola

The World Economic Forum (WEF) projects the numbers of Africans generally to attain a geometric increase by 2050, projecting worries and potential problems that abound for the continent given such demographic shift.1 The challenge of the slow pace of development occasioned by the crop of African leaders and their consistent show of ideas deficit accounts for the rising tension among stakeholders and concerned groups. While it certainly constitutes a worry that many experts believe that the future of the continent is cloudy if activities continue in this fashion, it is not also improbable that some forwardlooking, young individuals from the continent may use their ingenuity to help solve the crisis. Hence, the emergence of a business-oriented generation of Africans who have immediately swung into action to take advantage of the opportunities open to the continent. While doing this, these sets of Africans concentrate on economic activities that can maximize the population potential. They have recorded considerable progress in their business engagement and in making enviable contributions to the global economy’s advancement, using their African potentials. In this writing, a number of these African business leaders are examined, looking at the contributions they make.

T. Falola (B) Department of History, University of Texas At Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_54

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Mo Ibrahim Mohammed “Mo” Ibrahim, born on May 3, 1946, is a Sudanese-British businessman.2 He had his education in both Africa and London, graduated as an expert in communications, and made important strides in the telecommunications business. Mo understands that the very key for making Africa a central focus of global economic success is to invest in the youths by creating knowledge acquisition platforms across the continent and building strong institutions and structures that would help in the sustainability of human capital available in the continent. However, achieving this lofty mindset does not depend on having negative thoughts or drawing actions without viable plans, as breaking a boundary requires revolutionary thinking. Thus, Mo cultivated an entrepreneurial mindset and used that as a reliable element to revitalize the continent with business initiatives. He helped enable Africa to extend its hand beyond its geographical coverage to countries and businesses that could enhance symbiotic benefit economically. Knowing the political and economic strengths of Europe and its American ally is not profitable alone in itself; banking on the available opportunity by swinging to collaborative actions is more important. Against this background, Mo Ibrahim has created an atmosphere for his business tasks to thrive through an intercontinental network. In the quest to build a strong foundation for the erection of structures and institutions which will address the structural and systemic rot that has pervaded the African society, he creates the environment for establishing a friendly relationship with the outside world to formulate success-driven strategies and has committed to this activity since forever. One of these strategies is the engagement of the youth in a profitable enterprise. This has always been a very important step in the economic emancipation struggle to free Africans from financial deprivations in which they are eternally stuck. The motivation behind this is to challenge the long-term problem of Africa’s unemployment, which continues to reduce the people in values compared to their counterparts in other continents. Despite the underlying potentials of African youths, they are helplessly caught in the web of redundancy, which invariably leads to the escalation of crime-related activities given their resolve to attain a quality life, even if it means achieving it through condemnable means. Therefore, all these combine to stall the progress of Africans, which depends on creating business opportunities. Ibrahim uses his business intellect to rescue Africans from the looming danger of depression that comes with being idle by creating foundations that give youths opportunities to develop their skills. Apart from creating the necessary atmosphere and the required finances to enhance achieving these goals, Mo Ibrahim has maximized every given opportunity to reiterate the importance of sound education as a catalyst of economic independence. A good education provides the needed skillsets as it also activates an individual’s critical thinking and engagement, the two mental services that readily aid human development. Education would attune the individual

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with the contemporary times and would help develop pragmatic problemsolvers by converting students’ mental resources into profitable results. One such occasion is predicting the market behavior ahead and therefore investing accordingly to reap the underlying and unfolding benefits. Ibrahim’s initiatives have produced entrepreneurs, climate-sensitive youths, and smart Africans who have been very fluent in labor markets, thereby making considerable progress in their various terrains. Therefore, Africans who are the primary beneficiaries of all these have developed a reliable sense of fulfillment with the on-the-go opportunity to understand the inherent benefits accruable from the crossborder synergy with the outside world. One of the most reliable ways to achieve this is to share the experience while simultaneously gathering it with countries with a track record of business growth and political development. One major defining way through which Mo Ibrahim has been contributing to global advancement is through his initiation of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, a non-grant-making organization that serves the purpose of enhancing good governance in Africa. This springs from the conviction that the continent’s growth, to a large extent, depends on political transformations and experience from its leaders. Excellent leadership directly influences people generally as it brings about a beautiful environment that allows businesses to thrive and skills to be appropriately transformed into measurable results. African progress and leadership conditions are closely connected, so achieving predetermined goals depends largely on the communication between the two. By routinely giving corresponding recognition to leaders who have enhanced the admirable quality of governance, the Foundation gives due attention to various strengths of these leaders. Hence, governance to them is defined by the ability to deliver the political promises that would enhance the average individual’s quality of life, thereby protecting the country’s integrity and taking it away from the traps of security challenges. When the country, or more importantly, continent, is in very good shape and conditions, it will attract the international community’s interests and open the floodgates of opportunities to the people economically and politically. Another important project to which Mo Ibrahim is irreversibly committed is the Ibrahim Leadership Fellowships and Scholarships. Ibrahim recognizes good leadership by providing monetary reinforcement to outstanding African presidents and organizing scholarships for promising Africans. Giving these leaders the necessary monetary recognition serves very important purposes of putting them on their toes for distributive governance and creative leadership. The initiative is meant to celebrate African leaders who have enhanced good governance despite all negativities. This is defined by the said leaders’ policies to advance the average citizens’ lives, lifting the majority out of poverty metrics. The endgame gave both moral and ideological support for leaders and encouraged good governance as the only benchmark for achieving progress. Notable of the leaders who have benefited from this are Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and Festus Mogae of Botswana in 2007 and 2008.3 The group’s scholarships are extended to young Africans who are

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outstanding in their chosen field of study. Partnering with some other NGOs, the forum has opened ways for many Africans who have expanded their worth, having benefited from the available opportunity provided by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. Awarding scholarships to people to further their study abroad is founded on the understanding that getting an education—a quality one at that—is primary to achieving African greatness. There is a consensus that such investment in Africans’ education would facilitate exponential growth in different dimensions. One such is the inclusion of Africans in a scheme that will register their presence in cross-country cultural programs and networks of individuals making giant strides in education, technology, communication, social architecture, and strategic planning. This is necessary for Africans to achieve a transcendental leap to make a long-lasting impact on their continent’s political and economic trajectory. Without denying what the initiative has done to improve Africans’ lives, especially those who are beneficiaries of the program, considerable progress is achieved, particularly by the people. There has been an extended relationship between the growth of entrepreneurial ideas and the investors even from the outside of the continent. There are transnational figures putting their financial attention on projects that should come with massive economic outcomes, making more Africans benefit from it. Perhaps because of his relationship with Britain, Ibrahim has developed economic frameworks and technological infrastructures to promote crossborder business integration and mutual respect. His celebration across nations is evidence of his foresightedness and the ability to make marks against possible odds. By conducting research, Ibrahim has provided the intellectual evaluation of the situation confronting the continent and has sufficiently offered pragmatic solutions to the myriad of challenges that almost consume the continent. His business continues to thrive, and his dedication to assisting humanity is paramount. The fact that his business headquarters is domiciled in England attests to what we have said above. Apart from immensely adding to the country’s economic backbone where he has flourished, his initiatives have remained very impactful for the African continent. They demonstrate a commitment to the people’s economic emancipation that consequently makes him stand out among many philanthropists of his stature. This has qualified him for many awards of excellence, all of which honor him and complement all the noteworthy ideas he has initiated. The fact that the continent is continuously creating opportunities for the younger people is an attestation to his efforts, alongside others, to see the true financial freedom of Africans.

Aliko Dangote Aliko Dangote is one of the most successful Global African Business Leaders and hails from the Hausa ethnic extraction in Nigeria. Born in 1957 into a wealthy Muslim family in Kano state, he rides smoothly into the elite community threading on the foundations laid down by his ancestors, his grandfather

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specifically. In the current scheme of economic engagement, Dangote remains very influential in Nigeria’s, or more extensively Africa’s, economic activities to the extent that all his entrepreneurial involvement has domestic sanctions in the continent. Whereas he has made redoubtable steps in his business deals, he has made equally significant contributions to put the continent on the map for all-round improvements. Dangote is impeccable and forthright; his foresightedness has remained outstanding, for it has unlocked many potentials that made him achieve more fame across different countries. In the international community, he is respected for the strides he is making and his ability to set the African continent on the path of healthy competition with global players in the economic competition. Dangote is a remarkable stakeholder in the board of the Corporate Council on Africa, and he has been one of the active members of the United Nations committee, steering the SecretaryGeneral’s Global Education First Initiative, the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, and also the Clinton Global Initiative.4 Aliko Dangote Foundation (ADF) is a philanthropic group created by Dangote in 1994 to rise to the financial challenges of the people through philanthropy. This group primarily seeks to influence the African continent’s social reconfiguration and the world through distributive wealth and the social infrastructure that can comfortably sustain development. With the mandate to make social change, ADF is actively committed to creating opportunities that enhance these changes through strategic investments that can improve the people’s social welfare, heighten their academic opportunities, and widen their economic empowerment chances. The decade-long dedication to these mandates has inevitably attracted the international community’s attention that has shown their level of interest in what he does to change the basic society. The ADF has supported the continent’s course by its timely provision of relief materials and funds for countries ravaged with intermittent wars and enduring strife. Although other similar non-governmental organizations are committed to similar mandates, ADF shows a level of commitment to child nutrition and support, which gives it an edge over many others. In the continent generally, ADF has earned respect for being an important driver of the people’s welfare viability. In no better way can one describe the global persuasion of his philanthropist works than through his attraction of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2013 when he was collaborating with the foundation to provide the necessary moral and financial aid in forms of disaster relief to the Northern states in the country who are continuously ravaged by terrorist actions.5 The concentration on the Northern states is not predominantly because of its war-torn conditions; rather, it was inspired by a common ambition to eradicate polio. This is found to assure that Dangote has committed to strengthening the children’s welfare system because children are naturally known to be vulnerable to some unforeseen medical disasters. This, by no means, suggests that Dangote’s financial outreach exclusively covers only Nigeria. There are clusters of relief programs conducted by him that have continental coverage. The

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group is continuously collaborating with appropriate organizations of similar mandate and interest to ensure that the national health system and the global advocacy for 2025 are adequately strengthened. At the continental level, there are many instances of moral solidarity that Dangote has ensured by providing the financial oxygen required to put their activities on the right trajectory. The ADF also takes the issue related to African education with the utmost attention, giving all the demanded financial commitment to enhance the continent’s academic productivity. The group has overtaken various initiatives to show its dedication to academic excellence through constant intellectual engagement. The group has a financial commitment to some universities in the country to encourage a quality education system and enable a great atmosphere that can spur the students into creative thinking and unlock their potential. Nigerian universities attract the sum of one billion naira from ADF, added to 500 million spent for the development of a business school at Bayero University. There are other schools in the corners of the country that benefit from this philanthropic disposition of Aliko Dangote. In particular, there are individual actions which the fiercely rich Dangote has enhanced in the country and across the African continent, all of which combine to give him the social image he is known for in the country. He includes a passion for his business, and the depth of his goodwill is measured in his readied availability for similar responsibilities. There are many other financial commitments of the group which we will briefly engage. Part of the global advocacy is eliminating poverty and eradicating unemployment to tackle the incessant challenges of insecurity, poverty, and terrorism, among others. Various stakeholders, therefore, put their efforts together to enhance the achievement of this lofty ambition. The business expansion of Aliko Dangote has thus contributed to the reduction of unemployment rates in Africa by providing empowerment opportunities for corresponding seekers of jobs who use their human resources to change their financial status. Statistically, both women and men have benefited reasonably from the empowering schemes of ADF. For example, there has been the provision of a micro-grant program that specifically targets the amelioration of the female population’s poverty index. In some of the states in Nigeria, women have been the target of his financial goodwill, providing them with the necessities to revitalize their existence in the financial domain. Most of the commitment shown to the development of the people has been very consistent. As efforts are made to improve their medical and social life, additional assistance is given to consolidate this philanthropic spending. There is no missing the fact that some parts of the country have been consistently hit with some ecological challenges that usually take away from their economic power. These states and places are usually vulnerable and therefore in need of financial assistance from time to time. Dangote has shown a considerable amount of concern through his dedication to support them with needed financial help on different occasions. For example, in the Northern part of the country, there have been displaced individuals in high proportion

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in recent history due to the increase in the number of crimes and terrorism. On some other occasions, there are people displaced because of one natural disaster or another. After these challenging experiences, they are rendered helpless and exposed to more uncertainties. This usually triggers the interest of NGOs interested in humanitarian services and that are concerned with facilitating a better environment and welfare. Among these groups arise the ADF, which again offers their preventive assistance for the people. For example, the rise of ethnoreligious discrepancies in Jos in 2010 marked another threshold in the people’s history. This inevitably led to the loss of lives and the dispossession of properties. They were confronted with consuming challenges that required immediate intervention. Among the groups that came to their rescue was the ADF, who contributed massively to rescue the situation. Dangote’s philanthropic philosophy peaked sometime in 2010 when he supported Pakistani nationals who were severely devastated by a flood in the year. The ADF donated greatly to relieve the victims from their unveiling disaster. With the provision of $2 million dollars to the World Food Program6 as part of the initiative to help these victims, Dangote became exceedingly popular in the global community as a notable philanthropist. The ADF demonstrated a similar gesture when 54Gene, a molecular diagnostics company specializing in research and diagnostics began their genomic research covering some African countries from which Nigeria considerably features.7 The group, which is reportedly committed to making groundbreaking research in sequencing the African genome so that it will have a reliable data bank capable of leading to a breakthrough in medical research and healthcare solutions, had intended to make Kano state one of the places to be used as the center for the research. Accordingly, the ADF assisted in setting up a 400 test per day capacity laboratory in the place. Impressively, the center with which the ADF intervention was instrumental to its erection became expressly useful during the period when the country faced the threat of COVID-19, which suddenly emerged and held the world at its feet. Without making such an effort, there is the tendency to think that the state, and maybe the country, would have been consumed by the challenges that the pandemic commands. Dangote attained more global recognition through his dedication of $20 million to the African Center, which was targeted to support a $50 million capital campaign for constructing a 70,000-square-foot facility at the northern end of Manhattan’s Museum Mile. This is, however, in addition to the programmatic initiatives focused on culture, business, and public policy, which would substantially influence the African image and their connection with the outside civilizations. It is undeniable that this contribution has appreciable value on the continent and makes maximum influence in the reshaping of the continent economically and politically. There is no escaping the reality that all these numerous contributions that ADF has ensured through the leader, Dangote, have international effects. They are the accumulated reasons for their recognition. There is a close connection between the pursuance of business growth and philanthropic giving with the individual’s perception at the

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other side of the divide at the global community. Therefore, these African leaders’ business groups have promoted them to the global community, and the fact that they have initiated programs that lead to social emancipation through these businesses has made them gain global recognition. Dangote has provided job opportunities to people in different parts of the continent where his merchandise is available. This is added to the fact that he supports these countries whenever there is a need for it.

Moshood Abiola Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola was born into the Yoruba ethnic group of Egba subculture in August 1937.8 He was raised in Abeokuta, where the people’s cultural essence was subsumed into his identity. At the later stage of his academic career, he went to study in Scotland, where he added sufficient knowledge on entrepreneurship with a degree in economics. Abiola’s arrival into entrepreneurial stardom was midwifed by his association with various enterprises that had a greater shot at financial growth, such as oil, publishing firms, and communication platforms. Therefore, the man’s spontaneous development was a result of his eclectic approach to financial engagement and his economic prescience. In no time, Abiola was able to amass wealth, which changed his social class and improved his economic worth. Therefore, his academic qualifications helped win him a career position that placed his foot on a strong foundation. By becoming the deputy chief accountant at Lagos University Teaching Hospital from 1965 to 1967, Abiola was progressively climbing his way to success; and the more opportunities he encountered, the more pragmatic he was. This explains his exponential development from one basic organization to another, making waves and breaking boundaries. Barely two years after the expiration of his first career experience, Abiola had become the comptroller of International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) Nigeria, Ltd. Abiola’s rapid rise to the apex was at a point shrouded in critical onslaught by people who had reasons to believe that he was perhaps manipulative. His consistent progression in economic calculation alerted the public about his ways, and immediately when they established a connection, they began the duty of condemnation and cynicism. Being the executive officer and the chairman of ITT’s Nigerian branch was instrumental in creating a publishing firm named Concord Press Nigeria Limited, where he simultaneously served as the head of Radio Communications Nigeria. However, he became the subject of criticism because of the poor condition of the country’s system of communication while he was managing his communication business. People found no difficulty in linking the Nigerian communications system’s outrageous conditions with his intention to weaken the country from the probable competition, especially with his communications business. However, Abiola became more popular not because there is a round of virulent campaigns against him; actually, it was specifically because he chose the path of philanthropy which therefore benefited a large number of the people. It was not difficult to spot

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the generosity of Abiola in the country where he earned mass respect. He was popularly regarded as Father Christmas (Santa Claus), a symbolic image created for his giving spree. However, the fame of Abiola was more so linked to his involvement in political struggles than his general achievement at the philanthropic front. Nigeria’s post-independence years were marred by many ideological conflicts, which affected them both economically and morally. It was evident that the rise of military operations alternating democracy was a pointer to internal contradictions that were settled and resettled by some factors and conditions. Among the individuals whose ambition was sacrificed in the course of the country’s democratic evolution was Moshood Abiola. His election mandate was flagrantly denied by the military candidate with which the electoral process was trusted, for a transition into democracy. His mandate was immediately withheld and sacrificed; the world recognized the heroic effort in his management of such a brazen violation of his human rights. Abiola had both the financial and moral muscle to embark on ethnic politics to challenge the situation, in which the resultant effect would be mass massacre and violence of unimaginable proportion. However, he decided to restrain himself from the growing temptation to misuse the power he had. Perhaps we can understand the roles he played in the sustenance of Nigeria’s peace and tranquility when we consider the divisional politics, which was the predominant style in Nigeria from independence until the 1980s. Abiola had become a beacon of hope and a symbol of nationalism in the modern era by cultivating a support base from across the country’s different divides. Therefore, his involvement in Nigerian politics means a deceleration of ethnic tension under which their politics is shrouded. Moshood Abiola was an employer of labor, as his business acumen can be measured by how he engaged many Nigerians and Africans in profitable enterprises that benefited the masses massively. His wide-ranging potential in the business landscape became an opportunity for the people as thousands were offered job opportunities, and many enjoyed empowerment in an unprecedented fashion. Abiola had different business forums, which provided economic strength for him and the people. He had Abiola Farms, Wonder Bakeries, Abiola Bookshops, Radio Communications Nigeria, Concord Press, Concord Airlines, Summit Oil International Ltd., Africa Ocean Lines, Habib Bank, Decca W. A. Ltd., and Abiola Football Club, etc.—all of which are capable of enveloping a very large number of people.9 His attainment of this feat is credited to his versatility and productiveness. Even before diving into Nigerian politics, Abiola has made notable efforts to improve his life as an individual. He was a reputable Patron of the Kwameh Nkrumah Foundation. At a point in his social involvement, he was director of the International Press Institute. The fecundity of Abiola in whatever he engaged in was not hard to spot. Abiola was also the Chairman of the G15 Business Council, President of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, and a Patron of the WEB Du Bois Foundation. In all of these engagements, Abiola remained very impactful.

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Therefore, his recognition by the international community was not a coincidence. At least, Abiola contributed his quota to the improvement of the status quo in the business landscape and at the political level. He was not a businessman without a strategy. His collaboration ability was topnotch, and this can be seen in the ways he breaks the boundary of ethnicity to establish business relationships with people of different cultural frameworks. Abiola collaborated with Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Bamanga Tukur, and Raymond Dokpesi to establish Africa Ocean Lines, which began full operations and immediately became a continental project with international coverage. This business firm became the most gracious one that navigated European countries’ boundaries and Africa very quickly. It brought about mutual growth for the parties, and it once again provided opportunities for youths to get employment. He was a mindless giver who committed much of his financial success to help the country and beyond. The death of Abiola proved the point of his social importance, as he was graced with many titles after his demise from different people across the continent. He was celebrated and appreciated for his humanitarian services.

Teresa Mbagaya The inclusion of Teresa Mbagaya in the Global African Business Leaders’ group answers the question about recency in accomplishments and impact. Her significance in the contemporary entrepreneur dormitory is more profound because of her age and tenderness. Mbagaya is a sound intellectual, and she has been an epitome of courage and resilience right from her ascension into the limelight. Bringing new ideas to modern history and devising strategies useful for attaining technological brilliance in the African continent are the two most important characteristics she is known for. Teresa Mbagaya is a Zimbabwean born and raised in Kenya in 1990,10 redefining people’s perception of education and shaping their understanding of social networks. Mbagaya comes across as heroic, defying different oddities capable of bringing her down to challenge a poorly designed status quo that is not easily amenable to contemporary changes. In the modern world, the desire to provoke significant changes through reliance on one’s ability is very rare to come by, especially among the current mass of African youths. There is, however, a difference between content and commitment. While there are many African youths with content, a number of them lack commitment, which is where Teresa Mbagaya appears to be different. Having acquired her education from great institutions, Mbagaya sets her focus on making the continent a nucleus of ideas where notable innovations can be generated and then transported as reformed products to the outside world. She was very vibrant in pursuing this ambition at a very tender age, so much so that she immediately dedicated her conserved energy to the dream as soon as she had the opportunity. Inspired by broad academic experience, Mbagaya sees the world differently and hopes to become an active member

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in shaping the world’s events in her generation. She is one of the few persons who throws their weight into what they believe in, and this is noticed in her dedication to education, technology, and innovation. She caught the eye of the world in 2015, with Forbes recognizing her as among the “30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs” in Africa, having done a satisfactory job while working as the Head of Econet Education, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless.11 Interestingly, Mbagaya has drawn the world’s attention to the organization because of the groundbreaking ideas she has introduced to them and implemented to provoke profound changes within a relatively short period of serving in the position. Globally, the desire to make education accessible to a larger percentage of people remains strong, and when efforts are made to achieve that, the recognition usually defies boundaries. Mbagaya began her career path with Google Inc. in the United States, where she offered her brilliance to the team, which yielded confounding results. Functioning at different capacities within the organization, she gathered useful information to increase her education competence, especially because she coordinated important research studies that have to do with education and knowledge sharing. Therefore, the gathered experience was useful to get a career progression when she worked as a Project Manager within the organization and helped make her arrange the first-ever education conference for over a thousand students across the world.12 This caught the world’s attention, revealing a blooming talent that Mbagaya was, and still is. There is a deep connection between her trailblazing contributions and her continued relevance in public memory. While the former has been the foundation of her mental energy, the latter results from her outstanding efforts manifesting in whatever endeavor she indulges in. Because of her nearobsession with transformative education, she has been offered to function at different capacities to add sufficient class and excellence to the given assignment. 2013 was unique in her career development as that was the year in which she was offered a position at the Econet Education at Zimbabwe to function as the head, becoming the youngest person to have occupied such an important position. Excellence and class are two important things that are difficult to overshadow. Mbagaya made profound contributions while serving as the head of this organization when she ushered in the EcoSchool Project, an educational platform that expanded the students’ access to reliable materials beyond what had been before then seen. Before coming to such a level of success in her career path, Mbagaya has been a very successful entrepreneur who made numerous shots in business. She was once again a remarkable person even while trying her luck in this domain because she demonstrated a good sense of comportment and direction. One thing drives her passion in whatever encumbrance she has found herself, and that is the determination to provide opportunities for people who could use her platform to improve their own lives. In this way, more opportunities are created for people, and their personal development becomes

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more assuring. For example, she has dived into technology because she understands the power of the internet in contemporary life, and the diversification of knowledge generation method applies because it remains the predominant instrument with which the people can drive their country and identity to a transcendental point. Mbagaya has used her entrepreneurial opportunity to improve the African chances to both economic and political experience. She envisions a position of respect for the continent and uses her platform in pursuing such a dream. And through her efforts, the world has gotten an increased interest in how education can be achieved by a wider coverage with incredible success in Africa, especially in places where she has the opportunity to demonstrate her ingenuity. Mbagaya, from all indications, is a light to the coming generation of Africans as she has shown that the African potential can be explored by consolidating the opportunities provided by the internet to improve not only entrepreneur systems but also something as valuable as education. She has attained a level of respect and recognition through prizes, all of which are indicators of her special contributions. Importantly, she remains one strong advocate for female emancipation, for gender imbalance is an impediment to collective advancement, and this is cardinal to the aims of this lady. Considering the giant strides pulled by her, especially in education, getting international recognition is the icing on her cake. Mbagaya was once a frontliner in the Econet Zero initiative—another academic platform that gives over five million Econet Broadband subscribers undeniable access to more than 50 educational and information platforms very instrumental to people’s improvements.13 Being an active player in Zimbabwe’s education in contemporary time further increases her chances of international success and recognition. This is actually because she introduced a new approach to the acquisition of knowledge and redefined people’s understanding of entrepreneurs. Mbagaya represents promising and vibrant youths, raising the hopes of everyone about the African future.

James Mwangi James Mwangi is a Kenya-born entrepreneur mogul with an amazing aura of business orientation and great economic foresight, registering his presence in business groups with solid potential and foundation. Mwangi heads a business group with an expanding capacity for financial transformation. Equity Group Holdings Limited is a banking conglomerate that commands the largest banking followers in the continent, invariably making it one of the highest labor employers. The profile of Mwangi stands tall as he is a global player in the contemporary market and business enterprise. The successful handling of his business empire has allowed him to become one of Kenya’s most influential figures, paving additional ways for him in different human endeavors. For example, the idea of making him a key factor in the Kenya Vision 2030, which he has headed since 2009, confirms that he has been recognized for

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his various great and outstanding efforts for the improvement of the people generally. His influence spans beyond the continent as his business presence has a far-reaching impact on the country’s economic system and the continent at large. In what will be looked into systematically, this business tycoon’s contribution has been nothing short of class and excellence for adding a new dimension to the system and bringing out reliable results. Mwangi has been a product of excellent education as his achievements in entrepreneurship are a certificate to his academic ingenuity and intellectual brilliance. Holding five honorary doctor degrees14 does not only reveal his eclectic fervor, but this also animates his underlying ingenuity. Going by his ascension into the limelight, one would notice how his success was midwifed by his absorbent tenacity, displayed in the face of trials. He was very dedicated to his goals, and the achievement of success in his business engagement is metaphoric. People who dedicate their attention will always arrive at their desires if their persistence does not flounder. Mwangi represents dedication, which enabled him to arrive at the position he is in the global community today. He has functioned in different capacities, including the Ernst and Young Trade Bank, before moving to Equity Group Holdings Limited, where he was the CEO. Growing through these stages helps him because these positions have allowed him to develop his business acumen while meeting resourceful individuals. Therefore, his life transformation has been another source for significant changes in African involvement in a global economy. This is actually because his efforts affect him as an individual, yet he has made considerable effort to reshape the business’s African interest. Importantly, he created the Wings to Fly initiative as a philanthropic initiative. James Mwangi introduced this initiative to provide scholarships to the less privileged people in the community (the Kenyan community) to enable them to have an opportunity to acquire education. This is motivated by an understanding that education remains the bedrock of human greatness, and the lack of it in the contemporary world would come with severe consequences for the people collectively. The initiative was launched in 2010, and it has gathered the attention of world leaders who are committed to the advancement of humanity for the greater good. Mwangi continues in this vision, as he donated 300 million Kenyan shillings to provide the necessary materials to combat the pandemic.15 At the trying time when the world appeared overwhelmed by the challenges and tensions of COVID-19, efforts in this regard are particularly celebrated because of their potential to reduce the burden on the collective welfare of the people. Therefore, doing this has considerably influenced the global perception of Mwangi and has won him the corresponding accolades that come with such magnanimity. He has been one of Kenya’s drivers in modern times, bringing in the social revolution through the banking system and entrepreneurial versatility. Mwangi has a penchant for excellence, as this defined his participation in every engagement he was given or found. Bolstering the opportunity for banking and its interest, his presence in this sector of Kenya business has provided more opportunities for the

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people who now can activate business life because of the availability of structures to enable their inclusion. Interestingly, this confirms the assumption that economic transformation is the handmaiden of courageous ideas by people who take important steps to improve others’ living conditions. Despite the growing challenges that overtake the global economic system in recent history, Mwangi was able to champion a financial revolution in East Africa, increasing opportunities where it is generally seen as impossible. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals includes helping to achieve sustained, sustainable, and inclusive growth and decent work for all as one of the cardinal points of that agenda, and the fact that Mwangi has been actively instrumental in the quest to enable an inclusive development by offering job opportunities to people in the region through the creation of foundations and jobs for individuals makes him win a remarkable audience in the global community. His celebration worldwide is representative of his growing efforts that are easily spotted in the ways many people benefit from his valuable ideas shown in the business environment and how this creates an opportunity for the country to manage crises that would have erupted from growing unemployment. Therefore, individuals are celebrated in commemoration of their contributions, which generally define the people’s economic, political, and cultural trajectory. Mwangi routinely has been credited with awards for his business-worthy values as a way of recognizing his importance. People who make significant efforts such as him are important stakeholders with the stature to change the status quo with their financial and economic stamina. The world is gravitating toward contradictions and complexities and therefore requires ideas or strategies to bring about the required change. Globalization, degradation, deforestation, and some other global challenges stare at everyone’s face, and the introduction of business as a tool for motivating changes is an elixir of life that deserves continued celebration. The global community is aware of how Mwangi has used this to affect his basic environment, and they are aware of the immeasurable advantage of such means to global peace; this of course explains the celebration of the man in terms of giving him coveted award points to the valuation of his personality. The growth of About Equity Group Holdings Plc has been exponential under his leadership, and this affirms the assumption that he has the leadership aura to lead the people toward a better economic climate. One of the driving forces of Mwangi is to ensure that a liberal economy becomes the strongest leverage for a Pan-Africanist development. The business coverage in the East African region attests to his fecundity of ideas and philosophical leanings. It is no coincidence that his bank is ranked respectfully in the global ranking under The Banker Top 1000 World Banks 2020, where Equity Bank was ranked 754 overall in its global ranking.16

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Patrice Motsepe Patrice Motsepe is an African mining billionaire businessman of South African descent. Born in 1962 in Augustine Motsepe’s family,17 he learned the art of mining business from his late father, in whom the strategies of business were well-established. The academic trajectory of Motsepe is very indicative of his rough-hewn views about business engagement and growth. This is because it is difficult to link his first degree with his mining business’s geometrical growth. This avatar acquired a Bachelor of Arts degree and proceeded to add knowledge in the legal field. This says a lot about his business interests as he found it necessary to acquaint himself with the basics of knowledge on the field where he would eventually make a significant impact. Because Motsepe was a postcolonial African experience product, he experienced substantial drawbacks, making his marks in a society with highfalutin racial prejudices. He acquired a Bachelor of law, especially in business and mining law, and decided to pursue his fortune in that direction. Thus, he joined a law firm, Brownan Gilfillan,18 in 1994, a year that coincided with Nelson Mandela’s emergence as President of the country. Therefore, this would influence his immediate career because Black empowerment was one of the core philosophies of the rising nationalists. The determination to enhance a friendly economic atmosphere is usually the motivation behind creating foundations that would distribute wealth to the people and open an expanding circle of opportunity for the indigent majority. Wealth distribution in society naturally involves some measure of palliative care for those who are not predisposed to ordinarily accessing opportunities with which their lives can experience a turnaround. Opportunities are available to everyone, but every society’s economic system is such that it is under the monopolistic influence of the capitalist, which makes it necessary to create forums where the financially less privileged would also be offered the chance to improve their welfare through relief packages. In some cases, these relief programs come in the form of monetary reinforcement that the beneficiaries can use to improve their conditions. On some other occasions, they are backings given to individuals, especially in their wealth development areas. For Motsepe, his philanthropic giving is very significant in South Africa as he has been known to promise a substantial concentration of his wealth to help the people of South Africa, especially the economically oppressed. This gesture was a solidarity step with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, two American billionaires who dedicated their fortune to global philanthropy and encouraged others of similar financial stature to follow suit. Motsepe is a thoroughbred African who abides by the Ubuntu philosophy, which reiterates the importance of communal living, togetherness, and oneness in all endeavors. Therefore, committing a substantial amount of his wealth to helping people develops from the mindset that they deserve to attract sufficient financial attention to improve the quality of life. Demonstrating such commitment to African financial emancipation alludes to his nationalist intentions, which has a historical relationship with his career progression. While being a

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lawyer, the new democratic structure under the control of a black man created Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy, founded on a general conviction to provide both the moral and ideological support for the suppressed majority in South Africa. Therefore, this policy was crucial to the growth of the man in question, and he has sufficiently given back to society after his ascension into the South African elite class. At various times, he has contributed to the fight against the Ebola virus and other pandemics of that nature, giving huge financial support for their eradication. Motsepe is a magnate whose presence in the country brings much financial value and economic success to the people. Satisfying all the moral requirements of leadership in his capacity as a controller of different organizations, the world’s attention is directed to him in recognition of his efforts to reduce global challenges through philanthropy.

Notes 1. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Mo Ibrahim, and Etienne Davignon, “Europe and Africa Must Cooperate to Ensure a Peaceful and Flourishing Future,” World Economic Forum, October 21, 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/ new-eurafrican-partnership. 2. Auletta Ken, “The Dictator Index: A Billionaire Battles a Continent’s Legacy of Misrule,” The New Yorker, February 28, 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2011/03/07/the-dictator-index. 3. BBC News, “Bostwana’s Mogae Wins $5 m Prize,” BBC News, October 20, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7679391.stm. 4. Philanthropy News Digest, “Dangote, Gates Foundations Pledge $25 Million to Africa Center,” Philanthropy News Digest, September 25, 2019, https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/dangote-gates-foundationspledge-25-million-to-africa-center. 5. Philanthropy News Digest, “Dangote.” 6. Philanthropy News Digest, “Dangote.” 7. Aliko Dangote Foundation, “After N2bn Donation, Aliko Dangote Foundation Engages 54gene Laboratory to Conduct 1,000 COVID-19 Test per Day in Kano,” Aliko Dangote Foundation, n.d., https://www.dangote.com/aftern2bn-donation-aliko-dangote-foundation-engages-54gene-laboratory-to-con duct-1000-covid-19-test-per-day-in-kano/. 8. Ridwan Adelaja, “M. K. O. Abiola: From Bank Clerk to Multi-Millionaire CEO and National Icon,” Nairametrics, June 12, 2019, https://nairametr ics.com/2019/06/12/m-k-o-abiola-from-bank-clerk-to-multi-millionaire-ceoand-national-icon/. 9. Encyclopedia.com, “Moshood Abiola,” Encyclopedia.com, 2020, https://www. encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/african-history/moshood-abiola. 10. Tech Gist Africa, “The Change We Seek: Teresa Mbagaya – Techpreneur of the Week Tech Gist Africa,” Tech Gist Africa, 13, 2018, https://www.techgi stafrica.com/people/techpreneur-of-the-week/the-change-we-seek-teresa-mba gaya-techpreneur-of-the-week/. 11.

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16. 17.

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Rachel Ombaka, “Woman of Power: The Trailblazing, Youthful Teresa Mbagaya,” Nation, December 18, 2015, https://nation.africa/kenya/lifeand-style/women-style/woman-of-power-the-trailblazing-youthful-teresa-mba gaya-1154848. Ombaka, “Woman of Power.” Ombaka, “Woman of Power.” Equity, “Equity CEO, Dr. James Mwangi, Wins Coveted Oslo Business for Peace Award,” Equity, September 9, 2020, https://equitygroupholdings.com/ equity-ceo-dr-james-mwangi-wins-coveted-oslo-business-for-peace-award/. Margaret Njugunah, “James Mwangi Family Donates Sh300mn to Fight COVID-19 IN Kenya,” Capital Business, April 30, 2020, https://www.capita lfm.co.ke/business/2020/04/james-mwangi-family-donate-sh300mn-to-fightcovid-19-in-kenya/. Njugunah, “James Mwangi Family Donates.” Jacopo Prisco. “7 Things You Didn’t Know About South Africa’s Only Black Billionaire,” CNN , July 15, 2015, https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/15/afr ica/patrice-motsepe-to-know/index.html. Gabriella Mulligan, “Billionaire Sir Patrice Motsepe Remains South Africa’s Richest Man, As Mining Sector Influence Rich List,” Ventures Africa, 18, 2012, http://venturesafrica.com/blog/2012/09/18/billionaire-patricemotsepe-remains-south-africas-richest-man-as-rich-list-wealth-grow/.

Index

A Abderrahim Iqbi, 69 Acheampong, Frederick, 916, 926, 927 Achebe, Chinua, 20, 33, 224, 1070–1072, 1078–1080 Adeboye, Enock Adejare, 932, 938, 941, 942 Aderibigbe, Moradeke Ibigbolade, 932–934, 939, 941 AfCTA, 3 Afriart Gallery, 69 Africa Command (AFRICOM), 753, 859, 861, 863 Africa Mining Vision (AMV), 348 African Charter, 10, 281, 283, 491, 695, 696, 698, 763 African Continental Free Trade Agreement, 3, 4, 12, 13, 18, 396 African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), 379–382, 396, 400–402, 406, 430, 431, 434, 435, 575, 576, 778, 779 African Development Bank (AfDB), 374, 409, 419, 429, 433, 571, 612, 614 African diaspora, 8, 104–106, 112, 113, 117–123, 125, 126, 132, 146, 922, 939, 971 African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), 66, 312, 417, 501 African humanism, 185, 263

African independent churches (AICs), 913, 931, 933, 934 African Initiated Churches (AICs), 916, 933 African National Congress (ANC), 328, 330, 335, 336, 502, 588–590, 596, 746, 1053, 1054 African Pentecostalism, 19, 912, 913, 915, 916, 921, 924 African personality, 185, 205, 206 African Renaissance (AR), 21, 185, 569, 765, 784 African Union (AU), 3–5, 14, 17, 22, 68, 105, 261, 336, 337, 381, 387, 400, 431, 435, 544, 569, 575, 603, 610, 620, 694, 696, 697, 710, 713, 717, 724–726, 728, 732, 736, 748, 753, 754, 761, 762, 765, 767, 774, 777, 783, 785, 788, 796, 806, 807, 810, 841, 842, 844, 848, 863, 866, 1054, 1061, 1093, 1096 Africa rising, 3, 395, 418 Afrikaans, 265, 290 Afrobeat, 19, 34, 70, 892, 893, 902, 903 Afro-pessimism, 218 Agadir crisis, 53, 54 Ajayi, Ade J.F., 2, 20, 101, 263, 931, 1085 Akan, 88, 135, 265, 971

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. O. Oloruntoba and T. Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3

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INDEX

Ake, Claude, 2, 3, 33, 316, 681, 682, 881, 897, 901, 964 Akindayomi, Josiah, 932, 937, 941, 942 Akosombo dam, 32 Al-Gaddafi, Muammar, 337 Algeria, 44, 62, 70, 75, 76, 84, 85, 91, 401, 558, 561, 621, 625, 626, 745, 746, 751, 753, 761, 775, 811, 814, 815 Aliko Dangote, 1102, 1104 Ali, Othman, 28, 37 Alpha Leadership Conference (ALC), 934 Al-Qaeda, 337, 736, 749, 751, 790, 805, 815, 816, 843 Alsace Lorraine, 46 Amadiume, Ifi, 33 Amin, Sarmin, 3, 13 Ancient Greek, 28, 81, 829, 1012 ANCYL, 328 Anglo-Boer War, 44 Anglo-Congo Free State, 87 Anglo-French Treaty, 87 Anglo-German Treaty, 87 Anglo-Italian Treaty, 87 Anglophone, 339, 547 Angola, 44, 64, 68, 76, 83, 84, 91, 337, 348, 374, 403, 454, 470, 473, 476, 479, 481, 491, 523, 549, 550, 553, 558, 573, 578, 593, 729, 746, 751, 783, 809, 811, 814, 815, 866, 882, 951 Anikulapo-Kuti, Fela, 19, 34, 876–878, 885, 892, 893, 896, 902 Annan, Kofi A., 4, 1055, 1058–1062, 1064 Anna Pepple House, 79 ANO Ghana, 69 Apartheid, 4, 97, 146, 198, 208, 225, 242, 283, 284, 325, 327–329, 452, 502, 553, 589, 652, 706, 711, 714, 829, 877, 881, 892, 893, 903, 1052–1054, 1057 Apostle Johnson Suleiman, 918 Appiah, Kwame Antony, 202, 210 Arab Muslims, 81–83 Arendt, Hannah, 204, 205, 994 Armah-Attoh, Daniel, 922, 929 Armstrong, Louis, 34

Artists Alliance Gallery, 69 Asante Kingdom, 88 Asante, Molefi Kete, 51, 52, 88, 202, 680 Associated Press (AP), 213 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 378, 710, 807 Atlantic Ocean, 82, 83, 353 Australia, 162, 225, 358, 359, 571, 578, 590, 644 Autour de la Terre II, 69 Awal, Mohammed, 922, 929

B Babylon, 28 Baden-Powell, Robert, 88 Banana Hill Art Gallery, 69 Bantjes, Jan Gerrit, 44 Bantu civilizations, 29 Barcelona, 70 Barnato, Barney, 328 Battle, Michael, 336 B’Chira Art Center, 69 Beijing, 273, 314, 329, 334, 652, 653, 656, 657, 660, 661, 663–666, 805–820, 864, 865, 1061 Belgium, 34, 43, 54, 61, 65, 80, 83, 84, 86, 310, 346, 547, 552, 642 Bell, Duncan, 195, 198, 206, 211 Belloc, Hilaire, 47, 90 Benin City, 88, 89 Benin Punitive Expedition, 88 Berlin Conference, 43, 45–47, 51, 83, 84, 86, 310, 323 Beti, Mongo, 259 Bight of Biafra, 103 Black Panther Party, 878 Blues music, 34 Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 263, 1086 Boahen, Adu A., 20, 37, 38, 48, 51, 75, 76, 102, 966, 1085 Bode Museum, 69 Boko Haram, 337, 623, 628, 730, 736, 745, 747, 750, 751, 753–756, 790, 791, 815, 816, 862 Bonny Island, 79 Boosting Intra-African Trade (BIAT), 400, 435

INDEX

Botswana, 84, 288, 327, 330, 333, 370, 442, 447, 473, 491, 526, 573, 746, 811 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 4, 728, 729, 738, 1055 Brazil, 3, 5, 11, 14, 32, 83, 104, 106, 108, 135, 136, 310, 312, 358, 368, 369, 416, 431, 571, 573, 574, 576, 578, 605, 609, 658, 777, 857, 858, 868, 970, 981 Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), 5, 14, 324, 329, 335, 416, 434, 501, 567 Bretton Woods institutions (BWI), 273, 441, 447, 448, 471, 529–532, 534 Bretton Woods network, 264 Brexit, 16, 18, 635–637, 640, 641, 643–646, 794, 810, 911 Bristol, 108 Britain, 3, 4, 16, 44–47, 49, 53, 54, 59–62, 65, 83–86, 90, 91, 93, 95, 107, 310, 312, 330, 446, 465, 491, 547, 552, 560, 561, 635–638, 641, 650, 651, 772, 791, 847, 863, 892, 1053, 1054, 1056, 1102 British empire, 8, 77, 85, 444, 1055 British Navy, 79 Brundtland Commission (WCED), 165 Buddha, 161 Buell, Raymond, 205 Buhari, Muhammadu, 935 Burkina Faso, 4, 84, 89, 495, 571, 578, 621, 625, 626, 745, 746, 752, 754, 806, 811, 819 Burma, 63 Buxton, T. Fowell, 77, 101

C Cabral, Amilcar, 263, 274 Cameroon, 54, 84, 85, 95, 99, 245, 335, 355, 477, 496, 497, 524, 578, 621, 625, 626, 745, 753, 785, 805, 806, 811, 812, 816 Cape Colony, 77 Cape Gallery, 69 Cape Verde, 84, 531 Captain Galloway, 88 Carmichael, Stokey, 263

1119

Carr, E.H., 198, 199, 209 Catholic Church, 931, 957, 959, 961 Cavour, Camillo, 46 Cecil John Rhodes, 323, 326, 328 Central Africa, 29, 51, 76, 82, 95, 133, 496, 505, 523, 561, 797, 806, 809, 974, 1027 Central African Republic (CAR), 68, 84, 268, 470, 473, 476, 479, 481, 496, 497, 556, 561, 578, 729, 730, 732, 733, 760, 761, 783, 789–791, 805, 818, 863, 882 Césaire, Aimé, 204, 205, 211, 227, 263, 274 Cetshwayo, 89 Chang, Kwang-chih, 26 Chief Moshood Abiola, 918, 1057 China, 3–5, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 60, 66, 260, 268, 309–312, 314–316, 318, 319, 324, 327, 329–331, 334–336, 338, 340, 347, 350, 353, 368–370, 394, 396–398, 402–405, 416–418, 431, 446, 447, 450, 495, 497, 502, 543, 544, 572–576, 578, 584, 588, 596, 610, 636, 643–645, 651–658, 660–667, 673, 676, 679, 709, 711, 760, 770, 777, 805–820, 846, 857, 858, 863–865, 868, 915 Chingono, Mark, 265, 272 Christian Council of Ghana (CCG), 916 Christianity, 6, 19, 20, 30, 31, 76, 80–83, 85, 98, 100, 101, 260, 262, 324, 912, 913, 916, 918–920, 931, 932, 942, 953, 955, 970, 1035, 1038, 1069 Clapham, Christopher, 196, 201, 210, 597, 835, 836, 838 Clinton, Hillary, 310, 335, 1103 CNN, 213 Coker, Daniel, 311 Cold War, 4, 7, 14, 15, 18, 64, 66, 67, 200, 201, 313, 315, 416, 483, 489, 543–545, 547, 549, 551, 584, 590, 595, 662, 663, 707, 712, 723, 728, 737, 746, 760, 764, 767–769, 773, 774, 777, 783, 784, 786, 843, 846, 848, 849, 857–861, 865, 868, 1055, 1086 Colonial civilization, 27, 30, 31

1120

INDEX

Colonialism, 1, 4, 7, 11, 12, 30–32, 48, 50, 55, 61, 63, 75–77, 85, 86, 93–97, 99–101, 128, 156, 167, 175–177, 179, 188, 199, 200, 204, 206, 223, 230, 241, 242, 259, 262, 263, 269, 274, 283, 284, 310, 311, 313, 316–319, 324–328, 330, 334, 335, 339, 351, 369, 373, 383, 395, 414, 444, 445, 448, 453, 490, 498, 526, 553, 568, 597, 652, 653, 662, 682, 694, 706, 714, 807, 825, 830, 840, 846, 857, 875, 951, 955, 969, 971, 1051–1053, 1060, 1063, 1069, 1073, 1075, 1077 Colvile, H.E., 87 Commodity Boards, 93, 94 Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) program, 160 Confucius, 161, 656 Congo Free State, 46, 221 Conrad, Joseph, 215, 219–222, 226 Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), 378 Conton, William F., 259 Costa Rica, 201, 691 Council for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR), 249 COVID-19, 16, 393, 394, 400, 454, 570, 572, 629, 651, 657–660, 662, 664, 674–678, 680, 682, 683, 686, 794, 810, 817, 958, 1025, 1029, 1036, 1105, 1111

D Da Gama, Vasco, 26, 82 Dahomey Empire, 974 Dakar, 69, 93 Dangote, Aliko, 20 Decoloniality, 177, 179, 190, 191 Decolonization, 4, 7–9, 14, 60–62, 70, 112, 184, 189, 191, 200, 223, 261, 262, 264, 269, 311, 312, 325, 338, 339, 574, 677, 774, 1084, 1087, 1092 Delany, Martin, 311 Descartes, 161

Dike, Kenneth O., 2, 20, 101, 1085 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 20, 21, 33, 108, 680, 1085 Doha Development Round, 4, 418, 434 Douglas, Frederick, 77, 130 Dube, Lucky, 876, 877, 883–885 Du Bois, W.E.B., 195, 198–200, 202, 203, 205, 263, 1107 Dunne, Tim, 201

E Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), 328 Economic Nationalism, 443 Egypt, 4, 28, 29, 36, 50, 51, 53, 54, 67, 69, 76, 80, 82, 84, 85, 106, 263, 423, 424, 503, 558, 561, 571, 573, 577, 621, 625, 653, 745, 746, 814, 817, 879, 884, 891, 892, 972, 1051, 1055, 1087 Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Mette, 913, 914 Enuka, Chuka, 415 Epistemic violence, 182, 184, 185, 259 Equatorial Guinea (EG), 84, 355, 496, 497, 814, 815 Equiano, Olaudah, 77 Erasmus Stephanus Jacobs, 44 Essa, Ahmed, 28, 37 Eswatini, 36, 84, 578 Ethiopia, 28, 29, 47, 49–51, 64, 68, 86, 89, 90, 198, 204, 369, 370, 399, 404, 442, 448, 450, 473, 477, 496, 503, 523, 524, 548, 549, 558, 561, 573, 578, 621, 625, 628, 653, 745, 746, 753, 811, 814, 842–844, 846, 851, 852, 972, 1051, 1052, 1087 Ethiopian civilization, 29 Eureka Galerie, 69 Euro-Africa relations, 18 Eurocentric epistemology, 3, 249 European Union (EU), 3, 16, 18, 65, 67, 312, 370, 378, 405, 418, 431, 502, 555, 559, 572, 578, 606, 619–622, 625–631, 635–644, 659, 685, 692, 710, 753, 761, 772, 776, 777, 783–795, 808, 818, 820, 844, 945, 946

INDEX

F Faduma, Orishatuke, 311 Fage, John Donnelly, 75, 76 Falola, Toyin, 6–8, 10, 20, 33, 119, 121–123, 135, 261, 263, 265, 451, 454, 680, 682, 683, 686, 975 Fanon, Frantz, 111, 179, 202, 220, 224, 318, 329, 337, 339, 680, 1093 Fashek, Majek, 876, 877, 883–885 Fast Track Land Reform (FTLR) program, 333 Federation of French West Africa (FFWA), 93 Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, 904 Ferguson, James, 140, 141, 145–147, 330, 342, 358 Fernando Po, 84 Ferry, Jules Francois Camille, 45, 85 FESTAC, 70 First Floor Gallery, 69 First Pan-African Cultural Festival, 70 First World Festival of Negro Arts, 70 Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), 65, 347, 360, 382, 402, 405, 411, 417, 419, 425, 428, 429, 431–433, 495, 570–572, 640, 645, 656, 808, 810 Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), 66, 402, 575, 653–655, 810, 865 Fox News, 213 France, 4, 25, 34, 43–49, 51, 53, 54, 59, 61, 62, 65, 75, 83–86, 90, 93, 310, 312, 350, 370, 371, 471, 491, 547, 552, 560, 561, 575, 578, 594, 642, 658, 666, 675, 692, 699, 723, 750, 752, 754, 761, 762, 785, 790, 791, 806, 815, 816, 818, 820, 863 Francophone, 339, 547, 561 Franco-Portuguese Treaty, 87 Frederikse, Jullie, 230 French Congo, 53, 85 French National Assembly, 76

G Gallery, 69 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 46 Garrison, William Lloyd, 77, 130, 131 Garvey, Marcus, 118, 263, 1086

1121

Geej Dynasty, 110 General Dessalines, 203 General Ibrahim Babangida, 918, 1057 Genoa, 82 German-Portuguese Treaty, 87 Germany, 4, 43, 45–47, 53, 54, 60, 65, 69, 77, 83–86, 91, 93, 223, 310, 358, 370, 371, 429, 471, 571, 577, 578, 621, 642, 658, 675, 679, 707, 785, 790, 820, 863 Ghaddafi, Muammar, 5, 765 Ghana, 6, 12, 28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 49, 67, 69, 76, 84, 91, 92, 95, 99, 201, 245, 261, 262, 311, 327, 330, 345–349, 351–357, 359–361, 370, 374, 375, 399, 404, 424, 434, 448, 454, 470, 471, 473, 476, 479, 481, 495, 496, 523, 524, 526, 527, 530–533, 558, 571, 621, 625, 644, 666, 699, 809, 811, 812, 817, 867, 912, 915–917, 919, 922, 924, 928, 955, 964, 975, 980, 982, 1051, 1055, 1058 Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference (GCBC), 916 Ghana Revenue Agency (GRA), 357, 922 Global North, 246, 248, 325, 334, 338, 349, 519, 520, 527, 533, 619, 624, 735, 736, 815 Global Public Policy Paradigms, 13 Global South, 14, 15, 21, 214, 215, 217, 226, 325, 477, 520, 521, 544, 549, 568, 569, 573, 574, 583, 587, 619, 662, 735, 736, 806, 807, 819, 841, 1056 Gold Coast, 76, 88, 103, 955, 1058 Goodman Gallery, 69 Goree Island, 110 Great Britain, 43, 46, 47, 49, 77, 79, 80, 82–85, 89, 90, 92, 107, 128, 471 Great Depression, 55, 78, 650, 660 Grovogui, Siba, 197 Gueye, M’baye, 51 Guilhot, Nicolas, 200 Guinea, 47, 84, 495, 523, 556, 571, 621, 625, 627, 789, 806, 808, 816, 863

1122

INDEX

H Haiti, 136, 197, 203, 204, 970, 980, 981 Haitian revolution, 203, 204, 206 Hall, Stanley, 203 Hanga, Makombe, 51, 89 Harris, Joseph E., 104, 120, 125 Harry Rawson, 88 Hausa, 52, 95, 267, 680, 683–685, 1032, 1035, 1036, 1038, 1050, 1102 Havana Declaration of, 67 Hayford, J.E. Casely, 263 Hegel, G.W.F., 6, 26, 948 Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), 422, 423 Hirschman, Albert, 348 Historic Mission Churches (HMCs), 916 Hitler, Adolf, 60 HIV, 186, 775, 783, 1026–1028, 1061, 1062 Hoffman, Stephanie C., 913 Holmes, Justice, 226 Hong-Kong, 16, 225, 368 Horton, James Africanus, 262 Houtoundji, Paulin, 33 Hulley, Michael, 336 Human evolution, 25–27, 36 Human Rights Watch (HWR), 331 Hume, 161 Hutu and Tutsi, 95, 552

I Iberian Peninsula, 81 Ibrahim, Mo, 20, 433, 1100–1102 Igwe, Stanley, 880, 883, 979 Ikenberry, G. John, 914 Ikime, Obaro, 2 Imperial British East African Company (IBEAC), 86 Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI), 94, 97–99, 524, 525 India, 3–5, 11, 12, 14, 21, 81, 82, 88, 106, 142, 310–312, 335, 336, 347, 353, 368–371, 397, 404, 416, 417, 431, 497, 529, 543, 544, 571, 573, 574, 576, 578, 777, 846, 857, 858, 868, 1087

Indigenous knowledge, 9, 156, 157, 159, 160, 163–169, 240–242, 294 Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), 8–10, 156, 157, 162, 165, 166, 168, 215, 239, 242, 249, 252, 687, 1084 Indirect Rule System, 91, 92, 826 Indonesia, 62, 67, 571, 578, 1054, 1062 Industrial Revolution, 44, 45, 78, 90, 99, 101, 309, 493, 494 Indus valley, 28 Information Communication Technology (ICT), 35, 399, 574 International Council for Research in Agro-Forestry (ICRAF), 168 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 11, 13, 14, 182, 186, 273, 327, 373, 375, 381, 404, 441, 442, 446, 447, 449–455, 457, 471–475, 478, 480, 494, 506, 531, 534, 535, 571, 572, 714, 776, 808, 911, 920, 921, 1061 International relations (IR), 6, 9, 14, 60, 94, 137, 195–208, 469, 495, 568, 569, 574, 575, 578, 604, 606–608, 640, 642, 705, 707–709, 711, 713, 759, 767, 768, 773, 857, 911, 946, 950, 1050, 1058 Iran, 68 Iraq, 68, 591, 637, 706, 709, 717, 736, 749, 806, 862, 1062 Islam, 7, 20, 28, 30, 50, 81–83, 100, 106, 122, 260, 680, 853, 878, 931, 955, 964, 1035, 1038, 1039, 1088 Islamization, 48 Israel, 225, 615, 896, 936, 1054 Italy, 43, 46, 47, 49, 51, 63, 83–86, 93, 471, 572, 578, 658, 659, 707, 806, 847, 939 Ivory Coast, 47, 48, 51, 69, 76, 84, 495, 524, 809

J Jamaica, 34, 108, 126, 201, 902, 934 Japan, 4, 65, 370, 429, 457, 502, 574, 577, 578, 644, 669, 676, 679, 707, 798, 816, 858, 863, 868, 915 Jazz music, 34, 878

INDEX

Jefferson, Thomas, 204 Jihad, 50 Johnson, Samuel, 263 Jubogha, Jubo, 79

K Kabaka, 86, 87, 980 Kagame, Paul, 270, 482, 483, 577, 593 Kagwa, Apollo, 263 Kamga, Serges Djoyou, 10, 279 Kane, Hamidou, 259 Kaplan, David, 348 Kaplinsky, Raphael, 348, 404 Kennedy, J.F., 66 Kenya, 6, 20, 35, 36, 51, 69, 84, 91, 97, 98, 140, 167, 223, 265, 311, 338, 370, 375, 397, 399, 404, 424, 442, 450, 471, 473, 524, 525, 531, 549, 556, 558, 573, 578, 621, 625, 681, 682, 745, 746, 750, 751, 754, 783, 817, 844, 862, 877, 1057, 1073, 1074, 1108, 1110, 1111 Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), 97 Kikuyu, 87, 97 Kimberley, 44, 328 King Hendrik Wittboi, 89 King Leopold, 221, 223 King Leopold II, 80 King Lobengula, 90 King, Martin Luther, 142, 143, 146 King Menelik, 89, 90 King Moshoeshoe, 291 King Otumfuo Nana Prempeh I, 88 King Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, 88 King Prempeh, 88 Kiswahili, 265 Kone, Seydou, 876, 877 Kongo kingdom, 29

L Lagos, 52, 69, 70, 568, 623, 624, 816, 879, 932–934, 938, 942, 978, 979, 1041, 1055, 1106 Lake, David A., 203, 207, 210, 211 Lamine, Mamadou, 47 Lat Joor Ngoone Latiir Joop, 89

1123

League of Nations, 54, 61, 198, 707, 716, 1052 Lebanon, 68 Legitimate Trade, 30, 76, 78–80 Leroy Beaulieu, Paul, 46 Lesotho, 84, 286–291, 295, 404, 573, 578, 595 Liberalism, 198, 206, 337, 443, 448, 455, 495, 527, 528, 583, 590, 591, 911–915 Liberia, 48, 68, 86, 197, 198, 204, 205, 268, 369, 448, 473, 495, 553, 578, 695, 735, 761, 765, 783, 813, 829, 831, 882 Libya, 17, 47, 82, 84, 91, 97, 98, 268, 324, 337, 560, 561, 610, 615, 621, 625, 626, 663, 690, 706, 730, 745, 746, 749, 751, 761, 792, 793, 798, 805, 818, 861, 862, 891, 892, 1054 Livingstone, David, 80–82, 101, 221, 222, 224 Lobitos, Koola, 878 Lovejoy, Paul E., 32, 128 Lugard, Lord, 87 Lumumba, Patrice, 257, 260 Lusophone, 339

M Maathai, Wangari, 33 Maghreb, 30, 223, 632, 805 Mahabir, Aruneema, 405 Majefe, Archie, 20 Maji-Maji revolt, 51 Makeba, Mariam, 876, 877, 902 Malawi, 83, 84, 245, 328, 470, 471, 473, 476, 479, 481, 573, 578, 594, 595, 654, 772, 819 Malaysia, 11, 201, 310, 312, 347, 358 Mali, 28, 30, 32, 48, 84, 85, 473, 495, 496, 556, 558, 561, 578, 621, 625, 626, 680, 684, 693, 694, 730, 733, 735, 736, 745, 746, 752, 754, 761, 790, 791, 805, 806, 811–813, 815, 1051 Mamdani, Mahmood, 2, 20, 33, 246, 825, 1085–1089, 1091–1094

1124

INDEX

Mandela, Nelson, 328, 329, 336, 645, 706, 714, 1053, 1054, 1113 Mandela, Zondwa, 336 Manuh, Takyiwaa, 33 Marley, Bob, 34, 876, 877, 884, 903 Marxism, 443 Maseko, Robert, 11, 12 Mauritius, 36, 84, 423, 442, 447, 573, 578 Maxwell, David, 921 Maxwell, William, 88 Mazrui, Ali, 20, 33, 241, 271, 544–547, 560, 562, 563, 642, 1085–1090, 1093, 1094, 1096 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 46 Mbaganga, 882 Mbeki, Thabo, 5, 329, 333, 774, 775, 1054 McCormick, Dorothy, 404 Mediterranean Sea, 82, 792 MERCOSUR, 378 Mesopotamia, 28, 29 Mesopotamian civilization, 28 Middle East, 20, 28, 54, 63, 69, 70, 81, 119, 124, 314, 396, 482, 489, 491, 561, 708, 709, 712, 724, 753, 828, 848, 849, 861, 891, 1034 Millennium Developmental Goals (MDG), 186, 187, 788, 1060, 1061 Millet, Allan R., 59 Mkandawire, Thandika, 33, 182, 183, 264, 270, 525, 530, 533, 1083, 1095 Mohlomi, Morena, 286, 290, 291, 293–295 Montaigne, 161 Morgenthau, Hans J., 199, 200, 210 Morocco, 36, 53, 69, 84, 85, 424, 571, 621, 625, 696, 751 Morris, Mike, 348, 404 Mosepo, Patrice, 20 Mozambique, 4, 51, 76, 83, 84, 89, 91, 103, 106, 328, 332, 333, 337, 448, 490, 491, 573, 578, 596, 729, 746, 793, 811, 814, 1053, 1054, 1101 Mudimbe, V.Y., 202, 210, 680, 683, 684 Mugabe, Robert, 333, 334, 336, 596, 814, 1054

Mullings, Robert, 405 Murray, Williamson, 59 Musa, Mansa, 30, 680 Museum of the African Diaspora, 69 Mwangi, James, 20, 1110–1112

N Nabudere, Dani W., 2, 681, 682 Namibia, 54, 69, 84, 91, 283, 330, 333, 490, 550, 573, 595, 596, 746, 866 Napoleon of Africa, 48 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 32 Ndebele, 52, 87, 89 Ndebeleland, 90 N’Dour, Youssou, 876, 877 Negritude, 185, 205, 274 Nepal, 160 Newfarmer, Richard, 399 New Orleans, 34, 134, 135 New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), 5, 68, 569, 571, 573, 575–577, 774, 775, 784, 792, 793 Ngoni, 87 Niger, 32, 47, 48, 51, 84, 87, 95, 167, 168, 245, 470, 473, 476, 479, 481, 503, 556, 578, 621, 625, 626, 628, 745, 746, 752–754, 791, 809, 815 Niger Convention, 87 Nigeria, 2, 4–6, 16, 19, 20, 32, 35, 36, 51, 67–70, 76, 84, 91, 92, 95, 99, 128, 245, 261, 262, 268, 327, 335, 337, 348, 355, 370, 374, 375, 397, 401, 404, 410, 413, 442, 447, 450, 453, 454, 470, 473, 476–479, 481, 482, 491, 495, 504, 506, 523–526, 531, 551, 558, 561, 573, 578, 613, 614, 619–625, 627–631, 644, 651, 652, 657, 659, 673, 676, 680–682, 694, 695, 697, 699, 730, 736, 745–748, 751, 753, 755, 756, 764, 772, 775, 805, 811, 812, 814–817, 819, 829, 862, 863, 866, 867, 877–879, 881, 883, 884, 892, 893, 896–900, 902–904, 912, 915, 918, 924, 931–942, 960, 970–972, 974–976, 978, 979, 989, 991,

INDEX

1026–1028, 1030–1032, 1034, 1035, 1041, 1053–1055, 1057, 1058, 1062, 1066, 1070, 1078, 1087, 1102–1107 Nketia, Kwabena, 33 Nkrumah, Kwame, 10, 22, 195, 201, 205, 206, 210, 263, 273, 311, 318, 351, 533, 764, 916, 1086, 1107 NOAA, 159 Nollywood, 5, 70 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), 2, 159, 501, 531, 532, 584, 588, 593, 613, 650, 921, 1028, 1041, 1061, 1102, 1103, 1105 North Africa, 28, 47, 51, 70, 75, 76, 81–83, 91, 95, 110, 337, 396, 417, 621, 751, 753, 754, 866, 891, 1094 North America has North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 378 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 5, 641, 707, 708, 711, 761, 790, 793, 860, 868 North Korea, 561, 846, 863, 868 Norway, 358, 359, 471 Nyawo, 185 Nyerere, Julius K., 201, 206, 244, 259, 263, 273, 311, 533, 551, 597, 1054

O Obasanjo, Olusegun, 5, 270, 453, 551, 764, 775, 862, 899, 918, 1054, 1058 Obote, Milton, 311 Obua Ajukwu of Oguta, 79 Offiong, Daniel A., 318 Ogot, Beth A., 101, 263, 1085, 1089 Okosu, Sunny, 876, 877 Oliver, Roland, 75, 76 Olympic games, 6 Omenka Gallery, 69 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 65, 244, 246, 378, 397, 398, 575, 635, 770, 772, 1061

1125

Organization of African Unity (OAU), 4, 7, 14, 67, 400, 544, 545, 548, 550, 551, 553, 554, 556, 603, 695, 696, 724, 726, 728, 734, 761, 764, 765, 783–785, 1054, 1061, 1095 Otto Von Bismark, 45 Ouloguem, Yambo, 259 Ousmane, Sembene, 259 Out of Africa Gallery, 69 Oyewumi, Oyeronke, 265

P Padmore, George, 263, 533 Page, John, 399 Pan Africanism, 11, 104, 121, 122, 185, 230, 263, 274, 310–312, 319, 325, 339, 400, 547, 714, 764, 876, 1086, 1087, 1096 Pan-Africanist movement, 4, 263, 1074 Pascal, 161, 957, 959 Pastor Enoch Adeboye, 918 Pastor Tunde Bakare, 918, 927 Peace of Vereeniging, 87 Pentecostalism, 912, 913, 918, 919, 924, 932, 939 Pereira, Duarte Pacheco, 26, 107 Phillips, James Robert, 88 Pierre, Jemima, 202 Pisa, 82 Plaatje, Sol, 259 Plato, 161 Policy of Assimilation, 90–92 Porges, Jules, 328 Portugal, 43, 44, 46, 65, 83, 84, 86, 91, 93, 574 President Yoweri Museveni, 33 Programmes for Infrastructure Development for Africa (PIDA), 435 Prophet Muhammed, 81

R Racism, 9, 85, 196, 197, 326, 331, 826, 877,

91, 138, 142, 145, 190, 200, 202–206, 208, 225, 339, 444, 658, 807, 817, 884, 902, 1093

1126

INDEX

Redeemed Christian Church of God North America (RCCGNA), 932, 934, 937, 938, 940–942 Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), 19, 932–942 Reggae, 34, 882–884 Reggae music, 34 Reindof, Christian, 263 Republic of Benin, 76, 84 Revd. W. Turnbull Balmer, 263 Rhodes, Cecil, 47, 90 Rhodes Must Fall protests, 3 Robinson, Cedric J., 338 Robinson, Joseph Benjamin, 328 Rodney, Walter, 2, 3, 31, 109, 201, 316, 318, 368, 384, 414, 444, 456, 466, 771, 883, 964, 966 Romans, 26, 28, 29, 953, 957, 959, 961, 997 Rudiger, Arnim, 433 Ruper, Trevor, 6 Russia, 3, 11, 14, 18, 46, 59, 60, 64, 83, 90, 312, 337, 416, 431, 573–576, 578, 588, 596, 644, 708, 709, 711, 777, 857, 858, 863, 865, 866, 868 Rwanda, 14, 17, 19, 35, 54, 68, 84, 95, 167, 245, 261, 338, 399, 448, 552, 553, 558, 571, 573, 577, 578, 593, 723, 727, 728, 736, 760, 765, 772, 783, 809, 825–827, 829–837, 878, 1036, 1054, 1059, 1092

S Sackey, Emmanuel, 917 Safar Khan Art Gallery, 69 Sankofa Youth Movement, 243 Sao Tome, 84, 578 Satire, Jean-Paul, 220 Say-Barruwa Agreement, 87 Sayyid Muhammad, 49 Schwank, Oliver, 433 Science Technology and Innovation (STI), 32, 435 Scott, James, 64 Searing, James F., 110 Seko, Mobutu Sese, 337, 548 Sekyi, Kobina, 263

Senegal, 47, 76, 84, 85, 89, 99, 103, 110, 399, 473, 479, 523, 524, 531, 558, 571, 573, 577, 621, 625, 806, 809, 817, 867, 877 Senegambia, 47, 103, 109, 110, 684 Senghor, Leopold S., 205, 206, 263 Sesotho, 265 Seychelles, 84, 88, 573, 1057 Shang civilization, 26 Shepperson, George, 104, 120 Shivji, Issa G., 2, 540, 585, 597 Shona, 29, 265, 332 Sicily, 81 Sierra Leone, 48, 49, 67, 76, 79, 83, 84, 92, 103, 268, 314, 448, 695, 712, 761, 763, 783, 811, 814, 829, 844, 882, 978–980 Sire, James, 158 Slavery, 7, 43, 44, 77–79, 98, 99, 106, 107, 110, 111, 122–128, 132, 134, 136, 138, 242, 259, 274, 311, 326, 444, 568, 656, 689, 694, 713, 881, 882, 934, 971, 1084 Slaves, 8, 30, 34, 43, 44, 78, 79, 83, 101, 106–110, 123–128, 131–139, 259, 272, 323, 493, 673, 694, 784, 883, 970 Slave trade, 7, 30, 43, 44, 63, 77, 79, 80, 82, 84, 86, 103–106, 108–112, 123–125, 128, 137, 138, 316, 318, 345, 368, 395, 444, 662, 857, 955 Smith, Sandra, 878 Somali, 49, 50, 549, 551, 552, 839, 840, 842–848, 850–852, 1075–1077 Somalia, 4, 47, 84, 448, 470, 473, 476, 479–482, 548, 549, 551, 553, 561, 621, 625, 695, 727–730, 736, 745, 746, 750, 751, 753, 754, 760, 761, 765, 783, 789–791, 805, 808, 812, 815, 816, 839–853, 862, 882, 972, 1054, 1059 South Africa, 3–6, 12, 14, 19, 21, 32, 35, 36, 44, 46, 47, 54, 67, 69, 80, 84, 91, 92, 97, 192, 225, 242, 245, 246, 265, 283, 285, 286, 288, 290, 324, 326–330, 332, 333, 335, 336, 340, 358, 370, 374, 375, 397, 399, 401, 424, 429, 449, 454, 470, 473, 476, 479, 482, 490, 502, 549,

INDEX

558, 567, 571, 573, 574, 577, 578, 588, 589, 596, 644, 653, 682, 706, 714, 719, 729, 746, 763, 775, 814, 817, 819, 829, 866, 877, 881, 882, 892, 957, 974, 976, 1026, 1034, 1052–1057, 1087, 1093, 1113, 1114 Southern African Development Community (SADC), 379, 432, 556, 557, 559, 561, 573, 577, 811 South Korea, 11, 16, 310, 347, 368, 429, 644, 673–680, 682, 684–686 South-South, 251, 416, 417, 431, 807, 883 South-South Cooperation, 5, 501, 574, 610, 653, 727 South West Africa, 54, 89, 91 Soyinka, Wole, 20, 33, 260, 897, 1019, 1066–1069, 1080 Spain, 43, 69, 83–86, 106, 790 Stanley, Henry Morton, 220, 221, 224 Stevenson Gallery, 69 Stora, Benjamin, 75 Structural adjustment programs (SAPS), 2, 333, 395, 449, 454, 920 Sub-Saharan Africa, 6, 27, 28, 35, 36, 83, 246, 349, 393, 394, 396–398, 421, 466, 470, 474, 477, 591, 645, 754, 861, 862, 913 Sudan, 49–51, 68, 84, 95, 96, 337, 403, 496, 523, 524, 556, 561, 621, 625, 628, 730, 733, 745, 746, 751, 759–761, 783, 789, 805, 808, 811–814, 849, 862–864, 882 Suez Canal, 54, 80 Sundaram, Jome Kwame, 433 Swahili, 26, 29, 30, 80, 124, 245, 265, 1050 Swaziland, 84, 245, 333, 404

T Tanganyika, 47, 84, 259, 311 Tanganyika coastal resistance, 51 Tangier Crisis, 53 Tanzania, 2, 54, 67, 84, 206, 241, 259, 265, 327, 338, 375, 404, 470, 473, 476, 477, 479, 481–483, 495, 524, 526, 533, 551, 558, 573, 578, 621,

1127

625, 644, 654, 673, 745, 751, 772, 783, 811, 862, 867, 1054, 1087, 1092 Tarp, Finn, 399 Teleki, Mofihli, 10, 287 Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), 359, 360 The Gambia, 92, 621, 625, 627 Tobago, 358, 691 Toure, Samory, 47–49, 52 Traditional African leaders, 93 Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (TST), 1, 6, 8, 11, 12, 77–79, 83, 99, 106, 118–120, 124, 125, 128, 132, 133, 137, 444 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 418 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 418 Treaty of Versailles, 59 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 26, 27 Triennial, Windhoek, 69 Trinidad, 358, 691 Tsonga, 265 Turkey, 3, 54, 571, 578, 816 Turner, Henry, 311 Tylor, Edward Burnett, 68

U Ubuntu, 9, 10, 258, 261, 264–274, 286, 291, 763, 1113 Uganda, 2, 32, 33, 51, 69, 84, 87, 262, 311, 355, 404, 448, 477, 523, 532, 558, 573, 578, 621, 625, 745, 746, 750, 751, 754, 761, 763, 764, 811, 814, 826, 832, 842, 844, 866, 867, 974, 1087, 1091, 1092 Ujamaa, 185, 206, 273 UNDRTD, 281, 283–291, 293, 294 UNECA-ATPC, 418, 434 UN Economic Commission, 448 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 4, 14, 60, 61, 64, 67, 493, 707, 859, 865 Unipolarism, 858–863 Unipolarity, 18, 493, 857, 859, 860 United Nations (UN), 4, 10, 14, 17, 20, 49, 60, 61, 67, 68, 283, 410, 417, 419–421, 424–430, 433, 438, 446, 491, 543–548, 551–555, 561,

1128

INDEX

570, 574, 575, 605–607, 620, 637, 652, 693–695, 706, 710, 712, 713, 715–719, 723–733, 735–737, 746, 752, 761, 776, 788, 789, 791, 806, 807, 811–813, 815, 816, 828, 833, 835, 841, 844, 849, 861, 862, 864, 866, 867, 882, 893, 911, 960, 1034, 1052, 1055, 1058–1062, 1093, 1103 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 376, 377, 380, 381, 386, 387, 396, 397, 409, 411, 412, 417, 419, 421–423, 433, 438 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 346, 385, 429, 430, 450 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 213, 971, 976, 1093 United States of America (USA), 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 18, 43, 66, 90, 139, 150, 213, 332, 335–337, 350, 355, 358, 359, 370, 371, 417, 418, 492, 501, 506, 575, 576, 578, 641, 675, 679, 707–709, 711, 746, 749, 752, 753, 772, 776, 848, 849, 855, 857–864, 868, 897, 932, 935, 952, 953, 1058, 1078, 1080 USAID, 168, 591

V Van Onselen, Charles, 328, 332 Venda, 265 Venice, 82 Vitalis, Robert, 195, 198, 203, 208, 210, 211

W Wallerstein, Emmanuel, 12, 368, 414, 769 Waltz, Kenneth N., 197, 201, 210, 859 Wa Thiong’o, Ng˜ ug˜ı, 33, 184, 242, 338, 1073–1075, 1080, 1085 Westad, Odd Arne, 64 West Africa, 27, 34, 47, 76, 80, 83, 84, 95, 99, 125, 128, 132, 167, 398, 494, 502, 626, 674, 683, 725,

745, 754, 790, 970, 974, 975, 978, 1035, 1051, 1094 Western Sahara, 84, 811 Williamson, John, 448 Witwatersrand, 44, 328 Wordsworth, William, 218 World Bank (WB), 11, 13, 14, 182, 186, 247, 248, 273, 324, 327, 348, 351, 370, 372, 382, 394, 402, 404, 406, 425, 433, 441, 446, 447, 449–451, 453–455, 457, 470–472, 475, 479, 486, 496, 497, 529–531, 534, 535, 571, 659, 714, 776, 808, 911, 920, 921, 1112 World Development Report (WDR), 401, 402 World System Theory, 12, 369 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 409, 410, 416–418, 490, 493, 653, 661, 776 World War I (WWI), 50, 52–54, 59, 198, 199, 847 World War II (WWII), 62, 63, 416, 471, 528, 549, 650, 707, 1075

X Xhosa, 265

Y Yoruba, 8, 20, 26, 32, 87, 95, 117–120, 128, 134–136, 146, 680, 879, 897, 937, 939–942, 970–972, 974–978, 980–982, 988, 991, 1007, 1012, 1013, 1019, 1038, 1039, 1050, 1066, 1106 Yorubaland, 974, 975, 980, 981

Z Zambia, 12, 51, 83, 84, 91, 314, 327, 328, 330–333, 335, 336, 338, 410, 413, 471, 490, 491, 523, 524, 526, 531, 533, 550, 573, 578, 796, 811, 817, 946, 955, 957, 958, 960–962, 971, 1052–1055, 1057 ZANU PF, 334, 336 Zanzibar, 30, 84

INDEX

Zeleza, Paul T., 20, 104, 106, 118, 136, 1085, 1086, 1088, 1089, 1093, 1094 Zhang, Zhao, 864 Zimbabwe, 12, 29, 67, 69, 83, 84, 91, 213, 228–230, 245, 283, 285, 327, 328, 332–336, 338, 340, 452, 490,

1129

491, 525, 561, 573, 596, 680, 746, 772, 814, 817, 866, 881, 921, 951, 955, 1051, 1056, 1057, 1109, 1110 Zoellick, Robert B., 351 Zuma, Jacob, 329, 335, 336 Zuma, Khulubuse, 336