1 Editorial
Africa’s International Relations (AIR) literature is emerging beyond what mainstream International Relations (IR) studies as Africa in International Relations (IR). Africanists are questioning the ‘internationalness’ in IR and have also accused the IR discipline of studying the ‘international’ in Africa rather than understanding Africa’s IR behavior. These accusations stem from studying Africa in relation to dominant Western and geopolitical agendas (Murithi, 2013; Tieku, 2022). A reaction to presumed understandings of AIR has propelled a critique of the field (Abrahamsen, 2017; Death, 2015; Odoom and Andrews, 2017; Tieku, 2013). The bulk of the field has exposed the implications of studying Africa through a Western gaze, yet it has been slow in moving beyond the agenda to practice theory-building based on African realities.1 Tieku (2022) has also admonished AIR scholars for being defensive, oppositional, or reactive by spending their energies defending the legitimacy of focusing on Africa. He urges them instead to engage in offensive scholarship, which entails AIR scholars setting their research agendas to develop analytical frameworks capable of capturing nuances and complexities of international life in Africa.
Therefore, the main aim of this special issue is to build theories focusing on African experiences. Africa is a worthwhile location of experiences, realities, dynamics, and activities that give rise to theorizing about IR. This explains why we choose to use the term African International Relations (African IR), instead of Africa’s International Relations, to emphasize that concepts and theories developed are of African origin. When we refer to AIR, we mean the study of Africa’s IR. However, with African IR, we refer to theories that draw from African experiences. That is, derived from African experiences based on methodologies that centered on ‘Africa’ as the subject, a voice and locus of enunciation based on its histories, epistemologies, and worldviews.
However, even though the special issue advocates for African IR, the choice of AIR theories is neither an offshoot of IR theories nor a proposal for a stand-alone theory but a challenge to scholars to proactively engage “with” the continent in theory-building. For example, the special issue aligns with Tieku’s (2022) call for AIR scholars to shift the emphasis from reactionary scholarship to an offensive knowledge production and dissemination by building research around pertinent key themes he proposed. These include exploring and harvesting IR ideas embedded in indigenous African knowledge systems and centres of scholarship as African social, political, postcolonial, and decolonial thoughts serve as the foundation for understanding the continent. Also, AIR scholars can build on emerging ideas and scholarship around decoloniality, relationality and solidarity to develop theoretical frameworks that can capture the nuances of international life in Africa and the world (Tieku, 2022: 499). Therefore, AIR scholarship that focus on theories derived from African experiences based on methodologies that centre on ‘Africa’ as the subject (means and end) invariably contribute to reorientating theory development on Africa.
Considering the foregoing, the contributions in this section will do the following: first, they build theories based on reorienting and recentering Africa as the subject of the investigation. A significant critique of mainstream IR engagement with Africa focuses on Western-centric themes and the translation of concepts into African discourse and experiences. For instance, Oyěwùmí observes this in her work on the ‘woman question’ and argues that a Western lens is a wrong approach to examining African societies (Oyěwùmí, 1997). Much of such concepts exist in mainstream IR and have been applied as a Western gaze on Africa – sovereignty, democracy, legitimacy. Rather than an assumed definition of concepts, this special issue examines the meanings of concepts from an African perspective – how are concepts constituted, by whom and for who? By so doing, the contributions move away from uncritically adopting pre-defined concepts based on Western standards, experiences and worldviews.
Second, the special issue contributes to practice by building theories around an African IR based on themes derived from an African perspective. Africa is a context from which to see the world, so theorizing is meaningful for where Africans stand in the world’s geopolitics. Straight out of Odoom and Andrew’s (2017) article, the special issue addresses what and who is missing in AIR and how such sources reconstruct and present a nuanced narrative of IR to give meaning to the “international” in IR. Hence, the special issue advocates for Africa as the subject. A reorientation of Africa as the subject would mean situating Africa as the source of data for theorizing.
Third, contributions that have built theories and engaged with Africa as the source and locus of enunciation have done so through a critical methodological approach. Methodological approaches employed analyze data in a larger, historical, cultural, and global context. Methodologies were adopted with an awareness of diverse epistemologies, methods, and methodologies – especially those of formerly colonized regions (Chilisa, 2012; Smith, 1999). An African IR approach acknowledges that coloniality persists post-colonization. Thus, case studies featured in the special issue engage with the role of power in AIR discourse (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015; Tucker, 2018) – exploring power dynamics in the African regional space.
Therefore, this special issue puts forward six contributions that moved the agenda forward on theorizing AIR. It includes papers exploring regional hegemony and power-hood in Africa, bureaucratic processes, security dilemmas and development discourse in African regionalism. All articles theorize with Africa at the centre of analysis. Isike and Schoeman begin this debate by examining how regional hegemony operates in the African context using South Africa and Nigeria as case studies to answer a key question of whether Group Hegemonic Leadership better explains regional hegemonic behavior in Africa. The next four contributions (Krösche, Ayodele, Hogan and Iroulo & Boateng) centre on the African Union (AU) as a unit of analyzing and understanding AIR behaviour. These include the contributions on security cooperation which advance mainstream theories by introducing the concept, African hybrid regionalism, including emotions in African regionalism.2 These regional debates are part of complex bureaucratic processes in the AU with 55 diverse member states. Recognizing this reality is premise of Ayodele’s article, which takes us behind the curtains of collective bargaining as a path to developing Common African Positions (CAPs).3 Iroulo and Boateng end the AU-focused articles by exploring acquiescence4 as another strategy bureaucrats employ that potentially smoothens the path to CAPs. The issue concludes with Popoola’s article, which speaks to the nexus between national development and international politics (nexus between domestic and foreign policies) by examining the effects of Western-centric discourses in the African space. It engaged the neoliberal agenda in the African context and its potential implications for development.5 Overall, these contributions provide a wider and more nuanced understanding of African regionalism and, as a result, advances theories of African IR.
Theoretically, moving beyond theory testing to theory building based on African realities is the main aim of this special issue. Therefore, we develop three concepts that explain the African case and have a potential for generalizability – group hegemonic leadership, hybrid regionalism and acquiescence. We argue that context matters, hence, the need to build contextual theories. However, in the context of this special issue, we note that theories that evolve from African cases also have the potential to explain phenomena with similar contexts elsewhere in the world. Other contributions in this issue also take a contextual approach to advance already existing theoretical concepts, such as emotions and ubuntu, as they apply and deviate from African IR. Empirically, contributions focus on both micro and macro-level analysis. These include state-centric issues and the politics of the AU (bureaucrats and member states).
In sum, while Africa as a research agenda in international relations has gained more interest over the last decade, a glaring gap is the theorization of Africa based on African experiences, realities, and behavior in the international system. There is a lot more research on the marginalization and silencing of Africa in mainstream international relations theory and practice and less on theory-building from Africa based on its realities despite the rich social and political thoughts that exist. Therefore, this special issue moves beyond the critique of mainstream international relations theories to the actual practice of theory-building from an African perspective. In this regard, it emphasizes theory building and not theory testing. Contributions draw from diverse theories, including postcolonial and decolonial approaches to explain the realities of an African IR. It theorizes the behaviour of actors internally: within states and regional organizations, and externally: with other states and international organizations outside Africa. It presents fresh evidence that traditional IR has either oversimplified or overlooked its engagement with Africa.
References
Abrahamsen, R. (2017). Africa and international relations: Assembling Africa, studying the world. African Affairs 116 (462), 125–139. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adw071.
Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous Research Methodologies. SAGE.
Death, C. (2015). “Introduction: Africa’s International Relations.” African Affairs, no. adv041. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adv041.
Khadiagala, G. (2010). Two moments in African thought: Ideas in Africa’s international relations, South African Journal of International Affairs, 17(3), 375–386.
Murithi, T. (Ed.) (2013). Handbook of Africa’s International Relations. Routledge Handbooks Online. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203803929.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2015). Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity. New York London: Berghahn Books.
Odoom, I. and Nathan A. (2017). “What/who is still missing in International Relations scholarship? Situating Africa as an agent in IR theorizing.” Third World Quarterly 38 (1), 42–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2016.1153416.
Oyěwùmí, O. (1997). The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. NED-New edition. University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttt0vh.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonising Methodologies. Zed Books.
Smith, K. (2017). Reshaping International Relations: Theoretical Innovations from Africa. All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace, 7(2), 1–12.
Tieku, T. K. (2012). Collectivist Worldview: Its Challenge to International Relations. In S. Cornelissen, F. Cheru, & T. M. Shaw (Eds.), Africa and International Relations in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Tieku, T. K. (2013). Theoretical Approaches to Africa’s International Relations. In Handbook of Africa’s International Relations, edited by Tim Murithi, 1st ed., 11–20. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203803929-2.
Tieku, T. K. (2022). A new research agenda for Africa’s International Relations. African Affairs, 121(484), 487–499.
Tucker, K. (2018). Unraveling Coloniality in International Relations: Knowledge, Relationality, and Strategies for Engagement.” International Political Sociology 12 (3), 215–232. https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/oly005.
Zondi, S. (2018). Decolonising International Relations and Its Theory: A Critical Conceptual Meditation. Politikon, 45(1), 16–31.
There is still a wide gap in the field despite a few theoretical papers on Africa’s IR such as those of Khadiagala (2010), Tieku (2012; 2013; 2022), Smith (2017), Odoom & Andrews (2017), Zondi (2018).
In this special issue, Krösche, N. ‘Hybrid Regionalism in Africa: Towards a Theory of African Union Interventions’; and Hogan, J. ‘Shame, Exasperation and Institutional Design: The African Union as an Emotional Security Community’.
In this special issue, Ayodele, O. ‘The Famished Road: Africa’s International Relations and the Legend of ‘Common Positions’.
In this special issue, Iroulo, L. C. & Boateng, O. ‘Bureaucratic Acquiescence as an Institutional Strategy in the African Union’.
In this special issue, Popoola, M. A, ‘The Illusion Of Neoliberalism: A Construct of African Development Gap’.