Positioning “Africa”: extraverted agency amidst global (dis)order

A spectre is haunting Africa: the spectre of African agency. Long denied, African agency is surfacing in new ways in the current context of the new global (dis)order and increasingly tense global geopolitics, the benchmark event of which lies in Russia's invasion of Ukraine: African countries are beginning to assert themselves, by not taking sides.

UN General Assembly votes

This stance was initially manifested in the most obvious way during the United Nations (UN) General Assembly vote on the 2^ndof March 2022 condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Out of 54 African countries, 28 voted for, 25 abstained (or were absent) and one – Eritrea – voted against. The contrast between the votes of the West and of the Global South had intensified even more during the UN General Assembly vote of 7^thof April 2022, on the suspension of Russia’s membership of the UN Human Rights Council. Some countries, which had abstained on the first resolution, voted against. Among the African countries, we count only 10 votes in favour of suspension, 35 countries abstained or absent, and 9 countries against.

The positioning of the African states took some Western chancelleries by surprise. Emphasizing the growing multipolarity of international relations, it puts forward a geopolitical imaginary which is radically different from the one that still permeates (albeit less and less) western-centric world-views: that is, the assumption that the OECD block—which includes the core of Western economies but also a number of satellite countries of the Global South upgraded as “good pupils”—maintains an unquestioned global hegemony.

Nevertheless, about 15 African countries that had declared themselves neutral during the UNGA resolutions votes of March and April had changed position in the UN Assembly vote of the 12 of October rejecting Russia’s so-called referenda in regions within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders¹. The shift has been justified by some African leaders not as a changing positioning vis-à-vis Russia or the West, but rather a need to avoid establishing a precedent to the violation of national sovereignty and redrawing of national frontiers, a serious concern for African countries often plagued by civil wars and internal conflicts².

Pragmatism and the “white-men war” narrative

The positioning of African states deserves further clarification. Simplifying a bit, one may identify two main explanations. First, as expressed by Carlos Lopes (former Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa), the current non-alignment can be seen as pragmatic. Facing the risk of the economic deterioration produced by the war – which manifested itself with severe food crisis, lack of raw materials, disruption of supply chains, inflation – not taking side avoided antagonizing one of the various strategic partners. According to Lopes, the African perspective could be summarized by the proverb “when two elephants are fighting, is the grass that suffers”. Gayle Smith (CEO of the NGO ONE Campaign) put forward a very similar interpretation, stressing that the “non-alignment” should not be read as a direct reference to the Non-Aligned Movement since, unlike in the Cold War, economic concerns prevailed over political stances in explaining African countries’ votes at the UNGA.

A second rationale is somehow normative. Since the beginning of the war, the narrative of the “white-men war” or “double standards” has been frequently evoked. This perspective highlights the alleged hypocrisy of Western governments and media, which treated the outbreak of war in Ukraine as an unprecedented event, while sidelining other more long-standing and more brutal conflicts taking place in Africa. The normative misalignment has also been fuelled by the double standards in the management of refugee flows from Ukraine and from Africa, and further reinforced by the indignation for the discrimination of black asylum seekers that fled into Ukraine’s neighbouring countries, first and foremost Poland.

These dynamics contribute to further exacerbating the growing generation gap between the African old guard, often seen as complacent and all too collaborative with the former colonial powers (especially in the francophone countries), and the young guard – including officials of the public administration. The harsh criticism targeting former colonial powers and their “African puppets” in popular social media discourses is all too easily dismissed as “populist demagogy”, “hate speech” and “fake news” by the West, but in fact provides a clear illustration of the comeback of pan-African militantism in a new form.

From the Dakar Forum, a path to strategic autonomy.

The conflict in Ukraine further impacted on Africa’s security imaginaries by contributing to shaping an ever-stronger agreement on the need of fostering Africa’s strategic autonomy. This idea has surfaced, for example, during the October Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security. Sceptical about Western commitment to African security, Africans agreed on the need of building their resilience by their own.

Building a path to strategic autonomy represented the fil rouge of the Dakar Forum. Sylvie Baïpo Temon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Central African Republic stressed the need to value the peculiar African positioning of neutrality, and to challenge the hierarchization of wars worldwide. By depicting the Western intervention in Libya as the cause of the wave of terrorism currently ravaging the Sahelian region, she urged for a greater cohesion among African stakeholders at the strategic decision-making level. Recalling the responsibility vis-à-vis all the suffering populations, she called then for a continental solidarity that should commit to be concerned by any conflict ravaging African soil. Similarly, Abdou Abarry, the Head of the UN Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA), justified the African “timidity” regarding the support to Ukraine by stressing the principle of non-delegation of the African countries’ sovereignty. For him, the suffering of the Ukrainians is similar to that of far too many places in the Global South, which would deserve an equal attention.

Claims in multilateral fora and influence’s struggles between global powers

A second consequence of the conflict in Ukraine on Africa’s security discourses and imaginaries is the ever stronger – yet pre-existing – demand of reforming global governance in a more inclusive and representative way. In 2022, the Senegalese President and current President of the AU Macky Sall explicitly called for a permanent seat of the AU at the G20 and at the UN Security Council (UNSC), as well as for the reform of the mechanisms on risk investments ranking. He tabled the idea on several occasions: at the OECD Ministerial Meeting; at the UN General Assembly; along with the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, at the G7 and at the latest G20. A request that certainly did not go unnoticed by Africa’s international partners. For instance, during the opening of the Dakar Forum, Sall has announced China’s endorsement for a permanent African Union seat at the UNSC. The ensuing discussions prompted the same endorsement coming from the US Deputy Secretary of Defense Chidi Blyden. Such move comes in a moment of reconfiguration of the US foreign policy towards Africa. After the Obama administration’s change of course, focused on the Pacific, the Americans are looking across the Atlantic again, but to the South. This emerging approach goes hand in hand with the organization of the US-Africa Leaders Summit, in December 2022 in Washington, where President Joe Biden is expected to announce his support for the AU’s admission to the G20.

The US support comes nevertheless late, after a long series of events illustrating the reconfiguration of Africa’s international standing since the beginning of the Ukraine’s conflict. These include: the invitation to the African leaders by Vladimir Putin to participate at the next Forum on Russian-African Partnerships in Saint Petersburg, in 2023; the meeting in Sochi between Putin and Sall, accompanied by Moussa Faki Mahamat, President of the AU Commission, to plead the cause of food security; the limited attendance to Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech at the AU; the race for African gas supplies by several European states; the long-distance rhetorical duel between Sergey Lavrov and Emmanuel Macron, both touring several African countries at the same time.

Such dynamics suggest that Africa is increasingly seen as a space of great power competition. Key is thus to understand if, amidst this political tension, African states are at the mercy of events, or if they do play a proactive and structuring role. To what extent the neutral position of (some) African countries towards the emerging multi-polarization of the international order can be seen as participating in the strengthening of African agency? And what kind of “African³ agency” is at stake here?

An extraverted approach?

Although Africa's relations  with other continents have historically been asymmetrical, dependency does not exclude proactiveness. Jean-François Bayart and Stephen Ellis in fact conceptualize Africa’s agency through the notion of “extraversion”, that is “dependence without being dependent”⁴. In the current context, one could understand the emerging “African agency” in a system of multi-polar dependences and multiple interdependences, in which Africa’s “extraverted modality” could be evaluated as an asset. The fluidity and the diversification of Africa’s strategic partnerships with the rest of the world in fact would expand Africa’s room of manoeuvre and freedom to navigate intersecting rival interests.

The current scenario provides unprecedented opportunities to express Africa’s peculiar agency. The ever more pressing calls by African leaders for greater inclusion in the global governance and for radical changes in their relations with the West, shifting from a donor-recipient relation to economic strategic partnerships, are gaining more a more traction, becoming key issues on the agendas of different multilateral fora. In this sense, the global geopolitical competition and tensions between the West and the rest play in favour of the Africans, prompting the demise of a global order that systematically left their demands unmet. The ambition to foster strategic autonomy may seem, at first sight, in contrast with the “extraverted” approach to agency, but is not. In fact, the existence of multiple interdependencies binds Africa to the highest bidder, and the multiplication of prospective suppliers of cooperation – including in the security domain – reduces the transaction costs of dependence, thereby benefiting Africa and its strategic autonomy. In this sense, by exercising its “extraverted approach” cunningly, Africa has a unique opportunity to challenge its alleged peripherality in the international system.

Endnotes

1 This wasn’t a secondary political event for African politics: for example, the former Foreign Minister of Madagascar, Richard Randriamandrato, has been dismissed a few days later the Assembly, for his decision to vote in favour of the resolution without the endorsement of the Head of State, Andry Rajoelina.

2 This is for instance the case of unresolved disputes and low-intensity conflicts in Casamance or Biafra, as suggested by the votes of respectively Senegal and Nigeria. By contrast, countries such as Ethiopia, which is currently experiencing the most violent conflict in the world, as well as countries like Mali, Burkina Faso or Mozambique, currently affected by jihadist insurgencies, did not vote in favour of the resolution. These observations suggest that the jihadist threat is not apprehended in terms of state sovereignty; or that the current response to such threats is sensitive to the positioning of those countries.

3 The reference to “African” agency raises the problem of the ontological status of “Africa”. The identification of Africa as an entity of the international system has been shaped and negotiated by a vast and heterogenous group of “region-builders”, which makes the ontological pre-determination of the term very difficult. See A. Paasi, Europe as a social process and discourse: considerations of place, boundaries and identity. European Urban and Regional Studies, 8, 1, 2001; and L. Raineri and E. Baldaro, “The place of Africa in international relations: the centrality of the margins”, in Global IR. Italian Political Science Review 1-16, 2021.

4. The scholars trace the history of the African continent before, during and after colonization, showing how Africa has always interacted (for example, in trade, including the slave trade) with the outside world. In this sense, although Africa's relations with other continents have been unequal and asymmetrical, they do not exclude the active role that Africa has played throughout the so-called process of dependency. See J.F. Bayart and S. Ellis, L’Afrique dans le monde: une histoire d’extraversion. Critique Internationale, 5, 97-120, 1999.  

Cover photo: African Union 50th anniversary summit, 25 – 26 May 2013. Chairperson of the African Union Commission Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma shakes hands with Sahrawi President Mohamed Abdelaziz during a family photo at African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Photo: GCIS). (CC) 2013, GovernmentZA