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Paul-Henri Bischoff (ed.) 2020. African Foreign Policies: Selecting Signifiers to Explain Agency. London: Routledge, xix + 265 pp. ISBN 978-0-367-34828-1 (hbk), £96.00; ISBN 978-0-429-32823-7 (ebk).
The determination of and undertaking of decision-making on foreign policies by many independent African states have undergone significant changes over the years in response to emerging trends, including the circumstances surrounding local and international settings and affairs. Africa under the African Union (AU), on the one hand, and as individual states, on the other, continues to embrace principles, and frameworks regulating foreign relations and policies. Diversity in foreign policies of African states indicates a persistent lack of common principles that guide design and key issues to take them closer to the dream of a United Africa. This gap in and lack of African common principles in the formulation and characteristics of Africa’s foreign policies have attracted considerable amounts of scholarly work by academics and practitioners. African Foreign Policies: Selecting Signifiers to Explain Agency, edited by Paul-Henri Bischoff,1 is one such scholarly work, comprising 15 well-researched essays with 12 case studies in 265 pages. It gives an interesting overview of foreign policy through multidimensional perspectives within the geographic space of the African continent.
This book comes at a time when the continent is experiencing significant political, economic, and technological changes, endeavouring to answer the question how African states’ foreign policies have been and continue to be crafted and used as tools in response to both external and internal needs and expectations of individuals or groups. Offering options for policy orientations, from a foreign policy analysis the volume sheds light on theories, actors, contexts, and aspired outcomes in Africa as well as areas that need to be included
The key theme that runs through this edited volume is how foreign policy has for years been crafted and used as a basis for responses to internal and external issues. Changing foreign policy orientations over time have, in many cases, depended on the personality and character of the leader(s) in power. The book indicates that throughout the history of several African states, the personality of the head of state and government has, in many cases, played the predominant role and served as the main driver of policy formulation.
In the first two chapters, while discussing foreign policies, Bischoff gives an account of the concept and historical background of African foreign policies, demonstrating how different actors have and continue to behave, as well as presents aspects pertaining to success and failures. The editor clarifies the central issues of the book, including foreign policy writing and foreign policy links with states and regional as well as continental organisations (e.g., the Southern African Development Community, the AU, and interregional policy formulation and implementation agencies). It is asserted that foreign policies of many African states are an extension of domestic policies to the international space. They address such issues in terms of preserving independence, national survival, culture, enhanced livelihoods, and better living standards for poor populations. These are some key factors that influence decision-makers in their foreign policy choices. The chapters by Bischoff, thereby, provide a general background for the edited volume.
While chapter 3 of the book focuses on the AU as the primary collector and overseer of policy implementation on the continent, chapters 4, 5, and 6 offer descriptions of the foreign policies of South Africa, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, respectively, as drivers of political and economic influence on the African continent. Chapters 7 and 8 focus on Zimbabwe and Kenya, respectively, as expressions of symbolic power alongside diplomatic and military presence to make these states more significant. Chapters 9, 10, 11, and 12 outline external affairs of small states. In chapter 13, Cecilia Lwiindi Nedziwe addresses external relations of SADC, as a regional organisation, and its external relations in overseeing implementation of the region’s security policy. In chapter 14, Kwesi Aning and Kwaku Danso examine Ghana’s policy relating to identity formation and defence policies of small states. In the last chapter, Bischoff offers a conclusion and ways forward.
The volume can be a useful reference for analysts of African foreign policies, especially regarding the related challenges and contributions of the personalisation of foreign policy, including its perceptible limitations in its implementation and outcomes. This volume draws attention to the need to restrict personification of African foreign policies and ensure they are formulated by accredited institutions to enhance African democratic governance and to ensure that specific foreign policy issues are dealt with that otherwise might escape the personal attention of presidencies. Several studies show that there is a strong link between the quality of African political institutions and the related state of governance and socioeconomic development (Ahmed Salem, chapter 10; Issaka Souaré, chapter 12). This means that more institutional teamwork, rather than idiosyncratic behaviour, often defines better principles, rules, and procedures that structure effective and efficient social interactions at local and international levels, such as through foreign policy.
Another strength of this book is that it is a timely contribution to literature on how history and culture impact and shape a state’s foreign policy-making. The volume – via the chapters by Mike Mavura (chapter 7), Makonnen Tesfaye (chapter 5), and Cecilia Nedzine (chapter 13) – offers a holistic explanation of how history and cultural heritage can shape and direct foreign policies of states. These scholars show that culture influences the way people think and behave and even interpret as well as determine issues with far-reaching implications. Culture and history help to shape the behaviours, thinking, ideas, and interpretation regarding events that are internal or external to a nation state. For example, Mavura argues that the mind of a foreign policy-maker is containing complex and intricately related, critically patterned thoughts, including beliefs attitudes, values, and self-conceptions, to mention but a few (chapter 7, p. 107).
Despite these shortfalls, the volume is theoretically and empirically rich and therefore contributes to the literature on foreign policy. It is a timely eye-opener, so to say, for African foreign policy scholarship and writers, departing from the tradition where such policies are written from a Western perspective. Furthermore, it serves to update ideas about foreign policies in Africa. Given the rich scope of the subject matter and its disciplinary focus, some of the chapters in the book would serve as useful teaching resources and be of use for scholars of African politics, society, and diplomacy.
Paul-Henri Bischoff is a professor of international relations and the long-standing head of the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University, South Africa.