Africa should not just wait to be exploited or influenced. No. We should be part of the conversation. We should raise ourselves to a level where there are certain terms we dictate in the conversation because we have a lot to offer – Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda
Over the past couple of decades, the world has been changing. The extraordinary economic development of nations in Asia has seen the emergence of new powers, most notably China, who are now challenging the global hegemony of the West. Crucially, for Africa this has meant the emergence of new partners in trade, and development aid, which the African countries has been keen to take advantage of. However, the headlong rush for loans projects and deals is putting the continent in the awkward position of ever-deepening debt and obligations, without significant regard for the implications of this for the future of the continent or the motivations of the Asian powers. Making Africa’s relationships with China and India more advantageous for itself will require African countries to adopt a much more strategic and thoughtful approach towards its relationship with these powers building a partnership that can not only further the continent’s development but also help carve out a greater role for Africa on the world stage.
Understanding the East
To construct a coherent and beneficial foreign policy, you first have to understand the motivations and history of the nations that you will be dealing with, and there are two key things that can help African policy makers understand the intentions and motivations of the rising Eastern powers to Africa.
The first is their history. Asia has its own history of colonialism (such as the British Raj in India) and western domination (e.g. the century of humiliation in China), this gives them a far better understanding of Africa’s own history as well as a much healthier respect for sovereignty and an aversion to neo-colonial interference in the domestic affairs of others. This has led to much more cooperative relationship with Africa so far. Unlike Western states China does not impose programs or projects in the name of development, rather African states go to them with requests and they consider them. This gives African states agency, a voice in development partnerships and this is vitally important as it gives Africa the ability to determine its fate.
The second key issue is their needs. China, India, and the other rising economies of the east need resources to fuel their economies, markets to sell their products to, transport routes to move their products along and diplomatic partners who will help them shift the global balance of power. Thus, they need Africa. And Africa needs the development funding, markets and the diplomatic support of the rising powers. Mutual needs that could form the basis of a mutually beneficial partnership.
Because understanding East is at the core of developing a coherent foreign policy, Africa will need policy makers, specifically foreign policy experts who understand the East. To that end African governments need to make the effort to educate and train a new cohort of Asia specialists. People who will learn the languages, history, politics, culture and customs of the rising powers in the East and provide the continents leaders and decision makers with the expertise to craft policy and negotiators who will understand their counterparts.
What should African countries be looking for?
The second aspect of constructing an effective foreign policy is defining your own strategic interests, which begs the question what are Africa’s strategic interests? I would put them in two broad categories. Development and gaining a greater voice for Africa on the global stage.
In terms of development, Africa’s needs are pretty clear-cut. The first is funding for expensive items such as infrastructure, which luckily China and others have proven willing to fund. In this regard, the onus is on African states to use the funding prudently, picking the right projects that will have a beneficial developmental return rather than vanity projects such as presidential palaces or Parliament buildings. In other words, African states must strategically choose the projects that will have the biggest bang for the borrowed buck.
The second need under Africa’s development interest is investment in its economies, where African states must think beyond resource extraction and seek to attract investment in areas of the economy that will further industrialisation and development such as industrial, and generic drug manufacturing. In short investment in areas that will create jobs and provide a base for future economic growth.
The third developmental need that Africa must fulfill is market access. Asian markets offer an unparalleled opportunity for African products, which we already export such as agricultural produce. Opening agricultural markets in Asia, would provide a significant boost for the agricultural sector which employs the most people on the continent.
The fianl area of strategic interest for Africa is gaining a greater role on the world stage. A globalised world faces global challenges, such as climate change, economic crises, insecurity and trade issues. All these affect Africa, sometimes disproportionately so, yet the continent has little diplomatic clout with which to help shape global responses to these issues. In a previous post I outlined how, by working together African states could take advantage of the West’s current state to change the status quo to become a more consequential player on the global stage. The rising powers of the East are also challenging Western hegemony, and they need international partners to do so. African states acting as a collective could be those partners, providing vital votes in the UN and other international fora and enacting policies that help further this agenda. In return for their support African states would require that key areas of interest to them such as changing the international trade and tax regime and mitigating against the consequences of climate change be placed on the global agenda with the backing of the Eastern powers.
Strategic partners and benefits from the east
The emergence of new powers from the East is changing the global landscape. Unlike much of the current commentary I do not see a new set of powers involved in a new scramble for Africa, I see opportunity. The opportunity to partner with them to the benefit of the continent. However, this will require strategic thinking from African policymakers rather than the opportunism we have seen when African presidents troop to Beijing or New Delhi to get funding for their pet projects.
Strategic thinking requires that African leaders and policy makers understand the interests of the emerging powers as well as their own, and use those to craft a foreign policy that would help create a mutually beneficial relationship between Africa and the rising East. A relationship that would help fund and drive development on the continent and finally give it a meaningful voice on the world stage, while providing the eastern powers with the resources, markets and diplomatic allies they need. With strategic thinking behind a smart foreign policy Africa need not be pawns of the West or the East.
Also published on Medium.