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The Round Table: The Commonwealth

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Africa and International Relations in

the 21st Century
a
Georgina Holmes
a
King’ s College London
Version of record first published: 06 Dec 2012.

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21st Cent ury, The Round Table: The Commonwealt h Journal of Int ernat ional Affairs,
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 The Round Table
2012, 1–3, iFirst article

Book Review
Africa and International Relations in the 21st Century
Scarlet Cornelissen, Fantu Cheru and Timothy M. Shaw (Eds)
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. xvii þ 248, ISBN 978-0-333-71708-0
(hardback)
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Amid calls that we are witnessing a 21st century scramble for Africa, as China,
Russia and the US race to strengthen ties with the continent, Africa and International
Relations in the 21st Century, edited by Scarlett Cornelissen, Fantu Cheru and
Timothy M. Shaw, tells a very different story about Africa’s position in the emergent
world order.
Normative models within International Relations (IR) theory do not adequately
explain African IR. Ten years on from Kevin Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw’s (2001)
seminal Africa’s Challenge to International Relations, IR scholarship is still too
dependent on orientalising constructions of race and identity that reinforce the
image of Africa as a ‘case of delinquency’ (p. 2). Several books have been published
on the continent’s relations with the North within mainstream IR, but ‘theory-
building in African IR scholarship’ has ‘tended to be partial and reactive’ (p. 2).
While this argument is well known, Cornelissen, Cheru and Shaw consider how the
recent global financial and economic crisis (2008–10) has led scholars of IR and
International Political Economy to become introspective. North American and
British scholars are recasting debates around ‘the fundamentals of capital and its
governance’ but their geographical focus is ‘very pointed in its silence about Africa’
(p. 4), despite Africa boasting some ‘six of the ten fast growing economies in the
world’ over the past decade (p. 195).
The anthology, initiated out of series of panels held at International Studies
Association (ISA) and British International Studies Association (BISA) annual
conferences, therefore attempts to realign current focus and remind scholars that
events on the African continent, combined with the production of knowledge by
African scholars (and scholars of African studies), are forcing us to rethink
conventional perspectives on world politics and break new ground when theorising
IR. In doing so, the contributors take a bottom-up approach to the study of Africa,
where African agency is considered key to the continent’s success.
The book is divided into three parts. Each section reviews how debates have
moved forward since Shaw and Dunn’s original challenge. In the first part,
‘Reconceptualizing Authority and Sovereignty’, Karen Smith laments the failure of
the critical turn to ‘make IR more relevant’, but notes that the onus is on African
scholars to ‘think outside the disciplinary box’ and ‘examine how they go about
researching and teaching IR’ (p. 35). Drawing on African philosophy, Thomas
Kwasi Tieku rejects the individualist worldview that dominates the study of global

ISSN 0035-8533 Print/1474-029X Online/12/060001-03

 2 Book Review

IR to consider how politics are played out in Africa’s collectivist societies founded
on group membership and obligation. Tieku then examines the dynamics of regional
groups such as the Organisation for African Unity in historical perspective to
consider the pros and cons of what he terms the ‘group-think approach’ shared by
African heads of states. Critiquing academic representations of sovereignty in
Africa, Ulf Engel and Gorm Rye Olsen draw on African postcolonial theory to show
how the Westphalian nation state model fails African states, rather than the other
way round, as conventionally perceived. Instead, there are ‘different forms of
territorialisation emerging on the continent, which exist side by side with and
interact with the various components of the international system in very different
ways’ (p. 64).
Part two, ‘Innovations from Below: Territory and Identity’, is a collection of local,
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country-specific case studies. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni undertakes a systematic

historical analysis of the migration of Zimbabweans to South Africa to demonstrate
how studies within the field of IR must look at relationships that exist below ‘state
level’ to understand changing world politics. This is complemented by Darshan
Vigneswaran and Loren B. Landau’s study of forms of ‘othering’ that are taking
place in South Africa. Louise Wiuff Moe reveals how, in Somaliland, ‘hybrid
political orders’ that fuse state and non-state forms of governance can work very
successfully. Though challenging concepts of good governance prevalent in
international policies on Somaliland, this hybrid model does not mean the state is
failing. Rather, we need to avoid ‘state-building from scratch’ and to investigate
more thoroughly in ‘what works and in what way’ (p. 103). Alfred Zack-Williams
observes the role of diasporas in enabling sustainable peace in Sierra Leone and
challenges neoliberal concepts of post-conflict development by revealing the ways in
which diaspora groups interact with external actors outside their homeland. These
case studies reveal how complex dynamics form when old tensions and new
opportunities converge.
Part three focuses on securitisation and the evolving security terrain in Africa. For
Cyril I. Obi, national–global duality in the Niger Delta has affected the distribution
of power, creating ethnic minority ‘nationalism’ and contested sovereignties, which
in turn shape everyday experiences of Africans. Rita Abrahamsen undertakes a
highly engaging study of the rise of the private (global) security industry and the
positive impact it is having in Africa, where companies such as CCID/Securicor in
South Africa support state security. Jane L. Parpart and Lisa Thompson call on us
to rethink urgently how we define security threats and are critical of the continued
reluctance to include gendered analyses, even within the field of Critical Security
Studies. Security threats such as sexual-based gender violence and HIV/AIDS affect
the whole community regardless of whether a country is experiencing war or is ‘at
peace’, and there is an assumption that after war societies will return to ‘normal’
(patriarchal) life and ‘traditional’ gender roles. These discussions again point to the
inflexibility of state-centric models within IR, and their translation in the policy
world. The book concludes with an overview by the editors of the current economic
climate within which Africa now operates, the need to break the aid-dependency
cycle, and the successful partnerships Africans are forging with states, industry and
institutions beyond Africa’s traditional relationship with countries of the North.
 Book Review 3

In this essentially diverse collection of essays tackling a breadth of issues, the key
themes of the book are at times obscured and the anthology as a whole would have
benefited from more cross-referencing between chapters. The editors call on IR
scholars, policymakers and development practitioners to provide African govern-
ments with space to establish their own development goals (p. 200). However, more
space in the book could have been allocated to African scholars wishing to reflect on
the barriers they face in academia around the world today, in addition to a review of
progress made in the past 10 years to include African scholars in IR-related research
programmes. Overall, this book is of great importance for scholars of African studies
and anyone interested in broadening their view of contemporary global politics.

Georgina Holmes Ó 2012

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King’s College London

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