Africa before the multipolar world order. Protagonist or mere participant?

International geopolitical realism points out that the war in Ukraine may well signal the beginning of the new century in international relations, built on the multipolar world order, already preceded by other challenging events against the unipolarism in force since the end of the Cold War. In this multipolar world order, will Africa (at the current stage) be a protagonist or a mere participant?

Reading international relations ongoing issues from the perspective of the protagonists’ narrative

Very often the African understanding of international relations affairs is somehow connected to foreign issues from the US, the European Union, the UK, China, Russia, and other major players, whose foreign policy, security and international cooperation produce constant and permanent impact on the system of states, with positive or negative outcome at the level of third states, such as the case of the war in Ukraine, which may have derived from foreign defense and security policy of Russia (as aggressor) and NATO (as military alliance, whose hypothetical and/or probable expansion to the East, and the lack of balance of power agreement between the two, may have precipitated the ongoing war); or the NATO and no-NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, which resulted in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime leading to political and social turmoil, that almost transformed a once stable country into a failed state. Both cases are proofs of negative effects of foreign policies in national and sovereign territories of third states.

Hence, the (media or empirical) reading of such affairs happens very much from the perspective of the narrative of the protagonists (which could be subject of the history of political ideas and statesmen case study) and much less from the autonomous understanding of that and correlated effects (indispensable for strategic case study). In other words, in relation to the ongoing war in Ukraine geopolitics and international relations experts tend to make a general reading of it by re-proposing, in own terms, protagonists’ view, without bringing an epistemological (what is known) and methodological (how is known) framework in relation to the African context and deducing, from there, possible ontological repercussions (what will be) at the continental, regional or sub-regional level, in the short, medium or long term.

This hypothetical predisposition to analyze such “internationalized” events from the point of view of the protagonists more than from African point of view (which is normal, given their predominance in today’s system of states) may reflect, on the one hand, major states’ ideological predominance, media influence, cultural soft power and diplomatic charm in locally constructed narratives in most African countries, on the other hand, the absence or weakness of a mass psychology capable of looking at international relations’ issues from a Pan-African standpoint and African-interest perspective instead.

Multipolar order in affirmation

On several occasions the re-design of a world order that is equally and fairly represented by all states and regional blocs has been discussed and recommended both at multilateral and bilateral levels, considering that international liberal institutionalism crafted or consolidated since the 1940s still is essentially Euro-Atlantic-Centric one, either politically, economically and philosophically (liberalism and liberalism) or in terms of cultural, religious and racial scope (Western, Christian, and Caucasian). Indeed, it was the European and US governments that imposed economic sanctions on Russia for its aggression against Ukrainian sovereignty, rather than the so-called Global South, which tell you that it is they who still prevail in the international financial system through the Washington Consensus and the Brussels diktats rather than countries in the South or East (mostly), which, again, is legitimate given the context in which Bretton Woods institutions and United Nations system were created.

One of recommendations aimed at implementing just international order came through Resolution A/RES/55/48, approved on November 29, 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly, which called upon the promotion of a “New Human Global Order” to be implemented under the aegis of the United Nations, all member states and the other actors of multilateral governance (private sectors, NGOs, and municipalities). In fact, the resolution underlined the central role that the UN was expected to play in the new century!

At the African level, besides the 1979 Monrovia Declaration recommending the establishment of a new African economic order, based on the economic markets integration as a way forward for sustainable development and as a premise for future political integration (considering that at time being the Monrovia Group view was at center of African relations, in contrast with the Casablanca Group’s choice aimed at immediate African political integration), there is also the so-called “Azwelini Consensus” approved by the AU Executive Council on March 8, 2005, in which Africa, on the one hand, recommended greater inclusion of African officials into international and multilateral organizations, on the other hand, claimed two permanent seats at the UN Security Council, to be chosen by the AU for its member states. While the 1979 declaration proposed internal economic re-organization, the consensus represented Africa’s aspirations for a just international order, moving from unipolar dominance to a multipolar dimension, where states would enjoy the same sovereign prerogatives guaranteed by Article 2, paragraph 1, of the United Nations Charter, international peace, prosperity and justice, which are natural options of those who preach international idealism and optimism.

Africa, protagonist or mere participant

Although socialist variable may be relevant in explaining the abstentions or votes against by more than half of the African countries in the last two UN resolutions concerning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its suspension from the Human Rights Council, it also could be seen as “indirect support” for the establishment of European balance of power, with positive effects in terms of international security (considering its relevance in the system of states). In a direct way though, abstentions, votes against or no votes at all can also be understood as condemnation of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, regardless of whether its eventual entry into NATO would undermine European regional peace and security with devastating effects for Africa. In both cases, Africa presented itself as a assertive player in the matter of peace and security that concerns it and other members of international society of states.

It is also an actor, insofar as it has been demanding for decades reform over liberal institutionalism, the integration of African qualified human resources into international and multilateral bodies, and the allocation of two permanent seats in the Security Council.

Nevertheless, it is merely a formal position that Africa plays as actor, as it still has no factual representation in that peace and security body with veto power – and therefore does not participate in the decisions (if any) that determine the course of international peace and security; it continues to have negligible weight in the world economy, for the aspirations of the Monrovia Group have not brought to life the expected economic development, producing instead overlapping Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and the multiple membership of African states in different RECs (the DRC has now been admitted as a member of the East African Community, alongside to its pre-existing membership within CEEAC and SADC); it does not have a single defense command as proposed by Kwame Nkrumah in his 1963 speech at the launch of the OAU, whose African Standby Force has only remained on paper for more than a decade now – thus lacking the possibility of self-defense in the event of military aggression by a foreign alliance or state. Finally, the political disunity of the continent; the lack of a common foreign policy and coordination of its economic power, anthropological, cultural and ancestral soft power are also contributing factors that make Africa a non-protagonist in the multipolar world order alongside similar institutions such as the European Union.

Therefore, at the current stage, except for formal dimension, in the establishment of a multipolar world order the African continent would play the role of a mere participant rather than a protagonist. If you will, it would act as a participant-actor, and not as a protagonist-competitor and co-decider of that order, unless current leaderships stop maximizing their national sovereignties to the detriment of a joint African sovereignty as other peoples have done throughout history either in Europe, Asia or America. Simply put, unless all 55 African states unite into a single intergovernmental, confederate or federal entity, with a single foreign policy, single economic market and currency, and single voice in world’s affairs, it will continue to be a dispensable, minor or insignificant player on the international stage, and thus not becoming a protagonist in a multipolar world order just like other united nations do and will continue to.

Issau Agostinho