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Nigerian Foreign Policy and Southern Africa: a Choice for the West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Nicholas J. Spiliotes
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Extract

In the decade since Nigeria ended its civil war. Southern Africa has become the paramount concern of Nigerian foreign policy. No other foreign-relations issue generates such a unified Nigerian response as does opposition to White supremacy in the Southern redoubt. At the same time, extraordinary wealth from petroleum exports has provided a new capability to influence developments in Southern Africa and, ultimately, the outcome of the confrontation between Black and White in South Africa. With its strategic impact on the economies of the United Kingdom and the United States, Lagos has demonstrated a willingness to use its leverage to attain policy goals in the region. The Nigerian government appears to be offering the West a choice. It expects the Western nations to be more attentive to Nigerian concerns and demands on African issues if they are not to face economic retaliation. During the past four years Lagos began to define this choice in its relations with Great Britain. A consideration of these relations would be instructive for the United States; the political and economic implications of this policy should be clear to London and Washington as they piece together parallel approaches to Southern Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 11 , Issue 1-2 , Spring/Summer 1981 , pp. 41 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1981 

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References

Notes

1. “Nigeria Economic Overview,” Africa Research Bulletin, Economic, Financial, and Technical Series, 15 October, 1979: 5279-99; Business Week, 29 January, 1979, p. 49; Africa, May 1981: 15.

2. See Aluko, Olajide, “The New Nigerian Foreign Policy: Developments Since the Downfall of General Gowon,” African Affairs (London), October 1976, p. 307 Google Scholar.

3. Africa South of the Sahara, 1978-1979 (Europa Publications, London, 1979), p. 702.

4. Biersteker, Thomas J., Distortion of Development: Contending Perspectives on the Multinational Corporation (MIT, 1978), pp. 73–75 Google Scholar.

5. IRBD (World Bank), Direction of Trade 1970-1977 (Washington, D.C., 1978)Google Scholar. National Association of Manufacturers.

6. U.S. Department of Commerce, Highlights of U.S. Export-Import Trade, December 1980. (Estimates by author based on 1978 and January-November 1979 data.)

7. Africa Research Bulletin, 15 October, 1979, p. 5298.

8. For a fuller discussion of “Indigenisation” and its implications see Schatz, Sayre, Nigerian Capitalism (University of California Press, 1977), pp. 57–61 Google Scholar, and Williams, Gavin and Turner, Terisa, “Nigeria” in Dunn, John, ed., West African States: Failure and Promise, (Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 132–172 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Collins, Paul, “The Political Economy of Indigenization: The Case of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree,” in African Review (Dares Salaam), no. 4 (1974): 491 Google Scholar.

9. Aluko, Olajide, “Nigeria, the United States and Southern Africa,” African Affairs (London), 98 Google Scholar.

10. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of African Affairs, Economic Policy Staff, South African Reserve Bank, Annual Reports 1970-1977.

11. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, Mineral Commodities Summary, 1979.

12. U.S. Department of Commerce, Highlights of Export-Import Trade (December 1980).

13. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of African Affairs, Economic Policy Staff, U.S. Trade with Africa.

14. Financial Times (London), 2 August, 1979, p. 4.