Africa in World Politics: Sustaining Reform in a Turbulent World Order is a 303-page book, edited by John W. Harbeson and the late Donald Rothchild. It is a collection of chapters, written by an assemblage of scholars who have taught and researched Africa. Now in its seventh edition, it comprises fifteen chapters, distilled into four broad parts. Part One contains two chapters. It opens with a well-crafted introduction, in which James Harbeson teases out the core arguments in the book. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s Chapter Two is a theoretical cum historical analysis of Africa’s entrapment, in global coloniality. To be sure, what could be gleaned from Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s critical analysis is that contrary to the Western-centered perspective, which has attributed the evolution of the modern world system to unique endogenous European development, the constitutive role played by global coloniality, in which African economies were “structurally adjusted,” was the driving force.
Chapter Three by Nicolas Van de Walle opens the discourses in Part Two of the book. Therein, the author explores new trends in Africa’s relations with its partners. He surmises that African countries are, unlike in the past, less aid dependent. Rather, foreign direct investment (FDI), international trade, and remittances have contributed in shoring up economic growth. In the fourth chapter, M. Anne Pitcher canvases the argument that in a globalized world economy, entrepreneurial governance, in which the states have become investors, has come to stay in Africa. In the following chapter, Aili Mari Tripp argues that, without doubt there has been increasing participation of women in politics in Africa, especially in leadership positions; yet, what could be deployed to explain the increasing women’s ascendancy to leadership positions in the OECD countries are not applicable to African countries.
In Chapter Six, drawing from rich historiography of Africa, spiced with empirical data, sourced from the Freedom House and Afrobarometer, John Harbeson submits that despite keying into the third wave of democratization, democracy has not strengthened state institutions in Africa. In the seventh chapter, domiciled in Part Three and entitled “In search of Elusive State Reconstruction,” William Reno dwells on the international context of African warfare. The author advances the argument that the core driver of the internationalization of warfare in Africa is the prevalence of weak states. Navigating the multidimensional nature of the conflicts in the Great Lakes region is the thrust of the eighth chapter, authored by Filip Reyntjens. Drawing from a rich historiography of conflicts in the region, the author surmises that the regional conflicts, although they had their origin in the 1994 Rwandan genocidal war, their escalations were spurred by state collapse in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Drawing from data, sourced from organizations like the United Nations Development Programmes, World Food Programme, and so on, the trios of Gildfred Asiamah, Mohammed Awal, and Lauren MacLean, in the ninth chapter, contend that despite being the least contributor to the global climate change, the African region remains the most vulnerable to the consequences of global climate change. In Chapter Ten, Leonardo A. Villalon discusses the politics of democratization and state building in the Sahel region. Drawing from the comparative experiences of the six Sahel countries (Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Senegal), he opines that except Senegal, other Sahelian countries have not really built state institutions that could manage divergent groups’ demands, as well as maintain stability in the face of existential threats.
Part Four, with five chapters, opens with William Zartman’s Chapter Eleven. Therein, Zartman informs his would-be readers that the “disorder” that has characterized the contemporary international system has created power vacuums, which has made extra-African actors to be active in the diplomacy of African conflicts. Chapter Twelve by David Shinn is on China’s foray and visibility in Africa. Leaning on rich statistical data, he contends that China’s presence has been felt in virtually all sectors of Africa’s economies, beyond infrastructural interventions. The quest for peacebuilding after war via democratization is the focus of Chapter Thirteen, authored by Carrie Manning and Ozlem Tuncel. What the duos would appear to have teased out is that the prospects for sustainable peacebuilding in post-conflict countries are contingent upon the nature of democratic transitions, as well as the inclusivity of the post-conflict governments. In the fourteenth chapter, the core contention of Ulf Engel is that the African Union, since 2002, has undergone myriads of reforms, all geared towards achieving the pan-African objective of a united Africa; yet, the communitarianization of the union has remained problematic. In the final chapter of the book, Francis M. Deng and David Deng—drawing from their experiences as United Nations diplomats—posit that the new international humanitarian order-the responsibility to protect, is a laudable norm, but its operationalization has been characterized by politics of national interests.
Overall, the book is a worthy contribution to the stock of literature on Africa’s international relations. Each of the chapters captures recurring issues in Africa’s relations with extra-African actors and institutions. Not only that, the frameworks of presentations, adopted by the contributors, are top-notch. One organizational lacuna is observed, however. The first chapter of the book, anchored by John Harbeson, should not have been subsumed under Part One. It should have existed as a stand-alone segment of the book. Notwithstanding, the book is an inspiring read and should be a valuable intellectual resource for scholars and students of African politics, international relations and development studies.
