The importance of Africa for the GDR

In this book I have set out to demonstrate that an examination of the GDR's Afrikapolitik enables one to appreciate the broader significance and consequence of the development of East German foreign policy in toto and, indeed, of the GDR as an entity per se.

In the pre-recognition period of East German foreign policy African states and liberation movements were selected as important targets in the GDR's quest to secure diplomatic recognition or at least obtain some form of recognition as an independent state. Recognition was imperative in order to boost the legitimacy of the SED-controlled state as perceived internally and externally. Bonn's refusal to renounce the goal of German reunification and recognise the legitimacy of the GDR – Adenauer's original Alleinvertretungsanspruch – was mobilised on an international scale through the Hallstein Doctrine.

Developments in Africa (and in the connected region of the Middle East) in this period had encouraged the GDR to concentrate attention on the African continent in an attempt to break loose from the shackles of international isolationism imposed by the FRG. Inter-German rivalry in Africa mirrored the overall competition and hostility between the two Germanies. Within a consciously chosen strategy of affiliation with the USSR, intense East German support of Soviet objectives in Africa was directed towards securing policy successes over Bonn in Africa and elsewhere, and was cultivated as a means of ensuring Moscow's assistance in obtaining diplomatic recognition worldwide.