The seven months of Murtala Muhammed's leadership had set clearer lines of foreign policy than economic strategy. Nigeria's security was little threatened by its weak neighbours, among whom it sought to assert a leadership consequent on its size and oil wealth. The main external challenges came from two other directions. One was the revival of the Cold War between the two superpowers during the mid 1970s, now fought less in Europe or South-East Asia than in Afghanistan and tropical Africa. Between 1970–3 and 1977–8, the average annual value of arms imported into sub-Saharan Africa, at constant prices, rose from $370 million to $2,500 million, the chief recipients being Angola and Ethiopia. Angola was the link with the other major challenge of the period, for the presence there of a Cuban army numbering at its peak some 36,000 men accelerated the destruction of white power in southern Africa and the final liberation of the continent from colonial rule.

Obasanjo was eager to contribute to that liberation and to give his country a leading position in the African continent. To that extent he continued the two main lines of policy that he had helped to formulate during Murtala's regime. In both fields he gained only modest success. Further major advances in southern Africa came only after he left office, although some came as the result of policies he had supported. Nigerian leadership, similarly, proved difficult to assert where every African state jealously guarded its still novel independence, although Nigeria's influence within the continent certainly increased during Obasanjo's tenure.